Another blank title · 7:08pm Mar 31st, 2013
I was looking on NitrateVille forum (it's devoted to old films), and I found this post that I thought was awesome:
"To equate Charlie Chan as the equal of the Two Black Crows is completely missing the real point and is dead wrong, and those that do are like the same folk who want to remove the "N" word from HUCKLEBERRY FINN or ban the book entirely who don't realize that the book is one of the best fictional arguements against racism and slavery our World has ever produced and the use of that language in the book is designed to be taken negatively. The woman who refuses to let her daughter watch Warner Brother cartoons because of the occasional ethnic stereotype is unfortunately also stopping her daughter from learning all of the important lessons the Warner Brother cartoons taught us while we were so busy laughing, how to spot phonies in the world, how to stand-up to gun-totin looneys when they invade your own personal rabbit-hole, beware of dangerous single-mindedness that will destroy you by missing the forest for the trees,or run you directly into that tree in the forest, or past the end of the cliff, and the great Buddist [sic] concept of cause and effect that was well exemplified in the Roadrunner cartoons. All valuable lessons that I have carried through life and hard ones to learn from the crap thats on television or movie screens today."
What can I say, Bugs and co. do make the best teachers.
Speaking of which, I got a few such cartoons below.
Cracked Quack – 1952 – Warner Bros. – Freleng
Flying south for the winter, Daffy comes upon a stuffed duck in a house (owned by Porky). From there he hatches a plan, to play the dummy for an easy escape from winter. As far as story structure goes, I have to admit that Cracked Quack is rather weak, and the cartoon is really a blackout gag cartoons (the short just ends for one and there’s no really built-up conflict in the cartoon). Thankfully, the gags are pretty darn funny (“I can’t bare to watch a dumb animal suffer”), and they make what is really a rather simple and almost mechanical cartoon worth watching.
Dough Ray Me-Ow – 1948 – Warner Bros. – Davis
When the parrot Louie discovers that Heathcliff (probably the dumbest character based off Lenny from the movie adaptation of Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men”) will inherit one million bucks, unless he disappears (at which Louie will be sole inheritor), he sets out to remove the harmless cat. The problem for Louie is that like all stupid and innocent characters of his kind, Heathcliff is pretty much impervious to damage (or failing that is lucky enough to avoid it), forcing the parrot to resort to more and more drastic measures to eliminate the cat. A worthwhile cartoon for sure.
Who Killed Cock Robin? – 1935 – Disney – Hand - Warning
1935 for me is the turning point of Disney cartoons. Before then, there are probably more duds than successes, at least for our modern eyes (keep in mind, if you look at them from a more historical view and what came before, they don’t look as bad). However, in 1935 not only do the number of hits increase, but the quality of those hits is also substantial because the directing, animation, and writing finally start working together and stay on the same high level. And “Who Killed Cock Robin?” is definitely near the top of those hits.
Opening with the shooting of Cock Robin, much of the cartoon takes place in court, where the all bird cast tries to figure out who done it. A clever blending of comedy and music (every character speaks in rhythmical dialogue) fused into a rather cynical satire (think of it as a cartoon version of Gilbert and Sullivan). Such censure of the police and the justice system got this cartoon some criticism of its own at the time (the police violence is very heavy in cartoonlike (as opposed to cartoony) way and the jury and judge are very noose happy); it wasn’t called the most cynical silly symphony in a review at the time of its release.
This alone would make “Who Killed Cock Robin?” excellent but it also has some very amusing characters, especially Jenny Wren. A caricature of the at the time controversial actress Mae West, everything about Jenny from the design to the dialogue (“somebody rubbed out my robin”) is a major delight. She’s pretty much the only true caricature sadly, although there hints of Harpo Marx, Bing Crosby, and Stepin Fetchit in a few other characters.
The Fetchit part deserves mentioning. This cartoon does feature a crow who does act like a black stereotype (there is a gag where the character literally comes pale from fear), along with an Irish cop and a homosexual stereotype. You find trouble enjoying an otherwise wonderful cartoon
If you want learn more about this cartoon including the earliest outline of this cartoons development, a more final script by Bill Cottrell, drafts and mosaics that indicate who animated what scene, and more well-written commentary about the development and qualities of the cartoon, let me recommend this “Capsule” by animation historian Michael Barrier.
