The Animation List Discussion & Suggestions (Genre Project)

[Mr Sausage]

By way of nothing except that you just mentioned him, is your name a reference to a Murakami novel?

[Dansu Dansu Dansu]

Yeah, I'm a huge Murakami junkie. I've even read his running book despite my obvious proclivity towards sitting.

Speaking of Murakami, his new one was just released hours ago in Japan. I'm envious.

[htshell]

I haven't been really following this thread though I need to take a few hours and go back through it thoroughly. From what I've skimmed I noticed that there are a few filmmakers who are either unmentioned or under-mentioned, so here is a list of them with perhaps a suggestion for each:

Sally Cruikshank (Quasi at the Quackadero)
Richard Condie (The Big Snit)
Robert Breer (Rubber Cement)
David Lynch (shorts like The Alphabet)
Raoul Servais (Chromophobia, Harpya)
Jiri Barta (The Club of the Laid Off)
Lawrence Jordan (Hamfat Asar)
Lis Rhodes (Dresden Dynamo)
Frank Mouris (Frank Film)
Bretislav Pojar (Pane, budeme si hrat)
Lillian Schwartz (Pixilation)
Yoji Kuri (Pop)
Al Jarnow (Shorelines)
George Griffin (Viewmaster)

Also there is lots of great stuff on the VHS compilation that the film distributor Picture Start released in 1991 called Tony Vegas' Animated Acid Flashback Tabu:
FILM DIRECTOR(S)
1. Life is Flashing (Before Your Eyes) ... Vincent Collins
2. Ace of Light ... Dennis Pies
3. Delivery Man ... Emiley Hubley
4. Reasons to be Glad ... Jeffrey Noyes Scher
5. Impetigo ... James Duesing
6. Lunch ... Michael Dwass
7. Parataxis ... Skip Battaglia
8. One Nation Under TV ... Ruth Peyser
9. Bus Stop ... Andrea Gomez
10. 200 ... Vincent Collins
11. Rapid Eye Movements ... Jeff Carpenter & Mary Lambert

There are lots more American animators especially from the 70s and 80s that I can't immediately recall right now, though Picture Start distributed a lot of them. I'm working on a program right now for a film festival that will incorporate some of the above works/animators and will hopefully focus on experimental animation in the film (aka pre-digital) era.

Also what about Cory Archangel's Clouds?

[Michael Kerpan]

Concurring with DDD's recommendation of Haibane Renmei, which is my favorite animated series. This one was written and visually designed by Yoshitoshi Abe. Although neither a director nor an animator, he is definitely the "auteur" of HR. The Japanese voice version is _markedly_ superior. My family has watched this so often we now dispense with subtitles (watching the original Japanese version -- which wasn't subbed). The score for this is quite good overall (mostly written by O'otani Kou, the same composer who scored the 1990s neo-Gamera films -- though the style here is quite different). Technically, some of the subcontracted animation isn't quite as good as the overall level of the series, but I would say this is a pretty minor issue (the budget here was higher than average for an animated series, but way below Ghibli levels).

[Gregory]

Sally Cruikshank (Quasi at the Quackadero)

Cruikshank is amazing. Once one accepts the fairly crude animation compared to some of her influences (it's still better than 99% of what professional animators these days are turning out), her vision really puts her across as a true throwback to the Fleischers and some other great things of that vintage.

[Saturnome]

a true throwback to the Fleischers and some other great things of that vintage.

Exactly! I already mentioned Face like a Frog somewhere on this topic, in comparaison to a Fleischer short. I can't think of many shorts creating that same kind of atmosphere.

[matrixschmatrix]

I've been watching through some of the Disney movies since we talked about it a while ago- so far, Dumbo, Sleeping Beauty, and Alice in Wonderland- and I've got to write them up properly later (along with Howl's Moving Castle and Nausicaa) but one of the things that really struck me that I hadn't noticed before is how Disney regularly folded in avant-garde elements into the movies. It's most noticeable in Dumbo (and as much of a narrative digression as the pink elephants sequence is, I think it's also the making of the movie for me) but it pops up in Sleeping Beauty, with the scrolling bird images during one of the early songs, and while Alice in Wonderland veers more towards the surreal, elements like the discordant music in the down-the-rabbithole sequence give it a feeling that breaks from the otherwise totally representative environment.

