Ever have a friend, like back in college say, who was just the funniest guy you knew? Always coming up with great jokes completely out of left field, or riffing on whatever was happening at the moment? You graduate and go your separate ways, then six years later you meet up again. You can’t help but notice he dresses a lot better than he did in school. He still tells jokes, only now a lot of them are what he heard last night on Leno, or he’s quoting the catchphrase of the moment. It was fun seeing him again, but it’s not the reunion you were hoping for, the one that would recapture those great moments back in school.

That’s how I felt walking out of Hoodwinked Too!: Hood vs. Evil.

“It wouldn’t be the first time a labor of love arrived stillborn.” That was the closing line to a 1980s Film Comment article about animator Richard Williams’ ongoing quest to complete his long-gestating animated feature The Thief and the Cobbler.

The author of that article was close; what ultimately (and briefly) made it into the theaters as Arabian Knight wasn’t just stillborn; it was an abortion.

A fellow named Kevin Schreck has made a spot-on doc documenting Williams’ personal heart of darkness, aptly titled Persistence of Vision. It’s been popping up here and there (evidently he’s been working on it a few years himself) and I was fortunate enough to catch it at a recent Manhattan screening.

Road Runner and Coyote in 3-D.

Animating classic, nay legendary cartoon characters is a daunting challenge. Theatrical shorts are no longer part of a four-hour day at the movies, along with a double feature, newsreel, shorts and coming attractions – they’re now a prestige item occasionally accompanying a suitably themed fantasy/family film. And as befits our modern truncated attention spans, they’re more often than not faster-paced and briefer in running time than their illustrious predecessors.

When Warner Bros. asked Matt O’Callaghan to return their yin-and-yang, would-be predator and hoped-for prey pair Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, to the big screen – only in CGI-shape and 3D-depth, O’Callaghan took a deep breath and delivered the goods – and fortunately for all involved with the production, without once resorting to Acme technology…

Jim Cummings Ph: Eric Charbonneau ©Disney

Enterprises, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

By Jim Cummings, with an intro by Joe Strike

 Disney's simply-titled Winnie the Pooh movie opens this Friday, July 15. It's back to basics for the bear with very little brain; the new Pooh takes several previously never animated A.A. Milne stories and weaves them into a tale that harkens back to the warmth and charm of Disney's 1960s Pooh featurettes.

Pooh and Disney have had a long association since the first featurette, 1966's Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree. He's appeared in any number of TV series (in both puppet and animated form), direct-to-video releases and now the first theatrical Pooh release since 2005's Pooh's Heffalump Movie.

Sadly, Sterling Holloway (the original Pooh) and Paul Winchell (likewise Tigger) are no longer with us, but veteran voice actor Jim Cummings has vocalized these two inhabitants of the Hundred Acre Wood for over thirty years. His enthusiasm for voicing the bear and the tiger is of Tiggerish proportions, as you're about to read...

Saturday morning at the movies, watching a cartoon – what could be more reminiscent of the joys of childhood?

Well, the cartoon this particular Saturday morning (September 10, 2011) was not exactly the kind of matinee I used attend back in Brooklyn when the theaters had ‘matrons’ who kept the kiddie section in line. Today I’m wearing polarized lenses and watching Disney’s upcoming 3D re-release of The Lion King.

Been a while since I’ve seen Simba and company in action onscreen. In fact, I think I’ve seen the Broadway show more recently than the movie. (No.2 box office champ for 1994, and the film that triggered the short-lived 1990’s feature animation craze that gave us classics like Anastasia and Quest for Camelot.)

Think that guy sitting across from you on the subway looks ugly? What if he had two heads? Or horns and a forked tongue, or maybe was a fish from the waist up? And there were plenty more like him all over town? Then you’d probably be living in the imaginary New York City where Ugly Americans, Comedy Central’s new animated series takes place. The concept: “Newcomers,” a bizarre assortment of monsters and fantastical creatures have become an accepted part of the population, and a small government bureaucracy, the “Department of Integration” tries to help them fit into society. It’s the brainchild (and by the way, bodiless brains are among the Newcomers) of one Devin Clark…

Enrico Casarosa

The year-plus early teaser trailer is a given for spectacular genre movies nowadays… but how about the full release of an entire movie – an animated Pixar film at that – some ten months before its official premiere?

In this case however, the Pixar film in question runs all of seven minutes and is set to accompany the summer 2012 release of Brave, Pixar’s next full-length feature. It’s called La Luna, and it’s the story of a boy, his dad, granddad… and their peculiar relationship with the celestial body of the title.

Gore Verbinski - Rango.

Every now and then Paramount Pictures puts out a nice spread (mini-sandwiches, sliders and open bar, not to mention those killer chocolate chip cookies – there goes my diet) in their overlooking-Times Square 3^rd floor screening room. Tonight it’s in honor of Pirates of the Carribean-meister Gore Verbinski, in town to promote his premiering-in-March, Johnny Depp-starring, first animated feature Rango.

Ren & Stimpy board 2

One by one, the folding chairs set up in New York City’s Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art are being occupied. It’s the first evening of a three-night course in storyboarding – part of MoCCA’s ongoing educational program – and the dozen or so folks filling those chairs are here to learn from Stephen DeStefano.  Stephen’s MoCCA students are looking for a leg up in the craft, or are simply curious about the nuts and bolts of an animation fundamental. CGI animators, comic book artists and even a handful of School of Visual Arts instructors (not to mention one AWN writer) have come to try their hand at boarding.

SpongeBob SquarePants: Truth or Dare © Viacom International, Inc.

SpongeBob SquarePants’s been around for either a decade or ‘eleventy-seven’ years, depending on whether you go by the calendar or by the irrational number thrown around in the absorbent and yellow and porous one’s tenth anniversary special, Truth or Square.

 Scooby Doo aside, I can’t think of another TV cartoon character who’s broken into the mainstream with the same staying power as the classic Warner and Disney characters. The Flintstones and Scoob may be fondly remembered by many, but when was the last time you completely cracked up watching them? (For me frankly, never.)

Apart from laughing at the nonstop gags, I completely lost it at least four or five times during the special, which juggles two plotlines: the sponge and friends preparing for the Krusty Krab restaurant’s eleventy-seventh anniversary, and a live-action parallel story (rivaling some of SCTV’s more inspired episodes in sheer goofballiness) following Patchy the Pirate’s flop sweat-drenched attempt to put together an all-star salute to the Sponge.