Noted animation producer / director / technologist / multimedia guru / man of international mystery Christopher Panzner has launched a brand new bi-yearly digital magazine, LHOOQ (pronounced “Look”), a pluridisciplinary (pronounced “double-you tee eff”) look at mindstyle, lifestyle, arts, literature, anything, everything.  The first issue includes a great piece spotlighting three well-known Canadian (pronounced “Kun-ay-dee-yan”) animation-type folks, none other than Mike Fallows, Chris Robinson and L. Elliot Taylor

 

 

It's hard to choose my favorite Christopher Walken.  Kevin Pollack, Jay Mohr and of course, Kevin Spacey come to mind.  In fact, Mr. Walken has become such an iconic personality that it's tough to watch him on TV or in a film and not think, for a moment, that he doesn't do nearly as good a Christopher Walken as one of the previously mentioned actors. He's just not Walken enough.  As they say, you can't be too rich, too thin, or have enough Christopher Walken.

For every cowbell junkie and True Romance lover, this video should scare the "Wow, Wow, Wow" out of youze.

 

 

Recently, I had an opportunity to talk to Daisuke “Dice” Tsutsumi, whom many of you know as a driving force behind the Totoro Forest Project and most recently, the Sketchtravel charity art project.  An accomplished artist who spends his days applying his formidable skills as an art director at Pixar Animation Studios, Dice gave me an inside look at the unprecedented Sketchtravel sketch book, a historic collection of sketches being auctioned off this coming October 17^th.

 

For the past 2 years, Bill Plympton has had a team of interns busy restoring Winsor McCay’s last short film, The Flying House.  As work has progressed, Matthew Modine came onto the project as a producer and with assistance from business partner Adam Rakoff, has launched an online fundraising effort through Kickstarter.com.  Find out more about Winsor McCay, his career, the restoration of the film and how you can get involved.

 

 

One of the highlights of this past Saturday's ASIFA-Hollywood Annie Awards was Brad Bird's acceptance speech, done via video from the Vancouver set of Mission Impossible IV.  Brad was honored with the Winsor McCay Award for Lifetime Achievement.  How could you possibly out-do the compilation of clips they screened highlighting his incredible body of work?  Well, you follow it with a recorded acceptance speech that brought down the house. 

If you weren't at Royce Hall, you're in for a treat.  If you were lucky to be there, this is certainly worth at least two more viewings...enjoy!

 

 

Craig Barron has posted a really nice short film tribute to film historian and preservationist Kevin Brownlow, who this past Saturday received the Governors Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. 

 

 

Frank Gladstone shot me a note about a short animated cg film called Mila being made by former Disney, DreamWorks and Imageworks animator Cinzia Angelini. Hoping to push the boundaries of non-photorealistic rendering to create a painterly aesthetic and character design, Cinzia is also striving to tell a socially relevant story about war’s most tragic collateral damage – the youngest civilians. The film is inspired by true stories that Cinzia’s mother and grandmother told her of their own lives in Italy during World War II. 

 

 

I’ve known Gary Schwartz since, well, since he was a much younger zany filmmaker and animation teacher.  In the Webster’s Dictionary, under the word “energy,” there is a picture of Gary with his infectious grin, a camera and a tripod.  If you ever meet him, ask him about taking 3-D pictures of Don Knotts in the Toronto Airport.  This year at the Ottawa Animation Festival, as he does every year, Gary made an extremely cool stop motion short – in one day! This year’s edition, Fa Fha Pha Ottawa!, inspired by the Ottawa festival award designed by sculptor Tick Tock Tom, is his best yet!

 

No, Anderson, Bullwinkle, Rocky and Me is not a British supergroup from the 80s.  Please, who would have played bass?

Alexander Anderson Jr., who along with Cal frat brother Jay Ward created Rocky & Bullwinkle and Dudley Do-Right among other cartoon characters, passed away last Friday at age 90. My daughters grew up with a constant barrage of my “Wossamotta U” and “fan mail from some flounder” mimicry.  Of course back then, they thought me odd and had no idea what I was saying, until I bought them (actually, I bought for myself) our first set of The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle VHS tapes at least 15 years ago and opened their eyes and young minds to all the greatness and splendor of Anderson and Ward’s creations.