A Christmas Yuleblog

Bill Meléndez, the Mexican-born American animator who is best known for directing nearly all of the Peanuts television specials, died Tuesday, September 2, 2008 at St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica. He was 91. Meléndez began his career at Walt Disney Studios drawing Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck shorts before moving on to such feature films as Bambi, Fantasia and Dumbo. From 1941 to 1951, he worked for the legendary Warner Brothers animation studio where he helped create cartoons for directors Robert Clampett and Robert McKimson. In 1951, Meléndez went to work for UPA where he animated dozens of television commercials as well as numerous Gerald McBoing-Boing and Madeline shorts. Saul Bass called upon Meléndez to help animate the opening credit scene for It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (one of two things I find funny about this particular movie): While at UPA, Meléndez started doing work for the New York-based J. Walter Thompson ad agency. One of their major clients was th...

It's my personal belief that the greatest Christmas album of all time is "A Charlie Brown Christmas" by Vince Guaraldi. Even if this wasn't recorded for the Peanuts gang in 1965 and released as a soundtrack to a one-off TV special, the music would still hold up on its own. It's that good. However, the strains of the Vince Guaraldi trio are forever linked with Linus, Lucy, Snoopy, and a boy named Charlie Brown. The music was a perfect marriage for the Peanuts characters and all its subsequent movies and TV specials. When this newly remastered version of "A Charlie Brown Christmas" was released last year, many of us were elated, ecstatic, and excited all wrapped into one. It's no secret that the original pressings of the soundtracks on CD (1988, 2000) were not the greatest quality and fans worldwide awaited a true remastered work of art. When it comes to high fidelity, noise reduction, and the like, I am totally clueless. I wouldn't know ...