A Lulu of a Toon
Jeez, I let nearly a week go by without posting something here. What better way to say “I’m sorry” than by showing two cartoons from the Little Lulu canon? Here’s Miss Lulu at her bratty best in the 1945 Paramount production Snap Happy:
Lulu was voiced by Mae Questel, who also voiced Betty Boop and Olive Oyl. 1947′s Musica-Lulu is highlighted with a surreal dream sequence involving anthropomorphic musical instruments. It’s a lulu, all right.
Nine Nations, Animated
My review of the shorts collection Nine Nation Animation has been posted at DVD Talk. This package of animated shorts from Europe includes the cute (and weird) German short Please Say Something, excerpted below.
The clip has French text, which is in English on the DVD.
Magoo, You’ve Done It Again
Here’s the first half of the Count of Monte Cristo episode of the animated series The Famous Adventures of Mr. Magoo, which ran on NBC (in prime time!) in the 1964-65 season. I’m getting acquainted with this show since reviewing the upcoming Mr. Magoo on TV Collection DVD set from Shout! Factory. The box also includes the other two Magoo series, The Mr. Magoo Show (1960-61) and What’s New, Mr. Magoo? (1977), along with the 1970 special Uncle Sam Magoo. That’s a lotta Magoo!
The Famous Adventures show, which puts Magoo in various well-known historical events and pieces of literature, might be the most interesting one. Unlike the others, I’d never heard of this show and don’t remember it at all from my childhood. There aren’t a lot of gags relating to Magoo’s blindness, but it’s a lot of fun with a kicky, ’60s feel.
Piggies
Before we took in Contagion at the theater today, this animated commercial for the Mexican food chain Chipotle was playing. As they describe it:
The film, by film-maker Johnny Kelly, depicts the life of a farmer as he slowly turns his family farm into an industrial animal factory before seeing the errors of his ways and opting for a more sustainable future. Both the film and the soundtrack were commissioned by Chipotle to emphasize the importance of developing a sustainable food system.
It’s totally charming, and the Willie Nelson song playing on it adds a haunting edge to the cute-style animation.
Politically Incorrect Theatre
The spouse and I spent some time a couple of nights ago looking up all of the Warner Bros./Looney Tunes “Censored Eleven” on YouTube (thank you, Tivo Premiere). We found ten of the eleven, including a nice print of the 1936 Merrie Melodie Sunday Go To Meetin’ Time seen below. Directed by Termite Terrace stalwart Friz Freleng, this is a typical faux-Silly Symphonies outing of the day with lots of great gags and fun music. It was placed amongst the eleven for its stereotypical treatment of black characters, but for the most part the humor is pretty benign. African-Americans may find it offensive, or they may find it a fascinating little window (as I do) on how mainstream culture viewed black communities in the 1930s.
Personally, I’m looking forward to Warner giving all of the “Censored Eleven” a tasteful presentation on DVD. It’s supposedly on the way later on this year (originally planned for Warner Archive, but now I hear it will be a full-fledged retail release). Whatever the case may be, outright censorship is never the answer when it comes to politically incorrect pop culture of the past. Complain all you want, but let me be the judge of whether something is offensive or not.
Betty Boop in So Does An Automobile (1939)
With my Flick Clique post yesterday, I (once again) forgot to mention that I’ve taken to having certain movies preceded with a vintage cartoon from the same year the movie was released. For Greta Garbo in Ninotchka, I selected the late-period Betty Boop So Does An Automobile. At this point Betty was redesigned to have more human proportions, and she’s considerably less saucy than in her early ’30s efforts. It’s still a charmer, however, with lots of the jazzy anthropomorphic gags that Max and Dave Fleischer were famous for.
Either Orient Proposition
The 1935 cartoon The Chinese Nightingale was part of the “Happy Harmonies” series produced by Rudolph Ising and Hugh Harman for MGM. Once one gets past the stereotypical characters, it’s quite a charmer with a uniquely decorative look rendered in orange and turquoise two-strip Technicolor (apparently at this point Disney still had the exclusive rights to three-strip Technicolor, which produced a more realistic spectrum of color). The Happy Harmonies at their worst were totally derivative of Disney’s Silly Symphonies, but they had lots of appeal on their own. They’ve popped up individually as extras on random DVDs, but I’m dreaming that Warner Archive will assemble all onto one easy-to-play set.
Little King in Cartoonland
1930s comics star The Little King befriends two hobos in Christmas Night (1933). We recently saw this via Netflix stream as part of the Cartoons That Time Forgot: Van Beuren Studios collection. It’s strange and not too terribly holiday-esque, but cute all the same:
How about some more animated Little King? Here he is three years later with a much more fondly remembered cartoon star, in Betty Boop and the Little King. Onscreen, he’s a bit vague; cartoonist Otto Soglow bestowed the character and his strip with an Art Deco panache that was more appropriate for the newspaper comics page than the cinema. Can’t blame ‘em for trying, however.
Related: The Little King at Wikipedia.
