Love and Hate Cartoons

Animated Santa Claus Alignment Chart

2011-12-21T20:56:00.005-05:00

Here's my attempt to break the internet. I was shocked that I couldn't find a Santa alignment chart (although here's a Christmas one that popped up today), so here's an animated Santa Claus alignment chart.
Share and enjoy.

Alternate WB cel type

2011-11-22T13:45:00.002-05:00

Here we have a cel with a slip of paper with Leon Schlesinger's signature. And a fake background painted on what looks to be a different kind of wallpaper than on the other style of official release cels orm the time period. Interesting.

ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive needs help

2011-05-03T22:25:00.002-04:00

The ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive is curtailing operations due to a lack of funds. Please consider donating to them. The Archive is a resource for people who like animation and related arts. I sent $20. Perhaps you could too.

http://www.animationarchive.org/?p=2515

Film Flashes from Judge Magazine, 1916

2010-12-22T00:09:00.003-05:00

J.R. Bray and Colonel Heeza Liar in an article from the book type compilation from Judge Magazine in 1916. It talks about production. If you click on it, it should be readable.

I'm not transcribing it all right now, but hey, at least it's a straw post to say I put something up in 2010 in this blog!

"Colonel Heeza Liar Makes Grand Game For the Animals."
"He's A Busy Little Funmaker"
"There isn't a fun-maker on the screen to-day who draws more laughs to the minute than the busy little Colonel Heeza Liar, who was invented by J. R. Bray some few years ago. He keeps six cartoonists, twenty assistant artists and four camera men constantly at work getting them out."

And so on.

Don't forget, the Cartoons of 1939 blog is about to complete its primary phase, and the Cartoons of 1935 and the Cartoons of 1943 blogs are about to begin.

Egg Cracker Suite (1943)

2009-02-12T11:06:00.007-05:00

Lantz

This is the last Oswald cartoon made (barring perhaps a cameo or two, which would not be an Oswald cartoon as such). It may also be the worst Oswald cartoon made; it's at least the worst I've seen, tho I've probably only seen 10%.

Note this title is what appears on the Columbia House tape these images are from (Woody Woodpecker and Friends The Collector's Edition Chew Chew Baby) , but it is not the original, presumably because of the "Universal Presents" in the title (and even then, it would depend on the print, as Universal seemed involved in the Columbia House release):
http://lantz.goldenagecartoons.com/1940s/eggcracker-title.jpg

This is a short trying, logically enough, to cast a rabbit (and by "a" I mean "army") in the role of Easter Bunny production workers. Presumably Oswald is the one in suspenders directing the other rabbits, but since this is his only theatrical appearance with this particular generic MGM rabbit look, it's hard to say. While everything lists this as an Oswald cartoon, it doesn't note that in the credits, at least not on the Columbia House release. There's a sign on a tree saying "To Oswald's Easter Egg Factory", and I suppose that's eough internal evidence.

Hate:

Awful washed out Disney color scheme. It could be the print, but based on an original background from the cartoon I own, I don't think so. The colors are not an issue in the black and white shorts, with the stark black or white Oswald reading clearly, but here the rabbits are not stark, in black, white or color. Andy Panda was black and white (and with red pants of a brighter red than Oswald's overalls), and Woody Woodpecker had his bright color scheme Washed out backgrounds allow such characters to pop. Here it is as if they took nature's plan, i.e., rabbits need to hide in their surroundings, and applied it whole heartedly. And it is a failure.

It's not just the colors; it's also the awful washed out cuteness. It's more MGM cute than Disney cute, which is probably a better choice. Still hateful tho.

Ugly bunnies. For all their feigned cuteness, they are ugly and wrong.

Oswald has a horrible voice; a weird drawling stop in it, spouting awful fialogue like "come come girls, it's time to go to work".

And there's the reused animation; they used different speeds and broke it up by other animation, but it's still cheatery, and in a way that doesn't look good.

The lame end; a mindless rabbit waving from a parachuting basket.

Love:

Wrinkly Oswald. It's better when they make them intentionally ugly instead of cloyingly "cute".

Classical music; for some reason, they don't keep it up, and switch to big band for the color extraction, which would be fine, except that it fractures the cartoon.

Dumb cluck sign. The drapes look good, and the insult to the pompous hen is good.

tympani for ostrich egg

The almost Woody-like cuckoo. It's not crazy enough sounding tho.

Pissed bunny. Again, better than cute.

The color split. It's a shame the colors aren't better.

The checkered bunny; the checks break up the monotony of the incredibly bland thing it is normally.

The naked come hither ostrich.

The uncolored ostrich faces for movement. Shame about the crappiness of the bunny...

Summary:

Overall, a sour note to end the Oswald cartoons on (supposedly it was the 195th Oswald cartoon). You can see why this, as a testing of the waters for a new Oswald series, would have meant no more Oswalds.

Tall Timber (1928)

2008-11-25T19:54:00.027-05:00

Winkler/Disney

Here we have one of the last Disney Oswald cartoons. Also alliterative with its Ts like Trolley Troubles.

Love: The design is much more cute than it was before. It has rounded shapes instead of harsher, flatter forms.

The music is at least just an organ this time. So, while it is irritating in the way silent film music is irritating, it's better than a fake orchestral arrangement. Again, not the fault of the cartoon itself, but the restoration. In terms of restoring soundtracks on cartoons, Disney would be better off following the axiom that simpler is better.

The backgrounds are far lusher than in Trolley Troubles, tho this cartoon is only a year newer.

A V of ducks is cool. Even if they're in lock step identical movement all at the same time.

A lack of gun safety or the safety of the audience is sure to lead to entertainment. That's a barrel pointed straight at the screen in the image below.

