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‘Man on Wire’ Supplemented. Trade Roughage 09/03/08

Christopher Campbell
By Christopher Campbell posted 3 days ago
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  • As if I really needed a reason to see my favorite film of 2008, Man on Wire, again: beginning this Friday, the Landmark cinemas showing the documentary in L.A. and NYC will include with the film an animated short from 2005 titled The Man Who Walked Between the Towers, which features narration by Jake Gyllenhaal. Although not as appealing as a sing-a-long version (I can’t help but annoyingly hum along to Eric Satie as it is), Magnolia Pictures is hoping for a bump in family attendance.
  • The Fox vs. Warner Bros. trial over the rights to Watchmen has been set for January 6, and here’s hoping it’s well-covered by the appropriate stations. I’d like to be able to flip back and forth between the actual trial — on truTV — and footage of the expected comic geek protesters outside — on G4.
  • Get ready for unnecessarily computer-generated gorillas and African tribesmen: Stephen Sommers (The Mummy; Van Helsing) is in negotiations to direct Warner Bros.’ new Tarzan movie, from a script by Stuart Beattie (Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl) expected to be “an entirely new approach” to the character.
  • The latest children’s book series hoping for a Spielberg-directed first film is called “The 39 Clues,” and it may happen with Jeff Nathanson (Catch Me If You Can; The Terminal) adapting the initial book, called “The Maze of Bones,” for DreamWorks.

Disney Animator Ollie Johnston Dies

Karina Longworth
By Karina Longworth posted 4 months ago
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Ollie Johnston, the last living member of a gang of nine Disney animators whose work set the bar for 2D animation for, well, the seeming entirety of 2D animation history, died this week at the age of 95. Check out the first half of one of Johnston’s lesser-seen works above. Ben and Me, the story of a mouse who sneaks into Benjamin Franklin’s house an helps him invent bifocals and the modern printing press, “entirely robs one of the most revered founding fathers of his agency,” as the YouTube synopsis puts it. Stay tuned for the even more bizarre second chapter. Even as a child, I think I knew there was something really bizarre about the idea of an eccentric inventor who walked around talking to the rodent hidden in his hat, but I totally forgot about the part where the mouse walks off like a jilted lover after Ben electrocutes him––twice.