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.

As dependable as the vernal equinox and the return of Daylight Savings Time, the New York International Children’s Film Festival is back in town to help wrap up another winter.

As usual, the Fest began with a high profile, mainstream movie for its opening night gala; this year, it was producer Robert Zemeckis’ latest mocap creation, Mars Needs Moms, courtesy of Disney. (A few notches up in the prestige dept. from 2001’s Recess: School’s Out, based on a Disney Saturday morning TV series.)

Perhaps I was a little harsh on Bob when I dismissed his mocap-fixated films as ‘Zombievision.’ Any form of CGI animation technology can’t help but improve as computers get faster and programming more sophisticated, and Moms’ human characters aren’t anywhere as jarring as the ones in Carrey’s Christmas Carol or God forbid The Polar Express’ living dead. (But still, in this age when middle school kids can green screen composite their friends into sci-fi settings, why does the Big Z still insist on mocapping people to play people in the first place?) Flesh textures still tend towards the rubbery and hands and feet look particularly doll-like in close-up, but eyes (ever so slightly larger than a real face would sport, a nice touch) shine with more life than they have in the past. Oh, and I’m not being nice towards the movie just because my niece is marrying one of its technical directors. (Hi, Mike!)

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.

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.

Tron: Legacy. © Walt Disney Enterprises.

I haven’t been this disappointed by a Walt Disney sci-fi movie since The Black Hole.  Maybe I walked in with unrealistic expectations of seeing something as groundbreaking, and visually thrilling as the 1982 original. The trailer looked tremendous (as trailers are supposed to) and the idea of revisiting a ‘visionary’ film (the first Tron does indeed deserve that now-overused adjective) with 21^st century effects – and with the same actors playing the same characters they did in the original, only middle-aged – seemed irresistible.

Megamind. All images courtesy of DreamWorks Animation.

Ever wonder how Wile E. Coyote would feel if he ever caught the Road Runner?

(Actually, Seth MacFarlane did more than wonder; in his Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy show, with the bird long digested, Wile E. turns to Jesus to fill the void in his heart.)

The inept arch-villain Megamind has the same problem; now that he’s finally offed his nemesis, the smug ‘n smarmy superhero Metro Man… what’s left to do? Terrorizing Metro City and kidnapping feisty reporter Roxanne “Roxie” Ritchi doesn’t have the same zing without someone to oppose him. There’s only one option left – and it ain’t looking for Jesus…

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.