Fuzzy moose. Always go for the fuzzy moose. Sure, it doesn't look quite right. But it still looks good.

The boulder take. The boulder has a lot of momentum to it (tho it is very floaty, anchored to a spot on screen that it spins on), and the take is unusually extreme for what I usually think of in Disney cartoons.

Lightning head effects. It wasn't considered gauche to use visual cues in common with, say, a comic strip. Why did everyone seem to stop using this kind of thing after Tex Avery left MGM except in not consciously noticeable FX frames?

The running bear looks good.

Fish eye lens Oswald: not sure if it's love or hate. It's something tho.

Naked mama bear bloomers and bra

Oswald in the bear coat; except the smoking which is ugly.

Hate: While looking exponentially better than Trolley Troubles, this is still ugly much of the time.

It's still incredibly repetitive.

Oswald crushed into 6 little Oswalds is just poorly done. It's like they'd heard the idea, and just floatily executed it. There is much floatiness to the cartoon's action, actually.

The long bear hold. While the little bears keep moving, the big bear just stays and stays and stays like it went to the Stepford Etiquette Academy.

So, TT is much better than, uh, TT was. But if this was reinventing the wheel 80 years ago, the novel nature is lost in standards that became entrenched and enhanced. A reasonably decent and semi-watchable cartoon.

Next time, we will skip to the end of the story, and then eventually wade back into the middle (which is better than the beginning or end, at least in its best moments of its hundreds of cartoons) of Oswald's animated bio.

Trolley Troubles (1927)

2008-11-06T21:40:00.019-05:00

Winkler/Disney

So, here we have Trolley Troubles, the debut Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoon (at least the first to show; supposedly a cartoon called Poor Papa was made and rejected; this is the first extant example, and can be found on the Disney Treasures Oswald collection). This is the face that launched a thousand ships?

Love:

The running trolley. This is literal; it's trying to use its wheels like feet.

The trolley widening to the fit the tracks. And thinnening to also fit the tracks. And it's in an animated background coming-at-the-camera shot. Too bad it repeats jokes within its tedious length several times.

Nose thumbing.

Goat ramming.

Butt waggling

Nice animated hills. The grey gives it a real mass and 3D feel the characters lack. The trolley has a good feel too, as it tosses the ugly little passengers off.

Under car shot

Vicious rabbits foot

The Oswald ass end.

Hate: Incredibly irritating music (courtesy of Robert Israel and the Robert Israel Orchestra). To be fair, this is not the fault of the original cartoon itself, but of the "restoration". It's also easily remedied by turning off the volume. I wonder why people scoring silents mostly use the same incredibly boring sound. This score is even using multiple instruments; if it was just a piano or an organ, I could maybe forgive it. But to use a form of instrumentation that would only have been used in the grandest of presentations, in a tiny handful of luxury theatres? You may as well go whole hog, ignore the sounds of the era, and make something good instead.
(For an example of one of those rare showings, see
http://www.cartoonbrew.com/disney/colony-theatre-92427 )

Incredibly repetitive animation. The opening scene repeats the same animation of kids catapulting off part of a trolley 6 times.

Repetitive design: those kids above are all the same rabbit.

The next shot repeats a cycle of kids climbing up the side of a trolley and going off to the left (down across a window where it is never seen), then another kid climbing up and going off to the right, ten times. Not 5 for each direction. 10 times for each direction (actually 9; the last going right is absent). Now, to be fair, Oswald himself is oiling the trolley's troll-hole, and some unlucky rabbit's face. But this ugly repetition is in service to the idea that if everything is always moving, that's good (enough). (The weird mutilated wheels on the trolley are interesting tho).

The overall awful ruralness of it all. Would there have been trolleys for bumpkins? My impression is the Toonerville Trolley (which had been a strip for almost 20 years before this short and had had something like 17 shorts made 5 years earlier than this short; gosh, I wonder where they got the idea for Trolley Troubles?) was similarly horribly rural, but I haven't seen any of Toonerville since watching the Oswald shorts.

Repetitive tunnel shots, even if the silhouette is cool.

I'm not sure exactly how this gave Winkler faith in the Oswald series's potential popularity. But then its only the silents that have made their way to me filtered through 80 years of letting bad cartoons slip into nitrate film stock non-existence, and the rise (and fall) of the theatrical short generally and the Oswald series itself more specifically giving me better material to compare it to. Look at the post preceding this; the brand in 40 years would retain rabbits and overalls, but would be otherwise unrecognizable. Oswald would go through several unrecognizable changes, and would essentially be dead on screen in only 11 years.

Oswald Rub-A-Pencil Book (Lantz, 1968)

2008-09-03T17:26:00.023-04:00

Welcome back. Hopefully this will pre-sage a series of cartoon Oswald posts.

So here we have a Rub-A-Pencil book (signed by Walter Lantz; the seller had several other Lantz Rub-A-Pencil books signed by him, plus additional Lantz materials, mostly unsigned production materials and those ugly limited cels). Like a coloring book, but half the pages require you to rub a pencil on them to expose the underlying image, and you are not told to color those pages. I mean, I guess; I'm not going to actually try it. I'm assuming the slightly raised invisible ink will repel graphite so it will be a negative line. But maybe it super catches it. The blue pages below are inverted to show the lines. Sorry they're not clearer, the images on the other side of the page, and even on other pages, are clearer than the rub ink.

So, while by 1968, Lantz cartoons looked like crap, the cover art on this is great. Of course, Oswald hadn't appeared in a cartoon in 25 years at this point, but he'd had a longer life in print. Even the black and white images outclass Lantz '68 by a long shot.

So, yeah... a rabbit in a seal costume with a bird tail riding a broom over three quarters moon. One of Saturn's, apparently.

This is Saalfield 5092.

