Being that it is Christmas time, I thought I would post Hugh Harman’s Peace on Earth, especially as this is the 70th anniversary of its release (7 December 1939); the film’s pacifist theme resonated with the American public in the wake of the outbreak of the World War II in Europe and Harman said it [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Short films'
Peace on Earth & An Old Box
December 24th, 2009 · No Comments · Politics, Short films
Tags: An Old Box·Hugh Harman·MGM cartoons·National Film Board of Canada·Normand Roger·Paul Driessen·Peace on Earth
Mutt and Jeff: On Strike (1920)
August 6th, 2009 · No Comments · Short films
This rare and delightful Mutt and Jeff cartoon directed by Charley Bowers is one of six American films from the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia that were preserved with the aid of the National Film Preservation Foundation, which can be seen online or downloaded as a high quality MPEG file here. (The Museum [...]
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Norman McLaren’s Films Added to the UNESCO Memory of the World Register
August 5th, 2009 · No Comments · Awards, Canadian cinema, Documentary films, Film history and criticism, Filmmakers, Short films
As the CBC reports, “The UNESCO Memory of the World Register has selected McLaren’s films to be held in its heritage collection of the most significant world cultural artifacts. “McLaren’s Oscar-winning anti-war film Neighbours is among 82 films and 52 film tests to be preserved.” The Memory of the World program is aimed at the [...]
Tags: Neighbours (1952)·Norman McLaren·UNESCO's Memory of the World
Fatenah
July 17th, 2009 · 1 Comment · Documentary films, Politics, Short films
I’m a bit late on this, but I think it important to take note of Fatenah, the new Palestinian animated documentary, which Erika Solomon at Reuters described on July 3rd as: The true story of a young Gazan woman’s futile battle against breast cancer has been commemorated in the first-ever Palestinian animated commercial film. “Fatenah” [...]
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New DVDs
July 15th, 2009 · 2 Comments · Short films
A number of interesting new DVD compilations of short films have recently been announced starting with The Astonishing Work of Tezuka Osamu from Kino Video, featuring 13 personal films by the renown “god of manga” and “father of anime” made between 1962 and 1988. (The last, his 1988 animated self-portrait, which is also included, was [...]
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Eleven Roses
July 14th, 2009 · No Comments · Canadian cinema, Short films
Canadian filmmaker Pedram Goshtasbpour, for some reason, describes his short film Eleven Roses (aka E1even Roses) (2008) as a “romantic comedy,” though it is more aptly seen as a 98 lb. weakling tale gone horribly wrong. Pedram, who is someone with whom I’ve had a productive, long-standing correspondence with, shows himself to be a expert [...]
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Do You Know This Krazy Kat?
December 14th, 2008 · No Comments · Animation studios, Filmmakers, History and criticism, Short films
The Nitrate Film Interest Group of the Association of Moving Image Archivists‘ has a Flicker site where archivists post frame scans (and clips) of unidentified films. The above "frame scan is from the end of the film when the audience realizes that Krazy has been eating his furniture in his sleep." David Bordwell recently noted [...]
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More From Life: Gerald McBoing Boing
December 8th, 2008 · No Comments · Animation studios, Cel animation, Short films
Whenever I lecture about UPA, I almost always mention the Life magazine story about Gerald McBoing Boing as an indicator of how popular the film was. Thus, it was no surprise to find a whole slew of images from the film in the Google/Life magazine archives. What is interesting is that they were apparently photographed [...]
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CBTV (Cartoon Brew TV)
October 4th, 2008 · No Comments · Short films
The Pumpkin of Nyefar (Tod Polon and Mark Oftedal, 2004) . Jerry Beck and Amin Amidi’s Cartoon Brew is one of my favorite animation sites, so I was delighted that they have added Cartoon Brew TV to their mix, featuring new and old films. Their first offering, Michael Langan’s award-winning Doxology, a student film made [...]
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Presto, WALL·E
June 30th, 2008 · No Comments · Feature films, Short films
Doug Sweetland’s Presto, the new Pixar short that shows before Andrew Stanton’s WALL·E, is an absolute delight. As good as some of best classic Hollywood cartoons, it is brilliant, very funny and a much better piece of filmmaking than the accompanying feature. The nonstop piling of gag upon gag seems more in line with more [...]
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YouTube Screening Room Debuts
June 20th, 2008 · No Comments · Short films
CNET blogger Harrison Hoffman reported yesterday that, YouTube has just announced the launch of the rumored YouTube Screening Room. The news broke yesterday that YouTube was going to be delving into professional films, with the possibility breaking out of their 10 minute mold and into longer form. YouTube is actively pursuing filmmakers to try and [...]
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The Madness of Being
June 13th, 2008 · No Comments · Independent animators, Short films
The Madness of Being, a striking short film Hal Miles made last year, recently finished doing the festival circuit. Its about a character (a stop motion armature) trapped in a situation right out of Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit; Miles describes the story as being about a “character … confined in an extremely small and isolated [...]
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Animated Oscar Winners 2008
February 26th, 2008 · No Comments · Feature films, Short films, Special effects
The Oscar for Best Animated Feature went to Brad Bird’s Ratatouille from Pixar, beating out Persepolis, which was my favorite. In so doing, the members of the Academy went against the trend to honor smaller independent films in the Best Picture category, as opposed to blockbusters like Ratatouille. The Best Animated Short Film went to [...]
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2008 Oscar Nominated Animated Shorts
February 24th, 2008 · No Comments · Feature films, Short films
The package of Academy Award-nominated short films distributed by Magnolia Pictures, had a brief run in Atlanta and I managed to catch the program of animated films. Overall, an excellent program, though one film does stand out and would be my choice. Here are some first impressions: Samuel Tourneux and Simon Vanesse’s Même les pigeons [...]
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