New "Speed Racer" Toon Premiering on May 2

Speed Racer: The Next Generation will premiere on Nicktoons Network on Friday, May 2, at 7:00pm (ET), the network said today. The ninety-minute premiere will revolve around Speed, an orphan who discovers he is the son of Speed Racer after he arrives at the Racing

Boomerang to Mark Earth Day with "Captain Planet" Marathon

Boomerang will mark Earth Day with a twelve-hour marathon of Captain Planet episodes on Saturday, April 19, the network said yesterday. The twenty-seven episodes, which will begin airing at 8:00am, were selected by The Captain Planet Foundation.Schedule for the marathon:8:00am A Hero for Earth8:25am Dead Seas8:50am Tree of Life9:15am Two Futures (Part One)9:40am Two Futures (Part Two)10:05am The Garbage Strikes10:30am Domes of Doom10:55am The Ark11:20am Summit to Save Earth (Part 1)11:45am Summit to Save Earth (Part 2)12:10pm Greenhouse Planet12:35pm A Creep From The Deep1:00pm Bitter Waters1:25pm Okay at The Gunfight Corral1:50pm The Night of The Wolf2:15pm Missing Linka 2:40pm The Unbearable Blightness of Being3:05pm The Energy Vampire 3:30pm You Bet Your Planet3:55pm Planeteers Under Glass4:20pm Twilight Ozone4:45pm Hollywaste5:10pm Little Crop of Horrors5:35pm Disoriented Express6:00pm Nothing's Sacred6:25pm Whoo Gives a Hoot?6:50pm Twelve Angry Animals7:15pm Never The Twain Shall Meet 7:40pm Dirty Politics

"Ben 10 Season Four" Coming in August

Warner Home Video will release Ben 10: Season 4 to DVD on August 5, the company said yesterday.The two-disc set will feature the episodes "Perfect Day"; "Divided We Stand"; "Don't Drink the Water"; "Big Fat Alien Wedding"; "Ben Four Good Buddy"; "Ready to Rumble"; "Ken Ten"; "Goodbye and Good Riddance" and "Ben 10 Vs.

DREAMWORKS' KATZENBERG PAID JUST $1 SALARY IN 2007

DreamWorks Animation SKG chief executive officer Jeffrey Katzenberg turned down millions of dollars in equity awards and was paid only $1 in last year, the company said in a securities filing filed Friday with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Katzenberg waived annual stock awards for 2006 through 2008 in order accommodate the salary and equity-based compensation of studio president and chief financial officer Lew Coleman, who was hired in 2005. The stock awards would have been worth $5 million a year. Katzenberg also waived performance-based equity awards that would have been worth another $1 million to $3 million a year, the company's proxy statement said. In 2007, Coleman received total compensation of $6 million. That figure included $1.25 million salary, as well as $1.75 million in non-equity incentive plan compensation. He also was given shares and options valued at an estimated $3 million on the day they were granted. As well, Coleman received $21,000 in separate compensation for an automobile allowance, legal services and matching 401(k) plan payments. Although not given any other compensation, stock options or awards in fiscal 2007, Katzenberg remains eligible for previously granted stock awards that were worth $15.8 million on December 31 and will vest in October 2009, the company said. Over 423,000 as yet unearned stock options that were previously granted at an exercise price of $28 will vest in October 2009 as well. However, these are currently worthless, as the stock now trades at about $24 a share. DreamWorks Animation SKG said in its filing that 2007 net profit zoomed to $218.4 million, up from $15.1 million the previous year, as revenue rose 94% to $767.2 million. Katzenberg, David Geffen and Microsoft Corp. co-founder Paul Allen make up an investment group which owns 18.6% of the company's 81.6 million outstanding shares, but which controls 72.2% of its voting rights. Steven Spielberg owns 6 million shares, or another 7.4% of DreamWorks Animation.

"The Batman": A Look Back

Anyone who writes for Batman has a lot of potential interpretive leeway. After all, the character has a long history in comics, TV, movies, and cartoons, and has appeared in series whose styles have run from bright camp to gritty noir. No one should be surprised then, that the creators of The Batman were hardly breaking new ground by trying to create a unique approach to the character; nor should we be surprised that, for better or worse, they succeeded.Of course, just because they had a lot of freedom doesn't mean they had an easy time