Shanty Where Santy Claus Lives (1933)

2006-12-23T21:30:00.000-05:00

Harman-Ising

A big problem with many cartoons is that they seem to think having a theme and moving around is enough to make a cartoon. They're probably right; it's just that it's not enough to make a GOOD cartoon. Even with some little good things to point to, being incredibly boring overall can ruin a cartoon.

LOVE

Monkey's around the tree. They are repetitive and moving too fast, but they ARE monkeys.

Cool background homes.

Seusseian reindeer.

Santa's prison windows. German expressionist/Caligari style windows, even.

The many toys. That all move in rhythmic little cycles, but there's a lot of them and they don't do anything stupid like keep them going for 46 seconds...

Windup sambo jazz band. Sweet. That's the place to use the folk instrumentation, not as a stand in for the church organ...

Doll going "mama" falls into coal bin, comes out in black face, says "mammy", and a mammy type says "Sonny Boy" (Al Jolson ref)

Tulip wall.

DNA ball guy. Stretch your self to kick some shmo.

Little girl blows up a balloon, uses it to blow herself up into a big fat woman, then sings "Good Night Harvest Moon"; Scotty dogs say "are you listening?"; a reference to Sophie Tucker, possibly; it is at least clearly a reference.

Switching to bagpipe music when using bagpipe to put out tree fire is inventive.

HATE

The music starts nicely with bells and an orchestra; then it switches to ugly folk instrumentation (accordian) to represent the church of all things; then it goes back to the orchestra. Is it a subtle commentary on the nature of religion? I think maybe it's just general crappiness...

There are good looking stocking and fireplace and house details; but it's all over on the side, leaving huge amounts of useless empty space in the shot. The shot, incidentally, lasts for 46 seconds! You see the protagonist approach from outside, enter the house, go to the fireplace, stomp to the chair, cry on the chair, see Santa Claus approach, say Santy Clause, wait for Santy, Santy enters, and only then does the shot end. All with this big boring background.

The lame sad sack of a protagonist. He's boring, ugly, and irritating. Super.

Rhythmic bending at the knee and rhythmic lock step fist (pumping? As good a word as any I suppose).

The cartoon just ends. Santa made a cameo, took the protagonist to the shanty, then disappears. A fire starts and gets put out, everyone cheers, and it's over. Maybe they wanted everyone to really like the feature, which would look better in comparison to a craptacular short.

CONCLUSION

Don't mistake the many individual good things about the cartoon as an endorsement of the entire cartoon. It's lame.

Do or Diet (1953)

2006-11-15T00:43:00.000-05:00

Also on the Harveytoons box set is this Casper cartoon. It is much much better than Voice of the Turkey, altho watching the two of them, the later project owes a lot to the earlier (of course, it wouldn't surprise me if there was a much larger group of cartoons made in a formulaic manner of which these are but two examples). I wonder if Harvey itself just got better, or if they just had their A-team working on the Casper franchise. It appears in the same listed episode of the TV show as Voice of the Turkey and the Toon Take involving the pilgrims, so I'm thinking it was shown around Thanksgiving. The cartoon between Do or Diet and Voice of the Turkey is just about overeating, so it's not appearing here in this series of seasonal posts. Did I mention the box set has a pleasingly strong cover? Because it does, even if it's a bit short on information on the packaging...

LOVE

There is a formulaic reaction to Casper, but it comes from pilgrims in a calendar picture, which is different. Said picture is a tasty painting as well. (Did they have page a day calendars in the '50s? If not, Harvey may have invented something great.)

Donkey shoes running sans donkey. It sounds lame, but looks surprisingly ok.

Casper demonstrating thinner. It's actually visually appealing; Casper's blue outline, transparency, and impossible thinness end up looking really good; especially as his stupid eyelashes are gone for the shot.

"Pepper, salt, mustard, cider; skipping rope will make you lighter." Now that's a lyric.

Thin turkey via corset. Thin gags work in this cartoon...

The sound effects of the corset popping off are well done.

Moron tongue take. Not much better than the eye take in Voice of the Turkey, yet it works much better; better timed, better sound effects, better framing maybe. Then he runs into his house and runs away with it, but his chimney has to run by itself. So much better than the last cartoon...

"Do or Diet" also ends with the turkey eating corn like a typewriter, but Casper catches him and ties him up, WHICH IS WHAT SHOULD HAPPEN WHENEVER ANYONE TRIES TO DO THAT LAME GAG!

HATE

Casper's lame niceness. Lisa Simpson may find it sad, but what can I say; he's a little Milktoast (there is a cartoon on this set where he wails on the ghostly trio pretty well, tho; it sure isn't this cartoon). It's hard to relate to him, and he's the company's star. Such a bad sign...

Weird gurgly whining sounds of Timothy Turkey. I think this was hate. I can't actually tell from my notes...

Recycling the moron sharpening the axe. He's got a different accent, but my pain from "Voice of the Turkey" remains, and the cheating of it all is offensive...

Voice of the Turkey + (1950)

2006-11-14T23:31:00.000-05:00

Classic Media and Sony Wonder have put out a four double sided disc box set (about 19 hours) of Harvey cartoons. The set came to me for correctly and quickly answering a question from Jerry Beck of Cartoon Brew and Cartoon Research, who was involved with the compilation of these cartoons as a show some time ago (altho he was not directly involved with assembling the DVDs). "Voice of the Turkey" can be found on side 2A, chapter 19 if playing all.

LOVE

Great calendar painting.

Inexplicable mints. That's kinda cool.

Tricking the turkey into putting his neck on the block by looking for something is cool.

Turkey with goosepimples. That's funny. But it comes across looking kinda badly, and it's hamfisted since the visual gag is introduced with a verbal gag (either by itself would have been less lame).

