Animated Films

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Kinsayder · #51 Post by **Kinsayder** » Sun Sep 03, 2006 6:27 pm

There are a couple of wonderful old Japanese animations on YouTube at the moment. These are the links:

KUMO-TO-CHURIPPU (1943)
(Spider and Tulip)
Director:Kenzo Masaoka

UGOKIE-KO-RI-NO-TATEHIKI (1933)
(Fox and Racoon)
Director:Ikuo Oishi

I'd love to find more of these type of cartoons, particularly the Kenzo Masaoka one. There appears to be a DVD with Spider and Tulip, mentioned on this page. I've no idea how to obtain it, though.

Lino · #52 Post by **Lino** » Wed Sep 06, 2006 2:47 pm

Matt, you might want to add this to your library:

From 1924 to perestroika the USSR produced more than 4 dozen animated propaganda films. They weren't for export. Their target was the new nation and their goal was to win over the hearts and minds of the Soviet people. Anti-American, Anti-British, Anti-German, Anti-Capitalist, Anti-Fascist, some of these films are as artistically beautiful as the great political posters made after the 1917 revolution which inspired Soviet animation.
A unique series. With a unique perspective. Includes interviews with the directors of the animated films which are still alive and commentary by a leading Soviet film scholar.
Two hours of documentary and six hours of animated films

And yet more reasons to buy that set I mentioned above

Amazing imagery and graphic originality. Definitely on my to-buy list.

I'm so glad I found this trailer over at youtube. It certainly ranks as one of my favorites, if not my own personal favorite, works of anime I've ever seen. It's called Belladonna of Sadness and it's a rarity from 1973. Art Nouveau, Hippy imagery and traditional japanese animation all rolled into one glorious, mind-boggling, jaw-dropping piece of moving art.

Currently only available on a unsubbed DVD from Japan, it would be fantastic if someone like MoC picked it up and included it on its catalogue. Nick, are you listening?

DVDTalk reviews the second volume of Silly Symphonies, one that I've been waiting for since the very first wave of the Disney Treasures Collection. These are my personal favorite Disney works and I can't wait to dig into them.

Kirkinson · #53 Post by **Kirkinson** » Sat Sep 16, 2006 4:27 am

While we're linking to YouTube (and I'm really enjoying the things I've watched there recently thanks to this thread), I'll point out that I've just uploaded a couple of Georgian cartoons:

JADOSNURI KVERTSKHI (THE MAGIC EGG) [1974]
Dir.: Oleg Kochakidze, Yuri Chikvaidze, & Alexander Slovinsky
Music by Giya Kancheli

ALIQURI [1989]
Dir.: Bondo Shoshitaishvili
(I think this might be "A Slap in the Face" in English, but I'm not certain about that yet. I really like this one.)

There's another Georgian cartoon on YouTube I'm not that fond of, but might be of interest to someone:

TKIS KVARTETI (THE FOREST QUARTET) [1984]
Dir.: Merab Saralidze

tryavna · #54 Post by **tryavna** » Sun Dec 03, 2006 12:25 pm

I wonder if that collection includes "Eastern Europe's favorite cat-and-mouse team": Worker and Parasite?

HerrSchreck · #55 Post by **HerrSchreck** » Sun Dec 10, 2006 2:57 am

Don't laugh, but they finally put up the best of the series, which to this day gets me in the gut in a sort of blatantly nostalgic/obscurely dadaist sorta way. And it's the most soulful & lyrically sung song about bestiality, ever. The performance this guy delivered on this all those years ago just kills.

Scharphedin2 · #56 Post by **Scharphedin2** » Sat Dec 30, 2006 8:52 am

Thanks for posting that Lino. These Disney sets are a lot of nostalgic fun, and the first Silly Symphonies is one of the very best.

When I followed your link, I also stumbled across another Disney series that was launched this Christmas -- The Walt Disney Legacy Collection: True Life Adventures. Now, I recall as a very small boy, they showed some Disney wildlife documentaries on German television (lived there for a while as a kid); one in particular concerned a family of jaguars in the amazon. The whole family was glued to the television set (one of those with a knob and no video), as the jaguars was shown to take on all kinds of adversaries in the jungle --.the battles with a crocodile and a huge snake stand out. For years afterwards this program would come up in family conversation, and we always hoped that it would turn up on TV again, but it never did.