“The Dover Boys of Pimento University” or the “Rivals of Roquefort Hall” – 1942 – Schlesinger – Jones
When I published my piece on Chuck Jones’ Birthday, I considered posting this cartoon as well. But per my rules, I’m only allowed to have one cartoon that I “love” per post, and quite frankly, that cartoon had to be “Duck Amuck.” So, instead, you’re getting this cartoon now.
Part of the reason I thought about including this is because it’s an incredibly important cartoon in Jones’ development as a director. Before this, most of his cartoons fell under the cute Disneylike style as seen in his Sniffle cartoons. Here however, Jones decided to imitate the stiffness of the Gay Nineties with sharply defined poses in his characters. This can be seen over again through seen in both the movement (the character Dora Stanpipe, for examples, initially moves as if she had rollers instead of feet) and in the design (only the villainous Dan Backslide, a caricature of the animator Ken Harris, looks like he has some more life in him). This combined with the simplified backgrounds (supplied by Eugene Fleury, with John McGrew on layouts), gives the stylization in the cartoon a great feel of life.
That alone would have fine, but what really helps the Dover Boys is the writing. A parody of “The Rover Boys,” the witty and dignified narration (“Pimento University. Pimento U. Good old PU“) delivered by John McLeish (he did the narration in the Goofy cartoons at Disney) or often even funnier dialogue of Dan Backslide (“The Dover boys. Then Dora must be alone and unprotected!”; I believe the writer here, Ted Pierce, supplied his voice) are intermixed with great visual gags (some of them so tiny, you might miss them the first time). This wasn’t the first Jones cartoons that is more funny than cute, but it is probably the first where Jones really grasps comedy for its full potential nor feels too slow in its pacing.
Shocking though it maybe seem, the cartoon didn’t go over well with the heads of at Warner (who distributed the cartoon). Jones claimed they wouldn’t “have released it at all except that they had to have a picture” and Eugene Fleury said that Schlesinger was upset that all the characters were humans (instead of just one or two; Jones said he didn’t know if Schlesinger had such a ban, but it was possible). But thankfully it was released, and it sparked interest elsewhere; John Hubley acknowledged the cartoon as a development for the UPA style years later and praised the cartoon in a newsletter at its release (personally, I consider 1942 to be the point in which the Looney Tunes not only surpass Disney but become the classics we remember, the ones before are usually not well-animated enough or well-written enough to earn those times, even after Avery changed the studio’s character).
And if I’m to be strictly honest, it’s the fact that I first saw this cartoon in high school, after my cartoon interest were revived and that makes me a little bad that I hadn’t seen in earlier in my life. But I’m glad I did see, and I’m glad to share with all one of the greatest and most important cartoons in the Golden Age of Animation.
I’ve mentioned his name before on this blog plenty of times, but I haven’t recommended Michael Barrier’s website in general. So, let me do so right, because there are a lot of great things about. Not just a page devoted to such a wonderful cartoon as “Who Killed Cock Robin?”, but also one devoted to “Motion Painting No. 1”, a selection of interviews Mike conducted with veterans of the past (honorees include Disney director David Hand, Warner Bros. writer Lloyd Turner, and Schlesinger layout man John McGrew, just to state the people who worked on one of the cartoons I posted), essays (some historical, some critical), and a very nice blog in general (sometimes I comment on, using my real name of course). And if you think I’m harsh, read this man’s commentaries on a number of recent animated films and books on comics and animation, or reprints of his Funnyworld magazine from the 70’s and 80’s, considered by some to be the real start of the animation fanbase. I was lucky that my university library had copies of three of issues, and it was definitely worth my time. Of course, I’m biased; Mike is along with Mark Mayerson, one of the two people with the influence on my critical outlook (he is really the one who made me look at cartoons an adult as opposed to a child), and I’ve been introduced to a lot of things I love (such as Segar’s Thimble Theater) through him.
