Mostly (not) Dead · 4:03am Jun 5th, 2017
I keep meaning to get back to blogging on a more semi-regular basis, but I have always found struggling to get anything posted. It's not like in the past where my problem was I didn't really have anything I wanted to talk about. I've had plenty things I've wanted to write about such my thoughts of seeing Monty Python and the Holy Grail on the big screen (fun, but I personally would have enjoyed it more if people didn't quote it), Arizona (a place so dry that the sight of green grass feels incredibly alien), Disney's The Jungle Book, my thoughts on movies She (a film where you can't stop think about the issues of sex and race in it that show its age), Logan's Run (a film where you can't stop think about the issues of sex and race in it that its age), and Spartacus (a film where... actually Spartacus is a good movie, and while there are bits regarding race and sex, they're not the things that stuck with me the most, what did was how different the movie would be if it was made today, and how that Laurence Olivie's Cassius has almost as many scenes as Kirk Douglas's role as the title character), the growing concern that a lot of older fanfics are disappearing, and many other things that I'm forgetting. Maybe some day I'll get around to writing about them, but if I couldn't finish putting thoughts to bits then, it seems unlikely now.
Fortunately, I do have two short essays that as well as some news regarding this blog. More below.
I watched Rhapsody Rabbit recently, and then afterwards I watched The Cat Concerto. If you don’t remember either cartoon by title alone, than surely you’ll remember them by description. Directed by their studios favored director(s) (Friz Freleng of Warner Bros for Rhapsody Rabbit and Joe Barbera and William Hanna of MGM for The Cat Concerto), both of them feature the cartoon studio’s most popular character (Bugs Bunny for RR and Tom for TCC performing Franz Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 while a mouse (an unnamed one in RR and Jerry for TCC) pesters them and plays the piece along with them. Both cartoons were released close proximity (less than six months) and nominated for Oscars for Best Animated Short for the same year with The Cat Concerto winning it*, and because of that fact, they are part of the so-called “Great Cartoon Controversy” which hinges on the belief that one of the studios (mostly it’s MGM) was copying the other, usually with the claim being that a mix-up from Technicolor (who developed the films) had Rhapsody Rabbit (I have to admit at this point I prefer typing it as Rabbit Rhapsody, it just sounds better) sent to MGM where Barbera and Hanna saw the film and stole the idea for themselves. More likely than not, it was pure coincidence as Thad Komorowski points out on Jerry Beck’s Cartoon Research here, and he does a good job of pointing out the mix-up likely occurred, and that the realization of this caused both studios to rush the cartoons through production and release. Michael Barrier also adds a few comments as well and how the two cartoons were really just another example of cartoon studios looking at what was popular at the time for inspiration.
* As Thad points out in his piece, Friz Freleng says he got unlucky when it came time for screening purposes because his short was shown was after the MGM one, so his looked like the copy. But while it likely did hurt RR, assuming that all Academy showings for the voters projected them in that order, I have to wonder if it would have made a difference. MGM had the largest voting bloc at the time, which is why Tom and Jerry likely won so many Oscars. Then again, Freleng would win the Oscar for Warner Bros. next year with Tweety Pie, the first cartoon to match up Tweety and Slyvester.
But anyway, enough history. The reason I’m mentioning the two is that I came away with an opinion that I don’t think I would have had a few years ago. That is I think The Cat Concerto is a slightly better cartoon than Rhapsody Rabbit.
(In case you want to see develop your own opinion without having it tampered by my thoughts below you can view the cartoons on the links here.)
The Cat Concerto
Link above has been giving problems, so this one is back up.