What I did remember, and what remains true, is the extremely lush, painterly quality of the early movies, something I think was never recaptured in the post-Little Mermaid renaissance- they feel less like a children's cartoon and more like a series of illustrations in a picture book in motion. It feels a bit oppressive at times, as it tends not to be a particularly dynamic form of animation (and really, I'm hard pressed to think of great action sequences in Disney, just as I'm hard pressed to think of a Miyazaki without them) but I think that slightly stultifying quality gives something like the pink elephants number greater force, and belies Disney's reputation for being hidebound.

[Timec]

Yeah, I've also been going through the early Disney films recently, and I've been surprised/entertained by the weird little digressions and unexpected stylistic choices that you almost certainly wouldn't see in their more recent creations. The Three Caballeros is a strange film anyway, but it's capped by a very bizarre and very entertaining musical dream (?) sequence (appropriately called "Donald's Surreal Reverie.")

I do quite enjoy several of their "renaissance" films, but I think overall I prefer the sheer weird creativity of their earliest works.

[knives]

I'm probably never going to get around to finishing these write-ups so since we're on the topic of Disney I might as well as post what I had typed up on the Disney canon.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Disney's folly, the one that (supposedly) started it all, and which no higher an authority than Sergei Eisenstein called the greatest film of all time has a lot of myths around and also many preconceived notions surrounding it as a result. In part I want to use this space (and the entire cannon) to highlight some animation elements that might not be picked up on by those more familiar with thinking from a live action perspective. After all I'm sure that most here are familiar with these films which makes it all the more easy to accommodate H to the language of animation. Hopefully I'll be able to make a terminology and roles guide later, but this should work out well to begin with.

First things first, no this isn't the first animated feature. It isn't even the first American animated feature. That role goes to none other than the Fleischer's Gulliver's Travels which went into production several months earlier. I'm sure that takes away a weight of responsibility in a way to better appreciate what is some really hardcore animation from such legendary animators as Ward Kimball and Grim Natwick. The later in particular is a name to remember as not only was he the original designer for Betty Boop, but in his time at Disney he more or less perfected the real human style as seen here with Snow White, the character he personally animated across this feature. As you can seen even to this day it is far easier to animate human characters in an exaggerated and bizarre way, but Disney (or at least early Disney) was in the most contradictory way a naturalist and as a result emphasized all throughout his films a reality that had never been attempted in animation up to this point. While I think it is actually in animals (particularly Bambi) this was finally accomplished Natwick's women is a powerful reminder of this with their faces being full of detail yet always realistic as it were. Even the body language for a character like Snow White has an extraordinary level of realistic movement to it making this fairy tale world something closer to home.

Of course Natwick wasn't the only animator doing this though he seemed to be the only one aiming for the Zola tradition of naturalism (it was probably not coincidental he was also one of the few actually educated in the arts). Take Joe Grant's Queen and Witch designs which while being more cartoonish than Natwick's work transposes via body language and clothing turns in a naturalistic design giving as Disney himself said life to the character. Of course the real heroes of the naturalism is appropriately enough the background animators like Samuel Armstrong and future Chuck Jones layout artist Maurice Nobel. While typically being dead animation the backgrounds have a strong three dimensional sense to them fully lived in and structurally fascinating and detailed. Of course none of this, even the smallest rock, would come to pass without Albert Hurter. Note how I am focusing on Hurter rather than acknowledged director David Hand. That probably indicates the differences of mediums more than anything else. Now of course Hand had a big Hand in the direction of the film, but that had more to do with movement and placement than anything else. You could say that Hand was more the mis-en-scene controller than anything else. Even then though there was sequence directors such as Ben Sharpsteen under him who oversaw the mis-en-scene for individual moments.

Going back to Hurter though he was the production designer for the film detailing the looks for everything in the film drawing all of the inspirational sketches which would form the design of the film and at least in this case was given authorial control over final designs too. He was probably also the oldest animator at Disney going all the way back to Barre studio in 1916. Very little of Hurter's actual work wound up in films as they were often too strange and dark to fit with the friendly image of Disney, but in a way that gave him more freedom to experiment than any other animator at Disney. Unfortunately the last major project Hurter would work on (to give an idea of what his sketches were often like) was The Night on Bald Mountain segment of Fantasia. He died of rheumatism soon after. I highly recommend Ted Sears compilation "He Drew As He Pleased" to see more of his work. I don't believe it is in print at this point though. All of this really just goes back to say Eisenstein was probably right.

