Posting Slacker?

No, I haven't been just loafing around and not paying attention to the animation news - I've been saving up stuff to post!

October marks the one-year-old mark of my blog. Cooked Art is now 1! That puts me at just under 40,000 hits a year - not too shabby, I say!

I hear that Hayao Miyazaki's starting a new film due out in Summer 2008. Make sure to keep an eye out for Goro Miyazaki's film - Tales from Earthsea - hopefully due out soon!

Have you heard the rumours? Is it true? Is Google really in talks to by YouTube for 1.6bn?

Mark Mayerson posts some very interesting figures of animated feature film grosses in the past few years, and neatly categorises it for easy dissemination and scrutinization: here.

An area of repeated frustration for me has been the iTunes Music Store - a while ago I posted that you could purchase a selection of Disney Shorts (Back in January) as well as the fact you can get some of the Oscar-nominated shorts released in the past year (such as Jasper Morello and Badgered). But the problem for Canadians is they just can't buy these short films on Apple's Store due to their licensing - and I'm sure Apple is eager to release the films as soon as possible even if there is a disparity between the selection available geographically. I'd like to give Apple my money for these shorts, but they won't let me - which only seems to encourage looking to the more legally murky alternatives. This is just an open complaint without any real solution - but it's just something I'd like rectified so that I can watch Jasper Morello again.

I recently ran into this post on IGN.com on their visit to the Disney Animation Reference Library. It's a 4-page article with 55 images within the accompanying gallery. Check it!






Glen Keane Tarzan Test...



... Yes it's very short.


Linetests from "Jin-Roh"



Linetest from "Asterix and the Vikings"



Panel of Speakers before the screening of The Little Mermaid at the El Capitan Theatre...



Speaking of the Little Mermaid, I finally got the DVD and I have to say the special features are overall quite disappointing. A definite plus is that it includes Roger Aller's (Director of Open season) The Little Matchgirl, and two featurettes on the making of the movie - "Treasures Untold - The Making of The Little Mermaid" and "The Story Behind the Story" - as well as a few storyreel deleted scenes. Also, it has an audio commentary with Ron and Jon and Alan Menken - all of which are worth checking out - but beyond that, it's pretty much a bust. Where are the linetests, dammit?

Note that there are three hidden extras in the "Treasures Untold" menu - one of Ron and Jon doing caricatures of each other, another of them displaying the "Mermaid Handshake" and the last of Glen Keane on his use of live action reference for Ariel.

Didier Ghez posts to his blog about the exhibit "Il était une fois Disney" exhibit in Paris, France. Looks like quite the show!

Anyways, have a good long weekend!