Axe murdering farmer. He's pissed. And even tho he isn't as well animated or designed as Fudd in Bugs Bunny cartoons where Fudd plays a similar role, his dilated pupils give the impression that this guy is throat slitting nuts.

Skin and bones. The visual on the Turkey is great. Tho his dialogue is lame. And the joke goes nowhere afterwards. It creates an awkward pause in the action that then just cuts to a slightly wider shot and then gets going again.

Farmer helping the turkey to stop sneezing then using his open mouth to pump him full of stuffing. It's done very smoothly and nonchalantly, and works quite well.

HATE

The music is big and obvious, like most Harvey music. That's kinda bad, kinda good. The music really pushes itself out there. I don't remember that as a kid, but as an adult, it's irritating. The repetition of the music's sound in many Harveytoons isn't exactly a pleasing thing either.

There's a very static plate of food in this shot; it looks creepy. It must have saved about 30 individual cels of the plate. And looks like crap due to it.

The moronic voice on the moron. Extremely grating. The makers seem to be from the "irritating is inherently funny" school of comedy. I wish their school would burn to the ground. The accent on the turkey, which seems to be some flavor of NYC accent, sucks as well, although it is not as bad.

Lame food gags. Shuffling a sandwich like cards is a crappy gag here, done in a way that just looks unnatural; the food moves of its own volition, violating physics in an uncomfortable way. Eating the corn like a typewriter (basically all by sound effect) is an old gag, presented here in a boring manner. There's a winning combination. Then the turkey jacks open its beak. Sigh. Stuffing its beak to fullness is actually the most interesting thing involved in the gag, and shows a bit of visual interest.

Sucker gag; by 1950, we can officially say the sucker gag was played out. It even says "sucker" on the sucker. It's like the company was saying "hey morons, you're morons!".

Remember how I complained about the painted escape route gag in Jerky Turkey? It's worse here. Maybe it's the angle of the shot, maybe it's the music, but it just feels worse here. And that's in spite of the fact that I like some aspects more (the paint coming off is a little funnier, the impact marks look a little better, and the camera moves with the impact resonance).

Off frame gag. You know how it's good in Looney Tunes or MGM cartoons? Not here. The sprocket holes don't move, it looks, well, fake. The animation going off frame isn't smeared and is very stiff, and the camera moves smoothly out and back.

The farmer inexplicably has a plunger gun all of a sudden (it doesn't work here, altho it might in some other film) and knocks the turkey's feathers off with it. This shot actually looks cool, like the turkey is releasing his evil seed, but it doesn't look all that good animated. I also kinda like his turkey gloves and human boxer shorts.

"Listen boss, let's talk toikey". Shudderingly bad.

Poorly done eye take. Very slow, doesn't work. The veins and the puckery sockets look good in a still tho.

Ghost turkey (including transparent effect shot) asking for wings is funny. But then they ruin it by dumping the effects shot for a solid white turkey who takes off a sheet. Ending on cannibalistic ghost turkey would have been much better. Then they keep going and end on a lame punchline ("I fool him this way every Thanksgiving") and then go back to the lame typewriter corn gag. Gah!

TOON TAKE

Immediately following this cartoon is a "Toon Take", which has gutted some other cartoon for some laughs. It has a segment on the pilgrims, and that's much funnier than the "Voice of the Turkey". So you get a bonus backup review in this post.

MINI LOVE

Priscilla, in the courtship of Miles Standish, has giant hips and legs. I guess two fisted butter churning only keeps the top svelte.

Then we get another lass big in the, er, hips, with the Pocahontas/John Smith story. John prefers death over big boned women, for some reason.

MINI HATE

Not especially attractive island photo of "Dorothy"; I think it's an ugly picture of Dorothy Lamour. It's still funnier than "Voice of the Turkey".

And so the discontinuous blackout gags make a better go of it than a continuous cartoon. Not tied down I suppose. The visuals are more streamlined as well.

Jerky Turkey (1945)

2006-11-10T14:21:00.000-05:00

Jerky Turkey (1945)

Directed by Tex Avery

A short appropriate for Thanksgiving. That was released in April. Maybe they rereleased it in November, or maybe they just had to ration common sense during the war... (My screencaps are from a $1 public domain DVD ("Toon Factory: Scrap Happy Daffy"), where in their packaging they misspell it "Jerkey Turkey"; sorry, it looks like their print was suffering some color problems; better contrast than the Daily Motion video tho.)

Download at:
http://refrederator.com/cartoon/jerky_turkey

Jerky Turkey
Uploaded by dandu386

LOVE

Double titles! More than one image in titles is a good thing. At least when the art is good. And it is here.

Transposing WWII battleship guns onto the Mayflower. Cartoons sure went to war...

Plymouth rock stone chicken gag. Painting gags are usually cool, and this is no exception. It's followed by a pan over to a WWII gag sign: "was this trip _really_ necessary?"

Partisan politics gag. It is part of the overuse of "ye", but it's good to know partisan rancor isn't new. Imagine, in a time of war, it was an accepted popular notion that not everyone was on exactly the same team...

Turkey Call with bill and a hand to whistle and call the words "Hey Turkey!". Double gag; it's a duck, and it's a duck that calls like a human.

Black market building. The turkey exposes it from behind camoflauge. It's a great big black building. Out of place, nicely designed, playing off the name black market. Cut out the "ye"s and we'd really be in business.

Turkey giftwrapping himself. Ludicrous and therefore funny in and of itself (even tho he uses his positioning to get around to blowing up the pilgrim), using the scissors to make the ribbon curl up is a pleasing attention to detail.

The bear's musical theme. Slow flute music punctuating the thrilling chase music dominated by strings. Everything has to stop for him, too; bringing the cartoon to a total halt works as a piece of comedy. It's an aspect of what made Droopy work, I think.

