What do you get when Pixar-style animation meets zombie apocalypse? A great looking piece of computer animation like A.D. This is a trailer for a promised longer film by creator Haylor Garcia. An interview with those who are working on this film can be found here at the Zombie Info website. If the completed film holds up in storyline and look to this preview then I’ll be adding A.D. to my animation DVD collection.

Two articles in Religion Dispatches give me reason for pause in seeing the film, or at least to watching it more critically if I do decide to see it. The first is an article by Anthea Butler titled “Disney’s Lump of Coal.” The author’s displeasure with the film may be summarized with the words, “I’m going to go all out and say that the entire movie is a wholesale desecration of New Orleans, Creole culture, Cajun Culture, religion, zydeco music, the Evangeline story, and Louis Armstrong..”. In the second article, Michelle Gonzalez Maldonado focuses her displeasure with the film specifically on its treatment of Haitian religion in a piece titled “Bad Magic: Voodoo According to Disney.” Maldonado feels that “this film perpetuates offensive stereotypes about Voodoo.” As the author concludes the analysis she writes:

I did not expect critical race analysis or a sophisticated presentation of Voodoo when I walked into the theater. It is, after all, Disney. I did not expect such a blatant, racist, and misinformed presentation of Voodoo, however. The reduction of religion to magic is also reaffirmed in the curious absence of Catholicism in the film. My son is correct, Disney Voodoo is bad magic; it just doesn’t have anything to do with the authentic African Diaspora religion.

But how should audiences react to elements of race, culture, and religion as portrayed in a fantasy cartoon? Even Butler writes, “Yes, I know, it’s just fantasy, right?”

On the one hand, elements within a fantasy film take on the meaning given them by the writer of the story. This is a basic principle of literary, and by extension, cinematic interpretation. So it would be inappropriate to critique Harry Potter for providing “inaccurate” portrayals of witchcraft, since J. K. Rowling was creating a contemporary fairytale form of witchcraft rather than a representation of Wicca outside of her fantasy context.

But on the other hand, it would be a mistake to give fantasy a pass in terms of being divorced from the social and cultural context in which it is produced. Josha Bellin, author of Framing Monsters: Fantasy Film and Social Alienation (Southern Illinois University Press, 2005), reminds us that in addition to entertainment and escapism, fantasy has a dark side that is often missed because it is held to be separate from reality:

But of course, that’s what makes these films particularly powerful vehicles of social alienation, the phrase I use to suggest the whole range of processes by which marginalized groups are stereotyped, victimized, and scapegoated: fantasy films’ resistance to critical scrutiny enables them to perpetuate loathsome social ideologies under the guise of “harmless entertainment.”

My previous interview with Bellin on this topic as the thesis of his book can be found here, along with a second interview contrasting the original King Kong with Peter Jackson’s more recent version. Both interviews shed light on the need for a more critical reading of fantasy films that will enable viewers to gain a deeper appreciation of the many facets of fantasy and how they reflect social and cultural contexts. I offer this as food for thought for those who want to probe Disney’s latest cartoon offering beyond holiday cinema escapism.

As readers are aware, this blog is devoted to the exploration and enjoyment of various facets of the fantastic in pop culture. Most of the time I pursue in-depth exploration, and through this receive a level of enjoyment. Hopefully my readers do to0. But with this post analysis steps aside in order to enjoy a great piece of animation and music associated with the Halloween holiday. This cartoon is called “Midnight Dance,” and it represents an animated interpretation of Saint Saens’ “Danse Macabre” by award winning animator John McCloskey. The piece was produced by Raw Nerve.

The business section of today’s The New York Times includes an article of interest to TheoFantastique. The story by Brooks Barnes is titled “Pixar’s Art Leaves Profit Watchers Edgy,” and it describes an unfortunate situation. As the article notes, Pixar Animation has not released a movie yet that has not been “a commercial and creative triumph,” but it appears that the Walt Disney company and a few folks on Wall Street, including toy retailers, are concerned that Pixar’s new venture, Up, may not fair well at the box office.

It seems that the concerns relate to some of the artistic daring of the film, a phenomenon also found in Pixar’s Wall-E: ”there are stretches without dialogue,” and (heaven forbid) some of the scenes are done in black and white. Up is also said to be influenced by the noted Japanese anime figure Hayao Miyazaki. This pushing of the envelope in terms of artistic expression and artistic influences may not seem like much to worry about for those of us who appreciate filmmakers who go outside of the standard formulas for movies. But to others the bottom line is primary.

