“This version is aimed at an audience 10 years and up, and a bit scarier than the Disney film.”

Gris Grimly’s 2002 book spookily illustrating Carlo Collodi’s 1883 story about the puppet who wants to be a real boy will now be the basis of a film. Grimly is co-directing alongside stop motion legend Mark Gustafson, whose work you last saw in The Fantastic Mr. Fox.

From Deadline:

….Nick Cave has signed on to be music consultant and the puppets and 3D elements will be developed with MacKinnon and Saunders, the UK-based facility that worked onThe Fantastic Mr. Fox, Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride, and the upcoming Frankenweenie.

They are planning to make more terrifying a story which already scares me to pieces — I’ll have to have to work on becoming more courageous in time to see it when it comes out.

Tom Cruise is attached.

This post brought to you by Oregon Cartoon Institute, your source for Oregon animation and cartooning history since 2007.

Awarding winning media critic Aaron Mesh became an honorary member of the Oregon Cartoon Institute, in our Astute Newspaper Reader category.

It turns out Mr. Peanut was recently in the shop here in Portland, getting his image refurbished.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Aaron’s expert eye noticed the new Mr. Planter spot was made at Laika, and directed by Mark Gustafson, of The Fantastic Mr. Fox fame, and Ringan Ledwidge. Here’s the “making of” doc.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Congratulations, Laikans!

And thanks, Aaron!

This post brought to you by Oregon Cartoon Institute.

Last year, Oregon was represented at the Oscars by Coraline and The Fantastic Mr. Fox, both films animated by artists trained by Will Vinton, at Will Vinton Studios here in Portland. This year, Bill Plympton decided to keep Oregon animation in the spotlight by making sure his internationally acclaimed, multi-award winning Idiots and Angels was eligible for an Oscar nomination.

Here’s the story in Bill’s own words.

I believed in the film enough to try for an Oscar nomination.

So, without a distribution deal in place, I decided to handle the release myself. Now this isn’t the end of the world, in fact there are some positive aspects of self-release. But let me first list the negative points:

1.     I had to lay out a lot of money for prints and trailers.

2.     I had to hire press agents.

3.     I produced posters and postcards myself.

4.     I called all my press friends begging to get any kind of interview or articles.

5.     I organized street teams of students to canvas the city.

6.     I booked myself in every art school I could think of to give me a Master Class, to make the schools aware of the screening.

However on the positive side, here are the benefits of self-distribution.

1.     The rights to the film remain in  my hands, thus I can control when it’s released how it’s released, and where it shows. And if I want to rerelease it, it’s my decision.

2.     All the money, if there is money, comes directly to me.

3.     I get to control the images and style of the release. I can talk directly to my audience.

Idiots and Angels’ run at the IFC theater in New York, which began Oct.6, now has been extended to Oct. 21.

Congratulations, Bill! For all you Academy members out there, here’s the screening times:

• Wed, Oct 13 at: 1:00 PM, 2:45 PM, 4:40 PM, 6:40 PM,8:40 PM, 10:35 PM
• Thu, Oct 14 at: 1:00 PM, 2:45 PM, 4:40 PM, 6:40 PM,8:40 PM, 10:35 PM
• Fri, Oct 15 at: 1:05 PM, 4:40 PM, 8:25 PM
• Sat, Oct 16 at: 1:05 PM, 4:40 PM, 8:25 PM
• Sun, Oct 17 at: 1:05 PM, 4:40 PM, 8:25 PM
• Mon, Oct 18 at: 1:05 PM, 4:40 PM, 8:25 PM
• Tue, Oct 19 at: 1:05 PM, 4:40 PM, 8:25 PM
• Wed, Oct 20 at: 1:05 PM, 4:40 PM
• Thu, Oct 21 at: 1:05 PM, 4:40 PM, 8:25 PM

The IFC Theater is at 323 Sixth Avenue, Greenwich Village, New York. Yes! You are correct. It  is located on the site of the historic Waverly Theater, just off the southwest corner of Washington Park.