Speaking of Barrier, he was also the biographer of the late Carl Barks, whose birthday was last Wednesday. All things considered, I’ve come to think of Barks as my favorite comic book artist. I’m not alone in that, plenty of people have found influence in Barks (to state a superficial but well known example, the boulder trap from the beginning from Raiders of the Lost Ark was inspired by one his stories).
Barks got his start as inbetweener at Disney at the age of 35, much older than most people then and later moved on to the story department after he suggested a gag for the film “Modern Inventions” (his gag was that Donald would get trapped in a robotic barber chair upside down, so that his rear would get a cutting and his head would get cleaned with shoe polish; another gag of he contributed was the ice slipping for Bambi). He wasn’t much of a story teller than and he really wasn’t suited to animation as much as say Walt Kelly, the man who would later create the newspaper comic masterpiece, Pogo.
But in comic books, Barks eventually found his forte after a few years. His first assignment in that world was something he did together (the only time he drew a story with someone else) with writer and later director Jack Hannah, a comic book adaptation of an abandoned Disney cartoon that was to feature Mickey, Donald, and Goofy in a loose adaptation of Treasure Island. That comic finally came out as Donald Duck finds Pirate Gold in 1942, a fine first effort, but really nothing special. The experience would convince Barks to move in that line of work at Western. Although he did many characters (he did at least one Looney comic, I don’t think it works, but then again the comics were different from the cartoons), but he mainly worked with Donald and turned the hot-tempered prankster and bully that no one can understand into a multi-faced character, one who was different in as a character each appearance (sometimes intelligent, sometimes a boob), but as Barrier said, “his mutations made him more real, not less.” Donald was the best character Barks used as far as a character went, but he’s better known for creating Scrooge McDuck, world’s richest duck (he also created amongst others, the Beagle Boys, Gladstone Gander, Gyro Gearloose, Flintheart Glomgold, and Magica De Spell).
In the best Barks’ stories, there’s always a verisimilitude to his plots and an emotional richness to his characters. As others have said, his stories, although written for children (and thus presented so they can understand them), are true adult ones; mature and often sardonic, and never losing that part even in moments of intensity where many others would resort to simple crudeness. Of course, writing is only part of a comic book; drawing and staging matter, and Barks was able to present that in his characters, they are highly expressive and at times exaggerated, but there is nothing false about it, they instead do come from within his characters. At his best is the key, a lot of Barks’ stories are mediocre, and it’s because his best ones are as brilliant that he earns his reputation.
So I’m going to post a link to three of Barks’ stories that I could find (the website that I used because it had every one of Barks’ duck stories has become defunct, unfortunately). The first one (I beleive I've posted before) is Scrooges' first appearance, Christmas on Bear Mountain. The second is the first appearance of Flintheart Glomgold, the Second Richest Duck and rival of Scrooge. What makes it amusing is the many ways the two stubborn ducks try to find ways to show their richer eventually discovering the only thing they haven’t discovered is who has a larger ball of twine. The third is the controversial (and edited in this copy) Voodoo Hoodoo, which takes Donald to Africa to rid himself of a curse. Still worth a read.
Thoughts from my Trip
I’ve never been one for theme parks. I don’t like rides for the most part (whatever enjoyment I may gain from the ride itself usually doesn’t make up for the boredom from the amount time you wait in line, and I have acrophobia, so rollercoasters are out). The fact we often see life as a progressive path, doesn’t help, it inflates the view that Walt Disney’s greatest achievement was Disneyland (Disney World was planned by him, but work began after he died) instead of the animated features or shorts, only increases my annoyance (thank goodness EPCOT came out as it did instead of what Disney originally planed). In short, I’ve come with a low opinion of the parks (I’ll admit that I still like both the “Haunted Mansion” and Pirates ride).