NUDE SENIORS DON MICKEY MOUSE MASKS FOR 9/11 OPERA

Dozens of pensioners will wear plastic Mickey Mouse masks -- and nothing else -- for an avant-garde staging of Giuseppe Verdi's A Masked Ball in what looks like the ruins of New York's World Trade Center. Put on by a German opera house, the deliberately provocative 9/11-themed production premieres Saturday and was concocted by Austrian director Johann Kresnik. Also featured are Elvis impersonators and Hitler salutes on stage, where the ruins are re-created. "It will be a different, a provocative masked ball on the ruins of the World Trade Center," Kresnik told reporters. "The naked stand for people without means, the victims of capitalism, the underclass, who don't have anything any more." The seniors were recruited by the opera house in Erfurt in eastern Germany. They'd be totally nude if it weren't for their Mickey masks. "It's a very beautiful, poetic scene," insisted Guy Montavon, the theater's general manager. Some 60 amateurs were eager to show the full Monty for the premiere, but only 35 made it to the finals, Montavon said. Kresnik has described his staging as a populist critique of modern American society, which shows the gap between rich and poor while drawing a large audience. Some cast members wear soldiers' uniforms. Others wear the red, white and blue of Uncle Sam, or day-glow pink Elvis costumes, slashed to the waist. But many have chosen to appear in their birthday suits. A female singer sporting a painted-on toothbrush moustache offers a straight-arm Nazi salute. Although an Erfurt politician has urged a boycott of the production, local theatergoers aren't paying attention to him. Saturday's premiere at the Erfurt opera house is a sell-out, as are four other performances. Just a few tickets are available for other performances later this month. "One has to introduce new elements," Montavon said. "Otherwise, it is difficult to attract new theatergoers." Originally staged in 1859, Verdi's A Masked Ball has had its share of controversy. Verdi wrote it about the 1792 assassination of Swedish king Gustavus III, who was shot while attending a masked ball. In the 19th century, censors demanded that Verdi shift the setting from Europe to colonial America so as not to show the assassination of a European monarch. And the United States is still the setting for Kresnik's brave new version. However, it's set after the September 11, 2001 attacks. "The concept is a little critical about America, the world of America with very rich people, very poor people, with war and the excesses of American society today," Montavon declared.

JAPANESE SCREENWRITER YASUNORI KAWAUCHI DEAD AT 88

Yasunori Kawauchi, one of Japan's most prominent action and science-fiction screenwriters, died early Sunday morning at a hospital near his home in Hachinohe. He was 88. The cause of death was bronchial pneumonia. Kawauchi was rarely seen without a cigarette. Also known as Kouhan Kawauchi and Kôhan Kawauchi, he was executive producer of Ai Planning Centre's 1975 anime seriesManga Nihon Mukashibanashi, known in English as Japanese Folk Tales and Manga Japanese Folk Tales. Still running in 2001, this is anime's second-longest TV series after Sazae-san. The series has run for over 1,255 episodes. It originally ran on TBS from 1975 to 1994 and remains popular today. Kawauchi created numerous tokusatsu (live-action special effects) series, including the first, the hugely successful Gekko Kamen (Moonlight Mask), in February 1958. He also wrote the scripts for Gekko Kamen. An anime version of the series, Seigi o Aisuru Mono(Moonlight Mask: The Man Who Loves the Justice), was co-produced by Ai Planning Centre and Knack; it aired for 39 episodes on Nippon TV in 1972. In 1981, the anime series was parodied in Go Nagai's Kekko Kamen, which featured the Great Toenail of Satan as a school principal. In 2000, it was remade as a comedy anime, Look! It's Little Moonlight Mask!, directed by Toshio Takeuchi and written by Yoshio Urasawa. This featured the characters Naoto and Satan's Claw. Kawauchi continued to write scripts for several Gekko Kamen series and movies over the years. In 1972, he created another superhero, Rainbowman, for the TV series Ai no senshi Reinbôman. Born Kiyoshi Kawauchi in Hakodate on February 26, 1920, he wrote lyrics for such top stars as Shintaro Katsu and Aki Yashiro. A poet, lyricist, novelist and comic writer, he joined Toho Film Company as a scene shifter in 1941. His first script came in 1952. Starting in 1955, he worked closely with the film industry, first for Shin Toho and then for all the six "majors." The success of Gekko Kamen led Kawauchi to write a manga adaptation, which was drawn by Jiro Kuwata and serialized in Shonen Club magazine, starting in May 1958. Films soon followed, starting in July 1958. Though the TV and film franchise was canceled in 1959, the comic version ran until 1961. Kawauchi wrote similar TV series, beginning with Seven Color Mask (1959), and Allah Messenger (1960). Moonlight Mask reappeared in a 1981 live-action film from 1981, which Kawauchi himself produced and supervised. Kawauchi wrote many novels which were adapted into films. He also composed the music and lyrics for several theme songs for his creations. Last year, Kawauchi publicly chastised singer Shinichi Mori for making changes to the lyrics of his signature tune "Ofukuro-san" without his permission. Mori retorted that the changes were made some 30 years ago. An infuriated Kawauchi refused to allow Mori to sing any of the hits that he had written for him ever again -- even enforcing the ban through legal means. Mori tried several times to change Kawauchi's mind, but the composer refused to speak with the singer or even read his letters.

