those new Peanuts cartoons now on-line

If you’ve got iTunes set up, this link should take you to the free sample of the new Peanuts cartoon, including two episodes of the 20 they’re making this season. They run about three and a half minutes each, plus credits. In this case, the two episodes really cover one storyline – they’ve adapted the Linus-runs-for-school-president story. Which means that they’ve got something very timely, but on the toher hand they’re basically covering the same ground as You’re Not Elected, Charlie Brown, which aired on U.S. TV just last week.

The animation is a little stiff in a different way than the classical Peanuts animation is a little stiff; the use of  Flash software to make it gives movements that area little too smooth without being quite right. But that’s a nitpick – particularly if you’re watching this thing on a cell phone, which is what they had in mind.

Pricewise, the deal is reasonable. If all the episodes are about this length, that means than a $7.99 subscription gets you about 70 minutes of animation, which is roughly as long as three TV specials.

A couple of you told me about yesterday’s NPR interview with Craig Schulz about these new cartoons; you
can listen to it online here.

There’s still time to vote.

And there’s always time for more donuts.

New releases
“Books”

My grocery shopping today landed me two new Peanuts “books”. The more bookish of the two is the latest edition of The Great Big Book of Peanuts Word Seeks, volume 5 to be precise, which as I’ve mentioned before I’ll allow to qualify as a book… particularly because it not …

Schulz/Peanuts news
New Peanuts podcast

Peanuts fans have had a number of podcasts to listen to over the years. Currently, there’s Unpacking Peanuts (working its way through the Peanuts canon four months per episode), Talking Nuts (working its way through the canon one month per episode), and It’s a Podcast, Charlie Brown (focused on, but …

New releases
Review lightning roud

I’m a few books behind on reviews, so I’m going to try to kick them out simple and quick. The Big Book of Peanuts: All the Daily Strips from the 1990s is exactly the same in format as the four prior volumes of this series, despite it being distributed differently. …