My hunch is that it is the "Jungle Cat" episode on volume 3 of this series. Has anyone picked up any of these sets? What is the verdict in general? And, can anyone confirm that "Jungle Cat" corresponds to my description of "mystery TV broadcast from early seventies featuring jaguars in the jungle as described above"?

Lino · #57 Post by **Lino** » Sat Dec 30, 2006 2:58 pm

Scharphedin2 wrote:...can anyone confirm that "Jungle Cat" corresponds to my description of "mystery TV broadcast from early seventies featuring jaguars in the jungle as described above"?

I wouldn't know but I found a review with pictures. Follow the link and see if you can recognize some of them.

Scharphedin2 · #58 Post by **Scharphedin2** » Sat Dec 30, 2006 3:12 pm

Excellent! That would be the one...

"The Jaguar... Savage Lord of the Amazon!"

Can't wait to see that again. Thanks Lino.

bufordsharkley · #59 Post by **bufordsharkley** » Tue Jan 02, 2007 4:05 pm

This is ridiculously cool. The Termite Terrace crew goofing off, in live-action. I had no idea this existed. (I think Bob Clampett is wearing the wig towards the end-- I recognized his face in a flash.)

Gregor Samsa · #60 Post by **Gregor Samsa** » Thu Jan 18, 2007 10:16 pm

Has anyone else here watched More Silly Symphonies? I imported the set last month and its a really interesting look at the development of Disney animation from the dawn of sound to the post-Snow White period. The first disc (1929-1932) for example shows how the Silly Symphonies developed from being almost plotless musical numbers with repetitive shots (a lot of these shorts have a scene with a menacing character advancing towards the camera, which is a convention also present in early Mickey Mouse cartoons) to having coherent stories and covering a variety of genres, something that comes through clearly on the second disc.

Saying that is not to diminish the worth of the early shorts however, which have a value of their own and often generate a hypnotic effect with their cycled movements. (Its also these cartoons that were among the ones first praised by the avant-garde) Furthermore, its possible to see how even the 1929-1930 cartoons anticipate later films. One example is in the charming Monkey Melodies, where the plot is interrupted by two crocodiles doing a soft shoe shuffle (animated by Norm Ferguson) that clearly looks forward to the 'Dance of the Hours' sequence in Fantasia.

Although many of the Technicolor Silly Symphonies were already included on the first set, this one includes cartoons that remain interesting and historically important, as with 'The Goddess of Spring's (1934) early attempt at realistic human animation or 'Merbabies' (1938) the only Disney short not animated by Disney staff. (It was farmed out to Harmon/Ising) One of my favourites was the 1935 short 'Cock o' the Walk' [a title that surely wouldn't fly nowadays], which combines a catchy soundtrack, early Bill Tytla animation, numerous Busby Berkeley references, romance and an adultery joke with panache, although the cartoons are wide-ranging enough that some will appeal more to different sensibilities.

Especially interesting is that compared to the first Silly Symphonies set this one mostly includes rarer or more controversial cartoons [and is in chronological order] which provide an alternate narrative of 1930s animation as practiced by Disney. While early Technicolor cartoons are usually illustrated by "Flowers and Trees" (1932) and its innocuous story of trees in love, the cartoon that immediately followed it ("King Neptune") is a pre-Code extravaganza that includes topless mermaids, gay stereotype pirates and a cruel and vindictive Neptune. [To summarise: Neptune sings about how jolly he is, then gets pissed off when pirates steal one of his mermaids and ends up sinking the ship with his bulk, presumably killing all the pirates so that the mermaids can return to pleasing their master.] Similarly, the set's final short Mother Goose Goes Hollywood is one of those Silly Symphonies (like 'Toby Tortoise Returns' or 'Three Little Wolves' from the first set) that is often described as 'un-Disney' in that its a witty series of Hollywood caricatures from Katharine Hepburn to the Marx Brothers. I personally think it raises the possibility that Disney's 'Golden Age' output shouldn't be considered in terms of the narrow 'Disney' classification that later emerged and still persists, but thats a whole other issue.

