The AAUGH blog

It’s a little early for me to get my usual requests to note the date, time, and channel of the upcoming airings of the key “classic”  specials (It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, and A Charlie Brown Christmas), but I can get one part of the answer out of the way now – ABC has signed a deal with Peanuts Worldwide (that’s the new Peanuts owner, co-owned by Iconix and Charles M. Schulz Creative Associates) for five more years of these specials.

One thing I don’t quickly find is whether this five year deal starts with this year, or whether this year’s showings are simply covered by a previous deal. The reason that becomes a particularly interesting question is that that decides whether ABC has A Charlie Brown Christmas booked up for 2015 – the special’s 50th anniversary, and an opportunity for much hoopla.

Despite the talk about the upcoming Happiness is a Blanket, Charlie Brown, that’s not the next DVD up. Here are a couple that will be shipping in the next couple months.

• He’s Your Dog, Charlie Brown offers up one of the early specials… one that’s already on DVD on the Peanuts 1960′s Collection. However, here it’s paired with Life’s a Circus, Charlie Brown, a 1980 special that’s not out on DVD, plus a documentary featurette about the Redwood Ice Arena, the skating center that the Schulzes had built. This hits in September.
• October brings Charlie Brown’s Christmas Tales to market. This is a DVD which was actually available last year, but it was exclusive to the CVS Pharmacy chain. Christmas Tales is a short special, created to round the unedited A Charlie Brown Christmas up to a full TV hour in today’s more-ad-filled TV format. It’s a good special – little short bits about various characters and Chriastmas – but it’s short. It is rounded out with a second special, 1983′s Is This Goodbye, Charlie Brown, a rather random pairing. And there’s no documentary featurette to add to the viewing time. So you get a total of 41 minutes of entertainment, but they do price it lower than their other DVDs due to this. And these specials are not on any other currently-available DVD.

Note: I think I’m figuring out why people have been missing some of my posts – it looks like my “put this post up later” system and my “email people who want posts mailed” system don’t play well together. I will try to remember not to use the first, but if you are getting this via email, you may want to add the AAUGH Blog to your RSS reader instead of relying on the email system.

As mentioned, I had to miss the Peanuts 60th anniversary panel today at Comic-Con. I missed what I hear was a good Q&A session. However, the panel’s Andy Beall, a cool animation dude, took pity n your poor AAUGH Blogger and gave me a run through the parts of the panel looking at Happiness is a Blanket, Charlie Brown, the new Peanuts animation.

First off, this is going to be a long one, a 44 minute-er (i.e., the length of an hour long TV special, after you strip out the ads.) This is the first full-length Peanuts special to be done without the involvement of any of the original key 4 creative team. Mendelson is not involved,  and Melendez, Guaraldi, and Schulz himself are all dead. But they’re trying hard to draw inspiration from their work, specifically from the first 5 specials. It’s like they want to create a 1960s special, and from the conversation, it was clear they were looking at a lot of details of what made those things worked. And yet, the sample of animation I saw also took some angles that the old work wouldn’t have. They want to ground it in the past, but also grow it for today. Some of the new touches looked quite nice. There were some moments that didn’t look quite right… but then, that was true of the old material as well.

The grounding in the 1960s also shows in the choice of content. The special focuses on Linus and his blanket… particularly, Snoopy’s battle for the blankets. The material is taken in large part from strips from the first half of the 1960s. The B story is Lucy’s attempts to win Schroeder over.

One thing that I suspect will raise the eyebrows of the hardcore is the lack of Guaraldi music. The absence isn’t from any lack of love for the material, but due to a very practical manner: money. They’re trying to produce this special affordably, and licensing the Guaraldi rights costs a heck of a lot. So instead, they commissioned an all-new score from Mark Mothersbaugh. Now, those of you who just know Mothersbaugh from his band Devo may find that an unlikely choice, but he’s had quiet a career composing for films and TV; he’s one of those guys who really knows music in its wide variety. The sample I heard showed clear Guaraldi influence, but as with the animation, it also brought in some things that were clealry new.

Is the end result going to be good? I can’t tell. I only saw a clip. Bur I can say that a lot of earnest effort is going into this. Expect it in 2011.

Goodnight from Comic-Con!

So the San Diego Comic-Con 2010 is coming up in just under 2 weeks, and if you look at the schedule of talks, you will find this:

Friday, 2:00-3:00 Peanuts Turns 60— On October 2, 1950 the Peanuts comic strip launched in seven American newspapers. Little did anyone know the impact this comic strip would have around the world for decades to come. Nearly 60 years later, Peanuts appears in over 2,200 newspapers, in 75 countries and 21 languages. The animated specials have become a seasonal tradition and thousands of consumer products are available in every country around the world. Moderator Jerry Beck (animation historian/cartoon producer/consulting producer to Warner Bros., Universal, and Disney), Comic-Con special guest Jeannie Schulz (widow of Peanuts creator Charles Schulz), Paige Braddock (creative director of Charles M. Schulz’s studio in Santa Rosa), Andy Beall (fix animation lead for Ratatouille, Wall-E, UP), Stephan Pastis (creator of Pearls Before Swine), and Marge Dean (general manager, W!ldbrain Animation Studios), present an in-depth foray into the work of Charles M. Schulz and what new things fans can look out for from Peanuts. Warner Premiere is joining the celebration with a sneak peek of something all new from Peanuts that fans won’t want to miss. Room 25ABC

Know what else is on the schedule?

Friday, 2:30-3:30 The 24-Hour Comics Day Challenge— Can you create a full 24-page comic from scratch in 24 hours? Popular comics creators give out tips and tricks to help you complete the challenge this year and have your comic included in the international 24-Hour Comics collection. Or are you interested in hosting a 24-Hour Comics Day event in your area? Nat Gertler (publisher of About Comics and founder of 24-Hour Comics Day) and Portlyn Polston (Brave New World Comics, Newhall, CA) can tell you how to create and advertise a successful event at your store, school, or library. Room 12

That’s right – the one and only panel that I’m on, and it’s overlapping with the big Peanuts panel. That means that I’m going to have to miss the Peanuts panel, with its preview footage of what’s obviously Happiness is a Blanket, Charlie Brown (and “Warner Premiere” means this is direct-to-video, folks.) And it means that the huge room for the poor Peanuts panel will be empty, because all of the AAUGH Blog fans will be over at my panel, soaking in the goodness that is me… right? Right?

Oh, all right. Go to the Peanuts panel. Have a good time, and let me know about any new news they announce there. Just don’t gloat to me about how abso-mazing it was, okay?

Coming in February from Running Press Kids is Happiness Is a Blanket, Charlie Brown, which would appear to be an adaptation of a new Peanuts special that the LA Flash animation studio Wildbrain is bringing to life. Is this a direct-to-video or direct-to-iTunes release, or will it see release to the small screen? That’s information I don’t have. As always, I’ll interrupt regular programming whenever news breaks on this critical matter.

When cruising Netflix’s streamable content the other night in the search for something for my daughter to watch, I stumbled across a packaging of Peanuts videos that I had not noticed before: Peanuts Summertime Specials. It strings together It’s Spring Training, Charlie Brown, the all-too-overlooked Charlie Brown’s All-Stars, and It Was a Short Summer, Charlie Brown, in that order. My 5 year old was amused by there being two stories in a row about Charlie Brown’s team getting uniforms. (She was also amused by other aspects, of course; from a couple rooms away, I could tell whenever there was a nice bit of Melendez action gags, as those always set her a-giggling.)

Anyway, this odd set is available for download or streaming at Amazon as well.