Probably the biggest thing that bothered me on my trip was the “modernizing” of many Disney classics. I showed the “Clock Cleaners” before I went on break, but I saw a “short version” of it on the bus I rode. Good lord, it was horrible and depressing. Scenes are cut out so that none of the gags can even be setup, the jumps between are just awful (one second Donald is pounding the spring in, and the next he’s facing the opposite direction and standing and throwing the hammer at it; another cartoon “The Lonesome Ghost” cut out a part where the ghost sticks his fingers in Mickey’s shot gun, so we don’t see why it deflates after he points it at the ghost), and I swear they further messed with the sound track. It wasn’t the only one that suffered this fate; even worse were the ones the “genusises” at the company decided it needed wise-ass commentary for. I’m never been one to say if people of certain generations are smarter or dumber than others, but the impression I got is that the Disney company think our attention spans are a lot shorter than they were in the past (they might be) and we are dumber. Equally bad was some one of the merchandise I saw, they’d tried to make the characters come across as hip (one of the Minnie shirts I saw: “Don’t make me unfriend”) or a play about the Disney villains (the older baddies suffered from being made incredibly campy that takes away what people probably liked about them in the first place). All this reeks of contempt in my opinion both for the characters and for the audiences that make those characters profitable.
Even though I didn’t enjoy my Disney trip, it still had me in thought. The fact is, people from all over still come to Disney World in droves, and there are still plenty of Disney fans in the world. They’re good at keeping their fans loyal and customer relationship. What they’re not good at is making themselves not look yesterday’s thing and creating products that have appeal beyond their fanbase . Seeing that merchandise makes Disney look like well, if you pardon the political analogy, a Republican campaign strategist trying to draw in young voters by using internet slang (let’s avoid any further political talk; I’m not in the mood for a debate and I will not answer any such comments). There’s nothing sincere about it and it looks stupid. The thing about it is they used to be good making themselves more presentable. You don’t have to watch all of this video, but you should at least get the idea of it. I grew up those in movies, through those VHS’s, and they got excited to see both new and old, again and again. You get the feeling that the people working on the film are enjoying themselves, and Disney isn’t trying to be the thing, they are the thing. Nostalgia definitely colors quite a bit of this, but not all of it (I don’t like a lot of Disney movies anymore for one, including the 90’s ones; one is free to disagree, I get why people like them). Micheal Eisner did a lot of damage to the mindset at the mouse (I don’t have time nor all the knowledge to go into why) and unfortunately it’s ingrained itself in a company that now just buys moneymakers (Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilms) instead of working hard at creating new ones.
But what got me in thought was how this reminded me of ponies. I’ve never been blind to what the purpose of the show was for Hasbro, a way to make money (that’s how its been since they started the brand). But I think some of the parallels I see (because there’s a chance, maybe a good one, that there are none) are interesting. Both the Disney and Pony franchise might be in some ways be victims of their own success. That’s what I see both with Twilight being made a princess or the return of fan favorite characters. Plus the need to make the characters hip or more line with the adolescent fanbase wants. I’ve barely looked at the official comic books (for one, I do not like how they are drawn), but what I’ve seen doesn’t strike me as very much in nature of the show. Good comic book stories and good animated TV episodes are of course have to be different given the demands of each medium, but the comic ones strike me as belonging to the magical adventure as opposed to slice-of-life. They’re more violent and less kid-friendly on the surface, not necessarily more adult or mature. I see them as trying to appeal to the fans who want the show to be adventure like (the one’s who would like to see Twilight engage in actual magic combat with queen moron).
I see this not just with Hasbro, but fan created works as well. While I do not believe the average fanfict or fanart or fancomic or fanmusic is better say a year or two ago, I do believe that it’s become more cliché and more adolescent work has an easier taking center stage.
This is of course, just another way of saying, implicitly, that my taste and the taste of the typical Brony are rather different, to say nothing of popular culture in general. What can I say, I’m a young fogey.
In which Twilight Sparkle Attempts to Eat a Sandwich by Maphysto
Local legends are part of our tradition as anything else, and they can make amusing stories to help attract the dollars of fat and not-as-fat tourists. That’s basically the premise of the story, Twilight orders a sandwich from a restaurant, and her friends (popping up ever so conveniently) attempt to dissuade from doing so due a legend (each pony tells one) hanging around the Oatfield Café and its sandwiches.
