GREAT WEEKEND FOR ANIMATION

Once upon a time, cartoons were a popular, if minor, art form.

At movie houses you could always see, in addition to the main feature, that “wasscawy wabbit,” Bugs Bunny, run rabbit circles around poor befuddled Elmer Fudd. Or watch as sweet Tweetie Pie naively sent Sylvester the Cat on one more headlong plunge down the stairs just for his efforts to have a yellow bird for lunch.

Cartoons--or animation, as it is called now--are rarely seen in commercial theaters these days. But there is an audience of adults for this kind of film. A day may come, they say, when Warner cartoons such as “What’s Opera, Doc?” “The Scarlet Pumpernickel,” “Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2th Century,” “Porky in Wackyland” and “Duck Amuck” will be considered classics in their own right.

Animated films have been dismissed from the movies and relegated to Saturday morning television. The TV offerings are strictly for kids. But there are contemporary alternatives. Sadly, they are usually seen only at film festivals. “The Big Snit,” for instance, a Canadian film believed by some to be a contender for an Oscar, is part of a new wave of cartoons that have hit in the wake of the ineffably silly shenanigans of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Yosemite Sam, and Sylvester and Tweetie Pie.

This weekend at two San Diego locations, cartoon lovers can catch a glimpse of the vintage Warner animations or take a look at 16 films that have a decidedly contemporary flavor.

Today the Circle Gallery opens a show featuring original and limited-edition cels (short for celluloids) by Warner creators Friz Freleng and Chuck Jones. A cel holds a drawing used to create the movement of the animations. From 7 to 9 o’clock tonight, Jones will be feted at a fund-raising reception for the Humane Society at the Gallery, 2501 San Diego Ave. Freleng will be in town Sunday for another fund-raising reception at the gallery from 2 to 4 p.m.

Videocassettes of the popular Warner Brothers cartoon characters will be shown throughout the weekend at the Gallery. The show runs through Feb. 16.

Meanwhile, the latest in animation films from six countries will be shown at the “Festival of Animation,” which opens a six-weekend run at 7 p.m. today in Sherwood Hall at La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art. Sixteen animated films will be screened this year, the festival’s seventh visit to San Diego.

The contemporary films were created at a time when technology is at an all-time high but audiences and venues for cartoons are at record lows.

The golden years of animation at Warner, from the mid-1940s to the end of the ‘50s, provided three generations of Americans, and much of the Western World, with a special kind of inspired craziness.

Belatedly perhaps, the world is honoring the Warner Brothers cartoon shop. On Tuesday, CBS broadcast a one-hour tribute to the cartoon characters. In September, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City opened a four-month, 50th anniversary tribute to the Warner’s cartoon creators. In October, Warner Home Video brought out its “Golden Jubilee 24 Karat Collection,” nine cassettes that reprise the animated mayhem of its Looney Tunes and Merrie Melody characters.

The Warner cartoon stable once included writers, artists and directors, such talents as Tex Avery, Bob Clampett, Frank Tashlin, Jones and Freleng. Warner shut down its animation section in 1963.

Jones, who is 73 and lives in Corona del Mar, doesn’t like the level of animation that is typical of today’s televised offerings.

“The term animation, according to the dictionary, means to invoke life,” Jones said in a telephone interview. The Warner creators took their cue from the popularity of such Walt Disney characters as Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Jones said.

Jones takes pride in the character and personality of the Warner creatures, including the unique voices provided by Mel Blanc. There’s the determined Daffy, Porky the bashful stutterer, and Bugs Bunny’s endless chutzpah.

“The Smurfs,” Jones said, making an example. “They all look alike, act alike and talk alike. That’s not animation. I think they’re writing down to children. That’s what I object to. I don’t want my grandchildren or great-grandchildren seeing those cartoons. It’s unfair to children. We never made pictures for children. We made them for ourselves.”

Jones said the technical quality of the cartoons has also deteriorated. “We had 12 to 15 drawings a second,” he said. “They are probably forced to limit themselves to two per second. It’s possible to achieve the impression of movement by holding the character’s body steady while using separate cels for the head.”

The films in the “Festival of Animation” are not the child’s fare of contemporary television--although “Super Cecil” contains a “Beanie & Cecil” cartoon. They are a catalogue of styles used today to create cartoons, ranging from the pin screen animation of Canada’s Jacques Drouin (“Mindscape”) to animation used in television commercials to scratch-on animation. “Criminal Tango” by Solweig von Kleinst was made by scratching drawings on 35mm film stock.

Mike Gribble, one of the two Riverside partners who have been promoting film festivals on the West Coast for more than 10 years, believes “Criminal Tango” has a shot at this year’s Oscar. More likely candidates, though, are “Broken Down Film” and “The Big Snit.”

“The first time we showed ‘Broken Down Film’ we forgot to tell the projectionist,” Gribble said. “He nearly had a heart attack.”

The film, by Japanese animator Osamo Tezuka, starts with the credits then suddenly jumps, and the screen goes white. It portrays with irony a poorly made movie, filled with vertical lines as well as a hair in the lens, over which a character eventually trips.

The festival continues through Feb. 28.