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Lots of debate about the worthiness of the film Happy Feet to win the Oscar when motion capture technique is not considered by many animators to be true animation. Bill Kroyer and I talked about it yesterday. Truth be told a lot of the animation in the film was not motion capture. Almost all the faces were key-framed. Rhythm & Hues, an LA based company, created two action sequences for the film including the Tigershark chase. They were all keyframed, no pingpongball clad actors to be seen.
While the theme was pretty simplistic,I liked the art direction and the fast cutting of some of the sections, like the slide down a mountain.

Thursday the U.S. Congress is going to vote on the Employee Freedom Act. This act will restore many provisions of the 1935 Wagner Act protecting workers who want to unionize. Please let your congressman know artists like us need this act. You can't complain that your union doesn't do anything if you won't let it regain some of it's teeth, pulled by decades of hostile politicians. Check out http://www.peoplepower@aflcio.org

All that harms Labor is Treason to America. If anyone tells you they love America, yet fear labor, they are fools."- Abraham Lincoln

Democracy and FreeMarket Capitalism cannot co-exist, and the most obnoxious form of Democracy is Trade-Unionism!"-Adolf Hitler


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Birthdays: Michel de Montaigne, The Marquis de Montcalm, Samuel 'Zero" Mostel, Vasclav Nijinsky, Molly Picon, Gavin MacCleod, Sir John Tenniel, Bernadette Peters, Bubba Smith, Mario Andretti, Milton Caniff- the creator of Terry and the Pirates", Ben 'Bugsy' Siegel, Tommy Tune, Vincente Minelli, Dorothy Stratton, Rae Dong Chong, John Tarturro, Jack Abramoff

1835-Dr. Elias Lohnnrot published the Finnish national epic poem Kalevala,. It’s about the first man Vanjiamoimmen, who was born old and searched for the magical machine called the Samo, kept in a mountain with seven locks, guarded by seven wizards chanting Samo! Samo!

1882- The first college store opened, this one attached to Harvard.

1896- Robert Paul demonstrates a kinetograph to the Royal Institute.
The British Cinema is born.

1920-.Evans vs. Gore – Al Gore’s grandfather. The U.S. Supreme Court upholds the legality of the Income Tax amendments, saying:” The power to tax carries with it the power to embarrass and destroy “. Isn’t that reassuring..

1920 Maurice Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin debuted..

1940- At the Oscars ceremony Hattie McDaniel became the first black actress to win an Oscar for her role in Gone With The Wind. When the NAACP criticized her for portraying stereotyped black mammys McDaniel snapped:” I’d rather make $5000 a week playing a maid than $5 a week being a maid!”

1940- Richard Wright’s novel Native Son about growing up black in America, first published.

1953-Chuck Jone’s “Duck-Amuck” short debuts- called by Steven Speilberg the Citizen Kane of Animation.


1953- An Englishman named James Watson walked into his local pub and announced to the barman” Barman, Set them up, I’ve just discovered the secret of life!” Indeed that morning Watson & Francis Crick had come upon the DNA double helix molecule.

1983- The last episode of the television series M*A*S*H.

2001- Seattle rocked by a 7.0 earthquake.


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