Fantasia
Started as a way to restart Mickey's popularity while also giving Disney an excuse with the even at this time legendary Leopold Stokowski Fantasia quickly ballooned into an ambitious multi-year project that arguably was never completed though Disney has since made several successors including a legitimate sequel. Composed of seven sequences with a few inbetween spots including live action segments shot by none other than James Wong Howe this became not just a very personal showcase for Walt, but every animator and director working at Disney. Things even got so far as Disney hiring forum favorite Oskar Fischinger to supervise some of the more experimental pieces (sadly he would wind up quitting for lack of artistic freedom).

After a simple introduction by Deems Taylor (whose voice is sadly no longer with us) we get what is in many ways the most shocking part of the movie and the one with Fischinger's hands most clearly on. This is also where his disagreements with Disney reached their head. Disney and animator Cy Young had fallen in love with Len Lye's A Colour Box and for years had tried to develop their own version of that before handing the project to Fischinger. During the collaboration of the three many ideas including making the film in 3D were worked on and rejected. Eventually Young who was never credited as director came to a compromise between Disney's and the already exited Fischinger's vision that is uniquely unlike either man's work.

Next is probably musically speaking the most famous sequence, The Nutcracker Suite which takes the known narrative of the piece and tosses it in favour of an exploration of the seasons. Samuel Armstrong is also credited with directing this section, but that doesn't really mean much with people like Art Babbitt, Jules Engel, and John Hench having a larger influence. Engel in particular serving as choreographer does amazing work here giving even the most ordinary of objects a bizarre sort of personality and twitchiness. Even more than the actual ballet segment this is like sitting in the theater for a dance.

Going from one piece of fame to an entirely different one we get to what rightly or wrongly Pauline Kael called, "grotesquely kitschy," The Sorcerer's Apprentice. Despite being the main reason for the project it is easily the least interesting being a fairly straight forward short with some cute comedy and a Disney cameo. What really makes this one work is the expressive interpretation of Dukas' song which might be Stokowski's best work on the film. It's impossible to even just hear the name without his version of the song entering into the brain which is more than can be said of the next segment.

The Rites of spring is without question the worst part of the film taking a terrible song reworking it to be completely without feeling and placing it on some lifeless animation that tries too hard to be serious and real. Even the legendary John Hubley, co-founder of UPA studios, who worked as art director on the segment had to admit that it was highly compromised due to Disney's fears of protests by creationists. Basically the only good thing to come from the segment is the wonderful if scientifically wonky fight between the T-Rex and Stegosaurus.

After that bore a break really is needed and thankfully Disney gives it in a pleasant if 'kitschy' form with an explanation of the soundtrack which despite not having him work on it is probably the most Fischinger-esque part of the film. It's short and sweet as you'd expect from Ben Sharpsteen and David Hand and serves as a nice calm before the storm.

In an odd mirror effect the next segment based on the Pastoral Symphony does a similar reorganizing to The rites of Spring, but to far greater effect. The animation style handled by Hamilton Luske and Ford Beebe of all people is round and cartoonish which plays to the general light atmosphere of the piece though as expected it makes the climax feel slightly off. This is also the segment with the most animation mistakes probably a result of money running out. The next segment also serves as a mirror to it's timeline equivalent with The Dance of the Hours being largely a straightforward Disney cartoon played silent. There's not much left to say on it. You'll love it as much as you love 'grotesque kitsch'.

Finally though we get our greatest mirror in the twin segments of Night on Bald Mountain and Ave Marie. The Mussorgsky adaptation is the stuff of legend with amazingly detailed animation filling the mis-en-scene to Tati levels as everything moves and mutates. This may come as no shock once the master of the short is revealed: Wilfred Jackson who I may so humbly suggest is the most talented person to have ever worked at Disney. Here he gives something shockingly different from his usual Disney personified as we get a horror show of deep purples and bright reds. Even though many people worked on this short everything known about it is Jackson. He even managed to pose as the villainous Chernabog after Bela Lugosi was found to be not scary enough by animator Bill Tytla.

Dumbo
After two high profile failures commercially if not entirely critically Disney scales things back in terms of scope if not artistic effort in what may very well be the company's greatest effort in any medium. Ben Sharpsteen is once again put in charge taking what the group has learned and applies these epic techniques to a story of such intimacy that it manages to become the best paced despite the very short run time of just over an hour.