The New York Times states that there is concern over Up‘s box office potential as well as whether it will benefit “other Disney businesses.”

Pixar has seen diminishing returns with each successive film, but there is no denying that even those that did not generate as much revenue as anticipated, such as Wall-E, must nevertheless be recognized as an artistic success which was warmly embraced by audiences. This conflict between artists at Pixar and the business people at Disney creates an unfortunate dichotomy. Why can’t a film push the boundaries on artistic experimentation and yet also tell an entertaining tale that does well at the box office? Of course it remains to be seen whether this can be done with Up, but to pre-judge it in this fashion seems harsh. Disney might also remember that its founder was a leader in artistic experimentation in animation that did not always do well with viewing audiences. Recall Fantasia. Nevertheless, Walt strove for finding balance between both artistry and box office, and his corporate successors might reflect on the history of their own organization before too much consternation about Pixar.

Yesterday my family forced me to take a much-needed half-day off, and a part of my relaxation involved taking in a showing of Monster vs. Aliens. I must admit that when I saw the commercials for the film they looked promising but I had my doubts about the ability of the film to live up to my expectations. Thankfully I was wrong.

Monsters vs. Aliens is yet another fine contribution to the computer animated films created by DreamWorks. The storyline involves Susan Murphy, a woman in Modesto, California who has dreams of living a bigger life which she assumes will be realized through her fiance who is a local television personality with his sights on a job in Fresno. As fate would have it, as Susan waits outside the church on her wedding day a meteorite crashes down on her from space filling her body with Quantonium. The side effect of this space energy is a dramatic growth in size and an increase in strength, which is all well and good until the government seizes Susan and locks her up with other monsters as part of a secret military project. Susan and her fellow monsters fear they will never again find freedom until an alien force comes looking for the Quantonium and threatening the destruction of the Earth. In response America’s political and military leaders release the monsters and offer them a pardon if they can destroy the alien invaders.

This film is enjoyable on a number of levels. Science fiction fans will find this film of special interest with its numerous references to aspects of sci fi television and film. For example, in the film’s earliest moments as the incoming meteor is being tracked, it gives off a high energy signature which raises alarms resulting in the event falling under the special code “Nimoy.” And when the President of the United States attempts to make contact with the alien robot sent to retrieve the Quantonium he uses a synthesizer and begins his attempt at contact with the infamous five musical notes from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Beyond this the film includes a number of influences from science fiction films and monster movies, especially from the 1950s. This is especially evident in the monsters who exhibit influences from The Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, The Fly, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, Godzilla vs. Mothra, and The Blob.

Although those who are not fans of classic science fiction and monster movies may miss some of these connections they will not be disappointed. Monsters vs. Aliens also includes numerous pop culture references outside the genres of the fantastic that add to the comedic nature of this film.

I found an additional element of the film enjoyable, and that was the 3D aspect of my cinematic experience. I have not seen a 3D movie since the debacle of Jaws 3 3D. The technology has come a long way since then, and the 3D experience adds an extra dimension that compliments the great detail the animators put into the texturing of their characters. At present James Cameron is working on his new film Avatar in which he promises a revolutionary experience of 3D which he sees as the future of the film industry. Although we’ve heard that before in everything from 3D to other theater gimmicks, if Monsters vs. Aliens is any indicator of the potential of 3D movies then Avatar may be one to watch for a new industry standard.

All this being said, Monsters vs. Aliensis a great film. It does not rise to the heights of DreamWorks Shrek series, or Disney Pixar’s Wall*E, but nevertheless it is very well done. So if you you’d like an enjoyable film experience that will benefit the whole family, particularly animation, science fiction, and classic monster movie fans, then get to the theater, and don’t forget your 3D glasses.

Last weekend a new title on the shelves of the DVD section at Target caught my eye and quickly became a part of my animation collection. The film is titled DEAD SPACE: DOWNFALL, and it is a feature-length prequel to the EA Game DEAD SPACE. The subject matter, violence, and gore of this film make this an animated feature for adults as it tells the story of a crew in space aboard the USG Ishimura. They come across an ancient artifact that they think might have some connection to their religious beliefs. It is brought on board ship, but as one might expect from a space horror game, the artifact is not connected to a form of religion that is benign. Instead, the object unleashes an alien race that viciously attacks and transforms the crew into alien killers themselves.

Although the film is surely designed as a means of furthering the profit margins associates with DEAD SPACE there is much that is commendable with this animated film. It comes in at a respectable 74 minutes in length, the animation is respectable showing the influences of Japanese anime, and the narrative provides for an interesting story in its own right as well as a compliment to the videogame.