Halfbreed. Visually interesting, in line with a lot of the pastiche visual jokes Avery did. Too bad it's inserted inappropriately; it just feels like an interruption. As an 1/8th breed myself, let me assure you this should not be condemned as racism; the palefaces are just as shnozzy as the redskins, and halting English is probably better than one would expect in the local people of 17th century Massachusetts. This scene is listed as censored at http://looney.goldenagecartoons.com/ltcuts/mgmcuts.html

The multiple pilgrim; as there are multiple possible hiding spots, the pilgrim splits into 4. The music really makes this particular gag.

Tree angle. The turkey in the tree is a pull out shot that basically couldn't be done (at least not without a ton of work) in real life. It's cool. unfortunately the next shot is very normal and feels impoverished from the great angle shown just previously.

The denoumount has the bear eating the pilgrim and turkey; this is marred by "I'm Joe" written on the bear's back, but his face is great; he looks contented while he is picking his teeth. The cutaway to the stomach isn't the greatest thing since sliced bread, but it's an acceptable way of underlining the protagonist(s) discontent with becoming food.

HATE

Overuse of "ye". Let it go. Combined with crows nest gag overuse, it really sucks. The lookout's giant mouth is kinda interesting tho. See also: ye hollywood, we vine, ye cigarettes today, ye cut rate drug store, with the interesting character line up:
Panning over the crowds (look to be painted on cels, not part of the background) is good for a change, not everything needs to be animated up the ass. But even the pilgrim says "ye", and it sickens me.

Ugly pilgrim, ugly turkey. The turkey is based on Jimmy Durante, who did lend himself to the beak. But the design is still ugly. Not nearly as ugly as the pilgrim tho. Incredibly ugly. Unpleasantly ugly. "Why did they design this schmuck to be so damn ugly" ugly. And this isn't his only cartoon! Fuckers. I wonder how much the kids know about Jimmy Durante now. My primary exposure to him was through cartoons stealing his act and look, but since there were only 6 channels when I was a little kid, I saw the actual guy on the show that showed movies during the day. Since classic cartoons are mostly consigned to the cold dark obscurity of Boomerang on TV now (and three cartoons on Cartoon Alley once a week on TCM), I wonder if kids are even getting exposed to the cartoon version...

Old gags: (were they old by then?): painting a background on a wall so the adversary will smack into it, the adversary runs into it as if it is real, the painter hits the painted wall. I wonder if there was actually a precursor gag where the adversary hit the wall, or where both ran into it. Then the mechanical gag; the turkey shakes his hand, the pilgrim's head goes up on a jack. They feel realllllly old now; I remember seeing the painting gag in roadrunner cartoons as a kid, and even though those were after this cartoon, I can't help but find it no longer funny. The mechanical gag was supposedly created by Iwerks at Disney, so that was in some form old by this cartoon.

On the whole a fine cartoon.

Scrap Happy Daffy (1943)

2006-09-28T19:20:00.000-04:00

Scrap Happy Daffy (1943)

Directed by Frank Tashlin

Animation: Art Davis.

This is a wartime propaganda film, and is fettered by that; it was probably rushed out the door to get the message out. But good reasons for sucking don't make those suck things suck any less. On a $1 DVD from Walmart in the "Toon Factory" line. For what is a pretty long propoganda film at 8 minutes, it's pretty enjoyable.

Love:

Daffy sings a song that probably named "We're In To Win", imitating Mussolini, Hitler and Tojo. Hitler's wearing a white hat with what looks like a German Eagle instead of a swastika; this seems out of character, and I wonder if it means something. Swastikas abound later on tho. Note the heavy linework behind the mirror. It's not actually bad in and of itself, but it doesn't jibe with the character styles.

Multiple Daffys in the broken mirror. Reusing a single piece of animation, to maybe give the illusion of more work, works pretty well here.

Keeping Daffy out of frame to showcase a chick in a bathing suit. They even go back to it and hold. This probably saved on animation while adding titillation. Strangely, the woman is a bit poochy in the mid section, and seems to be wearing a one piece that goes a bit down the thigh. It makes me think it might have been cribbed directly from some life modeling or something, but it at least differs from the general impression I get of WWII pinup body styles. Maybe all the hot chicks had to be sent overseas for the troops, and home propaganda films had to be rationed out with realistic women.

Dog tired daffy. Bent over, panting, feather standing up on his shoulders. Note the simple chalk drawn images as a background.

Transitioning in a cross fade from a horse's ass to Hitler, while playing the theme identified on Cartoons For Victory as "Who's A Horse's Ass". Daffy also says "How do you like that" and then something that sounds like "schikel gruber". I wonder if it means shit eater.

Weird German swearing subtitles.

Silhouette speaking into mic ("destroy that scrappile"). Prefigures later Bugs space cartoon, as does the radio tower.

The one good background part: the scrappile destroyer zooming to the scrap pile (the tall silhouette) shows a great looking the entry way to the yard.

Ass glasses joke. And Daffy's tail becomes a hand.

Ghosts of Daffy's history. Saves paint to do them in white inking, which looks cool.

Chiaroscuro Daffy. Looks good; but that seems out of place.

Daffy duckman look. Weirdly out of place with the rest of the cartoon. Abnormally long waggling of the eyebrows too. It should do it more briefly, surrounded by motionlessness.

Hate:

The title card is lame. So many good title cards; what happened here?

Salvage Warden Sign looks like from the time of plunging production values in the '60s. It pans over other signs from there, "Get That Tin Out" "Get That Brass Out" "Get That Iron Out", ending with "Get the lead out"

Bad writing. Daffy hears something. Laughs it off as "mice". Then he hears it again and says "moose". Mel Blanc's delivery might be to blame.