What bothers me about Rhapsody Rabbit is that the Bugs the Bugs in it doesn’t feel like Bugs Bunny to me. It’s not just minor things (such as a gag where Bugs pulls out a gun and shoots an audience member whose coughing disrupts his demands for silence before the performance or the less than usual amount of talking), but really in the overall conflict of the cartoon. Bugs requires a good antagonist, someone that would either be dangerous to most people like Yosemite Sam or some kind of bully in position of power like the opera singer in Long-Haired Hare or the Sheriff of Nottingham in Rabbit Hood. But here, his opponent is a nondescript mouse, who is more of annoyance than a potential threat (a similar problem exists in Chuck Jones’ Baton Bunny released in 1959 where Bugs is a conductor that is annoyed by a fly). And because the conflict arises from the mouse interfering with Bugs’ piano playing (unlike in TCC where Tom initiates the quarrel first by unintentionally waking up Jerry who is sleeping in the piano and then by slapping him once he notices the mouse), the first instinct is to sympathize with Mr. Bunny, but the animated short goes out of its way to make Bugs the bad guy from facial expressions (the dark look of glee on his face when he places a mousetrap on the piano keys, without setting them off by the weight of the contraption, followed by a throat slashing motion) to the ending, where the mouse succeeds at performing the difficult to play ending of Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, winning the audience’s applause.
It seems that Friz Freleng (and the writers Mike Maltese and Tedd Pierce) didn’t think much of the mouse either because he doesn’t come in till close to the three-minute mark of this seven-and-a-half minute long cartoon and there are stretches where he has no role. But that leads to another problem, Bugs just isn’t a great character at holding a cartoon by himself, for two reasons. One he’s often a reactive character that requires Elmer Fudd to start blasting his rabbit hole or the foreman on a construction project to destroy his home to get going. Two, Bugs is meant to be someone who is able to react to even the most dangerous situations with a coolness and competence (as dumb as many of Bugs’ opponents are, let’s not forget most are heavily armed) that most people don’t have. Therefore, there isn’t a real chance for inner conflict that would allow the character to struggle because he's pretty close to being perfect already. For a character like Daffy, he’d probably end messing up and struggle in his performing either due to his unhinged craziness, emotional passion, or large ego (depending on the year the cartoon is made), with gags developing out of that. Heck that’s a similar idea to how Disney’s characters work like Mickey Mouse (who also battles with a piano in 1929’s The Opry House, coincidentally the first cartoon to use Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2), Donald (thanks to his hotheadedness) and Goofy (his stupidity). They're everymen, Bugs is not.
In addition, Freleng, while a great director of timing gags, was neither the best at visuals nor tuning his gags so they wouldn’t come across as mechanical, which partially explains why a lot of the gags feel kind of generic, like the piano imitating a typewriter or Bugs’ hands getting tangled together, or even seem to stop the cartoon. As a result, they’re not as funny as say Bugs hoodwinking Yosemite Sam to walk off a diving board in multiple ways, whomping Pete Puma on the head when he asks for “three or four” lumps, or tricking a pair of hillbillies in the insane square dance ever conceived.
The Cat Concerto may have a shortage of real gags as opposed to violence (one of the first things I noticed about TCC was the lack of jokes to occur before Tom even starts playing, unlike RR which managed to fit in at least two) and in truth Friz Freleng was far better at integrating music with character actions and comedy than Barbera and Hanna (not to mention composer Warner Bros. cartoon composer Carl Stalling was better than MGM cartoon composer Scott Bradley, but at least for this cartoon, Bradley is remarkably toned down; there isn’t as much as the loud but attention drawing brass that usually infects his music for Tom and Jerry) as can be seen in parts where the gag is setup but takes time for it to be delivered (like the wait between Tom picking up a piano’s tuning spanner and whacking Jerry on the head with it going on for far too long), but there’s no mistaking Tom for another cat or Jerry for any mouse but Jerry, in spite of what little character they do have. They go out of their way to mess with each other, acting more like siblings with a horrible relationship than a cat and a mouse. And unlike in most Tom and Jerry cartoons, the pain that their actions cause each other is more subdued than most of their appearances (Tom’s fingers at one point get caught in a mousetrap, causing his fingertips to swell up to the size of a kid’s balloon, but outside of the snap of the trap there is no scream from Tom or bone crushing sound effect that accompanies it; understandable because it would interfere with the music) even if most the sadism is clearly present. And there’s no question in the cartoon that we’re meant to cheer for Jerry. There’s also no real interruption in the music, which gives the impression that film hasn’t stopped unlike RR.