That's really an act of deception though as right away things are made far more difficult than ever with the film being painted with watercolours, the second of only three times in the company's history, instead of traditional inking processes. While easily ruined this choice proves it's worth with every gorgeous frame of full warm colours painted in loving detail. It almost feels terrible to single out any one artist given how perfect and uniform the final product is, as if it were made in a burning flash, but if I had to choose it would likely be Wilfred Jackson who's hand is all over every final design in the way that typical way of creating dramatic detail from round cute balls. I've spent enough time on him though so how about obscure Bill Tytla whose amazing work on Dumbo here gives an entirely more life to a mute character than a million artists have given to a million lines of dialogue. Without question Tytla's contribution here is one of the greatest in all of animation history. Of course Dumbo isn't his only contribution even if it is his magnum opus. The so called greatest character animator also did Grumpy in Snow White, Stromboli in Pinnochio, and perhaps most famously of all Chernabog a.k.a. the devil character in Fantasia. All of these efforts show a wonderful talent in pantomime that really is a school in itself in animated acting.

This all doesn't even go into the hardest aspect of production though, the animators strike midway through production that left a mark on Disney and his company to his dying day. Tytla and 300 other animators left production after the firing of animator Art Babbit for union activities. That speaks nothing to the quality of the film though so it really should be left to an other day.

Bambi
And now we reach the film that created a million hippies. After the enormous success of Dumbo Disney tried to test their luck by taking the elements of that film that made it a financial success and pushing their experimentation to an entirely different realm. Artistically this may have been the smartest move, but with the American entry into WWII it was commercial suicide. The big signifier here that things are different is how completely on the oust Ben Sharpsteen is not even getting an animation job (he was still doing great work elsewhere in the company though). Instead we get David Hand's drastically different approach for the first time since the first time with help from some legends like James Algar and Samuel Armstrong amongst others.

While keeping with the cute style Disney had perfected up to that point the real point of greatness in the film is how hard it tries to deampromorphize its characters allowing for some almost documentary like (relatively speaking) designs and actions. It brings the language of live action cinema to animation for the first time ever (though I prefer Tashlin's similar experiments). This actually causes something of a fight within the movie though as the natural inclination by the studio to follow the Wilfred Jackson mode of animation clashes with Hand's higher aspirations making the pacing a bit odd as scenes transition without rhyme or reason from very dark moods to something that wouldn't be out of place in a silly symphony (for example look at the transition to hopping birds and joy after the film's most famous scene).

The one area where the film is always successful though is in its backgrounds which look like Andrew Wyeth paintings. responsibility for this largely rests on the feet of Dick Anthony a visual effects artist who did the backgrounds for nearly all of Disney's features up to Sleeping Beauty at which point he possibly shot himself in the woods after being laid-off (there are company documents on a Dick Anthony committing suicide, but no hard evidence that they are one in the same). All the same he proves himself here as a master here adapting perfectly to the new style and presenting a strong understanding of the sensibility of the piece. Simply put with no Dick Anthony Disney would not be as we understand it as.

Saludos Amigos---(best DVD Walt & El Grupo R1)
The war really screwed with Disney's potential to make feature film so after Bambi until Cinderella in 1950 the company put out exclusively portmanteau features starring with this propaganda film that was at least partially funded by the Unites States government as a way to strengthen relations with South American countries. Mixing documentary footage and four animated segments the film proves to be very odd, but that doesn't permit it from being great. In fact in some respects from an animated perspective this is one of Disney's most successful efforts.

You read that right, this little piece of propaganda finds the Disney animators completely out of their comfort zone to the degree where Disney's hand is nowhere to be seen. The documentary segments are fairly routine and are more interesting as a reflection of the American view of Latin American culture than anything else. What's really exciting is the four animated segments which remain mostly unfiltered and benefit from the larger budget than Donald typically gets.

