First off, since I just came back from a crazy family trip and am heading into another crazy weekend with my cousin's wedding and Boston Comicon, here is the Art of The Day right up top. After drawing this, I dubbed myself the most creative person ever:
* - Art Evolved has been after another band of dirty stinkin' art thieves! I don't know if it's worse that the artists are being uncredited or that their art is being stolen for a website that is not funny in a way that is almost impressive.
Yes, I know it's actually called "Tangled". Whatever, go ahead and drop the other shoe and name it "Explosions, Monster Trucks, and Testosterone Galore" for all it matters. For all the sweat Disney sheds over who gets named what, every normal person is going to just call this movie "Rapunzel" anyway. I base this on the fact that I do not know a single person in real life who doesn't refer to "The Princess and the Frog" as "The Frog Prince(ss)". I suggest you watch this fullscreen.
OK? OK. I guess the real question is, how badly can *you* tell that this was first conceived of back when the title "Rapunzel Untangled" would have been relevant (dammit)? That's a wikkid adorable chameleon, though. And I love Glen Keane but I'm not sure I'm seeing much of him in this. To be fair, and we've covered this before, there aren't that many teaser trailers by Disney that inspire confidence. Still, the "like... FOREVER" bit makes me cringe.
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Our next animated film trailer is for another "Why the hell did they change the title?" case, "Legends of the Guardians: the Owls of Ga'Hoole" (let's call it "Happy Shrieks" or, better, "Owls Who Can Smith Armor. Somehow.") The full trailer can be seen here at Topless (it isn't what it sounds like) Robot, to which I am linking because Rob has, like me, never read this series and lists some hilarious, yet thought-provoking, questions about it. Once again, you may want to watch it in fullscreen. I'm... surprised that we're getting a Guardians of Ga'Hoole movie before, say, a Warrior Cats movie (which seems to have a far larger fandom) but whatever. I do like when HeroOwl does his Neo in the rain thing and I enjoy that Jared Leto song. I do not enjoy the fact that HeroOwl's parents sound exactly the same and the fact that I am getting the same creepily-almost-human vibe I got from "Happy Feet". Also, I believe we can all agree that this movie should end with this guy swooping in and kicking everyone's ass. EDIT: Thank you, Albertonykus (boy I hope I spelled that right without checking) for giving a good summary of the series in the comments. The salient point is that it's basically a straight-up fantasy with owls. And on that note, I am as surprised as he is that we aren't getting a Silverwing movie (or a Warriors movie, or a Books of the Named movie, or a Firebringer movie, or a Raptor Red movie, or a Pick Your Favorite Xenofictional Series With a Sizable DeviantArt Fandom movie) before Ga'Hoole.
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/Film just recently also posted stills and a teaser for "The Smurfs" and... yeah.
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It's not all bad news from the big studios, though it's odd that the best animated feature (so to speak) might end up being a video game. We got a teaser for "Epic Mickey" finally at E3, showing off the animation and gameplay mechanics. This looks amazing!
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Away from the big studios (and you'll want to go fullscreen on both of these as well) , we have Sylvain Chomet's "The Illusionist" (not to be confused with the pretty-good live-action movie of the same name from a few years ago), and it doesn't really tell us anything about the film aside from the fact that it is very, very pretty:
And of course there's Studio Ghibli's very, very, very pretty looking take on The Borrowers. Sadly, it's not so much a teaser as some footage recorded off a television show where it debuted. Try to ignore the people in the lower-right:
I saw the following in Friday's paper and... I HAVE to share because... it's pretty astonishing: Thank you, Gatehouse News Service Guy! Thank you for sharing your condescending thoughts on an art form you clearly have not bothered to learn anything new about since you were scarfing Frosted Flakes in front of "Maia the Bee".
So anyway, as of right now, both "Worst Cartoon" polls have been tallied and winners have been chosen. "Worst Cartoons Ever" has picked "Rubik the Amazing Cube". "Rubik" is notorious online because it is the best artifact of a time period in the late-70's/early-80's when you could make a cartoon about anything. It looked like this:
Meanwhile, the unfortunately-named Topless Robot blog's winner for worst cartoon episode ever is a particularly angsty episode of "The Littles": Now, really, I shouldn't worry too much about these choices because they're each all part of a silly contest and it was all really just a few people's opinions right? Yet, it sticks in my craw because, honestly, get past the nature of the title character and "Rubik" isn't all that different from every damn "The Adventures Of Some Kids and their Pet Walking Talking Deus ex Machina" cartoon of the era. And the worst I can say about "the Littles" ("Here Come the Littles"is available on DVD so I just added it to the top of my Netflix queue to check and see if my nostalgia filter is strong with this film) is that the first ten seconds of the main titles are what the Uncanny Valley looks like. Anyway, being an animation fan means that I have seen worse. Far, farworse. (And hell, those are just from within my lifetime.) Just off the top of my head: The 60's Looney Tunes, like this not-Chuck-Jones-involving Wile E. Coyote short. Any and all of the various "This is where 'The Simpsons' ended for me" episodes. (For the record, mine is "Lisa the Skeptic". Great idea for "The X-Files" but damned bizarre for "The Simpsons".) The various prime-time series that sprang up in the wake of "The Simpsons", of which "Capitol Critters" is probably the most astonishing. A whooooole lot of series from Hannah-Barbera (how many times can you recycle the basic idea behind "Scooby Doo" anyway?), Filmation, and Ruby-Spears. More than a few cartoons based upon real people, such as "Pro Stars". "Fraidy Cat", "Caillou", "Dino Squad", "Father of the Pride", "The Mighty Ducks", "Free Willy", "Mega Babies", "Loonatics". All the DTV rip-offs of other movies. And a lot that I have nicely repressed. The only real problem is trying to decide what the biggest waste of celluloid I've ever seen is. Let us wash off the nerd rage and awful cartoons with this little slice of happy:
