Rick DeMott's Recent Posts

Walt Disney's former Executive VP of Corporate Affairs JOHN COOKE was named the J. PAUL GETTY TRUST's exec VP of External Affairs. He will be responsible for establishing and maintaining all business relationships, including partnerships between the Getty and other cultural and corporate institutions around the world. . . .

ANDREA-MANUELA SEIBERT has been named VP, European Sales for RIVE GAUCHE INTERNATIONAL TV. Seibert previously served as lead Acquisitions Exec and Special Project Exec at RTL Television in Munich, Germany. Based in Germany, Seibert will head European sales and marketing of Rive Gauche's programming library, handle acquisitions of European-produced specials for worldwide distribution and coordinate European co-productions.

The Jim Henson Company's MuppetWorld Web site will celebrate its first Yuletide with Kermit the Frog lighting an on-line Christmas tree. MuppetWorld offers a compelling interactive environment, allowing fans to play with their favorite Muppet characters. Fans may purchase Muppet merchandise, take cooking lessons from the Swedish Chef who offers weekly culinary masterpieces in the "What's Cooking?" location, and be able to tune into their favorite Muppet clips.

shockwave.com, One Infinity and Madlab Creative have produced Why2k@large which uses Flash 4 animation and MP3 streaming audio technologies to present an animated, multimedia series focusing on the approach of the year 2000. Live interviews were collected on the streets of New York City, New Orleans and San Francisco featuring what the American public thinks about the approaching Millennium.

With new live-action flicks ANY GIVEN SUNDAY and THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY taking the top two spots in the U.S. box office Sony's STUART LITTLE had to settle with third place grossing US$11.82 million bringing its grand total to $39.5 million. TOY STORY 2 finished fourth by flying in with another $10.38 million making its cume $177.5 million. THE GREEN MILE fell to fifth with a weekend pull of $9.26 million and a cume of $53.1 million. New comer GALAXY QUEST, backed by some surprisingly good reviews from the likes of Mr. Ebert, debuted at #7 with a first weekend take of $7.01 million.

PBS' NATURE recently received a new animated logo for its opening from digital animation and effects house, SimEx Digital Studios. The opening is a montage of snippets from nature. SimEx helped bring together the show's theme in the opening by illustrating how humans relate to nature everyday. Read more about SimEx Digital Studios and their work from Creative Director Allen Yamashita in Heather Kenyon's Animation World Magazine interview.

In promoting post-production on the MAC platform, Apple recently bundled a number of 3D and 2D tools with its Final Cut Pro system. MAXON, Terran Interactive, and Puffin Designs have announced that their software will be bundled in with Final Cut Pro at no extra cost. MAXON's Cinema 4D GO -- their entry level 3D package (in short, a cut down version of their very popular Cinema 4D XL package) -- will be included in the Final Cut Pro package as a full working version, allowing users to create 'flying logos' and other simple 3D imagery for use in their productions.

As was reported [AF 12/21/99], a federal

court jury convicted former Walt Disney Internet executive, 34-year-old

Patrick Naughton, of possessing child pornography, but deadlocked on

charges that he crossed state lines seeking sex with a "13-year-old girl"

which he arranged via the Internet. On Wednesday, December 22, 1999, U.S.

District Judge Edward Rafeedie reversed his own ruling and released

Naughton from jail, saying it was likely that he would win a new trial. On

As we reported in the past [AF 7/1/97], the

world-renowned Japanese animation director Hayao Miyazaki had decided to

hang up his white film gloves and never make a feature film again. Well

cheer up anime fans! The master is back to work on a new feature film. This

announcement ends a 2 1/2 year hiatus after PRINCESS MONONOKE broke box

office records all over Japan. What's the follow-up to the US$150 million

hit at the Japanese B.O.? The project is titled SEN TO CHIHIRO NO