Stating what I thought worked and didn’t work for this story isn’t too hard. Each story her friends tells that definitely has a local legend flavor, the kind that easily gets transferred on the internet. Each tale is short, filled with flavor, and embellishments that make for a recognizable (that is each strikes me as something that plausibly pass for a local folklore) but usually entertaining read (I admit that I don’t care too much for local or internet legends, myself but that’s more of me than the author). I say embellishments because each story in the end has a bearing of truth as revealed at the end, and Maphysto does a good job at tying each story together to that truth (when I find myself nodding my head with the characters, that’s usually a good sign). All the characters are well-presented and kept in-character (with the exception of Rarity and Rainbow’s deal, it comes across as if the two are try to embarrass the other as much as possible rather than a mere friendly jab or anything of the sort).
The not as good. Rather than having each pony tell their legend in their own way, Mayphysto opts instead for a more internet legend style of writing (don’t worry, the spell and grammar are fine from what I can tell (read copied on to Word)). There’s no sense of an individual speaker’s voice in those works. This isn’t fatal, but it is disappointing and I found myself bothered reading a story supposedly told by Dash, but sounding nothing like Dash. The author gave his/her/its reasoning in the comment section, and while I understand that (given how I consider the possibility when I got to the end), it doesn’t really fit when the story is being read. I also have to admit that there were not as many laughs as I wished there were. The genre tag is part of it (it’s marked as slice-of-life and comedy on EQD, but the latter seems to have been removed from fimficiton), but also the title. It sums up to me that things are going to get funny, and while there are some chuckles, there’s nothing hilarious. This story does also have a rough start and takes a while to get going. There are some plausibility issues with the whole legend and why it has a bearing in truth (example, they never keep fresh ingredients for the sandwiches, but if that’s the case, why keep them on the menu or even knowingly serve them to customers; health inspector would throw a fit, and to be honest, not all of the tales make sense on why the s). Like a lot of legends themselves, reflection and thinking only point the implausibility of the story.
I think the hardest part about this story is whether or not I enjoyed it. Looking back at, I have to say that I did for the most part.
Double Rainboom
There will be spoilers:
Film is the hardest medium to do well as an independent amateur (the unpaid, as opposed to inept). Literature, painting, and comics can be done not just at lower cost (besides investment in the necessary programs or resources), but they can be done by just one person who doesn’t have to extend him/her/itself to areas that are vastly different from each other. That’s not true with film, given that its in many ways a combination of other mediums; a person good at acting maybe a terrible writer and a person who would be skilled at filming with the camera it might awful at scoring it. Lack of experience is always a culprit (you have to start somewhere, and it’s often below the mean), and given the how film is a slow process, skill is built-up just as slowly.
Animated film isn’t different in this regard than live-action film, but I think it suffers from another problem that has infected the industry throughout the years, lack of attention to the acting itself. A big reason why I prefer the hand-drawn animation of the Golden Age (at its best) compared to most stop-motion, 3-D computer animated, Flash, or many other works from the present is the attention paid to the animation itself and the importance of the animator as a contributor; I’m not the best at identifying who animated what, but there a scenes that make me smile just for how they are animated and make me wonder, who animated that? By comparison, I’ve come to think that a technician mindset has set in elsewhere, where the animator really does nothing more than move the character that form gestures that are supposed to suggest (but not emote) a mood, and such thinking doesn’t enhance my enjoyment when I watch a film, where however well-done the animation be might on a technical level, ultimately feels empty on an emotional one (such levels are supplied elsewhere, if at all, mainly the voices).
I don’t really need too look far for proof of this thought process; I can think a number of fanficts, fanart, or fanmusic from this fandom that, while none were deserving of the word masterpiece, were excellent and make me interested in seeing what the person will do should they move on from fanworks. I cannot say the same about the fanfilms, many of them failing to impress for similar reasons (as an example, the animation of Discord in “Epic Wub Time” is such that the character moves like a paper doll with joints, slowly and mechanically; nothing suggesting the character is moving of his own free will). The overall ignorance and lack of concern for quality animation reared its ugly head very quickly when I started watching “Double Rainboom.” Not a single animator is named in the opening credits (but the voice actors, music, sound, and direction/writing are, because they are some how more important), and what little animation there is stock (generic expression for this emotion) and robotic. After having watched the whole thing, I came to conclusion that such an exclusion was justified.
