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.

Courtesy of Paramount Pictures Center to right, foreground: Rango (Johnny Depp) and Beans (Isla Fisher) in RANGO, from Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon Movies. © 2011 Paramount Pictures. All Rights Reserved.

I thought Rango’s character design would sink Rango, but the little lizard works. Those teeny-tiny eyes set in bulging trackball sockets are completely counterintuitive – don’t director Gore Verbinski and company know you’re supposed to give animated characters oversized eyes? Does Rango work because of, or in spite of his ocular resemblance to a real-life chameleon? Frankly, I don’t think it matters one way or the other: it’s Johnny Depp’s vocal and his ‘emotion-captured’ physical performances that brings Rango to life. I mentioned Verbinski’s cowboy dress-up strategy in my first write-up of the film: recording the actors not just reading their lines, but performing – and not in tights and motion marking ping-pong balls either, but in Wild West drag. It’s a brilliant brainstorm that judging from the final results paid off nicely.

Pete Docter remembered me – or at least my Route 66 pin.

I have a whole collection of them, shiny metal lapel pins I’ve gathered over the years. Last Friday I almost wore my 1960’s, Star Trek-ish NASA pin, but at the last minute switched to a favorite, one in the shape of a Route 66 road sign and headed out to meet director Docter to talk about his work on Pixar’s latest instant classic, Up.

Pete arrived and our chat (part of the promotion for Up’s blu-ray/DVD release) began. I started by mentioning I’d last seen him way early in the year at Disney’s New York screening room, when he and Up producer Jonas Rivera were in town to present the film’s top (or if you will, upper) half. “And you were wearing the Route 66 pin,” Pete said without a pause. “A different jacket, but I remember the pin.”

When you’re in charge of a $175 million film, you develop an eye for details.

The voice of Po, Jack Black.

I walk in, keeping my fingers crossed; the first Panda is one of my favorite animated films of recent years – why mess with perfection? That movie seemed so complete, so self-contained, with Jack Black’s Po character fulfilling his destiny as the Dragon Warrior; how do you build on it without repeating yourself?  And a skeptic might uncharitably describe Antonio Banderas’ feline swashbuckler as a one-note character: can he carry an entire film on his furry shoulders?

Toy Story 3. © Disney/Pixar.

To quote a line from Toy Story 2’s ad campaign, the toys are back in town, and to paraphrase one from What’s New Pussycat, together again for the last time. And it looks like the real deal too: Pixar is bidding farewell to Woody and his pals. Frankly, I wish all my goodbyes were this sweet.

Well, I guess it was too much to hope for, lightning striking twice in a row. (Then again, Pixar was able to pull it off to the third power with its Toy Story iterations.) But to put it bluntly, Kung Fu Panda 2 is no Kung Fu Panda. No, it’s not bad, it’s just that if KFP was a home run with two men on base, KFP2 is a double – a solid double nonetheless, maybe even drove in a run, but still a double. (Make that a triple if you’re not as much in love with Kung Fu Panda as I am.)

It’s a neat trick for a small Irish studio to snag an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature and go head to head with Pixar, Disney, Henry Selick and Wes Anderson, not to mention beat out Hayao Miyazaki’s Ponyo for a slot.

It’s even more impressive when it’s the first time you’ve directed anything longer than a few commercials or TV segments. But that’s what Tomm Moore of Ireland’s Cartoon Saloon has done with Secret of the Kells - and on a budget that’s probably less than what any of the other films spent promoting themselves.

The New York Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art’s Education program rolls on, ably overseen by the museum’s Senior VP of Education, Danny Fingeroth. Fingeroth’s impressive credits include a lengthy stint as group editor of Marvel’s Spider-Man books, college-level comics instructor and author, co-author and editor of various books and magazines on the subject of writing for comics. As part of his job Fingeroth rounds up pros at the level of Peter Kuper, Larry Hama, Paul Levitz and J.M. DeMatteis to share their knowledge and experience with aspiring comics creators.

As befitting the second ‘C' in MoCCA, cartoon courses are part of the curriculum too, like last year’s storyboarding class taught by Stephen DeStefano, or this past March’s “Animation Writing: How to Write Scripts that will Make You a Key Member of the Creative Team,” led by David Steven Cohen.

Want to do something nice for kids in Bed-Stuy Brooklyn and Sierra Leone Africa at the same time – and come away with a beautiful piece of art for your troubles? It’ll cost you a few well-worth-it bucks…

Blue Sky’s David LaMattina and Chad Walker are the creators of Brownstones to Red Dirt, a documentary centering on a pen pal program linking kids an ocean apart who have the odds stacked against them: at-risk Brooklyn sixth graders and African war orphans. You can learn more about the film at http://www.brownstonestoreddirt.com/

Image courtesy of Walt Disney Pictures.

On a rainy October Monday we media types, invited by the Disney folks, gathered at a midtown NYC arts center. The lure: a peek at the studio’s two big holiday events: Tron Legacy and Tangled, their CGI-animated de/reconstruction of the Rapunzel story.

Garlands of wheat-blonde hair twined around the handrails leading down to the basement auditorium to create an appropriate ambience for the main event of the evening (no, not the free buffet): a surprise, full-length screening of Tangled in its not-yet-fully-animated, not-yet 3D-rendered form.

I’ll go out on a bit of a limb here and call Tangled Disney’s liveliest animated feature in a long time and their best fairy tale updating ever.