Best of Season 1 Short Fics, Part 5 · 12:21am Jul 9th, 2017
I saw Ben and Me recently, one of a number of Disney non-feature works that Disney made, mostly in the late 40's and 50's, that didn’t have an attached label to it. Even though the Disney was getting out of the cartoon short market at the time because the revenue wasn’t justifying the cost (Mickey would star in his last theatrical short in 1953, the same year as Ben and Me was released), he was actually producing quite a few
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Glad you enjoyed the blog.
For Minnie the Moocher, I'm a Calloway fan and he had a hand in that cartoon. Besides his song, it's also inventive (watch the backgrounds change, for one) and feels more organized for me than a number of Fleischer cartoons from this time. Because Betty herself isn't a good character (not that good cartoon characters really existed then) and most gags from the studio are more arbitrary than funny, cartoons with her have to be imaginative without a haphazard handling of the elements, and most of them aren't. I'll be frank, I haven't touched my top ten list (a small part of my top 50 list) since 2009, and if I actually sat down and spent my time re-watching all cartoons that might qualify, there would probably be changes.
I love Chuck Jones' best work (details on why can be seen in my piece for his centennial birthday), and I enjoy most of his films from 1945-1955, with a few others outside those years (if I redid my top 50, he'd still probably have the most on it). Rabbit Fire is one of those I love and consider amongst his best, and I do like Rabbit Seasoning and Duck! Rabbit, Duck!, although I think people overate the Hunters trilogy. I enjoy Bully for Bugs as well, but there are a number of other Bugs Bunny cartoons I like more such as Hillbilly Hare (my personal favorite), Long-Haired Hare, High Diving Hare, and Rabbit Hood, just to name some I've posted. Part of it is because of the nature of the subject (bullfighting is one of the most overused cartoon premises, so they end up being really similar, something even Mexican Joyride, my fav of the bullfighting cartoons, can't escape), and because Bully lacks a few things (for example, the final gag seems more pedestrian (it would work with any number of Bugs' opponents) than say the ones in Hillbilly or Long-Haired, where square-dancing and disguising as Leopold Stokowski, respectively, fit the setting better). It's not a masterpiece, but I still like the cartoon.
Wow, this was a very interesting page to come across. I was interested in your opinion on Minnie the Moocher, since you have it listed as your number 10 pick. I've always found it to be a pretty weak cartoon, if you take away the historical context of it. Certainly not anywhere near what I would consider to be the best of the Betty Boop/Bimbo stuff. It goes without saying that Duck Amuck is a masterpiece, but how do you feel about the other stuff out of the Chuck Jones years? I'd say that one of the three iterations of Duck Season has to be up there somewhere. And I find the cartoon where Bugs fights that bull to be the best of all the Bugs outings where Daffy isn't involved.
Anyway, I just wanted to say that your blog was very interesting!