AQUA TEEN TERRORIST FORCE?
In order to promote their new movie, Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theatres, Cartoon Network has planted several electronic boxes in several major cities throughout the United States. The box has several blinking magnetic lights that are in the shapes of Ignignokt and Err, two of the shows more popular characters.
But residents of Boston mistook the boxes for bombs being planted around bridges, subways and buses. Bomb squads were called in and streets, bridges and tunnels were shut down in order to disarm the 'bombs'!
Police have arrested Peter Berdvosky, an employee of Cartoon Network's marketing team, charged under placing a hoax device that results in panic.
Is this marketing gone too far? The device wasn't a bomb and never claimed to be a bomb and now the movie is getting tons of publicity, but should the network be a little more thoughtful of the post-911 paranoid country that is the USA?
Anyway, while the show has quite a large cult following, I'm sure that the movie will not make any thing close to 'hit' numbers in the box office. The show is funny in its ten minute episode format but there is no way a whole movie will keep people's attention.
If you haven't seen the trailer, here it is.
Director Tim Hill, best known for Garfield 2 and Muppets From Space, has signed on to direct an Alvin and the Chipmunks feature film! Now you may think this is good news, but it's not.
This new animated series debuted on January 18th as part of a marketing campaign between Warner Bros and Sprint. Here is the most interesting part: The series is available exclusively for your cell phone!
Wait Till You Father Gets Home (WTYFGH) was brought to life by Hanna-Barbera to compete in the ever-growing popularity of the 'seventies sitcom'. This show which starred Tom Bosley (two years before his role as Howard Cunningham in Happy Days) as a married father of three and the situations that they encounter due to their generation gap. The series ran from 1972 to 1974 for first-run syndication. The two seasons and 49 episodes featured guest stars like Don Knotts, Don Adams and Phyllis Diller.
Space Ghost was the first half of the half-hour series that ran from 1966-1968 on CBS. It followed the adventures of Space Ghost, voiced by Gary Owens (Roger Ramjet, Powered Toast-Man), as he battles villains, monsters and other abominations. Joining him on his adventures are his teenage sidekicks, Jace and Jan, and their space monkey, Blip.
The 2006 Golden Globe Awards Ceremony was on Monday and Pixar/Disney's Cars took home the Globe for Best Animated Feature beating out Happy Feet and Monster House. No surprise, really. Cars had the highest box office gross out of all the animated movies this year and I think everyone's bias toward Pixar helped a great deal.
I agree with Frost. Pixar should thank the creative brains behind the picture which is Pixar. Hopefully, that will continue with their upcoming pictures.
But wait, there's more! Pixar has released their very first picture of the title character of WALL• E, Pixar's follow-up to Ratatouille. It was just a matter of time before Pixar did a robot movie. I'm not surprised. They've done insects, monsters, underwater, superheroes and even a little outer space. Robots have been tackled many times, like Brad Bird's The Iron Giant for example, but I'm sure that Finding Nemo director Andrew Stanton will deliver another Oscar-worthy film.
Also included in the Sneak Peak clip that I posted 
Underdog was a part of a marketing campaign in the 60s to sell breakfast cereal to children. King Leonardo, Tennessee Tuxedo and Underdog were among the characters created for the General Mills campaign. The superhero dog, who was an obvious parody of Superman, quickly rose to fame and won the hearts of children all over the world.
Not only will this week's theme song be a tribute to the Late Joe Barbera, but it will also be a tribut to Iwao Takamoto who passed away earlier this week. Iwao was a lead character designer for Hanna-Barbera and is most known for designing Scooby-Doo. But I want to share with you a character that Iwao almost didn't create.
When Hanna-Barbera created Wacky Races, a show about a bunch of race car drivers and a villain bent on sabotaging every race, they didn't realize that they had made a all-male cast out of the drivers. At the last second Iwao was given the task of designing Penelope Pitstop and her car, the Compact Pussycat. He completed his task in about two hours.
Wacky Races had two spin-offs. Dasterdly & Muttley in Their Flying Machines focused on the villain, Dick Dasterdly and his pursuit to stop a carrier pigeon from delivering its messages. The other spin-off was The Perils of Penelope Pitstop. Here, Peneolpe must escape and evade the traps set out by the Hooded Claw, who is after her wealth. To save the day, Wacky Races co-stars the Ant Hill Mob Gang also joined the cast of this show to help Penelope out.
Another great animator has passed away. On January 6, Pete Kleinow passed away at the age of 72. He was best known in the animation world for his stop-motion work on Gumby, Davey & Goliath, and the Pilsburry Dough-Boy. Pete wrote the theme song for Gumby
Only weeks after the death of Joe Barbera, another Hanna-Barbera legend passes away. Iwao Takamoto died yesterday from heart problems.
The Flintstones ran for six seasons from 1960-1966 on ABC and is the first animated television show made for prime time. The sitcom gained the record for longest running animated series which wasn't broken until 1997 by The Simpsons. The stories of Fred and Wilma Flintstone and their neighbours, Barney and Betty Rubble, gained huge popularity with kids and adults alike.
By the sixth season it was apparent that more kids than adults were watching The Flintstones and so a few new characters were added that greatly took away from the 'sitcom' feel of the show. The Gruesomes, a monster-like couple resembling the Addams Family or the Munsters, moved next door and a little green alien that only Fred could see, called that Great Gazoo, appeared to help Fred through his adventures. Many fans consider the appearance of the Great Gazoo as the moment the Flintstones jumped the shark.
Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks created Oswald for Universal pictures. He was a typical cartoon character with simple facial features and solid colour body shapes that bared many similarities to Felix the Cat and Bimbo from Betty Boop. In fact, Mickey Mouse is pretty much a copy of Oswald with smaller ears.
When Disney and Iwerks left the studio to persue their own dreams, Walter Lantz continued to use the character of Oswald but made some changes to compete with the quickly evolving animation medium. Most notibly, Oswald was given gloves, shoes, a shirt and a cuter face due to the head being larger and the ears being smaller. Lantz also started making Oswald cartoons with sound in 1929.
Dell comics put out an Oswald comicbook in 1942, taking the current Oswald style and moulding it to fit in with other Lantz characters like Woody Woodpecker and Andy Panda. The comicbook style greatly influenced the cartoons and soon Oswald began to look more cartoony and his fur became two-toned.
After Walt Disney's Alice Comedies had become stale, he and Ub Iwerks created Oswald the Lucky Rabbit for Universal's animation producer, Charles Lantz. Disney and Iwerks quit after Lantz suggested a 20% budget cut despite the series high ratings. Disney made 26 Oswald cartoons in 1927 and 1928 and then lost the rights to his character. Lantz continued on to make over 150 more cartoons and Disney and Iwerks went on to create their biggest success, Mickey Mouse.
Happy New Year and welcome to 2007! I hope all of you had a safe and fun evening and I hope that you have thought about your New Year's resolutions!