The End-of-Week Linkage

And the start of muscular animated news and commentary.

We start with a bit of corporate tub-thumping: The Mouse puts one of its "behind the scenes" snippets about Tangled on the intertubes.

(This short documentary has been playing inside the Hat Building's entrance for a while now ....)

Exciting news for remake fans of old Arnold movies:

Arnold Schwarzenegger's 1990 film Total Recall is set for a remake, with director Len Wiseman in line to take control. ... The script is being written by Kurt Wimmer, who wrote the screenplay for the ... Angelina Jolie film Salt. ... The remake is being described as "computerized animation". ...

Hmmm. Computerized animation. Must be something like cgi, yes?

VFX Soldier writes of the wonderful world of film subsidies.

... [G]overnment subsidies only artificialize the price of vfx and they ultimately lead to negative returns and little economic spillover. When countries like the UK are dealing with huge debts, the first thing politicians love to target is any funding for the arts. It’s sad but Hollywood is a favorite target for conservatives. For VFX facilities in the UK that depend on clients looking to cash in on government rebates, it could be very painful if the subsidy is abolished. ..

It doesn't do our fine entertainment conglomerates much good to build a studio in a subsidy-rich locale only to see those subsidies taken away, now does it? But that's the price corporations pay for trusting the damn guvmint.

Bugs Bunny's first cartoon short appeared seventy years ago this week:

... There was little fanfare to mark the anniversary of the cartoon that’s considered the rabbit’s official debut: “A Wild Hare,” which premiered July 27, 1940. The lack of a celebration is a shame, but not startling given Bug’s slide down the rabbit hole of obscurity in recent years. ...

Universal and Illumination Entertainment are keen on a certain monkey:

Illumination Entertainment ... is developing a new version of "Curious George." ... The Illumination film is ... getting a script from Larry Stuckey, who wrote the upcoming "Little Fockers," the third installment in the "Meet the Parents" franchise, for Universal. Universal is very keen on Illumination, which with "Despicable" gave the studio a long-awaited family-friendly animation hit. ...

I'm not overwhelmingly timely with this, but it's a worthwhile link anyway. Mark Kennedy remembers Pres R.

... [Pres] was a rough inbetweener for Glen Keane and he enabled Glen to crank out massive amounts of footage of Aladdin. Glen would do the key poses and Pres would fill in the breakdown and "inbetween" drawings to flesh out the acting and motion and Glen could move onto the next scene. I remember Pres telling me that Glen was able to do 50 feet in a week once (an unbelievable amount for Disney - most animators dream of being able to do 5 feet a week consistently) because of Pres's help. ...

Goodbye, Mr. Callahan.

John Callahan, the quadriplegic cartoonist whose famously politically incorrect humor generated both praise and criticism, has died. He was 59. ... Paralyzed from the chest down in a car accident in 1972 at age 21 and a recovering alcoholic since he was 27, Callahan began selling cartoons in the early 1980s and went on to be internationally syndicated in newspapers and magazines ...

I thought what was refreshing about him was, in an age of political correctness, he was bucking the system," said Bill Plympton, a two-time Oscar-nominated animator who first met Callahan in the late '70s when he showed up in his wheelchair at a cartoon class Plympton was teaching at Portland State University.

"He showed me his portfolio, and every cartoon was genius, a very wacky, crazy humor," Plympton said.

Among his better-known efforts: Two Ku Klux Klansmen heading out at night in their white sheets. Says one: "Don't you love it when they're still warm from the dryer?"

A beggar in the street wearing a sign that reads, "Please help me. I am blind and black, but not musical."

Turns out the Russian cartoon business isn't as healthy as Russians would like it to be.

The cartoon “Smeshariki” is known by most Russian children. It has survived Russia’s troubled animation industry, which is mostly dominated by western cartoons. But today most Russian children watch western cartoons of the past, and a few modern ones. ... Russian animators say the industry desperately needs government support. It should incorporate the promotion of animation on television and update media technology.

Add On: I couldn't resist this, via Tom Sito and Henry Mayo:

Have a worthwhile weekend.