Weird Daffy neck error; cranes neck around fence, then neck seems to be coming from the fence end. Oops. It looks more like an error in motion than it does in a still.

Mirror gag where Daffy is telling the eyes in the dark to come out, and it turns out to be him in a mirror. Except he's all moving around and the eyes are static.

Having a goat be the scrap heap destroyer is cool, but Daffy's interaction with him is stilted.

Daffy made of glasses. It's interesting. but doesn't quite work. I wonder if they were trying to especially encourage recycling glasses. The goats horns are even eventually turned into glasses.

Super American. Looks like crap. Big meaty Daffy. So wrong. Or badly done.

Hitting artillery shells. Just like regular Superman; altho it works better in comedy than in drama, it still seems off.

In the end it was a dream. But it wasn't. Um, ok. This could be funny, but not how it's done here.

Robot Rabbit (1953)

2006-08-19T12:50:00.000-04:00

Robot Rabbit
1953-12-12
Friz Freling
See
http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/
for the Friz Freling Blogathon, which this post has been made because of.

Love:

Title card painting. The weird angles on the robot Bugs are pleasing, as are the colors.

"Downa Indiana way..." Technically known as "In a Little Red Barn (On a Farm Down in Indiana)", the song is cool as a setup for bringing Elmer and Bugs together. It's not as well done as the opera singer using the song to bring Bugs and his antagonist together, but it's still cool.

Kick the bucket. Having Bugs and Elmer sing together again is kinda repeptitive, but the whole kick the bucket thing is a prime combination of a physical gag with verbal humor, as well as comic misdirection of the antagonist, followed by ...

Elmer's disengegement, the classic end to the playalong joke. The buggy in the barn is great in silhouette, too. Unfortunately, it goes on too long with Elmer stunned, and just ends up kinda falling flat as it drags on. Fortunately, the disengagement is followed by Bugs jumping in a hole leading to...

Flopping carrots. It's very satisfying for Bugs going to ground so hard that the carrots in his hole bounce like popcorn on a tympani.

Electronic Robot box. Mmm, paintings. The text is straight forward, and the font conveys plenty about the product without a messy little logo. Technical manual writers would do well to study the branding of the Electronic Robot line of products.

Flopping robot. Before there were flopping carrots, afterwards, its ass will fall off. Here is the middle state; starting up, the thing is shaking apart at the seams. Not the best idea in designing your robot, I think you'll agree, but it looks cool on screen.

Future gun. Great painting, great gun design. If only the entire cartoon had the color sense of the paintings...

Donkey's "whad I do? Whad I do?". The line is great. His post blasting head is as ugly as the testicle hanging out of the shorts of the old guy down the street, tho.

Evil painted robot. A still painting plus cels conveys a lot of anger and frustration.

Rusting painted robot. The sound of Elmer's oil can is cool with this, combined with the painting itself and the rusting effect is just a very tasty visual.

Robo drag. When Bugs is ugly (like in this cartoon), there's nothing like putting a bucket on his head to make a robot want to fuck him...

Robot falling ass, now with sputtering! I wonder if the sides flying off is what caused the robo bottom to drop out, or if the bottom was falling and in a safety measure the sides were blown off like a cockpit in a fighter plane...

Hate:

Ugly bugs. He's off kilter in the box, but the problem with this and most of the Freling cartoons is that Bugs looks boring/ugly. Chuck Jones got out of control later on, but at least his Bugses (yeah, I spelled it) were always interesting (by the '50s, at least).

Lame Elmer and Bugs interaction. Elmer is frustrating, Bugs is irritating. Gee, just what I want to see. And when they get together? Oh, the crappiness... It's like they're actors sleepwalking through cliched roles they've done a thousand times before.

"A wobot pest contwoller with an ewectwonic bwain?" Too much of a speech impediment drags down a cartoon.

Failed mistaken identity joke. Elmer getting shot by the robot here isn't as well done (not nearly) as in the Daffy/Bugs/Elmer Chuck Jones trilogy.

Having the robot crushing money shot off screen. I can't see why this would be an edit for television. It feels like the gag was designed to have a reveal, but it was hardly unexpected based on the shot leading to the fadeout. If the entire cartoon hadn't been leading to it (like, if it was just one of many minions Elmer had been sending after Bugs, and it wasn't the final gag) this would be ok. As is, the cartoon just sorta ends, giving the viewer cartoon blue balls.

Ugly colors. The painted figures are great, but they underscore the crappiness of the rest of the color scheme. The outdoor scenes on the farm are full of reds and greens that make me want to crawl into a cave to escape them.

All in all, I don't this cartoon as much as I did when I was a kid. It still has its virtues, tho...

Felix in Hollywood

2006-08-12T10:47:00.000-04:00

Felix in Hollywood
1923

If the page is functioning, you can download or stream this cartoon at:
http://www.archive.org/details/Felix_inHollywood_NoAudio

Love:

The main title card. It's pretty good; it could be better but the basic idea (of looking interesting) is there.

Lots of weird open spaces. It's unusual to see such big dead spaces. That makes it interesting as a change. It's irritating over time tho.

Freaky word boxes. The action just stops when the word boxes come up. Again, interesting for a change, altho even as a novelty the complete stop to animation during the wordbox is irritating.

"Go ye forth" intertitle card. Wordboxes and intertitles. Hmmm. I think they'd be better off with just the intertitles. The writing is completely over the top on this one, and that's cool. The lettering is also pleasantly odd, the way the Ls and Ds have right pointing flags and the Hs have left pointing flags. Do those even count as serifs?

Weird 3D looking background houses. The super flatness of everything else makes them look like Fleischer 3D backgrounds in comparison.

1¢ gum on a pole. Everyone loves 1¢ gum on a pole...