The biggest issue with Double Rainboom is, ironically enough, speed. I don’t know whether the timing was handled by Zachary Rich (the director), Cara Murray (the assistant one), or the individual animators for their scenes, but throughout the film, character motions gone on for far longer than needed, as if the people in making it wanted to draw attention to the movements themselves or that moving slowly enough. Such decisions are doubly fatal; it turns the characters into lifeless puppets and makes the animators look annoyingly smug (“hey looked how skilled I am”). Specials effects also suffer from this problem, there a number of moments when dust clouds cover the screen, what should be just one or two seconds instead takes five or seven. Other times, the poses the characters make also suffer, their hackneyed expressions (set to incredibly cliché things such as sluggish camera movements that seem to be epidemic amongst animated films on the internet) seemed to be copied from the vectors seen on devaintart, and such they lack the precision needed to display whatever emotion the scene requires. I’ll be honest, I’ve never been amazed with the animation from the show (never felt it deserved the praise it got), but at the same time, I’m rarely bothered by it. It passes my standards (for the most part); this film does not. Like too many student films, the people making it either don’t understand animation or not skilled enough to make good use of it (more likely, both).
Writing can’t save Double Rainboom either, because the plot is barely there and the humor is piss-poor. When it doesn’t suffer from glacial timing (a gag where Derpy gets hit in the head by flower pots, not once, but twice, takes far longer than it should to be funny; if anything it comes across as mean), are just fandom memes done over and over again (Scootaloo hitting a sign that or that Schwarzenegger like pegasus screaming “Yeah” at random times; I swear Derpy’s eyes getting fixed from a knock on the head has been used elsewhere) or mere references from other shows (which are never funny or worth getting excited about except to the incredibly juvenile). What little plot there is takes far too long to setup, and once it does; there’s almost no really conflict (Dash ending up in the Powerpuff universe (the placement of a copyright of that show in the middle of the film would be mood breaking if I was drawn into the film) and getting chased because she’s a pony) to worry about (and solved in an incredibly cliché way; Pinkie gaining the ability to move between cartoon universes (ugh!)). All together, it’s a throw together of some of the worst things to come from this fandom.
The voices aren’t exact praiseworthy. Replication is a hard thing to do to begin with, but none of the people are really successful and a number of them aren’t even good voice actors. Emily Koch, unfortunately, adds this throat sound or something to her (at best mediocre) imitation of Dash, and it’s a pain at times to listen to. Kira Buckland is better as Twilight, but would someone tell her that when the script tells you to scream, scream!!!!! Here, I suspect difficulties in replicating Tara Strong at that high a volume were a problem (understandable, but still something worth taking points off). Other roles have similar problems at matching the voice actors or being at their level.
The biggest praise I can give the film is that they are successful at recreating the visual style something I can’t say about the vast majority of fanfilms. Unfortunately, they didn’t do the same with the Powerpuff portion; they seemed to have chosen the latter season style (long after I paid attention to the show), and its hard to look given bad the designs are thanks to mainly the incredible thickness of the black outlines, which only helps remind us that we’re seeing a bunch of computer images, and not real characters (not to mention the animation problems). I’m not a fan at the puppet style they went for at times, but that’s more taste than critique (it still has the animation issues I talked about).
But overall, Double Rainboom is just bad (if not terrible). If this was a fanfict instead of a film, it wouldn’t get an ounce of the attention it gets now. And frankly, it doesn’t deserve any.
If I have time next week, I’m going look at Snowdrop, because its also getting quite a bit of attention. I don’t have high hopes, but I feel it will be better the than this mess. But in the end, I suspect the four films I posted above would be a better use of anyone’s time and certainly better at showing how amazing and powerful the medium of animation can.
Bugs Out.
