Walt Disney Pictures have announced several upcoming feature films, and among them is the sequel to the successful 2011 re-launch of The Muppets. Currently titled The Muppets… Again, the new film is scheduled for release in March of 2014. According to The Muppet Wiki, “The film is planned to be a ‘comedy caper’ set in Europe.  Ricky Gervais will star as ‘a male lead whose intentions are always in question’ along with Ty Burrell as an Interpol inspector, Tina Fey as a ‘Russian femme fatale,’ and a ‘slew of cameos’”. [Oh like they ever have that in a Muppet movie!] The sequel will be again directed by James Bobin, and scripted by Nick Stoller, who co-wrote the 2011 film with star Jason Segel.

image c. 2013 Walt Disney Pictures

Does Sean Connery have a death wish?

That is the only reason that I can think of for his investing money, executive-producing, and voice-acting in the forthcoming first Scottish CGI animated feature, Sir Billi.

The Cartoon Brew website has the latest trailer, which is unbelievable. The humans and talking animals are the ugliest that I have ever seen. (Well, except for Hoodwinked, but that at least had a clever plot.)

Sir Billi is about, to quote CB’s Amid Amidi, a retired skateboarding bald senior-citizen veterinarian (Connery) with Gordon, his anthropomorphic homosexual pet goat with bladder problems, who wears a Bruce Lee-style yellow jumpsuit and thinks that he is a dog. Together they set out to rescue Bessie Boo, Scotland’s last beaver, and Wee Dave, a cute rabbit who helped raise her.

How the mighty have fallen! In November 1999, when the first Pokémon theatrical feature, Pokémon the First Movie: Mewtwo Strikes Back, was released theatrically in the U.S., it was distributed by Warner Bros., played on 3,043 screens, and was the #1 grosser earning $85,744,662. Its final box office was over $163 million.

This year the 15th annual Pokémon movie, Pokémon the Movie: Kyurem vs. the Sword of Justice, which opened as the #3 grosser in Japan on July 14, will be shown only on the Cartoon Network on December 8. Ho-hum.

Well, here is the English-language trailer.

The Snow Queen, written in 1845 by Hans Christian Andersen, did not have any anthropomorphic characters in it. Hollywood; excuse me, Moscow; has corrected this omission. Not in the 1957 Soyuzmultfilm feature, which was a faithful enough adaptation of Andersen’s tale but with a talking raven, but in the new Wizart Animation 80-minute CGI feature, directed by Maxim Sveshnikov and Vlad Barbe, coming in Russia in December.

The story has been modernized and expanded for today's audiences, with a non-human troll added as a major character (for comedy relief); and Gerda has been given a pet ermine, who is not very anthropomorphic but is smarter than the average ermine. [Animation Magazine]

In August 2011, Flayrah published a favorable review of The Saga of Rex by animator Michel Gagné.

The Saga of Rex is a surrealistic whimsical science fiction tale that is really just an excuse for Gagné’s incredible imaginative graphics. The plot, if you want to call it that, is that the Guardian-Shepherd of the planet Edernia (a godlike being) summons a fleet of Gathering Ships to fly throughout the galaxy and harvest (kidnap) “specimens” to transport into Dream Globes (alternate worlds) where they will serve as hero-champions for Edernia’s metamorphic sentient Blossoms. (Readers who want to find meaning in this are told, “Those secrets have been lost in the catacombs of time.”) Rex, “the adorable little fox” from Earth, becomes the specimen of Aven, a Blossom who comes to love Rex and transforms herself into a sometimes-winged blue foxlike mate for him. I think.

As I said, just forget about plot and lose yourself in Gagné’s scintillating artwork. Rex’s Dream Globe is a wondrous, mysterious world that encompasses whole galaxies. It is full of strange, flowing, usually amorphous life forms, both benign and hostile. Rex rescues and is rescued by alien beings; he passes through trials of water and fire; he dies and is transmogrified into a savior. Basically, The Saga of Rex is 200 pages of mind-blowingly gorgeous semi-abstract s-f artistry. It is not to be missed.

Now, Gagné has launched a Kickstarter project to raise $15,000 to start an animation studio and turn his book into a classically animated film. He has already gotten $12,152 in pledges, with 26 days to go. See his four-minute video explaining the project.

