Cartoons

The Smurfs are celebrating their 50th anniversary (and promoting their recent DVD release) with a party at Coachella, the big California desert music festival taking place on April 25th-27th. There will be a Smurfs Village set up, with Good Charlotte and “Vanity Smurf” (supposedly Paris Hilton) DJing the opening party. Local graffiti artists are drawing their own Smurfs for the party.

I will personally be nowhere near this. It sounds like my worst nightmare.

(Thanks, Faran Krentcil)

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I do a lot of posts regarding Popeye’s current licensed (and unlicensed) merchandising activities. Who can forget Popeye the Sewer Man, Popeye the Beer Salesman and of course, Popeye the-Pot-guy-Hip-hop-Hustler-Man? I’m always amused that the character could ever be used a pitchman for anything but Spinach.

Now Brew reader Art Binninger has just discovered that Popeye is fronting a new chain of vitamin supplement shops in Canada. If you live in Canada, here’s a complete list of shop locations. No steroids for this one eyed sailor.

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Does anybody still use Amiga computers to create animation? Eric Schwartz apparently does and he recently finished this nicely animated tribute to Amiga computers, created on an Amiga 4000T. (via Waxy)

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Readers may recall that last year I posted about a group of Brazilian film students who had created a scene-by-scene live-action remake of the Oscar-winning Pixar short Geri’s Game (download from iTunes). Since then, there’s been a mini-online phenomenon in which fans of the film have been creating lots and lots of live-action remakes and parodies of the film.

Some of these films follow the film’s original scenes very closely while others are more parody-oriented taking liberties with the acting and staging. Is there any other example of an animated short being remade into live-action by fans of the film? I find the whole thing fascinating because this is not some contrived top-down corporate effort soliciting fans to do this for a contest or some such. It’s simply a bunch of people who enjoy and identify with the film’s character and want to try their hand at recreating him.

Here’s the original live-action remake from Brazil:

Amos’ Game

Don’s Game

This person remade the film with their grandfather in the title role:

A version made with a kid pretending to be Geri:

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Lawyers from Warner Bros. have come down on a firm called Booby Doo, a maker of sports bras in the UK. Booby Doo’s owners want to register the name as a trademark but the lawyers representing Hanna Barbera properties, say it sounds too much like the name of their famous doggy detective. Read the full story in London’s Daily Express.

So let me get this straight. Bras are a problem, but a Canine waste removal service with a similarly derivative name is okay?

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Sometimes the title of a post just says it all.

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Animator, filmmaker, and cartoon historian Ray Pointer will be dispensing his wealth of knowledge for two full hours on Stu’s Show all this week (March 26th through April 2nd) from 7pm to 9pm Eastern, 4pm to 6pm Pacific on Shokus Internet Radio. Ray will discuss his career, including meeting his idol Max Fleischer and eventually becoming a top authority of the Fleischer Studios. Click here and listen!

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Tim Hollis sent this in:

Last night, while clearing things out of a glass display case, I found the this plastic bag that someone sent to me probably 20 years ago. I thought you might get a chuckle out of such blatant H-B trademark infringement. All I can say is that it’s a good thing Officer Dibble wasn’t a vegetarian… or a rabbit…

“Yes, he’s a chief, he’s the king, he’s a vegetable thing…”

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In the 1950s it was coonskin caps… fifty years later couturier Supreme is offering a line of Coonskin T-shirts, based on the controversial 1975 Ralph Bakshi feature film.

(via Meathaus)

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The Brew strives to stay apolitical, but this very funny and trenchant Slate article by Jeff Greenfield is worth a mention: Bugs Bunny vs. Daffy Duck: Why voters always choose the wascally wabbit for president.

(Thanks, B. Baker)

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