I suppose that this is just a long way of saying that Rhapsody Rabbit is an okay but different take on a good well established formula for a great character while The Cat Concerto is a better but less deviating take on an okay well established formula for two okay characters, and that would be fair. But I guess when it comes down to it, sometimes a work at the top of a mediocre pack and exceeding expectations stands out more and comes across as better than one around the middle of an extraordinary list and not really making them (even amongst Freleng’s Bugs Bunny cartoons, Rhapsody Rabbit isn’t top caliber; Baseball Bugs, Hare Trigger, Racketeer Rabbit, Buccaneer Bunny, and Herr meets Hare are all better cartoons that Freleng directed with the character released around the years when Rhapsody Rabbit was). But that’s just my opinion, and The Cat Concerto is, like I said above, not that much better than Rhapsody Rabbit, so I can see myself changing my mind down the road. Heck I chuckled more at RR than TCC.
So what do you think?
I saw The Princess Bride for the first time in full, one those films that you’re supposed to have seen if you want to have any credentials as a nerd like Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Labyrinth (the latter I have not seen either, so I better fix that)
It’s not hard for me to understand why The Princess Bride is such a cult classic. The Princess Bride is a really campy picture that winks with its audience at the sheer silliness of much of the story (making fun of similar fantasy films of the time) for much of the movie, but also has enough action and cool parts that a kid growing up in the 80’s and 90’s (who probably saw the film on vhs) could enjoy and then eventually learn to appreciate the more satirical elements. Wallace Shawn (Vizzini) and Chris Sarandon (Humperdinck), in particular, are over the top and fun to watch, though that in some cases it works against the film (Vizzini is said to be rather smart by the other characters, but honestly, he comes across as a moron who you think is even dumber than his henchmen), and Mandy Patinkin (Inigo Montoya) and André the Giant (Fezzik) are a lot of fun as well, even if I found Patinkin’s fake accent to be annoyingly thick and hard to understand at times.
But the movie does has problems (the difference between the on location and film set for the Cliffs of Insanity is jarring to say the least), namely Robin Wright as Buttercup. No, she’s fine actor, but the part of Buttercup is terribly underwritten. The first third or so of the movie has her playing a damsel, and… actually now that I think about it the only time she isn’t helpless or in distress is briefly when the Dread Pirate Roberts is revealed to be Westley till they head into the Fireswamp, and at the end of the film. She also has no clever lines nor does she really do anything without needing to be saved by Westley, unless you want to be generous and include the scene where she promises to go with Humperdinck if he will spare Westley’s life (for all the good it actually does). She seems to be written as nothing than a love interest to be rescued. What makes that a bigger problem is that what few scenes Buttercup does have that are her own (like at the beginning) she comes across as a rather unlikable person (before realizing she loves Westley, it is said she loved nothing more than ordering him around), and it’s questionable why Westley even loves her.
Actually, I have a pretty good idea (and it’s not just Buttercup’s looks); it’s because he’s really not that great of a person either. Sure Cary Elwes gives his best Errol Flynn impression and he actually does get a few cool lines to say and things to do, but he’s actually a bit of jerk at best, and a monster at worst, barely better Humperdinck. When he takes Buttercup as a “hostage” after dispatching of Vizzini, he doesn’t reveal his identity (in a bit that somewhat reminds me of Ivanhoe), but instead decides to have fun with Buttercup’s feelings for him and question her faithfulness, even throwing in some sexist dialogue (“What is that worth, the promise of a woman. You're very funny, Highness.”) for no real reason. That’s just what’s on-screen; off-screen it’s implied that Westley, as the Dread Pirate Roberts, killed plenty of innocent people on the high seas and then took their possessions (which he will use to live in retirement with his beloved) simply because he could and even recruits Inigo to take the role because for some reason the name of the Dread Pirate Roberts has to be kept alive because for some reasons (that’s another mark against Buttercup by the way, she hates the man in black because she thinks she killed Westley but as soon she realizes they’re one in the same, she goes with a complete 180 and never once shows concerned for the other people Westley did kill).
