Italy’s View Conference...
Italy’s popular computer graphics conference View has announced its 2013...
Archive
A Legendary ‘Calamity’
I am writing this week’s blog on the day that President Barack Obama is being sworn in for his second term. What has that to do with the Toon Trenches? Outwardly, nothing, except for a comment made by a radio pundit covering the event, as to how no newly inaugurated president [...]
Love Him or Hate Him, This Guy Changed TV Animation
At a time when yet another national fistfight…um, I mean, debate…is heating up over who is responsible for the horrific gun violence in this country, one of the usual suspects has again come under scrutiny: the entertainment industry. In particular, that section of the entertainment industry targeted (so to speak) [...]
Hey, Arnold… Where Have You Been?
Not every successful animated series goes on to become an enduring classic. To put it another way, anyone remember when Rugrats was the hottest thing on TV and one of the hottest licensing properties around? Later this month Shout! Factory will release its third season-based DVD set of Hey, Arnold!, [...]
Iwao and Party Time at Disney
January 8th, 2013, just a little over one week away from my setting down these words, will mark the fifth anniversary of the sudden and tragic death of one of the industry’s most unique talents, Iwao Takamoto. It hardly seems like five years have passed, since I rarely go a [...]
A Bill Melendez Christmas
What would the holidays be without A Charlie Brown Christmas, which, believe it or not, premiered 47 years ago? And what would any Charlie Brown special be without the late, great Bill Melendez, who produced and directed countless Peanuts-related television specials? Bill enjoyed one of the longest continuous careers in [...]
Remembering Richard Stone
Some eighty years ago, after it was decided that cartoons should be heard as well as seen, the song scores in many cases became the driving forces for the shorts. An entire crop of now-heralded composers–Oliver Wallace, Scott Bradley, Carl Stalling, and by proxy, Raymond Scott, among them–contributed greatly to [...]
Yvette Kaplan Looks Back at ‘Beavis and Butt-Head’
Over the weekend I had the opportunity to come face to face one of the many, many people I knew only over the telephone, having conducted interviews with them from afar. In this case it was animation director Yvette Kaplan. I introduced myself by saying, “If I’m not mistaken, you [...]
Gene of All Trades
Some things stay with you for a lifetime. When I was a kid I read a Yogi Bear comic strip in the newspaper in which Ranger Smith punks Yogi by filling his enormous Christmas stocking with an enormous artificial foot. It sounds like a simple, obvious gag, but the memory [...]
Talking Turkey About Pocahontas
Another Turkey Day has come and gone (save for the excess pounds) and this time the our yearly national celebration of the communion between the English settlers and the Native peoples of North America got me thinking of the only animated treatment of Chapter One in American history, Disney’s 1995 [...]
Remembering Lucille Bliss
I have written about Lucille Bliss before on this blog. But upon hearing the sad news that this talented little lady passed away a couple weeks ago, I was drawn back to the interview I did with her in 2003, to find more stories about her fascinating career. If there [...]
Amazon’s LoveFilm and...
LoveFilm and Disney have signed a new pact which allows the Amazon subscriber...
CN All About ‘Adventure...
Cartoon Network Enterprises is riding the runaway Adventure Time train...