One of the more interesting aspects of the film’s narrative is a strong religious element. The ancient artifact is associated with some kind of evidence for God’s existence, mention is made of a religious group called the “unitologists,” who are said to have their own church and collection of sacred scriptures. Not surprisingly, the storyline reflects an ambiguous if not negative understanding of religion, but it is interesting to see an animated prequel and a videogame which features a strong and consistent religious thread in its narrative.

DEAD SPACE: DOWNFALL is but the latest in a trend in animated features connected to films or videogames. ANIMATRIX with its connection to THE MATRIX series and the involvement of some of Japan’s top animators was one of the most ambitious animated films connected to a major motion picture. Similar ventures include THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK: DARK FURY, VAN HELSING: THE LONDON ASSIGNMENT, BATMAN: GOTHAM KNIGHT, as well as a small but interesting collection of animated comics associated with I AM LEGEND. Filmmakers have discovered that animation can serve not only as a means of generating further profit associated with a given storyline, but also provide creative opportunities to develop the narrative in different directions beyond the main cinematic exploration. I hope this trend continues since it gives animation and fantastic film fans additional opportunities to stretch the imagination.

A number of research sources have provided a variety of things to think about in my exploration of deeper levels to the fantastic. One thought provoking source was David Skal’s book The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror (Faber & Faber, 2001) where, among other things, he argued for a connection between horror films and Surrealism. Since I read that I have felt that this connection, as well as the influence of Surrealism in pop culture in general, is worth further exploration. I was therefore pleased to come across a book on this topic edited by Graeme Harper and Rob Stone, titled The Unsilvered Screen: Surrealism on Film (Wallflower Press, 2006). The contributors to this volume look at Surrealism in a variety of cinematic expressions, and one chapter that caught my eye dealt with the surrealistic influence in American animation in the early twentieth century. The chapter was authored by Van Norris of the School of Creative Arts, Film, and Media from the University of Portsmouth in the United Kingdom. Mr. Norris spoke with me recently about the focus of his chapter, and his current PhD research.

TheoFantastique: Van, thank you for discussing your contribution to The Unsilvered Screen. How did you come to develop your interest in both American animation and Surrealism, and how did you connect the two in your research?

You’re welcome! I studied Classical animated forms during my undergraduate dissertation years back in the early 1990s, which in turn fed through the Masters programme completed in the late 1990s on animation aesthetics within American film and I’m currently completing a PhD thesis, ‘Drawing on the British Tradition’ on UK Television animation forms, that contextualises contemporary British social and cultural attitudes within mainstream settings and how these interact with extant ideas on comedy forms and narratives. Having long had an interest in how Surrealism is managed within mainstream cinema and throughout aspects of popular culture it struck me that many critics flirt with how these principles can be observed working in popular animation in a broad assumptive sense but often they seem to be perhaps more confident in discussing Surrealism separately and less specific or accurate when referring to the cartoons themselves in any detail – and indeed this occurs vice versa with animation scholars. What also is apparent when mapping surrealist impulses onto such works that the contexts are constantly shifting due to the nature of production circumstances, authorship situations etc so it is apparent that there is still much work to be done on how the form is read and misread in these contexts and I have to say this still all feels like just the beginning of moving towards a truly comprehensive understanding of how this is mapped out, historically, culturally, industrially and textually.

TheoFantastique: For the benefit of readers, can you define “Surrealism” as an artistic movement, and can you share your thoughts on how this came to be an influence in pop culture, including in animation?

Surrealism is a concept that, as The Unsilvered Screen highlights in each chapter, has become somewhat devalued and often misinterpreted in today’s culture. It’s a school of thought that seeks to discuss what lies beneath the surface of our reality (hence the ‘sur’ – meaning under) and expresses the dialogues of the subconscious, the hidden desires and feelings that we don’t express in our daily lives. It does so by using images represented through an adherence to photographic realism and placing them together in incongruous contexts or to produce a disturbing outcome. Andre Breton coined the term in his manifesto in 1924 and relied on a technique called ‘automatism’ by which he would detail unmediated, uncensored, unstructured thought onto a page. He deployed this tool to access what he saw as ‘the truth’ that lay beneath what he saw as the bourgeois construction that was ‘reality’. This unmediated approach to art construction thus offers up images that Breton felt should feed out of our dream landscapes and that then supposedly reveal interior narratives and produce ideas that should be, (if to be regarded as true surrealism) ‘shocking and disturbing’.