Q: What is Bill Plympton’s Idiots and Angels about?

A: New York Magazine sez: In the animation icon’s ambitious, hilariously demented moral fantasy, a selfish businessman discovers angel wings growing out of his back and finds his crass impulses suddenly at odds with a newfound, unwelcome desire to do good.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This post brought to you by the good people at Oregon Cartoon Institute.

Two world class Oregon animators, looking very respectable.

I don’t think I have ever seen Bill Plympton (writer-director-producer of Idiots and Angels) in a tie before. Perhaps it is more usual for Mark Gustafson (animation director for The Fantastic Mr. Fox) to sally forth in one.

One name kept coming up. Ellen Thomas said “Homer Groening”. Will Vinton said “Homer Groening”.Bill Plympton said “Homer Groening”. What was the question?  Dennis and I were asking them who we should know about in Portland film history.

From the Seattle Times obituary for Groening, in 1996.

Homer P. Groening was born Dec. 30, 1919, a U.S. citizen in Main Centre, Saskatchewan, the son of Mennonite farmers. He spent his youth in Oregon.

He earned the rank of Eagle Scout and was a co-founder in 1936 of Camp Pioneer at the base of Mount Jefferson. He graduated from Linfield College in McMinnville, Ore., in 1941.

He met his wife, Margaret, at Linfield. They married in 1942.

Mr. Groening flew a B-17 over Europe during World War II and participated in the D-Day invasion, winning a Distinguished Flying Cross.

After the war, he returned to Portland and joined the Botsford, Constantine and Gardner ad agency as a production assistant.

He was called up again to fly transport planes in Korea.

Upon his return, he became a vice president at the ad agency, working on accounts such as Jantzen, Pendleton, Olympia beer, Idaho potatoes and Western Hotels. He started his own agency in 1958.

“He was an absolute creative genius,” said former Advertising Federation President Mick Scott, who worked with Mr. Groening to found the American Advertising Museum in Portland.

When film caught his interest, he taught himself the craft.

“He was a one-man show,” said his daughter, Lisa. “He did the producing, writing, shooting, sound recording, editing, directing and narrating.”

Among his film clients were Jantzen, Timberline Lodge, Johnson Motors, Eastman Kodak and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

He won numerous Golden Eagles, given by the Council on International Non-Theatrical Events (CINE), and awards from the Advertising Association of the West and the American Film Festival.

He produced a string of films about water in all its forms, including “Get Wet,” “Getting Wetter,” “Psychedelic Wet” and “Study in Wet.”

Mr. Groening’s son, Matt, said he received creative encouragement at home, in part because his father was a cartoonist himself. Mr. Groening took colored pencils and sketch pads home to his five children. He would make up the beginning of a story and his children would finish it.

When young Will Vinton stood in Portland with his brand new Oscar in 1975, wondering if he should stick around, he took a page from Homer Groening, and decided to stay.

One consequence of that decision…..

Travis Knight and Mark Gustafson next month will be in LA nervously waiting for the moment they open the envelope for Best Animated Feature. Both artists are former Will Vinton Studio employees, mentored by Will, who was in turn mentored by Homer.

Portland represents at the Oscars once again this year. Last year we sent two directors: Gus Van Sant for Milk and Irene Taylor Brodsky for The Final Inch. This year we sent animators- lots of them. Coraline employed a small nation state of caffeine fueled Portland obsessives. As it happens, both Coraline and one of its competitors, The Fantastic Mr. Fox, showcase the stop motion work of graduates of Will Vinton Studios.

Top Photo: Travis Knight, lead animator on Coraline. Bottom photo: Mark Gustafson, working on The PJ’s at Will Vinton Studio. Gustafson is the animation director on The Fantastic Mr. Fox.

Gee…..thanks, Will!

