Apparently, that is NOT all folks. Jenny Slate has been tapped to write a feature film involving the looniest of cartoon tunes. Not much is known, other than it will be partly live action and partly CGI, like the last L. Tunes movie, Looney Tunes: Back in Action. Expect something like Space Jam but instead of Michael Jordan, there'll be a talking shell with shoes on.
Here's a video interview with New Yorker cartoonist Matt Diffee, in which he discusses the business of "drawing funny" and also doodles a macrocephalic flying unicorn. It's a good shock to the system for those of us who are used to thinking about comedy as a words game only. [Drawing of you watching this video, looking thoughtful, and chuckling.]
New SNL writer and New Yorker cartoonist Zach Kanin drew up some pretty exciting predictions for 2012. (You know, in his spare time. I hear they keep a really lax schedule over at SNL.) According to Kanin, we can expect big surprises from Newt Gingrich and a sizable increase in young-adult novels written by rabbis. Perhaps the biggest news here, though, is that the season of Looking Back On 2011 has officially arrived, and before Halloween no less. Let the reflective blog posts and magazine top-ten lists commence!
Why, these Tiny Fuppets are like nothing I've ever seen. It's like they always say: the fanboat is the birthplace of all great Portuguese art! Scott Gairdner has been kind enough to introduce us to cartoon master Arturo Lima and his positively unique gang of animated creatures Kormit, Gonzor, Tummi, and Animanuel. My favorite one is Ms. Woman. I bet if you got her angry, she'd hit you right between the eyes with a Jogo do Pau staff!
Fox loves itself some animation! It just ordered two new animated series for next year, one based on Napoleon Dynamite and one from Jonah Hill.
This cartoon was used in "The Cartoon" episode of Seinfeld. You know the one where Elaine accidentally steals a Ziggy. Well, now the New Yorker is actually planning on running it but it needs a caption first. You can submit your best quip here until July 23rd. I hope the New Yorker intern who has to read the first run of submissions likes Seinfeld quotes: "I have a complaint. These pretzels are making me thirsty." Haha, got you, intern who probably has an MFA from Iowa. Watch the perfect Seinfeld scene below in which Elaine first shows Jerry and Kramer her cartoon because it is so, so perfect. [...]
Anyone out there watching China, IL? Anyone out there heard of China, IL? You know, Adult Swim's "gleefully deranged animated series set in a college town that is constantly destroyed by the faculty," created by comic book artist Brad Neely and featuring cameos by Jeffrey Tambor and Jason Alexander? The one whose "frenetic jokes loosely hang on ludicrous plotlines that are rooted in a sharp satire of small-town academia"? No? Well, after reading this article about it, you might want to check it out.
In a casting move you can probably already hear in your head, Eddie Murphy will voice Hong Kong Phooey for a film based on the Hanna-Barbera animated series from the '70s. Having voiced a donkey, a cranky super and a tiny dragon of some sort, portraying a crime-fighting kung-fu master dog seems like the next logical step, career-wise.
It's Kristen Wiig's year; why not continue the winning streak by playing an emotionally tone-deaf lady rabbit? Wiig currently voices Bugs' Bunny's would-be Earth mate Lola (of Space Jam fame) for Cartoon Network's Looney Tunes reboot. When it comes to her song "We Are In Love" (also sung by Wiig), kids will enjoy the colorful animation and dulcet harmonies, while adults can relate to the ice-cold chill that washes over you when you realize your significant other has tapped your phone lines, violated their restraining order and is currently standing in front of your home in a lightening storm, grinning ominously.
Its parameters are tight: black and white. One square. One caption. It’s bare, and it’s simple. It doesn’t have dialogue or physicality or access to the infinite euphonic range of fart tones. It is the New Yorker cartoon, and despite its naked form in a culture of boundless multi-sense-stimulation, it remains a venue of high comedy.
If your impulse is to say that New Yorker cartoons are universally stuffy and unfunny, I understand. It’s okay. I was just like you once: dismissive, thought I knew everything about comedy, cursed a lot.
Then one day I got in a cab right after a man who resembled Jeff Goldblum—but [...]
After spending seven years heading up development over at Adult Swim, Nick Weidenfield is in the process of creating a very similar late-night animated block over at Fox called ADHD (Animation Domination High-Def). He explained to Fast Company how ADHD will differ from Fox's regular animated fair and Adult Swim:
There’s just more room for us to be experimental than in primetime. Conceptually, ADHD will be broader than some of the stuff that we worked on at Adult Swim, but in terms of execution, it will still be weird and late night—the shows will have the kinds of jokes and the kind of storytelling that will be too [...]
Everyone's making cartoons! Russell Brand is now "in advance talks" to produce an animated half-hour series. It's still too early to tell if he'd voice a character.
If anyone could prevent forest fires, it is almost certainly Black Dynamite. Adult Swim has posted the Black Dynamite pilot, and it's filled with the same amount of Cream Corn, throwing stars and borderline-uncomfortable blaxsploitation riffs brought to you by the original film. The animation, leaded by The Boondocks' Carl Jones, is gorgeous and as close to perfection you can get without without opting to make it live action. And when Black Dynamite still has a thick, luxurious mustache as a child? On another note, I'm going to have nightmares about That Frog Curtis for the rest of my life.
This cartoon by Skottie Young is pretty much perfect. He's selling the original drawing, too, if you're interested. Own something that will probably cause Maron to go into a shame spiral! That sort of value is hard to come by. [via]
