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Simon Brew Apr 5, 2017

We chat with Boss Baby director Tom McGrath about animation, changes at DreamWorks, Boss Baby 2, advice from Ron Howard and more...

Tom McGrath is one of Hollywood’s most underappreciated comedy directors. Megamind was a hoot, I found myself guffawing heavily through the Madagascar trilogy and now, with The Boss Baby, he’s brought yet more animated mischief to the screen.

We got the chance to have a chat with about the movie, about the big behind the scenes changes at DreamWorks Animation, and the invaluable advice of Ron Howard and George Lucas…

I remember watching the Oscars one year, and Jim Carrey came on to present an award just as Liar Liar had opened to massive numbers. He walked up and said “how was your weekend, mine was good!”. So, Tom McGrath: how was your weekend?

It was great! It was good! [Laughs] You know, I don’t have children myself,...

Sing, E.T., and a special Looney Tunes presentation in our April Family Favourites!Sing, E.T., and a special Looney Tunes presentation in our April Family Favourites!Jenny Bullough3/30/2017 10:00:00 Am Spring has sprung at last! We couldn’t be happier that warmer weather is finally here. And we couldn’t be more excited about the lineup of Family Favourites playing this month!! From recent hits like Sing to classics like E.T. and a very special theatrical showing of the greatest Looney Tunes cartoons of all time, at only 2.99 per ticket we might just spend every Saturday morning at the movies! April 1 – Looney Tunes Shorts A treat for kids and adults alike, Family Favourites presents A Looney Tunes Cartoon Celebration! Starring everyone’s favorite wascally wabbit and all his pals, don’t miss this opportunity to see classic cartoons like “One Froggy Evening”, “Rabbit Seasoning” and “Duck Dodgers in the...

Why Watch? Well, because Steven Spielberg calls it the “Citizen Kane of animated film.” That’s not enough for you? Here goes. One Froggy Evening is among the best of Chuck Jones‘s cartoons, recognized by the National Film Registry along with Duck Amuck and What’s Opera, Doc? It’s the first appearance of Michigan J. Frog, American cinema’s most influential singing and dancing amphibian. The top-hat wearing vaudevillian toad starts out in a box, hidden in the cornerstone of a just-demolished building. The innocent construction worker who finds him can the piles of cash waiting to be collected before his eyes (literally, because this is a Chuck Jones cartoon), and rushes him off to an entertainment agency. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. We all know the story: the frog never performs when he needs to, and everyone thinks that the poor sap selling him is a lunatic. It...

Chicago – The fast, funny and brightly thematic “The Croods” is the latest animated epic to come out of DreamWorks Studios, and a couple of veterans in the cartoon game, Kirk De Micco and Chris Sanders, are both the writers and directors of this vivid look into a prehistoric cave family and their evolutionary adventures.

“The Croods” are voiced by Nicolas Cage (Grug), Emma Stone (Eep), Catherine Keener (Ugga), Ryan Reynolds (Guy) and Cloris Leachman (Gran). They live to survive, but mostly hide in their dark cave from the outside elements. It is Eep who wants more out of life, and finds it with the adventurous Guy, who exists to enlighten himself.

Chris Sanders (left) and Kirk De Micco in the Recording Studio for ‘The Croods’

Photo credit: DreamWorks Animation

The writers and directors of this modern stone age fantasy are Kirk De Micco and Chris Sanders. Both are veterans of animation,...

The connection between music and animation is an incredibly close one. In 1940, Walt Disney pioneered with his first animated full-length feature, a musical telling of Snow White and even before, cartoons were common in movie theaters, rounding out the double bills along with newsreels and comedy shorts. For decades, audiences watched shorts this way and several studios duked it out for cartoon supremacy, from Disney (Silly Symphonies) to Warner Bros. (Looney Tunes) to MGM (Tom and Jerry). For the generations raised on the radio broadcasts of Toscanini and the NBC Symphony Orchestra, classical music was a common and valued source of entertainment and so it was a natural choice for animators as inspiration for some of their greatest cartoons. With the rise of television, however, shorts became less and less popular and prevalent in movie theaters and it seemed they may become like so many great classic films- underseen and...

One hundred years ago today in Spokane, Washington, Charles Martin “Chuck” Jones was born. It is quite possible there has not been a more widely influential artist in the twentieth century.

