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Cohen’s Cartoon Corner: Jan 2020 by Karl F. Cohen
SF IndieFest promo for 2020. Image: courtesy SF IndieFest
SF IndieFest is Back
SF IndieFest has a program of 16 interesting-sounding shorts coming to the Roxie (Sat. Feb. 1 at 2:45 pm; Tues. Feb, 4 at 7pm) from the US, China, Italy, Japan, India, Argentina, UK, Denmark, Korea, Germany, Canada and Switzerland.
“There is no shortage of innovation when it comes to animation," they state, in the guide for their animated shorts program, “Shorts 2, True Colors”. "This program features the best of new animation from around the world.”
David Chai, who teaches at San Jose State, has an excellent new piece in it, which takes his work in a more sophisticated, mature direction. For more, see their nicely illustrated web page here.
Poster for the new documentary 'Animation Outlaws'. Image: courtesy Animation Outlaws
The Animation Outlaws
The excellent and fun feature-length documentary, “Animation Outlaws”, about the Spike and Mike animation shows, has been accepted by the Slam Dance Film Festival. The tentative screening date is Mon. Jan. 27 in Park City, Utah. Hopefully it will get excellent press coverage, a distributor will fall in love with it AND Kat Alioshin will get a distribution contract.
Kat lives in the Bay Area and worked for Colossal Pictures, a local animation house that once created impressive high end TV commercials and pieces for MTV. The feature is presently making the rounds of other festivals as well, see their site here
"What a loving, honest, insightful and hilarious portrait of Spike, and of that festival era,” noted Mike Johnson, director of “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” and “Corpse Bride”.
“[They] captured the zeitgeist. The raw intensity of pre-digital days... We will never get that feeling again. Amazing that it’s part of history now and I’m glad that [they] preserved such a clear record."
Tom Sito, drawing the Beast, from 'Beauty and the Beast'. Image: courtesy G. Meyer
Meet Tom Sito at Cartoon Museum Jan 19
Tom Sito is a former Disney animator (“The Lion King”, “Aladdin” and “Pocahontas”), the chairman of the animation department at Univ. of Southern Calif., the president-emeritus of The Animation Guild and the author of “Drawing the Line”.
But the reason he is coming to the Bay Area now is to talk about his new book “Eat, Drink, Animate – An Animator’s Cookbook”, which features recipes and techniques from animation luminaries, along with lots of photos and stories.
Sito will be at the San Francisco Cartoon Museum on Sun, Jan 19, at 2:00 PM, signing books and spinning yarns. Admission is free and open to the public. The day before (on the 18th), he will be at the Disney Family Museum at lunchtime (but not free).
Gary Meyer in his N. Berkeley office, circa 2010. Image: courtesy G. Meyer
Gary Meyer: Film Addict
Gary was a founding member of ASIFA-SF international animation association, a past director of the influential Telluride Film Festival, a founder of the Landmark theatre chain and, for many years, the owner and chief bottle washer of the UC and Balboa Theatres in Berkeley and SF, respectively .
Currently he is the founder and editor of Eat, Drink Films, which, by the way, went online four years before Sito's book. He is also a great guy.
SF Film, the association that presents the SF International Film Festival, gave him a lifetime achievement award recently. In honor of that recognition, the SF Chronicle marked the occasion with a full page article about his career, a fascinating story of a kid realizing his dream.
Films That Didn’t Gross a Billion
Eight features grossed over a billion dollars in 2019, but what about the others? Keep in mind that most features cost well over a million to make and the box office income is split between the theatre, the production company and others.
Box Office Mojo says only 264 features grossed over a million dollars at the box office, while they list over 900 feature films being released in 2019. Only 117 of them have grossed over $25 million, 86 grossed over $50 million, 63 made over 100 million, twelve over $500 million and eight over a billion.
Amazingly, six of the latter were made by Disney/Pixar, with the winner being Disney’s “Avengers: Endgame”, which grossed $2,797,800,564 as of January 5th. Once again, while a few works made enormous profits, most have failed to break even.
Nick Park, famous for his Wallace and Grommet series, who has won four Oscars. image: courtesy N. Park
The Road to Being an Oscar-Nominated Animated Shorts
The Academy of Motion Pictures announced the names of the ten animated shorts films being considered for nominations, which is called the short list. Although 92 films qualified, this year's ten are: “Dcera” (Daughter), "Hair Love”, “He Can’t Live Without Cosmos”, “Hors Piste”, “Kitbull”, “Memorable”, “Physics of Sorrow” and “Uncle Thomas: Accounting for the Days”.