This post brought to you by the Oregon Cartoon Institute.

Cameron obviously intends Avatar to be a critique, however broad and simplistic, of American money and militarism—after all, his hero is an embittered veteran insurgent. But it’s hard to entertain seriously the proposition that the Most Expensive Movie Ever is on the side of the underdogs, let alone the angels. When judged against scrappier pictures like Fantastic Mr. Fox and Coraline, and their respective modest budgets, Avatar more closely resembles the unsavory, disproportionate strategies of Michael Bloomberg, our billionaire mayor who recently bought his own re-election, another king of the world. Benjamin Strong, in The L Magazine

When Benjamin Strong isn’t using James Cameron’s latest film to address the need for campaign finance reform in New York City,  he uses it to discuss CGI vs stop motion.

It’s worth noting, though, that 2009 has seen not one but two outstanding animated films—Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox and Henry Selick’s Coraline—both of which were made with stop motion, a technology that’s supposedly obsolete, at least as compared to what Cameron is doing. These two films—Fantastic Mr. Fox, in particular—have natural, fully immersive settings, material worlds that appear as if they were handmade in actual three-dimensional space (and not on a computer) for the reason that they were. Benjamin Strong, in The L Magazine

Thanks for the shout out, Benjamin! Readers of Oregon Movies A to Z instantly recognize that both the “scrappier” pictures he cites were made by animators – Travis Knight and Henry Selick for Coraline, and Mark Gustafson for  Fantastic Mr. Fox — who originally worked for Oregon born and raised Will Vinton, the godfather of feature length stop motion animation.

Oregon’s contribution to Avatar, however, is on the live action side of the equation.

Kristi Turnquist, an honorary research associate of Oregon Movies, A to Z, broke the big story: Joel David Moore, the actor who plays scientist Norm Spellman in Avatar, is from Portland.

That’s Moore, catching flies, to the right of Sigourney Weaver.

Avatar is James Cameron’s second Oregon film, after Point Break, which he executive produced.

Anyone seen this film?

I hereby claim Avatar as an Oregon film, on the basis of Oregonian Joel David Moore’s presence in the cast.

Kristi Turnquist adds some more names to the “What would Wes Anderson do without Portland?” list.

FOXY PORTLAND TALENT
Wes Anderson’s animated feature, “Fantastic Mr. Fox” is getting some of the best reviews of the year. No surprise, then, to see the names of talent with Portland roots showing up on the crew list. Among them: animation director Mark Gustafson, a longtime luminary at Will Vinton Studios; production designer Nelson Lowry, who worked on the Vinton studio-animated series, “The PJs”; and animator Brad Schiff, who worked on “Coraline,” from Laika studio.

To clarify: All three above named Oregon exports worked on the television series “The PJs” , made here in Portland.

Whatever the mysterious forces are which bring Oregonians to animation success, they were especially powerful in the mid-1980’s, when Will Vinton made the first feature length Claymation film in Portland. The following year, Matt Groening debuted The Simpsons and Brad Bird debuted Family Dog, both on network television, and Bill Plympton, working in NYC, was nominated for an Oscar for Your Face.

All four men are animation geniuses. If you are unsure that a successful advertising man like Will Vinton belongs in this group, see The Adventures of Mark Twain to appreciate just how miraculously odd he is as an artist.

If you remain skeptical of the size of Vinton’s contribution to American film, just watch the credits. Count the names who went on to other things — animator Mark Gustafson (The Fantastic Mr. Fox) and sound editor (now a director) Kelley Baker are just two.

Click here to view the embedded video.

It was Vinton who modeled the passionate engagement with technique which paved the way for Coraline.

I hereby claim The Adventures of Mark Twain as an Oregon film, based on many qualifying factors. It was made at the Will Vinton Studios in Northwest Portland, and written, directed, produced, animated — you name it— by Oregonians.

This post brought to you by the Oregon Cartoon Institute.