A Monster in Paris. All film images © 2011 EuropaCorp, Bibo Films, France 3 Cinema, Walking the Dog.

It’s baa-ack! The days are getting longer and warmer, but the real sign of spring’s incipient arrival is of the return of the New York International Children’s Film Festival. A Monster in Paris was the opening night feature, which festival director Eric Beckman first saw at  last year’s Toronto International Film Festival. Seems there’s a monster loose in Belle Époque Paris (duh) – but is he really a monster? The 3D CGI film is a charming piece of work with stylish character design and a sharp eye for getting its period details just right. (And be careful with those 3D glasses; bust them and the festival’s out $25.) It’s well-worth seeing for the mid-film fantasy dance number alone.

“Spin-off!"  Is there any word more thrilling to the human soul?”

Or so The Simpsons’ Troy McClure would have you believe. Evidently DreamWorks does too, with DreamWorks’ Puss in Boots about to hit theaters tomorrow. (Or last week, or last month when you might come across this review.)

Heathcliff, Garfield, and now Puss; orange tabbies seem to be at the front of the line when it comes to getting their own movie. it’s about time too, after years of Si and Am (Lady and the Tramp), Mr. Tinkles (Cats and Dogs) and Kitty Galore (Cats and Dogs redux) depicting cats as villains.

Can a former supporting player (Shreks II, II and IV) carry his own film? The answer is yes, especially if it sets up his backstory, introduces a female rival/love interest, provides plenty of entertaining set-pieces and a despicable villain or two.

Bugs Bunny and Daffy - The Looney Tunes Show

Now that CN has aired the first season of their new Looney Tunes series (or to be precise, The Looney Tunes Show), it’s time to enjoy them on DVD. What to do with these characters has been Warner Bros.’ challenge for years now. The classic theatrical shorts have matured from classic to just plain old. (Masterpieces all, but old just the same.) Attempts to bring them up to date have given us excretions like Loonatics, so-whats like Baby Looney Tunes and faux old-time toons like Carrotblanca.

Under exec-producer Sam Register, they’ve finally gotten it right: contemporized their merrie menagerie while keeping their core personalities intact. It took a bit of a trip into sitcom-land to accomplish, but IMHO (as they say online) it works.

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.)

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.

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic group shot. Courtesy of The Hub.

The Transformers may be raking in the box office gold and G.I. Joe battled COBRA in the multiplexes, but while those once-upon-the-eighties Hasbro cartoon shows made the leap from TV cartoon to big screen live action, the diminutive equines collectively known as My Little Pony have returned in a new animated series that has surprised a lot of people.

To put it simply, The Hub Channel’s My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is one hip show.

MLP:FiM is the creation of Lauren Faust, an animation veteran whose career began as an animator on 1990’s features like Cats Don’t Dance and Quest for Camelot. After directing a stack of Powerpuff Girls episodes, Faust hit her stride as Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends’ head writer and supervising producer. (And in all likelihood, the visual inspiration for Frankie, the show’s red-haired teenage problem-solver.)

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.)

DC relaunched a Looney Tunes comic book in the mid-90 that gave up on the Barksian adventures and instead tried to replicate the cartoons’ wacky sensibility. After 15-plus years it’s still going strong, but after a couple of issues I started getting that same déjà vu feeling I experienced when watching Tiny Toons or the less creative Disney direct-to-video sequels: favorite moments shuffled, repackaged and quoted – which were better the first time around.

All of which is a roundabout way of getting to the subject at hand: Cartoon Network’s re-introduction of Bugs and company in The Looney Tunes Show.

Lord knows I had my reservations about the entire affair. Trying to do something with these characters outside of the short cartoon format where they were at their best has always been risky; with one or two exceptions (like say, Taz-mania), the less said about efforts like Loonatics Unleashed, Space Jam or Looney Tunes: Back in Action, the better.

But in brief, my personal reaction to the first episode… The Looney Tunes show works. I like this show – a lot, as a matter of fact.

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.

Don’t Go, a CGI/live action film from Turkey. All images courtesy of NYICFF.

The 2011 edition of the New York International Children’s Film Festival began early in March and wrapped on the 27^th with its Awards ceremony, classy post-ceremony reception and traditional goodie-bag giveaway. If the fifteen-years and counting Big Apple fixture needed any more legitimacy, its newly won status as an Oscar-qualifying festival (NYCIFF prize winners now have a shot at the Academy’s golden statue) surely kicked it up a notch.