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Re: Any Interest in Animated Cartoons?

Posted: March 21st, 2008, 10:13 am
by movieman1957
House_of_Usher wrote:
Would like to find best source (netflix, e.g.) for Disney's Silly Symphonies of the 30's. Recommendations?
I checked Netflix and the have a 2 DVD set listed as if were due to come out. Oddly there are reviews from people who have seen it. Maybe they were withdrawn. I'm not sure why they wouldn't be available.

BTW, welcome to SSO.

Posted: June 7th, 2008, 7:02 am
by Hollis
Morning everyone,

"The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle" is by far my favorite cartoon of all time, but because of its' humor, not its' rather basic animation. For true artistry and use of color, I'd have to go with ""The Adventures of Superman" from the 40's. Beautifully drawn and animated with excellent stories to boot (for what you could squeeze into 7 or 8 minutes.) I don't think another cartoon series has ever even equaled it, let alone surpass it.

As always,

Hollis

Posted: June 9th, 2008, 8:28 am
by jdb1
I've always enjoyed the old Superman cartoons. They capture the comic-book essence very well. Was that Fleischer Studios?

Say, does anyone remember the old Clutch Cargo cartoons that were shown on TV? The ones with the minimal animation and live-action lips? We had them in NYC - were they shown anywhere else? For sheer oddity and creepiness, they win my vote as #1.

Posted: June 9th, 2008, 11:59 am
by traceyk
My name is Tracey and I am a Cartoonaholic...

No really. I love cartoons. I can still get bent out of shape over Hanna Barberra allowing that blasted Scrappy Doo to take over the Scooby Do series.

Ny favorites are probably classic Looney Toons. I remember watching them every Saturday morning with my dad on the Bugs Bunny Roadrunner show. "Overture, curtain, lights, this is it, we'll hit the heights..."

http://show.tvcells.org/2007/04/1.html? ... ng%20Theme

Favorite cartoons "Whats Opera Doc?" "Rabbit of Seville" "Falling Hare" "Duck Amok" "One Froggy Evening" and just about any Roadrunner cartoon--watching Coyote's trap go awry was sort of a mini physics lesson.

Posted: June 9th, 2008, 12:21 pm
by movieman1957
Judith:

I remember some cartoon doing that and it was just bizarre. Maybe it was "Clutch Cargo" but I don't remember anything except being transfixed on that creepy mouth.

Tracey:

We used to watch the Looney Tunes on Saturdays too. I used to thing they were made just for the Saturday morning show. We would watch "Tom and Jerry" with my dad and he'd laugh as hard as my brothers and me. Sometimes we'd get laughing so hard at each other we couldn't stop.

Another I didn't see much of but my wife bought me the DVD is "Droopy." Those I've seen are better than I remember. The humor is not unlike WB but not quite in their league.

Posted: June 9th, 2008, 12:22 pm
by traceyk
Also, I used to watch Niceklodeon cartoons with my kids, especially "Rugrats" and the WB's "Tiny Toon Adventures" which are full of references to classic movies. The Godfather , Cool Hand Luke, Fantastic Voyage, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, The Maltese Falcon, Ransom of Red Cheif, Treasure of the Sierra Madre and The Odd Couple, Orson Wells, Rear Window, The Marx Bros, Star Wars, Sunset Blvd, It's Wonderful Life and various classic superheroes shows also get pariodied.

Posted: June 9th, 2008, 12:35 pm
by jdb1
Here's Clutch Cargo, who was a pilot and had adventures in the jungle or something like that. I can't even remember, because the whole effect of the lip thing was so overwhelmingly and fascinatingly creepy. Of course, back in the late 50s I didn't see these in color, so I missed the redness of the live lips. They just looked black. The characters hardly moved at all, just the mouths (which were superimposed real human mouths) moved. The show did have neat theme music, though - a low-pitched flute and bongos - very tropical.

Image

Posted: June 9th, 2008, 1:34 pm
by MikeBSG
On the extras for "The Incredibles," they have a cartoon with real lips that purports to be a Fifties cartoon show about Mr. Incredible and Frozone. It is quite funny. I had no idea it was inspired by a real show.

Posted: June 9th, 2008, 2:24 pm
by jdb1
MikeBSG wrote:On the extras for "The Incredibles," they have a cartoon with real lips that purports to be a Fifties cartoon show about Mr. Incredible and Frozone. It is quite funny. I had no idea it was inspired by a real show.
Whenever I see that Twizzlers commercial with the big red lips (and no face), I have a flashback to the immobile faces of Clutch Cargo and his friends (I think there was a boy involved, but I don't remember who he was supposed to be). I'll probably have a bad dream about it tonight.