So the camel can talk. Can he fly?

Have you ever heard of Kamlu ...Happy Happy, a 3D CGI Hollywood-Bollywood co-production directed by Govind Nihalani that will be released on November 2? In India, anyway, in Hindi. Produced by Krayon Pictures, the same studio that made Delhi Safari, in fact.

This English-language trailer shows it to be a children’s fantasy about a young talking camel who wants to fly, who gets mixed up with a human princess, an enigmatic magician, lots of villains, and so on. Will it play in America? I’m sure the Bollywood producers hope so.

It’s been announced since August 3, but it just occurred to me that it hasn’t been announced on Flayrah yet. This coming Sunday, October 21, from 8:00 p.m. (EST) in the evening until 5:00 a.m. the next morning, Turner Classic Movies will feature “Rare Animation” including three features and eighteen shorts, hosted by TCM’s Robert Osborne and the Cartoon Brew’s Jerry Beck.

The three features will be the Fleischer Studios’ Gulliver Travels (1939) at 8:00 pm., Mr. Bug Goes to Town (1941) at 9:30 p.m., and Lotte Reiniger’s independent silent The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) at 1:15 a.m. the next morning. It is Mr. Bug Goes to Town, a.k.a. Hoppity Goes to Town, that makes this of interest to Furry fans.

This year’s 12th Waterloo Festival for Animated Cinema, on November 15–18, 2012 at The Crysalids Theatre, 137 Ontario Street North, Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, will include Mamoru Hosoda’s The Wolf Children, along with more than eleven other animated features unreleased in North America.

The list includes the 2012 Danish Marco Macaco (trailer) by director Jan Rahbek, featuring a tropical island full of anthropomorphic monkeys, a monkey policeman, monkey pirates, and a monkey Giant Robot.

Have you heard that the animated CGI 3D feature Dino Time, about three children sent back in a time machine to the age of dinosaurs, is coming on December 7th?

Neither had I, but the Cartoon Brew website has its two-minute trailer.

Are the dinos anthropomorphic? Hard to tell from this trailer, but if they are not, at least one of them is REALLY friendly.

Animation Xpress, vol. 10 #371 for October 4 reports that Delhi Safari, the CGI animated feature about an angry monkey, a laid-back bear, a scheming parrot, a mother leopard, and her cute cub trekking across India to the human city of Delhi to protest the strip-mining of their forest, will release on around 300 screens across India on October 18. The Hindi-language feature has a strong Bollywood voice cast.

Animation Xpress has a long interview with Krayon Pictures’ Nishith Takia that shows its poster and new promotional art. “Our film has got screened at Annecy International Film Festival and has also won the best Animated Feature Film at FICCI FRAMES in India, has boosted our confidence in the way the film has come out.” The film has a positive School Contact program at over 3,000 schools across India because of its strong pro-ecology message.

Delhi Safari has been dubbed into English with an all-star cast (Jason Alexander, Cary Elwes, Christopher Lloyd, etc.) for an American release sometime during 2013. Its English-language trailer was shown on Flayrah last May.

Are self-aware robots anthropomorphic? Hey, I think that I’ve asked th... [Ed.: !]

Cartoon Brew has posted D.A.D.: Digital Amusement Device by Mark Osberg, a brief CGI film.

In this short tale a father tries to encourage his son to overcome his fears and shows that even in this digital age that the trials of parenthood remain constant.

Are self-aware robots anthropomorphic? Hey, I think that I've asked this question before.

The Cartoon Brew has posted Dubstep Dispute by Jason Giles, a 1:13 minute CGI film.

On Friday, the Jim Henson Company announced the development of an animated feature film based on the Frog and Toad children's books.

Published between 1970 and 1979, the four books in the Frog and Toad series are Frog and Toad are Friends, Frog and Toad Together, Frog and Toad All Year, and Days with Frog and Toad. Written and illustrated by Arnold Lobel (1933-1987), they chronicle the exploits of the amiable Frog and his curmudgeonly friend Toad.

The Henson screenplay is being written by Craig Bartlett (Rugrats, Hey Arnold!), and Cory Edwards (Hoodwinked, Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil) will direct.