Friday Catch Up:

Cool things happening at the ASIFA Archives. Glad that Steve Worth is taking time to address all the great progress in these pages. It is also nice to have someone else writing in this blog.

I spent the day brooding on not being able to see Were-Rabbit with my peers this next Monday. If you haven`t RSVPed then you will not be able to either, they filled up in record time. DreamWork, with a great hit like this on your hands you really need to put on a couple of screenings for the Annie voting public at ASIFA.

I also, while brooding, managed to worked on my animation, re-rendering all of my work reel just so that I could see what is missing. Looking good. Having a good time. Still missing some vital scenes.

Several months back I helped Fred Ladd pitch his Kimba Reunion to the ASIFA board. I then got very busy with Comic Con and left Fred and David Derks to put the whole project together. Which they did very will. I love projects like this where I don`t have to do any of the work. Here is a message from Fred about the event.

2005, marks the 40th Anniversary of KIMBA, The White Lion, which is our version of Osamu Tezuka's Jungulu Taitei Leo. I was recording the Pilot Film in New York City on November 9, 1965, when -suddenly!- all the lights went OUT! It was the day of the awful POWER FAILURE in New York! We had to stop recording, and return the next day, November 10, to complete the filmtrack.

So, on November 10 2005, 40 years to the day after we completed our version "The Birth of Kimba", ASIFA-Hollywood (the animated film society) will sponsor a 40th Anniversary Celebration that I'll be producing in the

Glendale Central Library
222 E. Harvard Street
Glendale, CA
7 PM.

We'll be showing that historic 1/2-hour program in its entirety.

Guest panelists will be:

• Famous animator Sadao Miyamoto (alumnus of Tezuka's Mushi Production)
  
• Jared Cook, translator & interpreter for Tezuka himself, plus
  
• Hollywood animator-and-Kimba-expert Shawn Keller - and
  
• Mrs Sonia Owens, original voice-cast member from that classic series (flying in from her home in New Hampshire!)

Tickets are $6 for ASIFA-Hollywood members, $8 for non-members. This event will be THE DEFINITIVE REVIEW of the famous KIMBA Series, and a frank look at charges made even today that Disney's "The Lion King" was inspired by Osamu Tezuka`s "KIMBA, The White Lion,".seen on U.S. television 30 years earlier.

Kind Regards,
Fred Ladd

Who lives down in deepest darkest Africa? Come out to the Glendale Library and find out.  ¶ 9:01 PM