Weekly Mishmash: December 5-11
Hollywood Hotel (1937). Another splashy musical from the Busby Berkeley volume 2 DVD set. Berkeley directed this frothy Hollywood sendup with Dick Powell as a toothy singer who crosses paths with a temperamental movie star (Lola Lane) and the unknown (Rosemary Lane) who is employed as her double when the lady refuses to attend the premiere of her own film. The film opens with a bang with the supremely odd Johnnie “Scat” Davis performing “Hooray for Hollywood” as Benny Goodman and band ride in on a cavalcade of motorcars. It doesn’t bode well when the most memorable moment is in the first five minutes, however, and what follows is a grab-bag of funny moments interspersed with lots of filler numbers and even needless supporting characters (why the “goofy” supporting roles played by Hugh Herbert and Mabel Todd were included is anyone’s guess). The many self-aware digs at Hollywood are quite a kick (in a proto-Singin’ in the Rain twist, Powell even winds up dubbing the singing voice of a fatuous movie star), but the film’s only nod towards anything outside the Warner studio gates is stiff Louella Parsons playing herself — who was certainly no rival to Hedda Hopper in the acting department. Oh, there’s also legendary makeup man Perc Westmore in a fascinating bit in which he turns Rosemary Lane into a glamour puss. Berkeley directs smoothly, but the film has little of his usual panache and a dearth of memorable tunes. Lola and Rosemary Lane are both disappointingly bland, but I can’t think of anyone else who could have played a vain actress and her pretty lookalike at the time (maybe Ginger Rogers and the third Lane sister, Priscilla?). Anyway, I think I’m being too harsh for what is essentially a fun, undemanding flick. Let’s check out some more of the indescribable Johnnie Davis:
Rome Adventure (1962). Rented this lushly filmed Troy Donahue/Suzanne Pleshette romancer hoping for something soapy and escapist a la The Best Of Everything. Pleshette plays a rebellious teacher (named Prudence!) who is expelled from her workplace for distributing the same dirty book this film is based on (how meta can you get?). She takes off for the relaxed mores of Italy and becomes the object of affection for both native Rossano Brazzi and dreamy American Donahue. The film is pretty much half romantic drama, half travelogue. The romantic parts are nothing but trite dialogue (“I’m hungry.”) and predictable plottage, but I enjoyed the miles of footage showing Pleshette wandering about a strangely clean and deserted Rome. Had they ditched all the mush, it might have been a halfway decent film. Pleshette is beguiling in her movie debut, but Donahue always struck me as a shallow, brooding James Dean wannabe and here he’s no different. Angie Dickinson is around for about five minutes playing Donahue’s former flame.
Synecdoche, New York (2008). Knowing this is the directorial debut for screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Adaptation), I knew to expect something at the very least quirky and interesting. Synecdoche was all that, but the film is too ambitious and spottily done to be a complete success. The story opens with theatrical director Caden Cotard (Phillip Seymour Hoffman), 40, depressed, and with a crumbling body, as he deals with his prickly artist wife (Catherine Keener) and an infatuation with the perky ticket taker (Samantha Morton) where he works. After his wife leaves him and totes their daughter to Europe, he becomes the recipient of a grant which allows him to stage a huge autobiographical play inside a warehouse containing a life sized replica of New York City and hundreds of extras who seemingly have nothing better to do. The never-completed production goes on for decades, as Hoffman’s life and art become intertwined. Such a cool concept for a movie (wondering what legacy we leave behind), having a profoundness that is rarely done anywhere. Too bad the film itself is overlong, overly pretentious, and filled with obtuse flourishes (Morton’s burning dwelling, random shifts in time) that have no rhyme or reason. Hoffman was very good, and there are several clever/funny bits (such as when an extra asks the harried Hoffman for coaching on how to walk properly), but it became a draggy, depressing mess in the second half. It does score points for sheer originality, but Björk and director Michel Gondry did a strikingly similar thing in 1998 for her “Bachelorette” video. Check out that one instead.
Wallace & Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005). One of my favorite films of 2005, a DVD of which will be proudly gifted to my 8 year-old nephew this Christmas. Upon this second watching, I hadn’t realized some of the more subversive, adult-oriented gags in the script. When the character of Lady Tottington (voiced by Helena Bonham Carter) bemoans that her boyfriend “hasn’t noticed my melons” whilst hoisting two huge fruits to her chest, that raised an eyebrow. Another funny moment occurred when the nude (don’t ask) Wallace hoisted a box over his midsection with a “Might Contain Nuts” sticker. Those Brits, so cheeky!
Island of Misfit Animated TV Specials
Came across this lesser-known Ralph Bakshi project while viewing and researching his Mighty Mouse, the New Adventures series. During the second Mighty Mouse season, he directed an hour-long special called Christmas In Tattertown. Apparently it was supposed to serve as the introduction for a Tattertown series, but only the special (which was repeated on Nickelodeon in the early ’90s) was completed. In the intro below, I like the various homages to 1930s Fleischer cartoons; perhaps it was too visually sophisticated?
Dig, Dig, Dig, Remix, Remix, Remix
“Wishery” is another Disney video mashup from (I think) the same person who did similar treatments for Alice In Wonderland and Mary Poppins. Snow White’s trilling voice sounds weird enough on its own, mixed up like this it is truly mesmerizing.
Fun with Capitalism
Here’s something that might be a fond childhood memory for board members at AIG or Goldman Sachs — Going Places is a primer on good ‘ol American economics produced by John Sutherland Productions in 1948. The animation and music is appealing throughout, enough to make me want to check out more Sutherland cartoons from back then (p.s. appropos of nothing, I found this on YouTube while looking for the Heather Locklear sitcom of the same name). Cute ‘n perky!
The Lovely Bones
Let’s take a look at one of the TV series that was a by-product of the early years of The Simpsons, shall we? Family Dog originated as an episode of Steven Spielberg’s Amazing Stories. CBS commissioned a full-fledged series based on the success of that episode, but after sitting in the can for two years the network wound up airing only a few episodes in the summer of 1993. As seen in the “Show Dog” opening below, the project bears the charming creative imprint of Brad Bird (The Incredibles). Having only seen the Amazing Stories segment, I’m really curious as to what this entire series was like.
It Blowed Up Real Good
I want to have something different to share today, video-wise. How about Disney animator Ward Kimball’s very un-Disney 1968 short, Escalation?