Animated question mark. A nice little animated touch that's expanding on 2D conventions.

Super 3d stars. Every really well done thing sticks out in the film. It's very short tho, and moving so quickly...

Felix hiding as an umbrella and then a bag. No stills illustrate it well; it's just a cool type of thing (probably way less cool at the time, as that was the kind of thing they seemed to really overuse, and they were banging out a huge number of Felix the cats; at least from the point of view of now, considering the extremely low visibility the Felix cartoons have now; Felix was a huge franchise, until a perfect storm hit and basically killed him in cartoons (if not comic strips) for decades).

Unidentifiable female star, in a key cutout. It's drawn differently than the rest of the cartoon. And the key matte is interesting.

The first of a tiny number of closeups of Felix in the cartoon; he's actually given lip synch, which is weird, since it's a silent cartoon, but I guess if the word is visible, the lips need to be too...

Grotesque caricature of a guy (someone famous?); again, these break up the monotony of the boringness of Felix. My assumptions here are that the differently drawn caricatures would have been recognizeable at the time to the audience (altho it's possible these were inside caricatures and only Chaplin was meant to be recognizeable); it's at least lost on me now...

Cross eyed Felix in Iris. Highlight that action...

Uglyman 2. After no closeups, we're left with weird matted iris close ups. And honestly, they're pretty boring themselves...

Uglyman3 (the boss) with Felix. Apparently, Al Gore ran a movie studio in the '20s.

Self referentiality; it's always good to throw this kind of thing in the face of someone who's talking about post-modernism.

Weird iris onto gun of caricature; sure, they were too inept (or thought so badly of their audience) that they didn't use a straight cut, but at least it's different from the rest of the cartoon.

Felix grabs daggers from the mosquito's eye and duels with it. Again, surreal like the bag bit earlier. Again lets you smash a theory based grad student .

Hate:

No perspective bankruptcy sign; isn't the perspective in the shot perfectly clear. I mean, what the hell, is this being animated by like one guy in a week? Oh, it was kinda like that? Well, that certainly explains it.

One thing animated at a time. OK, something's happening! You, react! Now hold it... hold it... hold it... hollllllld it... Now you do something and let the cat watch... watch... watch... waaaaaaaaatch...

What's a close up? While there are few notable closups in the cartoons (all together), the cartoon mainly is full of middle distance shots, and isn't full of what is a completely normal convention now. I assume there were technical limitations (or conventional limitations) on closeups at the time in live action film, thus the weird mattes on every closeup there is in the short. If that's not the case, then there's some messed up idea going on in the composition, which I suppose may be due to comic strip conventions as well (tho a quick flip through The Smithsonian Colleciton of Newspaper Comics doesn't produce a lingering impression of such a stark landscape).

Stiff lines fluttering into the store.Super stiff composition, animation that looks like crap (I hope it's not the loss into the format).

"You say you like black. You say you like white. I'm on board so far, but what is this "gray" you speak of?". Pretty much just black and white in this (a very few exceptions, mostly in limited areas). It's interesting as a change, but it starts to feel bad after awhile. I assume grey takes longer to get right, so it was ignored...

Felix says "watch me register sorrow", but it's very wooden. Followed by a very fluid rip off of Chaplin (after saying "now here's something original"). I hate Chaplin. Maybe it's infecting me hating this particular thing.

The cartoon really drags on. The cartoon plays like two almost unrelated cartoons; 4 minutes for the first part; about a minute bridge; followed by 4.5 minutes of another cartoon (the first segment begins with bridge related material). The overall structure is painful as a whole, because each of the two main sections feels complete by themselves. You reach a logical conclusion then the bridge material hits and it feels like the cartoon is going on too long. Then the second main part hits and that feels like a secondary overlengthening. It makes me wonder if they had individual animators doing each of the sections completely by themselves; in other words, tell A to make a cartoon where Felix earns money to get to Hollywood, and tell B to make a cartoon where Felix has gotten to Hollywood and is trying to be a star. Whatever the idea was, it doesn't work here.

Ren and Stimpy Lost Episodes: Not the Cartoons

2006-07-19T14:35:00.000-04:00

This is on everything about the Ren and Stimpy Lost Episodes except for the cartoons themselves...

Love:

The intro/interview contents. There were lots of things that were interesting that wouldn't necessarily fit into a commentary track. Wonderful horrible stories.

The cover art. It's high time pretty girls were alerted to the dangers of tanning to their woman hides, and the horrific epidermis on the redhead on the cover is an object lesson in this. The many lines on Ren and Stimpy are cool too, and Ren's torso looks like it was carved out of a tiki head, which seems odd, but looks really good in the art.

Nice DVD case. It has locks on the side, and a hinged wing type dealie in the case for the first disc. Unless these locks are about to break off; there's white plastic visible on the hinges already; if they tend to break off, changes this to hate.

Pleasant paintings from Ren Seeks Help on the discs. The discs look good.

Shot composition on the Naked Beach Frenzy interview with a beer bottle right between Katie Rice's legs. Fatty Arbuckle would be pleased, altho he would likely deny it to the authorities.

The side by side animatic and normal episode of all of Ren Seeks Help. Much more satisfying than the short snippets we normally get. The other episodes should have had this as well.

Hate:

No explanation: nothing in the packaging or labeling tells you where the cartoons are. Instead of an insert that tells you where things are, you get a pointless note from John K. and a picture of him with his hands in his pockets and clip art that doesn't quite go along with the picture. Great. Hope you remember where things are; not even the disc art helps, since each disc has a different painting from Ren Seeks Help...

No direction to the text. The back cover is full of inconsistent text direction; so the snippets about the cartoons are not readable in a flow.

