Maybe I was in a bad mood when Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs came out. Maybe I just resented the idea of taking one of my kids’ favorite picture books and pumping it up into a full-length feature, so I passed on it in the theaters.  Meatballs was true to the book’s title, its idea of food falling from the sky – and not much else. Not that there was much else to ditch, admittedly, but at the very least I would’ve liked to have seen at least one visual nod along the way to Ron Barrett’s meticulously cross-hatched original illustrations that gave the book’s outlandish premise a real-world solidity.

Nick’s The Last Airbender – the movie based on the channel’s long running animated adventure – won’t be out until July, but the toys are already in the pipeline, and the prototypes went on display for a select audience the week before the New York Toy Fair began on Valentine’s Day.

Lourdes Arocho shows off Aangs staff.

There are ten Best Picture Oscar nominees this year? Big deal, nobody cares about Best Picture... what's really important is the Best Animated Feature, everybody knows that. Who will win?

As you probably know, The Princess and the Frog is Disney’s first 2D effort in five years. It took John Lasseter, a Pixar guy who now runs all of Disney animation to get the studio to return to its 2D roots. Lasseter and company knew they had to hit a home run to make people care about hand-drawn animation again. They came to the plate swinging for the fence: would they ground into a double play or hit a grand slam? Is P&F 2D’s rebirth or its last gasp?

Hey, it’s a Disney movie – there’s gotta be a happy ending, right?

Damn straight – a happy ending to both the movie and the studio’s mission to show the world 2D’s still got the goods. CGI? We don’ need no steenkin’ CGI!

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.

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.

If you take the J train over the Williamsburg Bridge, get off at Kosciusko Street and walk a few blocks west, you’ll come to a storefront that looks like it’s home to a going out of business sale, with benches and various other effluvia out on the sidewalk. Inside is a bar and club called “Goodbye Blue Monday” that’s most definitely in business: the place is decorated not unlike Pee-wee’s playhouse or the home of some mad collector of antique TV sets, mountains of action figures and bizarro furniture. (The rocking chair made out of two motorcycle gas tanks was pretty impressive.)

I’m there because way in the back – as a matter of fact out the back door and through a tiny backyard into a huge, high-ceiling shed – Tom Stathes is holding his first Cartoon Carnival

You know the tingles, that feeling running up and down your spine when you experience something awesome. Last month the Disney folks were kind enough to invite me to a preview of Ponyo – and I swear a day and half later the tingles were still with me.

Miyazaki’s not just concern for, but identification with the environment is once again an integral part of the story. (The once-human scientist “had to leave that all behind to serve the Earth.”) Unlike several other Miyazaki films, Ponyo’s rooting in Japanese culture and myth didn’t leave the Miscweant mystified. (Will someone please explain the endings of Nausicaa and Princess Mononoke to me?) Disney asked us not to review the film, so I won’t talk about the well-known stars who provide the English voices or describe its plot in any detail. I’ll just say that after I left the screening I walked 25 blocks home rather than be de-tingled on the subway. I didn’t even feel like turning on the TV for the next 36 hours or so, until the tingles faded away on their own; I wanted to hold onto that magic as long as I could.

Hey kids! Play the Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull Drinking Game!

It’s easy! It’s fun! You’ll get boozed out of your mind! Here’s how to play…

1) Every time someone refers to how old Indy looks, have a drink;

This alone will get you off to a smashing – and smashed – start. Shia LaBeouf delivers the best line here: “what are you, 80 or something?” Interestingly, Ford looks in pretty good shape in the action sequences, but noticeably older – wrinkled and white-haired – when he’s teaching his classes.

2) ...