A final bonus to the set is that its the first Disney Treasures collection with a good range of audio commentaries, with something like 23 out of 38 cartoons having commentary tracks. Most of them are quite good, offering information on animators and alternate plots among other things. However, it does have the least informative commentary ever, in the form of Richard Sherman's discussion of "Three Orphan Kittens". While there's a lot to actually talk about with the cartoon, such as its production, its pre-Multiplane attempt at creating three-dimensional backgrounds or even it winning an Oscar, Sherman prefers to tell us how "cute and appealing" the kittens are, again and again and again. In short, its a really interesting series of cartoons.

Kinsayder · #61 Post by **Kinsayder** » Thu Mar 08, 2007 2:05 pm

From YouTube, a piece of animation history: Emile Cohl's Fantasmagorie (1908).

Wikipedia wrote:Cohl made "Fantasmagorie" from February to May or June 1908. This is considered the first fully animated film ever made. It was made up of 700 drawings, each of which was double-exposed, leading to a running time of almost two minutes. Despite the short running time, the piece was packed with material devised in a "stream of consciousness" style. It borrowed from Blackton in using a "chalk-line effect" (filming black lines on white paper, then reversing the negative to make it look like white chalk on a black chalkboard), having the main character drawn by the artist's hand on camera, and the main characters of a clown and a gentleman (this taken from Blackton's "Humorous Phases of Funny Faces"). The film, in all of its wild transformations, is a direct tribute to the by-then forgotten Incoherent movement. The title is a reference to the "fantasmograph", a mid-Nineteenth Century variant of the magic lantern that projected ghostly images that floated across the walls.

Also by Emile Cohl: The Hasher's Delirium (1910) & The Automatic Moving Company (1909)

neuro · #62 Post by **neuro** » Tue May 22, 2007 1:43 am

Some of Jim Henson's wonderful early work; I loved The Muppets as a kid, but who knew the man had this type of experimental work in him:

Limbo: The Organized Mind (1974)

Ripples (1967)

The Cube (1969)

Kinsayder · #63 Post by **Kinsayder** » Thu Jul 05, 2007 6:47 pm

I hadn't seen this for about 20 years, but I remember it vividly, an amazing piece of macabre animated expressionism:

Harpya (1979) - Raoul Servais

King Prendergast · #64 Post by **King Prendergast** » Wed Mar 05, 2008 1:20 am

Coonskin (Bakshi, 1975)

Does anyone know of any scholarly/academic writing on this blaxploitation (or critique thereof) classic?

Lino · #65 Post by **Lino** » Wed Mar 05, 2008 1:15 pm

On April, 3 MGM/Fox will be releasing the complete cartoons of The Ant and the Aardvark on DVD. Remember them?

There is a new book on Ralph Bakshi coming out soon. You might want to give it a try. I heard that Tarantino is a big fan of Coonskin and he even wrote an introduction to that book.

the dancing kid · #66 Post by **the dancing kid** » Wed Mar 05, 2008 2:00 pm

King Prendergast wrote:Coonskin (Bakshi, 1975)

Does anyone know of any scholarly/academic writing on this blaxploitation (or critique thereof) classic?

James Craig Holte, "Ethnicity and the Popular Imagination: Ralph Bakshi and the American Dream," from the journal MELUS, vol.8 n. 4, 1981.

It's actually about 'American Pop', but it covers Bakshi's other films for context, including 'Coonskin'. Holte has published a few articles on ethnicity and stereotypes in film and television, all of it apparently from the early eighties.

Fletch F. Fletch · #67 Post by **Fletch F. Fletch** » Fri Mar 28, 2008 1:56 pm

A typically outspoken Ralph Bakshi is interviewed by BlackBook magazine. It seems that there is a new book coming out about the man and his work in April. Sounds good.

HerrSchreck · #68 Post by **HerrSchreck** » Sun Mar 30, 2008 9:05 am

This may have been posted addressed earlier in the thread (still groggo) but has anyone copped a peek at the Cartoons That Time Forgot series focusing on Ub Iwerks? Along with Avery & the orig Popeye's (and a couple others) Iwerks is a dude who I'd love to have bundled up encyclopedically on my shelf.