ASIFA-SF members, which includes me, saw two of the films, “The Physics of Sorrow” and “Uncle Thomas: Accounting for the Days”, with the directors present in October in a special program presented by the National Film Board of Canada.
Several of the short listed films can be seen online. “Hair Love” by Matthew Cherry, a former NFL player, can be seen here. Or check out “Sister”, directed by Siqi Song, which explores China’s controversial “one child” policy. Or “Hors Piste”.
Rosana Sullivan, from Pixar, has “Kitbull”, about a stray kitten, an abused pit bull and their unlikely friendship. The entire film is online.
Meanwhile, trailers for the following can be seen online: “He Can’t Live Without Cosmos”, the puppet film “Dcera” (Daughter), “The Physics of Sorrow”, from the National Film Board of Canada, directed by Theodore Ushev, and “Memorable” by Bruno Collet, a stop-motion puppet movie.
LATE BREAKING NEWS: The best animated shorts finalists are "Dcera" (Daughter), "Hair Love, "Kitbull, "Sister" and "Memorable". Also the nominations for best animated feature are "How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World", "I Lost My Body", "Missing Link", "Toy Story 4" and "Klaus"; for best visual effects, "The Lion King"; and for best song, “I Can’t Let You Throw Yourself Away” from "Toy Story 4", “Into the Unknown” from "Frozen II".
British Academy Awards
The nominations for the BAFTA in Animation went to “Frozen 2”, “Klaus”, “A Shaun The Sheep Movie: Farmageddon” and “Toy Story 4”. The awards ceremony itself will take place at the Royal Albert Hall in London on Feb. 2.
Cesar Animation Awards
See trailers for the interesting twelve animated films nominated at this well-lauded French festival here.
Characters from the new 'Playmobil' movie, produced by a company of the same name. Meyer in his N. Berkeley office, circa 2010. Image: courtesy Playmobil
Box Office Extremes
The animated “Playmobil” had the third-worst opening of all time for a title opening in 2,000 or more theaters (it opened in a whooping 2237 theaters). Essentially a feature-length ad for Playmobil Toys from Germany, The Hollywood Reporter headline read “Playmobil Bombs at $668K”.
Meanwhile “Frozen 2” crossed the billion dollar line on Dec. 15. Then on Jan 5 the film broke another record. On Jan. 5 Frozen ”2 became the highest-grossing animated film in box office history, passing a record held for six years by the original Frozen, which grossed $1.27 billion after its release in November, 2013.
As for "Plamobil”, to encourage people to see it, North American theaters offered the film for a reduced admission price of only $5. A friend of mine, panned the film after she saw its premiere at the Annecy Animation Festival last June. Although it was the supposedly prestigious opening feature, she noted that about half of the audience walked out and.
The film’s production cost is reported to be $75 million and so far it has grossed $1.5 million in the US and $15 million worldwide.
The Worst Animation
End-of-the-year news items included a lots of lists. The Hollywood Reporter put “The Emojis” on their worst-film-of-the decade list, calling it “cheesy,” “cynical” and “an offensive exercise in blatant product placement.” “Artic Fox”, which they called “simply dreadful,” made their list of the-top-ten-worst films of 2019.
Microsoft News, in turn, picked “Ugly Dolls” for their worst films list.
Disney Caught In Marketing Scam
Caught in a stealth marketing scam in Japan, Disney evidently paid “manga” artists to tweet praise of “Frozen 2” without revealing they had done so. Somebody almost as smart as Homer Simpson must have worked at the Japanese advertising agency that Disney hired given that average viewers noticed that seven artists who posted illustrations of characters from “Frozen 2” also praised the film using the same text.
Although Disney issued an apology on Dec. 5, they suggested the problem was due to a lack of communication rather than deliberate deception. But that didn’t end the problem.
One of the artists, Kosame Daizu, admitted on Dec. 11, on Twitter to his 100,000+ followers, that he had been told by the advertising agency that hired him to not disclose he was being paid to promote the film. Some of his followers pointed out that it sounded like he had been forced to send the messages.
Disney Japan finally issued a statement taking full responsibility and that it was not the artists’ fault. They also said they would take measures to prevent a recurrence of similar events. What fake publicity stunts have they pulled off that were never detected? During the first three weeks of “Frozen 2”’s run in Japan the film had earned around $250 million there, begging the question: Was a scam even needed?
Karl F. Cohen—who decided to add his middle initial to distinguish himself from the Russian Karl Cohen, who tried to assassinate the Czar in the mid-19th century—is an animator, educator and director of the local chapter of the International Animation Society and can be reached . Posted on Jan 15, 2020 - 05:01 AM