The result is that a story with a dull damsel and a hero who’s a jerk means that I never can care about their love, and that’s the one of the few things in this whole movie that’s treated with utmost sincerity (even Inigo’s desire for revenge against the six-fingered man is treated as a joke at times) in spite of the fairytale ending. And for a movie said to have be one the greatest love stories ever, that’s quite a problem.
I don’t mean to sound like I hated The Princess Bride, it’s a fun movie overall (though the best stuff occurs in the first third, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that’s where most of the film’s quoted lines are), and I wouldn’t mind seeing it again. But honestly, for a film with sword fighting, humor, revenge, and romance with a hero who’s kind of a jerk, I’d sooner watch Scaramouche with Stewart Granger as the main character, which I talked about much earlier on this blog. Not only is Andre Moreau more charming than the Dread Pirate Roberts, but it also includes an even better kissing scene than the Princess Bride, where Stewart Granger and Eleanor Parker make out while bashing each other with pans. Short of a few scenes with Shawn, I don’t there’s anything as funny in The Princess Bride.
I said I was going to try and get this blog up and going on a regular schedule again, and I have a way to do that, at least for awhile, by providing recommendations again. Not of cartoons, but of fanfiction. I'll provide more details (hopefully) next Saturday along with the first batch, but long story short, I'm going to start posting what I think are the best short fanfics that were written in this fandom's earliest days (think around when Season One was still ongoing). So stay tune.
I may be speaking from a biased position (I've seen The Cat Concerto many times, whereas I just saw Rhapsody Rabbit now) but I think Cat Concerto is much better for many more reasons than you just mentioned. The artistry and animation is just better overall in CC, even down to the fine details of animation: Bugs Bunny looks like he's playing random notes at the beginning whereas Tom is playing the actual notes of the opening melody on the piano; when the RR mouse falls over inside the piano he seems to hit a hardwood floor, but Jerry lands on (and is suspended by) the strings of the piano when he falls. Also there's just better detail in characterisation. When the mouse in RR starts playing jazz on the piano, Bugs joins in (why?) but Tom stops Jerry straight away when he tries the same thing; the latter makes much more sense for the context of a stuffy piano recital.
I could go on and on, but you probably get my point. The Cat Concerto is indeed executed much better than Rhapsody Rabbit.
Also, I didn't know that people in the MLP fandom have started to forget the early fanfics. I'm not a brony any more but that sounds like such a shame considering how many great stories people could be missing out on. The show's canon was also less well-established back then so the early fics could potentially be more creative than what people might write now, now that there's more known about Equestria in the show. (I'm just guessing at this last one, since I don't read fanfiction any more.) So, some blogs and analysis on lesser-known early stories would be quite interesting. I'll look forward to them.
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Some of those things you mention (like the strings in the piano) I would attribute to the fact that both the budget and the amount of time (which are basically the same thing) were higher for an MGM cartoon like The Cat Concerto than a Warner Bros. cartoon like Rhapsody Rabbit. If RR was a much better cartoon, it wouldn't really matter because I find that to be a superfluous detail, but when things are that close, it can make a difference. I thought of mentioning the jazz playing, which is a weak gag in RR's, but couldn't find a good way to integrate it my essay, same with the fact there's almost no talking on Bugs is part, which probably matters becasue is one of the Mel Blanc is the one the few unifying factors across most Bugs Bunny cartoons.
I don't know if people have forgotten about older stories anymore than is normally the case (most stories get most of their views when they first get published naturally, so it's not like something published in 2015 is going to do that much better than one from 2012), but it is true that not every old story got transferred to Fimfiction.net, which does concern me.