DISNEY'S PIXAR MOVIES ALL SLATED FOR 3-D RELEASE

The Walt Disney Company's Pixar animation studio will release all of its movies in the 3-D format, starting with next year's Up, chief creative officer John Lasseter announced Tuesday.

The announcement was made in New York at a presentation of Disney's lineup of animated films through 2012.

Walt Disney Animation Studios will offer the New Orleans-set musical The Princess And The Frog in the traditional hand-drawn format for release for Christmas next year, he said.

However, Pixar movies will be released in both 3-D and the traditional two-dimensional format, starting with May 2009's Up, about an elderly widower who heads on an adventure in South America.

Coming up from Walt Disney Animation Studios are the November release of Bolt, about a canine actor who thinks that he has superpowers; Rapunzel, a retelling of the fairy tale to be released in Christmas 2010; and King of the Elves, a modern-day fantasy (based on a Philip K. Dick short story about elves who make a man their king) slated for release in Christmas 2012. All three films will be released in both 3-D and 2-D formats.

Future Pixar releases include Toy Story 3 (June 2010); newt (Summer 2011), a love story featuring the last two blue-footed newts alive; Scottish fantasy The Bear and the Bow (Christmas 2011); and Cars 2 (Summer 2012).

Pixar is also ready to re-release Toy Story (1992) and Toy Story 2 (1995) in 3-D.

Lasseter said that three-dimensional photography has fascinated him for decades.

"I love 3-D. I made a 3-D computer-animated short in 1989 called Nickname, and in fact, my wedding pictures with my beautiful wife Nancy were made in 3-D," he said.

In its presentation, Disney showed a 30-minute clip of Wall•E, headed for theaters June 27. It's the love story of the title character, a robot abandoned on Earth for 700 years, and another robot named Eve sent to search for life.

"The population had to abandon Earth for a while, and they left little Wall-E there to clean it up," said Walt Disney Studios chairman Richard Cook.

Meanwhile, the only clue that creators provided for Toy Story 3 is that Andy, the boy who owned the toys, has grown up and is ready to go to college.

Converting movies to 3-D will cost Disney as much as $700 million and take three years.

ANIMATION PIONEER EMILE COHL REMEMBERED IN PARIS

Though he's forgotten by much of the world, the creator of what some consider the first totally animated cartoon will be remembered by a Paris film institute this week.

Already famous as a political caricaturist and illustrator, 50-year-old Emile Cohl was the creator of 1908's Fantasmagorie (Fantasmagoria). He was inspired when he saw an American cartoon in a Paris movie theatre and figured he could do a better job.

Cohl, who had already made live-action films, produced a surreal two-minute comedy by filming black lines on white paper, then reversing them using negative film to portray a chalkboard picture come to life.

"He considered himself to be the inventor of the animated film," said Jean-Yves Lepinay, who programmed a three-day centennial retrospective for the Forum des Images film institute, which will screen at the Cinematheque Francaise, tarting this Friday.

"He perhaps did not make the very first animated film, but he pioneered the techniques that later became the grammar of animated film."

According to Lepinay, Cohl's virtuosity may have come from his long, varied artistic career: "He was a co-founder of the Incoherent movement, which was a precursor to the Dadaists and the Surrealists, and which all had in common their challenging of society."

The retrospective displays 67 films out of the approximately 300 that Cohl made. The movies include documentary, burlesque, live-action comedy and puppet animation. They were all that three years of research could find.

According to Valerie Vignaux, a film history teacher at Francois Rabelais University in the French city of Tours, Cohl is as important for the history of cinema as his contemporary, stage magician turned filmmaker Georges Melies. However, by 1910, audiences were getting tired of the live-action "trick films" that Melies and Cohl had been making, she said.

"Melies didn't renew himself, but Cohl did by moving into animated films."

Taking 700 drawings to finish, Fantasmagoria is viewed by many film historians as the world's first fully animated film. James Stuart Blackton an American who inspired Cohl, had made The Enchanted Drawing in 1900.

But while some deem this the first real animated film, film experts point out that The Enchanted Drawing combined animation with live action, and was filmed continuously.

Instead, Fantasmagoria left the artist out of the film -- although an animated version of Cohl's hands is seen at the beginning creating the stick figure hero and then briefly near the end reviving him.

"Blackton does not leave the cartoon to its own devices, but Cohl freed the cartoon from its environment," said Lepinay.

Cohl was born Emile Eugene Jean Louis Courtet in 1857 and died in 1938.

One reason that he's mostly forgotten, suggested Lepinay, was that the First World War wrecked the French cinema industry, just as the country's general economy went to pieces. Many pre-war French movies, including Cohl's, fell by the wayside as American films soon predominated the post-war market.