Posted: June 9th, 2008, 2:35 pm
by ChiO
Judith: I watched Clutch Cargo (and the little dog Paddlefoot) after school -- and I'm not quite sure why. We made fun of the animation even in those days. As I recall, it was a poorly animated Jungle Jim retread.

Posted: June 9th, 2008, 4:50 pm
by MichiganJ
I love cell animation, too, particularly the Warners. My favorite short is One Froggy Evening (hence my “name”), but other Warner Brother favorites include: Feed the Kitty (Chuck Jones pairing the adorable “pussyfoot” with the wonderfully named dog, “Marc Anthony”); the “pronoun trouble” Daffy insists Bugs’ has in Rabbit Seasoning (and the other two in the trilogy, Rabbit Fire and Duck! Rabbit! Duck!), Bob Clampett’s A Tale of Two Kitties, which introduced Tweety (but I love it because of “Babbit and Catstello”.
Babbit: “Give me the boid! Give me the boid!”
Catstello: “If the Hays Office only let me, I’d give him the boid!”

The surrealism of Porky in Wackyland and the brilliant Duck Amuck , and of course What’s Opera, Doc? (Needed to be an adult to really appreciate, but even as a kid sang, “Kill da wabbit, kill da wabbit...”) Robin Hood Daffy with the cameo by Errol Flynn (“Don’t you worry, never fear, Robin Hood will soon be here...” ) and everything with Marvin the Martian and his space “mod-u-late-tor”.

Posted: June 9th, 2008, 7:20 pm
by myrnaloyisdope
I've been working on watching the films that are in the National Film Registry at the Library of Congress, so I've seen alot of cartoons lately. God Bless Youtube.

Anyway, Porky in Wackyland is excellent, so many ideas in a 7 minute cartoon.

I really liked Tex Avery's Magical Maestro, a great idea, incredibly executed.

The best one I've seen recently is Betty Boop's Snow White. The Cab Calloway song is fantastic, and the animation is just so fluid, and the pacing so rhythmic, that the cartoon has a hypnotic quality.

What's Opera Doc is classic as well, and further serves to reinforce the fact that my knowledge of high culture is entirely gleaned from the cartoons I watched when I was kid.

Posted: June 24th, 2008, 1:36 pm
by Hollis
Hi Judith,

90 some miles South of you in Philly, we had "Sally Starr's Popeye Theater" every day after school on WFIL TV (channel 6.) Clutch Cargo was a staple of the program. I remember the boy (Spinner) and his dog (Paddlefoot) but can't put my finger on the Gabby Hayes type character that was featured in virtually every episode. Can you help? And have you ever heard of the fashion designer Gene London? He started out in Philly at WCAU TV (channel 10) where he told stories and was actually quite a talented artist. He worked (as the storyline went) for an old miser for something like 17 1/2 cents a week at "Cartoon Corners General Store." He would sit at a drafting table with an oversized pad of drawing paper and illustrate the stories as he told them. Real area children were always a part of the set. They taped the show after school hours and aired them about a week later. I was lucky enough to be on the show once and because I was a real "carrot top" as a boy, he came over to me and "magically" pulled a coin out from behind my ear and told us he was going to tell us a story about gold. If memory serves, we heard about Good King Midas and his ultimate folly. The local NBC affiliate also had an afternoon kid's show but I can't recall what it was. KId's shows were already big business back then (the late 50's and early 60's) and most it seemed were of the homegrown variety.

As always,

Hollis

P.s. I guess you can tell that I'm "well medicated" this afternoon! I enjoy the time spent here too much to forego it altogether.

Posted: June 24th, 2008, 2:47 pm
by jdb1
Hollis, I'm pretty sure that Clutch Cargo's old feller was called Swampy. Does that ring a bell?

In NYC we had many, many hosted kids' shows (because we had so many local stations), and on many of those shows the hosts drew pictures for us. Those shows came and went, and the hosts moved from TV station to TV station. There were so many of them that I've lost count.

Posted: June 24th, 2008, 3:13 pm
by movieman1957
If you'd like an interesting read on cartoons greenbriar has a recent post. The comments are worth a look as well. It's dated June 17, 2008

http://greenbriarpictureshows.blogspot.com/