Alphonso · #69 Post by **Alphonso** » Sun Mar 30, 2008 11:55 am

Berthold Bartosch's rare L'IdÃ©e (1932)

"Bartosch was one of the first persons to demonstrate animation could be poetic, when the film came out in 1932, the newspapers refered it has 'Masereel's L'idÃ©e' not recognizing all the painfull work Bartosch went trough. This is the solely surviving film of Bartosch, he later made Cosmos, a 109 minutes film, which the Gestapo destroyed. One of the greatest and most forgotten genius of animation together with Alexander AlexeÃ¯eff, whom so much liked his work." (source)

akaten · #70 Post by **akaten** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 4:51 pm

Been reading a wonderful book by Giannalberto Bendazzi - One Hundred Years of Cinema Animation, opening up so many avenues that I wish to explore.

One in particular jumps out at me, and I'm hoping someone here might know more about, its Kon Ichikawa's early animated work, a short entitled Kachikachi Yama (The Hare Gets Revenge Over the Raccoon) in 1939, that looks very much indebted to Walt Disney, and which he made himself; "I was the only one left, and I did everything, I would draw, animate, film and write the scripts."

After the war he directed a feature length animated puppet feature entitled Musume Dojoju (A Girl at Dojo's Temple, 1947). According to the entry (offers no sources sadly) Kon Ichikawa considered it his best work.

On to something else, anyone remember an animated show Mysterious Cities of Gold, looks to have been released in the UK, I believe it was a joint French, Japanese production from the early 80s, was only 5 when I saw the english dub early in the mornings, but it made a lasting impression on me, opening theme in particular makes me nostalgic for those days when I could actually get up at 5am.

tryavna · #71 Post by **tryavna** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 5:10 pm

akaten wrote:On to something else, anyone remember an animated show Mysterious Cities of Gold, looks to have been released in the UK, I believe it was a joint French, Japanese production from the early 80s, was only 5 when I saw the english dub early in the mornings, but it made a lasting impression on me, opening theme in particular makes me nostalgic for those days when I could actually get up at 5am.

Oh, yes, indeed! And so do dozens of my friends (folks on the border between Gen X and Gen Y). I'm sure that I saw all the episodes at some point or another, but for some reason, I never managed to see them all in order.

For your nostalgic pleasure.

BTW, do you also remember the show Belle and Sebastian, literally about a boy and his dog in the Pyrenees? The two shows are always partnered in my mind, and although I liked Cities better as a kid, I have a sneaking suspicion that B&S was probably the more sophisticated show.

Cold Bishop · #72 Post by **Cold Bishop** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 5:46 pm

tryavna wrote:BTW, do you also remember the show Belle and Sebastian, literally about a boy and his dog in the Pyrenees?

A-ha! So that is where they took there name from. And all this time I thought it was from Beauty and the Beast.

tryavna · #73 Post by **tryavna** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 5:55 pm

Cold Bishop wrote:
tryavna wrote:BTW, do you also remember the show Belle and Sebastian, literally about a boy and his dog in the Pyrenees?
A-ha! So that is where they took there name from. And all this time I thought it was from Beauty and the Beast.

Either that or the original book. The cartoon was based on a French children's novel. Considering the age of the band members, either is possible.

bollibasher · #74 Post by **bollibasher** » Mon Apr 07, 2008 1:52 pm

Lino wrote:Oh, and all of Trnka's movies are also available on shiny digital discs in Japan. So far, I've got two: Old Czech Legends and my personal favorite, Midsummer Night's Dream which I luckily got to see a couple of years back on the big screen. A treat, no less. The DVDs are also english subs free of course...

For reference, there seems to be a DVD of some of his shorts available here

xx

Kinsayder · #75 Post by **Kinsayder** » Mon Apr 07, 2008 5:00 pm

akaten wrote:On to something else, anyone remember an animated show Mysterious Cities of Gold, looks to have been released in the UK, I believe it was a joint French, Japanese production from the early 80s, was only 5 when I saw the english dub early in the mornings, but it made a lasting impression on me, opening theme in particular makes me nostalgic for those days when I could actually get up at 5am.

I was a big fan of Ulysses 31, which was by the same animators, I think, but maybe a year or two earlier. A very imaginative sci-fi cartoon series that used themes from Greek myth.

Animated Films

Coonskin (Bakshi, 1975)

Coonskin (Bakshi, 1975)

Re: Coonskin (Bakshi, 1975)