Vignaux observes that Melies controlled almost every aspect of his films. Therefore, his descendants could control their distribution and make them available to broadcasters or film institutes.

On the other hand, Cohl worked for such production companies as Gaumont, Pathe and Eclair. After their initial profits from his films, they had little interest preserving them. Now, most of Cohl's films are considered lost.

"Like Melies, he was forgotten in his own lifetime," said Lepinay. "But unlike Melies, he has never been resurrected."

CHARLTON HESTON WAS MOSES OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS

Charlton Heston, the winner of the 1959 best actor Oscar as chariot-racing Ben-Hur, died Saturday night at his Beverly Hills, California home.

According to the Internet Movie Database, Heston was born on October 4, 1924, making him 83. However, the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday that he was 84.

Heston, who starred as Moses in Cecil B. DeMille's 1956 Biblical extravaganza The Ten Commandments, died with his wife Lydia at his side, spokesman Bill Powers said.

Frequently portraying heroic figures in 1950s and 1960s movie epics, he reprised his Academy Award-winning role in the 2002 Goodtime Entertainment animated video Ben-Hur, voicing the narrator as well.

With a booming baritone voice, he narrated several animated productions, such as the 1997 Disney feature film Hercules.

And belying his arch-conservative image, he narrated the English dub of the 1967 Soviet-American animated feature film Maugli, variously known in English as The Jungle Book, Rudyard Kipling's the Jungle Book and Adventures of Mowgli.

His first animation project was as narrator of Burt Strattford Productions' 1992 half-hour special Noel, which aired on NBC. He guested as himself in Dam, a 1997 episode of Space Ghost Coast to Coast.

Using archived audio footage, Heston was caricatured in Robert Smigel's 1999 Fun With Real Audio episode Gun Control, speaking against gun control in the Senate.

In live action, he portrayed Michelangelo and El Cid.

In 2002, Heston disclosed that he had symptoms consistent with Alzheimer's disease: "I must reconcile courage and surrender in equal measure."

The muscular Heston often said: "I have a face that belongs in another century." In a 1965 interview, he reflected: "I don't seem to fit really into the 20th century. Pretty soon, though, I've got to get a part where I wear pants with pleats and pockets."

"He was the screen hero of the 1950s and 1960s, a proven stayer in epics, and a pleasing combination of piercing blue eyes and tanned beefcake," David Thomson wrote in his book The New Biographical Dictionary of Film.

Heston worked with a wide array of famous directors: DeMille in The Greatest Show on Earth and The Ten Commandments, Orson Welles in Touch of Evil, Sam Peckinpah in Major Dundee, William Wyler in The Big Country and Ben-Hur, George Stevens in The Greatest Story Ever Told, Franklin Schaffner in The War Lord and Planet of the Apes, and Anthony Mann in El Cid.

Born John Charles Carter in Evanston, Illinois, Heston became a best-selling author. He also became a controversial gun advocate, becoming president of the National Rifle Association in 1998 and serving until 2003.

Infuriating gun control supporters, Heston imitated Moses' parting of the Red Sea. Instead raising a rod over his head, he lifted a flintlock and dared his enemies to pry it "from my cold, dead hands."

Heston's Oscar-winning role in Ben-Hur had him racing four white horses at top speed in a 15-minute chariot race in which his character, a noble, heroic Jew, competes against his childhood Roman friend, played by Stephen Boyd.

His landmark scenes in movies included his cat-and-mouse game with Welles in the oil fields in Touch of Evil, his discovery that "Soylent Green is people!", the dead Spanish hero on his horse in El Cid, and tortured discovery, at the end of 1968's Planet of the Apes, of a half-buried Statue of Liberty.

"All this wouldn't be so forceful or so funny if it weren't for the use of Charlton Heston in the role," New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael wrote about Planet of the Apes. "With his perfect, lean-hipped, powerful body, Heston is a godlike hero; built for strength, he is an archetype of what makes Americans win. He represents American power -- and he has the profile of an eagle."

Heston liked to say that he had performed Shakespeare on film more than any other actor. Once, he complained that modern movie stars don't try to improve their acting skills by trying Shakespeare.

He was a prominent civil rights activist in the 1950s. President of the Screen Actors Guild for six terms, he received the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country's highest civilian award.

In August 2002, Heston made a dramatic videotaped address announcing his illness. A days later, he sat down in his Coldwater Canyon home and reflected on his uncertain future.

"The world is a tough place," he said with a chuckle. "You're never going to get out of it alive."

Charlton Heston married Lydia Marie Clarke in July 1944. They had two children: Fraser Clarke Heston, a TV producer-director, and Holly Heston Rochell. Billed as Fraser Heston, their son appeared in The Ten Commandments as the infant Moses. He is also survived by two grandchildren.

A private memorial service is planned. However, no further details were provided.