1. Pixar’s amazing animation record wasn’t a fluke. John Lasseter, Brad Bird, Andrew Stanton, Peter Docter and all the other CG toon masters up in Emeryville, Calif. continue to deliver the goods, year after year.
2. The new fall TV season offered a slew of awesome toons for kids, including Craig McCracken’s Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends and Atomic Cartoon/Breakthrough’s Atomic Betty on Cartoon Network and the stylish The Batman series on Kids’ WB!
3. We get to watch everything that was left on the cutting room floor in the extended DVD edition of The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King this holiday season.
4. The Simpsons and King of the Hill still kick major butt on Sunday nights, and Fox is giving us 22 new episodes of Family Guy in 2005.
5. Miyazaki’s Howl’s Moving Castle is finally coming to U.S. screens next year.
6. For the past few months, Spike TV has stopped airing lame animated series nobody watches.
7. Everyone’s favorite 2D hero, SpongeBob SquarePants held his own against Nicolas Cage and those CG smoothies at the box office this week.
8. Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim and Comedy Central’s South Park and Drawn Together are the best antidotes to FCC prude-in-charge Michael Powell and his witch-hunt against free speech.
9. Some of the second-half sketches can still put us to sleep, but Saturday Night Live’s animated TV Funhouse continues to be laugh-out loud funny. Thank you, J. J. Sedelmaier!
10. Tom Hanks has scratched plans to do The Polar Express 2: Santa’s Revenge.
Bonus Item: Ben Affleck, Britney Spears, Donald Trump, Paris Hilton and all the other overexposed celebs of 2004 don’t work in animation.