The fact that Surrealism has pervaded art to literature to film is hardly surprising. Contemporary culture has absorbed, appropriated and quoted so much of Andre Breton’s original conception that over the 20th century it’s become but one of Western society’s key background narratives. And the shifts in contemporary morality, the expansion of modern media and our late modern fragmentary take on visual culture have all contributed to a ‘flattening out’ and in fact a corruption what was originally an incredibly subversive form.

TheoFantastique: In your chapter you discuss animated cartoons that were used as “fillers” along with newsreels between double features at the cinema. It might be a surprise to some readers to think of these as serious art forms that, as you write, “responded to and articulated a range of complex ideas.” What types of cultural ideas were the animated features in the 1930s and 1940s responding to, and how did Surrealism play a part in that exploration?

Van Norris: In terms of American animation (and in the context of the chapter I’m thinking more about popular Classical forms of the 30s and 40s here) this has arguably always been a form that has flirted with what are in fact related types of dialogues, those which manage incongruous imagery, subversions of a given ‘reality’ and actualise internal desires through visual representations. This can be seen from the early works of J. Stuart Blackton through to Otto Messmer and his 1920s incarnation of ‘Felix the Cat’. Although due to the commercial nature of the form the degrees to how ‘shocking and disturbing’ these can be is obviously compromised.

The cartoon filler is also a form which has since its origins processed popular culture and replayed aspects of it in the public realm continually (see Messmer’s citation of Hollywood, celebrity, industry, the star-system and genre in the 1923 ‘Felix Goes to Hollywood’ for example). I think, using the Warners animation as a more detailed example, they were attempting to define an identity away from the monolithic success of the Disney ‘Silly Symphony’ shorts of the 1930s. In their ‘Looney Tunes’ and ‘Merrie Melody’ cartoons that emerged in the late 1930s they seized on the fact that popular culture, film, radio and literary references went down very well with their proletariat audience base. And often this went beyond mere quotation and moved into parodying items such as a then ongoing media-managed feud between broadcasters and radio personalities, Walter Winchell and Ben K. Bernie in Friz Freleng’s ‘Coo-Coonut Grove’ (1936) through to the compendium of references that mock contemporary values in Bob Clampett’s 1946 ‘Book Revue’ to Frank Tashlin’s 1944 ‘Swooner Crooner’, which is a cartoon that satirises both the entertainment industry through the presentation of a passive audience dominated by manufactured singers and, with the wry positioning of the Porky Pig character, the efforts of wartime industrial profiteers.

Now, animation is a form that crosses boundaries with cinema and art practice and, (like film itself), is preoccupied with continually transgressing recorded realities and thus makes it an obvious platform for the Surrealist. Importantly Franklin Rosemont also talks about how much impact artists like Salvador Dali had on the American psyche throughout the 1930s, whose own work was regarded by the original Surrealists as a somewhat bowdlerized take on the form that was dominated by commerce, self-promotion and was defined by a rationalisation, somewhat shorn of the original movement’s political intent. The Classical animators were all undoubtedly aware of this strand of thinking consciously and unconsciously and its no surprise that aspects of it informed their work. How much of it can be defined as truly ‘surreal’ is another question. And how this form has contributed to this corruption in terms is still another that requires a larger amount than 8000 words to fully assess.

TheoFantastique: How did Warner Brothers studios and their Looney Tunes draw upon Surrealism?

In terms of Surrealism much of Warner’s output dallied with the odd image or juxtaposition of incongruous ideas which appeared to be a stock in trade within Tex Avery’s early work before he left the company in 1941. Bob Clampett’s 1938 ‘Porky in Wackyland’ is perhaps the most celebrated cartoon of the period which explicitly allies itself to what appears a surrealistic register. I think of it as almost an untutored raw misreading of surrealism. In its attempt to push the boundaries of the form, (a preoccupation of Clampett’s) the short contains nods towards the popular misconception of surrealism that had entered the public sphere but also melded aspects of the absurd, (in itself a more nihilistic register) with the surreal by appropriating incongruous pairings of landscape details, using melted clocks in backgrounds and positing images of decay and death – yet in fact removing any potential deeper resonances. Through the combinations of naturalist, Absurdist, expressionist and cinematic grammar, in the flattening out of key surrealistic images and the fragmentary approach to narrative the film is in many ways an ironic, almost Lyotardian commentary on art practice, commerce and indeed popularised understandings of surrealism itself, which through time, cultural factors and simple geography was already moving away from the original Bretonian impulse. The aspects of the surreal here are posited as quotation. Its slickness and knowing quality mark it out with a kind of ‘distance’.