Lies. The front cover says "this unit contains only official John K. product", and yet the first thing you are compelled to watch on the first disc, even before the standard forced legal warning, is ads for South Park. You have to avoid them repeatedly using whatever it is you use to hit your remote buttons.

No option for playing episodes while completely avoiding introductory comments. If you want to smoothly watch the episodes, you don't get that option; it's like cutting from the girl to Ron Jeremy all the time...

Bad image quality on the extras. It looks cheaply shot and cheaply lit.

Even worse sound quality on the extras. It sounds like the interviewees are not mic'ed; probably just a single mic on or near the camera. Probably a good assumption based on the constant sound of the tiny dog walking around (when he scratches himself, it sounds like the camera operator is engaging in self abuse; I really hope it was the dog, anyway), or the calamitous din of what sounded like a pyramid of Heineken bottles falling over. As opposed to people's comments, which often could not be heard.

Katie Rice trying to tear off her fingers in the Naked Beach Frenzy opening. I either acclimated to it later or she stopped doing it, but in that first opening it seemed like she was going to pop one of her digits off of her hand, throw it at the camera, and run screaming from the shot.

No followup on John K going to Katie Rice's 15th birthday party.

The physical composition for the intro to Stimpy's Pregnant. Ann Marie's pretty head is a tangent to John K's body initially, and her placement continues to be irritating/harrowing as the piece goes on, as she naturally turns towards John and away from the camera to answer his questions.

Weird Al. He didn't have much to say, but the piece went on. This could have been fixed with editing. The bit about his wife hating the cartoons (X3) was good, so were a couple of other things. But on balance, not good as presented.

Lack of case unity with the previous releases. While the case and art are (largely) good, it doesn't match the three previous recent Ren and Stimpy box sets in style or execution.

No commentary tracks (or if there is, the packaging didn't bother telling me where that was). I manually checked several of the episodes; no dice. I like the interviews just fine, but it's no substitute for commentary tracks.

Easter eggs. Nothing wrong with easter eggs, but most of them should have been explicitly findable extras, especially the cut bit from Onward and Upward.

All's Fair At The Fair

2006-07-14T23:31:00.000-04:00

All's Fair at the Fair is a 1938 Fleischer Brothers cartoon. Strangely, the Fleischer property Popeye would eventually have a cartoon of the same name, but after it passed from Fleischer.

Things to love:

The title card. Look at that fucker. Those are some letters you can count on. I love three dimensional looking title cards; they feel classy to me somehow, altho they're really pretty easy to make.

Artdecotechture! Look at that building facade. Now that's a place I'd like to go to. Whatever happened to this kind of futurism? Did it get replaced with the now futurism of actual instead of imagined technologies? Are we left with CES and E3 now? I don't think it's an adequate substitute.

Smorgasbord of Rube Goldberg devices as the story's engine. Tex Avery used this kind of device to great effect over the next couple of decades with greater and greater refinement, but this non-Avery cartoon is no slouch. Its biggest failing is thinking it needs the couple to drive the action. But this Ikea machine shows you don't need a couple of ugly rubes to make the joke work.

The theme song. I think the song had a larger existence, but it's zippy and catchy.

Signs. Look at the signs. They're great. Look at the signs again. A picture of words is worth... um, something.

Moving... into the future. While I think the cartoon would be better without the bumpkins, the cartoon contains a hopeful air, wherein the ugly country bumpkins are made better looking and generally benefit from the technology at the Fair, culminating with getting a car out of a vending machine (the horse seems to benefit from this as well, altho he doesn't seem to realize he's now out of a job).

Recognizing the subtle downside of technology. There's no big luddite move in the cartoon, but there's some commentary that technology has its dark side. Explicitly turning public transport into sardine cans accomplishes this with a visual joke.

Things to hate:
The voices. Oh, the voices are terrible. You know how Olive Oyl whines? Make it worse and you have the voices here. I'd say the Fleischers were incapable of making a cartoon without jamming something into the throats of all their voice actors, except that Superman and Lois Lane don't sound that way. Maybe they simply jammed something innocuous into those actors. "Hey, if something sounds stupid, the audiences will eat it up! Look at that prick Disney!" The first giant sound cartoon sounds like crap because the dark prince thinks kids like it and the world has to suffer for it for years.

The ugly, ugly leads. It's where troll dolls came from. it's how the Wolverton look doesn't work in animation. I'm thinking maybe it's an accurate abstraction of the ugly, ugly people of the Great Depression as seen in material like the photography of Dorothea Lange. Maybe the spirit of the age was just to show the grotesques.

Pie eyes. They might work on anthropomoprphic characters, but they look like shit on people. At least they do here.

Robots. I love robots; I don't love the robots in this cartoon. First we get a lame sequence of identical shaving robots. These robots are simply boring; they're not actively bad. I can actually see how this look might have influenced the style of Osamu Tezuka (Astro Boy/Tetsuwan Atom), which I do like. The big thing about these is that they're boring, and the super deco look of the backgrounds implies so many more possibilities. Ah well.

It's the dancing robots that actively deserve hate. They're paired with the ugly people and dance a rubbery dance of the lame, while horrifying all comers with their creepy black hair and dead painted on eyes. From the point of view of the future, it's a dystopia extrapolated from the bland grease slicked hair of the films of the '30s.

Summary: A good cartoon on balance. Strangely, the dollar store (and not on Amazon) DVD Fleischer Cartoons Vol. 1 (the version on YouTube) from Eastwest DVD has a better version of the opening, running about twice the length of the opening on the Top 10 Forgotten Cartoons DVD. That second DVD has much better visual quality tho. Based on the size, the forthcoming 5 disc Fleischer box set probably has it, but that remains to be seen (as does the quality if it is on there); at only about $18 tho, it's probably not a bad purchase anyway.