Chatterbox - Western Animation

It's stupid.

Edited by Delibirda on Jan 12th 2022 at 9:36:00 PM

"Listen up, Marina, because this is SUPER important. Whatever you do, don't eat th“ “DON'T EAT WHAT?! Your text box ran out of space!”

x2: For additional context, this comes from an article by Cartoon Brew, which goes more in-depth with 6 takeaways of this development.

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Alberto Mielgo, best known for his visual contributions to Spider Man Into The Spiderverse, TRON: Uprising, and The Witness just released an adult animated short called The Windshield Wiper on his Instragram for roughly 2 weeks (it's Oscar season related). It's 15 minutes, loosely inspired by Mielgo's life, and chronicles different events with the arcing question "what is love?"

Edited by XMenMutant22 on Jan 19th 2022 at 7:12:38 AM

What I ultimately want to see is American animated films with the quality of European ones.

I think American animated films are of extremely high quality, but the commercially successful ones tend to tell similar types of stories in similar fashion. That's not always the case, of course, but breakout stuff like Into the Spider-Verse seem to be the exception rather than the rule. I'd like to see a wider variety of stories told and approaches to storytelling. I think the American animation industry is making progress in this regard, but it's slow.

Edited by Robbery on Jan 19th 2022 at 7:48:02 AM

I guess what I mean is, I can't see Pixar or DreamWorks making something like "The Windshield Wiper". But they absolutely could in theory, and there would definitely be an audience for it if they did.

Edited by ElSquibbonator on Jan 19th 2022 at 10:59:42 AM

Nothing stifles creativity so much as success.

I don't know that there would be much of an audience for it, though. There's isn't much of an audience for non-commercial animated shorts outside of animation fans like us, or the festival circuit. I don't know that putting Disney behind something like that would help it any.

Yeah, Disney or Pixar could make "The Windshield Wiper," but why would they want to? I'm sure the animators at both companies have loads of creative, risky, revolutionary ideas they'd love to see realized (Glen Keane was involved in 2011's "Adam and Dog," for instance, and he directed 2017's "Dear Basketball") . Thing is, though, both companies are very successful doing what they've been doing. Historically, Disney has done more experimental or non-narrative stuff as proof of concept for new animation techniques (as the did with "The Old Mill," or more recently, "Paperman," both of which were great, in my opinion).

Edited by Robbery on Jan 20th 2022 at 4:21:18 AM

It's ironic, the studios that can most easily afford to do something unique or experimental without fear of bankruptcy are the ones least likely to do so. This goes for both animation and live-action.

Of course. Studios have a brand. Individuals, however, can sometimes have quite a wide variety.

SoundCloud

It's actually a victory for creativity that Disney started doing theatrical shorts at all again.

The long-gestating Mel Brooks produced movie Blazing Samurai has ended up in the hands of Paramount Animation.

It's planned for July 22, 2022. But given how this is pretty much the Duke Nukem Forever of animated movies, I doubt we should hold our breaths. (Seriously, how long has this movie been unreleased? I want to 10-15 years now?)

In the UK, Sky apparently has the rights to the film.

Since their promo for Sky Cinema that they've been showing for a couple of months has included very brief clips.

I hesitate to put this in any of the relevant threads we have on it, but:

Apparently we're getting a new LEGO movie?

It's a Christmas movie from the creators of the upcoming Rey Mysterio vs. The Darkness cartoon that should be coming at some point called The Missing Piece: A LEGO Christmas. It was pitched in LEGO World Builder Pitch Festival.

Evidently, two sisters try bonding with a LEGO set, but an A.I. complicates that plan and stuff happens and now the world needs to be saved!

I say "hesitate" and "apparently" because there's a lot of unknowns that have me raising my eyebrow. I mean, I want to be happy that we're getting a LEGO movie, but I have several questions:

• It's been pitched as a live-action/animated movie. Will this be animated like the previous LEGO Movies or be something else altogether?
• Will Universal be producing it? Because that five-year deal they made with LEGO has been going on since 2020, we're already at year 2 and until now, I was under the impression that Universal was just sitting on the LEGO brand out of laziness/avarice.
• Will Phil Lord and Chris Miller have some shred of involvement? Because that might make or break this movie's chances.