TheoFantastique: How did the Looney Tunes’s use of Surrealism compare with that of the Fleischer Brothers?

Van Norris: First Wave Austrian-Jewish immigrants, The Fleischer Brothers were making less polished shorts than Disney in the early 1930s but still were very highly regarded. These were animations that, too, enjoyed a symbiotic relationship with popular cultural and mass audiences of the period. Often their works presented a slightly less ironic sense of knowing cultural quotation than exhibited by Warners. This process was often restricted to inserting jazz songs by Cab Calloway and Louis Armstrong into narratives at odd moments and included bizarre unexplained appearances such as Frederic March’s incarnation as Mr. Hyde from Reuben Mamuolian’s 1932 version of Robert Louis Stevenson’s story in the finale of Betty Boop M.D (1932) – these are moments that jar and unsettle as much as operate as winks at the intended audience. The shorts also consciously and unconsciously referenced the values, mortality and the experiences of adult life in 1930s urban New York, they demonstrated a rougher, grittier, saltier aesthetic than Walt Disney’s folksy farmyard view of America and one which predicted the free-form cultural riffing of Warners.

Mark Langer refers to the pre-Hayes Code intervention ‘Betty Boop/Talkartoons’ shorts (1930-1933) as being pretty much all about “sex and death” and he’s right, in that whilst Clampett steers well clear of the really disturbing areas, The early Fleischer shorts are a miasma of distorted bodies, phallic objects, vaginal openings, fluid uncontrollable metamorphoses, inconsistent compostional sensibilities, dislocated sounds and all are contained within fractured dream-like narratives that exist as arranged sequences that appear as some kind of half-recalled afterthought. ‘Bimbo’s Initiation’ (1931) is an amazingly complex short which exemplifies this and replicates the dream state entirely through its subversions of space and time. Intriguingly it’s a film that is immersed in all sorts of Freudian totems that suggest acknowledgements around male performance anxieties and about becoming an ‘adult’ as much as any extension of what is permissible in terms of demarcating cartoon space. Like a number of films produced by the studio through this fertile period from ‘Old Man of The Mountain’ (1932) to ‘Is My Palm Read’ (1932) to the celebrated 1933 ‘Snow White’, it’s actually genuinely disturbing in places – which surely the pre-requisite of any surrealistic work. Clampett is more interested in popular culture while the Fleischers exhibit a more explicitly surrealistic approach. This is as much down to the haphazard ways they created their cartoons as it was their favouring of fusing a distinctly European approach to cartoon making to American industrial expectations.

TheoFantastique: In your chapter you also talk about the significance of Walt Disney’s animation, but he did not draw upon surrealism so much as his contemporaries. Where did Disney express Surrealism, and why did his expression of animation not draw upon it in greater ways?

Van Norris: There is something of a myth here, (and which I suspect the downplaying of Disney’s role within popular surrealistic animation in my own chapter in the book is adding to this!) in that the studio rejected this and other high art avant-garde practices. I think the rejection of a directly Bretonian register in such a commercial avenue would have had to have been inevitable as those ideas don’t really correspond with what Paul Wells refers to as the ”folksy Republicanism” that informs the studio’s overall ethos. However Disney experimented with limited/smear animations, abstract forms (which were tellingly rationalised beyond recognition in his 1940 ‘Fantasia’) and surrealism itself through his collaboration with Dali on the remarkable ‘Destino’ project began in 1945, but was never completed. All of this was laudable and certainly progressive in intent but inevitably appeared to be undermined by Disney’s own highly compromised nature as part artist and part business-man. Disney, like Clampett at Warners, seems happier to contain moments which conform to aspects of surrealistic practice (that occasionally could shock and disturb) within dream sequences, extreme moments and as contained within some space away from the universe in which his central characters operate. Which again points to this larger issue that often, as Rosemont points out, American art feels the need to quantify the irrational and the unexplained in terms of form and theme – that such a resolutely European idea as Surrealism inevitably would become transformed into something altogether less contentious.

TheoFantastique: Van, again, thanks for your discussion of an interesting topic. I hope it will give animation and Surrealism fans alike new things to think about.

Van Norris: Thank you.

WALL-E is the latest computer animated film produced by Pixar Studios in collaboration with Disney Studios. I have enjoyed the animated shorts and full-length features done in the past by this creative duo, and the previews for WALL-E piqued my interest in this latest venture, so my expectations were high as I entered the theater. Thankfully, I was not disappointed overall.