We could easily list his over three hundred cartoons that he directed; we could talk about all of the influential cartoons that he didn’t do for Warner Brothers– Pogo, The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, The Dot and the Line, and revitalizing Tom & Jerry; we could mention his creation and co-creations Private Snafu, Charlie Dog, Hubie and Bertie, The Three Bears, Claude Cat, Marc Antony and Pussyfoot, Charlie Dog, Michigan J. Frog, Marvin the Martian, Pepe LePew, the Road Runner, and Wile E. Coyote; we could discuss his educational work with The Electric Company and Curiosity Shop and his works with Dr. Seuss, not to mention the multiple generations of animators he taught and trained– but we’ll simply...

The Looney Tunes Show will bring back such classic animated characters as Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Wile E. Coyote on a new Cartoon Network show which will debut later this year. A brand new YouTube channel and Twitter page have also been launched and we're celebrating this new influx of animation with a new contest. We're giving away a fantastic coffee table book entitled The 100 Greatest Looney Tunes Cartoons to our readers, which delves through the lengthy history of this animated franchise. You know this book will go fast, so be sure to enter this contest today.

Winners Receive:

The 100 Greatest Looney Tunes Cartoons coffee table book

Here's How To Win!

Just "Like" (fan) the MovieWeb Facebook page (below) and then leave a comment below telling us why these prizes must be yours!

If you already "Like" MovieWeb, just leave a comment below telling us why these prizes must be yours!

Warner Bros.' Michigan J. Frog, the singing and dancing, top hat-wearing, cane-wielding amphibian, is a character that has been around since the 1950s. He made his debut in a 7 minute animated short titled One Froggy Evening, which is now one of the most renowned animated shorts in history. I remember watching this cartoon as a kid, and at that time I saw it as nothing more than an entertaining romp with a frog. It's funny how you eventually learn to appreciate certain things you grow up with. In the case of One Froggy Evening, I still think it's an entertaining romp with a frog, but now I know it's "culturally significant". At least, that's what the Library of Congress said. If anything, the song "Hello My Baby" will be stuck in my head for a while.

Here's a 3D remake of the first few minutes of the original One Froggy Evening...

That Mel Brooks is such a lovable rascal. I associate him with dirty Yiddish words, over-the-top humor that's not afraid to tackle Important Issues[Tm], as well as all things little and cute. Last year I wrote about the summer of 1987, when Spaceballs came out, as one of my favorite summers for movies, and while I don't revisit Spaceballs on the regs, I do think of it fondly. One scene that freaked me out as a pre-teen (yeah, I was kind of a scaredy-cat) was a parody of the famous chestburster scene in Alien. Even though the little chestburster was kind of adorable and even put on a little top hat to sing and dance, I still thought it was pretty gnarly.

As an adult, of course, I appreciate it far more, especially since the fellow experiencing the chest-popping parody is played by the same guy who gets it much worse in Alien,...

#235 (Vol. 2 #7): The Chief And The King

When I was a child I enjoyed all sorts of animated cartoon series I saw on television, perhaps more or less equally. But as an adult, watching these cartoons again, I discovered that some, notably Warner Bros.’ Looney Tunes grew in my estimation, while others, notably the Hanna-Barbera television cartoons of the late 50s through the 1960s, dropped considerably. I still find the early Hanna-Barbera characters–Yogi Bear, et al.–appealing, thanks to their visual design, primarily by the late animator Ed Benedict, and especially the great voice acting by Daws Butler and his colleagues. But while I can name numerous Warners cartoons whose direction and writing make them great and classic–What’s Opera, Doc?, One Froggy Evening, and on and on–are there individual Hanna-Barbera TV cartoons from the 50s and 60s that are anywhere near that league?

That’s why...

Hollywood is notorious for tinkering with a project to the point that it barely resembles the original concept. Horror stories of test focus groups, endless unnecessary revisions and glorified accountants having a say in creative development abound. Writer Denis McGrath has taken this twisted mentality and applied it to Chuck Jones' classic One Froggy Evening, with hilarious results. -re: the frog. Have you done research on Frog's lifespans? Does it track that this frog could survive from 1892 to 2056? Is his long lifespan tied into his ability to sing? -Is the frog singing the right songs? Could we have him sing something that speaks to our demo better? And make sure you read the comments, where other people join ...