If five years pass and no movie comes out, what happens?

Former Pixar animator Carlo Vogele has directed a film called Icarus (an independent European co-production made in Luxembourg, France, and Belgium, produced by Nicolas Steil of Iris Productions and Jean Michel Rey of Rez Productions). Looks to be cel-shaded CGI, and tells the story of Icarus (natch), but also apparently touching significantly on the surrounding story of Minos, Daedalus, Asterion the Minotaur, Theseus, and Ariadne. The trailer I saw seems to take a more sympathetic approach to the Minotaur (and why not? He didn't ask for any of that garbage—though, according to the original story he did eat people, which was odd as bulls don't eat meat...people do, though, and he was half and half...). Looks really interesting. It'll be released in French theaters in March of 2022.

Fox is developing a Bloom County animated series, with cartoonist Berke Breathed serving as executive producer and co-writer. It'll be animated by Bento Box.

Color me curious enough to give it a Google, and hotchie motchie this looks like next level stuff!

Trailer:

Man, Pixar animators that fly solo (heh, accidental Icarus pun) really have a habit of blowing people's minds, right?

So, I just realized it's now been ten years since Saturday morning cartoons came to an end.

Wow. That's so crazy.

Edit: My bad. The CW stopped it's saturday morning stuff in 2014. not 2012.

But it's still been a long ass time.

Edited by HandsomeRob on Mar 3rd 2022 at 3:11:24 AM

One Strip! One Strip!

It feels like a lot longer, probably because they'd been cutting back on their Saturday Morning cartoons for some time before they finally took them off altogether.

Me TV has Saturday morning cartoons, though (not new ones, but still).

So I found this article that says that Daria was kind of a last gasp of 90s slacker culture, and as it was airing, that type of attitude was fading away. Do you agree, and your thoughts on the show in general too (there's no thread for the show AFAIK)?

https://www.primetimer.com/features/its-somehow-been-25-years-since-daria-debuted

Never watched it but I got the impression being a spin off meant it always lived in the shadow of the show it was from

New theme music also a box

I mean, it was still a hugely popular show, and most people actually don't even remember that it was a spin-off of Beavis and Butt-Head.

Disney100 Marathon | DreamWorks Marathon

As I never watched it so I had no idea it had five seasons and 2 TV movies

New theme music also a box

While the character of Daria was taken from Beavis and Butthead, the show Daria bears no resemblance to Beavis and Butthead, either tonally or aesthetically.

I watched a little of it when it first aired. It was well written in the sense that the writing was often clever. Daria herself was often vulnerable enough to take the edge off her sarcasm; a lot of the other characters didn't rise above being stereotypes, though, which was kind of disappointing. It did kind of have that hipster air of self-satisfaction, too.

x7: Yeah, the Toon In with Me block is still going strong for weekend and weekday morning theatrical cartoons on broadcasting (which was died out much longer).

Sinclair, the broadcasting company, tried to bring back Saturday Morning programming with KidsClick between 2017 - 2019.

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The annual Annie Awards just happened last night, and the winners have been revealed! Notably praises to Arcane (9 wins) and The Mitchells vs. the Machines (8 wins).

Edited by XMenMutant22 on Mar 13th 2022 at 3:39:34 PM

So Cinema Sins did a video for The Prince of Egypt.

100 even. Though I feel like a lot of it is genuinely nitpicking (though gentle nitpicking since I feel like they weren't super serious about most of their sins):

Still that's a lot of sins for nitpicking. I can only imagine what the wins for the video is.

One Strip! One Strip!

I’ve seen a lot of hate accumulating for Cinema Sins over the years, and... I don’t get it, frankly. There are far worse things on You Tube than a joke review channel that nitpicks movies down to their last drop. I’d go as far to say that I like Cinema Sins.

“Now! Let us engage in the art of deduction!”