Good morning! It was my birthday yesterday and the only reason that I bring it up is that one of the gifts I received was a book long on my wish list and one only very recently issued in the United States. When I mention Halas & Batchelor Cartoons, anyone worth their salt will know this husband-and-wife team’s company was the closest Britain ever came to having a fully-fledged animation industry before Nick Park (who writes the foreword) and Aardman Animation came along. They launched into animated features, most notably with the classic Animal Farm and even pioneered computer animated films before Disney or LucasFilm’s pre-Pixar unit.
Vivien Halas and Paul Wells’ book is filled with an absolute wealth of informative anecdotes that reveal the history of animation in Britain and this Studio’s contribution to the American market by way of being contracted to produce a number of programs for TV in the 1970s. Their middle-years theatrical style was often compared to the UPA Studio, favorably and for good reason, and I’m just having a ball leafing through the pages. Better yet, this terrific book and DVD pack comes with a free disc compiling seven shorts, totalling well over an hour, and while the seminal The Owl And The Pussycat goes missing compared to a previous DVD release, this collection swaps it for two other films and has much better picture and audio quality. Halas & Batchelor Cartoons: An Animated History comes very, very heartily recommended, and cheap at under $25 from Amazon.
A little more pricey at just under $50 (though still better than the $75 list price) is Once Upon A Time, Walt Disney: The Sources Of Inspiration For The Disney Studios. This is the English language hardcover version of the book accompanying the recent Paris and Montreal art exhibitions that pointed to the many influences the Disney artists drew upon in their formative years and beyond, stretching from Ub Iwerks’ original pencil drawings of Mickey Mouse to the completion, in 2003, of the Salvador Dalí short Destino and coming full circle with the effect Disney’s contributions have made to today’s pop cultural artists.
As you’ll recall, I visited the exhibition for an in-depth tour report on this very site, and can only say that this is an essential addition to any serious animation art collection, with plenty of original artworks sitting next to various backgrounds and cel set ups unseen for many years from the Disney vaults. If you were unable to make the exhibit, this truly is the very next best thing. Another birthday present for lucky ol’ me, I was very much more than thrilled to be able to add this next to the softcover French edition that I picked up at the time of the original exhibit. Save up and buy it!
The name is Potter…Harry Potter. To Hollywoodland now for Warner Brothers’ claim that, with $4.47 billion in the bank generated from just five Harry Potter movies, their franchise is now the most lucrative in film history, beating out James Bond’s 22-movie total of $4.44bn, and the six Star Wars movies at $4.23bn. Of course, both the Harry and Bond series are set to continue, but with Potter‘s latest raking in almost a billion and another two movies still to come, my money is on the boy wizard to keep flying out in front for a good while before 007 and his gadgets attempt to stop this world domination of a magical kind!
Finally…a birthday wish come true: a sequel to the groundbreaking Tron is finally in the works at Disney. Produced by the original’s director Steven Lisberger (also of the frustratingly unavailable but brilliantly entertaining Animalympics feature), Joseph Kosinski (also linked to the Logan’s Run remake at Warners) will pick up the reins for this new adventure, billed as “the next chapter” in the new franchise. Kosinski is due to work with a pair of writers from Lost to develop the script, with the Light Cycles promised to be coming back as our heroes’ transport of choice. For many, Tron was the movie that prompted a move into the special effects industry, and with the word out, rumors are that many of those same folks – now experienced masters of their craft – are aiming to be involved with this new update. Though the original movie hasn’t gotten the recognition it truly deserves, it was the basis for many of today’s blockbusters – let’s hope a Tron 2.0 or whatever it ends up being titled, fares a little better!
Stay Tooned! – Ben.