As readers may be aware, the story takes place some 700 years in earth’s future in a post-human environment, where human over-consumption and the production of waste run amok, has led to such high levels of pollution that the planet has become uninhabitable. Visual clues in the story’s initial scenes inform the viewer that in the past a mega-corporation, the Buy-N-Large company, produced a group of robots, the WALL-E line of machines, which were tasked with the responsibility of cleaning up the planet. After some time the cleanup efforts were unsuccessful, the human race no longer inhabited the planet, and after 700 years only one robot remains, still pursuing his daily routine of cleaning up after human waste, largely in the form of metal trash compaction and storage. This basic storyline sets the stage for the later arrival of a rocket which drops off a robot probe in search of organic life, and it is this robot which captures the attention and heart of a lonely WALL-E, and which then leads to an adventure in space which unfolds in the remainder of the film.

The animators and technicians behind WALL-E have produced a visually stunning film with this outing. While the main characters still have a “cartoony” feel to them in terms of their appearance, the other elements of the scenes in which the characters perform, including background, “sets” and foreground items, are all done with the appearance of realism and great detail, right down to the rust on metal and dust on a dry earth surface. This combination of realistic surroundings, coupled with a more traditional cartoon approach to character depiction, gives WALL-E an interesting interplay between visual representations that I found intriguing. This contrast is even more striking in that the main feature film is preceded, in typical Pixar fashion, with a computer animated short, Presto, which has an “old school” feel that is reminscent of Chuck Jones’s work in the Looney Tunes.

Another interesting facet of this film is that the ininital scenes which set the foundation for the rest of the story. These take place without any dialogue and it is pure visual imagery, and the emotion conveyed through three characters, WALL-E, his “pet” cockroach, and the robot EVE, that both provide the foundational elements of the storyline and develop emotional bonds between the characters and the audience. Granted, storytellers have been anthropomorphizing non-human characters for quite some time, but Pixar’s animators have done a wonderful job in communicating human emotions and relationships through WALL-E‘s robotic main characters.

Beyond its straightforward family entertainment value, this film is not without its social commentary. A few conservatives have lamented the film’s premise of a planetary environment tainted by human pollution, but this element is handled lightly and serves as a subtle background assumption for the plotline. The film can also be understood as touching on other elements of the contemporary human condition, including our (over?) reliance upon technology, and questions surrounding sentience and the nature of personhood as they relate to complex robotic technologies.

One problem I did have with the film on a visual level was the inclusion of traditional, non-animated video footage of human beings at various points in the story. In previous efforts Pixar has animated all of its characters, including the human ones, and the mix of animated and real human video imagery came across as visually disjointed to me, and it didn’t seem to assist the storytelling either.

Independence Day weekend filmgoers will not be disappointed by this animated fantasy-sci fi adventure that includes aspects of enjoyment for young and old alike.

The Ovation TV Channel has been running a week-long series of programs devoted to the theme of animation. This has included Chuck Amuk: The Movie, a look at animator Chuck Jones known for his legendary work on Looney Tunes and The Grinch Who Stole Christmas; Tex Avery: King of Cartoons, a look at career of Charles “Tex” Avery; Ub Iwerks: The Hand Behind the Mouse, that details the contributions of Ub Iwerks to the Disney legacy in animation and film technology; and showings of Spirited Away, the Japanese anime masterpiece. See the Ovation Channel schedule for a listing of programming.

And a visit to my local Barnes and Noble and a perusing of the latest sci fi, fantasy, and horror magazines informed me of the forthcoming Batman: Gotham Knight, a series of six interlocking animated stories that are strongly influenced by anime and The Animatrix. This project will be released on July 8 on DVD and BlueRay in connection with Batman: The Dark Knight film. These cartoons look very promising in delivering good stories, great visuals, and involving the work of a number of noted anime directors. Previews and lots of goodies are available on the official website.

As the documentary describes, Iwerks was a brilliant animator who constantly pushed the envelope with his willigness to try new things in his use of motion, perspective, as well as an exploration of the “dark side” of character animation. Iwerks was also gifted as a technical craftsman and was responsible for the design of several pieces of camera equipemnt and special effects processes, such as the sodium travelling matte, that was used with great success not only in Disney films like Mary Poppins, but also in Hithcock’s film The Birds.

It was a treat to watch this documentary that reveals a figure often hidden behind the success of Disney Studios and its better-known founder. A short sample of the documentary can vewed here.