Speaking of our first segment is the Donald starring travelogue Lake Titicaca which primarily takes the form of one of those Goofy how to shorts thankfully as it prevents the sort of colonialist implications that these sorts of stories usually hold. Its also ridiculously hilarious as long as like any sane person you love seeing Donald flustered. Next is a silly and not terribly good attempt at cuteness with Pedro the Plane's only cinematic adventure. The story is a pretty basic little train that could type of thing that doesn't really matter much. Thankfully Hamilton Luske and his team give us some great visuals and stunning layout work by Ken Anderson. Next we go back to classic Disney comedy Goofy replacing Donald in the most hilarious short of the film. That's none too shocking with Jack Kinney behind the wheel. Starting as a writer he graduated to directing at the dawn of the decade specializing in Goofy cartoons, but doing just about anything. Somewhat humourously also this is the only segment with major on screen dialogue with most everything in the previous segments being conveyed primarily through narration. It should also be noted that the primary animator of the short is Wolfgang Reitherman who after Disney's death became the primary creative force of the film section of the company directing all of the features between 1961-77. Whether that's a compliment or a knock on him is entirely up to you. Finally we get to the film's most famous segment and the introduction of José Carioca. Starting with an animator creating Brazil to that song which Gilliam later made a laughing stock out of we eventually get a bizarre little adventure in which Donald and Jose try to get along with the help of music. It's an acid bath of pure animation that's slightly uncharacteristic of Wilfred Jackson, but all the evidence needed to show that he is the best Disney has ever gotten. sadly it ends all too soon.

When I said earlier that this was one of Disney's most successful animated films I really did mean that in terms of animation only. Unlike previous efforts there's not much cinematic here with a simple point and shoot camera work. So we don't get anything as radical as Pinocchio's panels. Instead we get stretches and expressions that are actions of pure animation, but more on that next.

The Three Caballeros
After the success of Aquarela do Brasil (if not the rest of Saludos Amigos) it was decided to bring back Donald and José in a feature adventure this time focusing on Mexico. The film on the whole was structured more like a typical animated feature with Harold Young of Universal monster movie fame handling the documentary aspects while Norman Ferguson headed the animation (with help from several notable artists most notably Clyde Geronimi who can be blamed for Sleeping Beauty's style amongst other notable films. Ferguson himself was primarily an animator who used cartoonish physics and exaggerated expressions to convey drama making him something of a predecessor to Richard Lester. His other major directing credit is the Dance of the Hours from Fantasia.

The film tries something of a plot with a story about Donald's birthday, but it's largely stream of conscious insanity furthering what the final segment of the previous film had only suggested. The propaganda while still here is almost invisible during the animated segments as Ferguson allows his animators (particularly Ward Kimball and Les Clark) to do whatever comes to mind from the first fourth wall breaking penguin shot all the way to a climax made entirely of psychedelia. It almost becomes impossible to talk about the film in terms of narrative cinema and instead becomes the best thing outside of Fischinger and the like to talk about what animation means in the context of a medium against live action (or if we want to go all the way with that thought process one form of animation against the other) This makes it while possibly not the best Disney film the most important to see from an animation perspective.

This is aided by how diverse the animation is. While primarily done in the house style there are many excursions into different looks suggesting different emotions and thought processes. As each of the caballeros are introduced the film gets more and more bizarre and the styles get further and further away from what's expected until they begin to loose shape entirely and the film looses itself to surreal and even during the occasional segment something bordering on dadaist lunacy.

Make Mine Music
From this point forward until the end of the war Disney, which could no longer afford features, would split their feature releases between Fantasia inspired anthology films of popular music and bifurcated long shorts. The first of these has had a long and annoying history on home video that I feel obligated to talk about. The first segment, The Martins and Coys, under most releases has been cut out completely with a few minor alterations done elsewhere. To get the full experience you have to head to Europe and even there the Scandinavian is the best bet for a completely unaltered version.

This is an especially frustrating film to talk about since so much of it is only vaguely credited if at all so it will be more difficult than usual to discuss the great work that went into making this film. Instead I'll just do a general breakdown of each segment. To start with let's go to that 'rustic ballad' I already mentioned The Martins and the Coys. The music and story isn't terribly interesting but the animation sure is. The short strikes me as a Tex Avery knock-off and I'll certainly take the opportunity to even if just by proxy talk about his animation (because for me it is certainly not his humour that makes him great). It's a short of great contrast with hyper detailed comedic people with a lax layout and background design that Hawley Pratt would perfect a decade later. This gives an exaggerated feel to the proceedings even though it is played fairly small giving rise to a comedic epic.

Much less interesting is the next segment based on the Blue Bayou. The animation itself was originally intended for Fantasia giving a much different feel from the rest of the proceedings though even the music choice which is original for the film is unique. Pretty much everything that could be said about has already been said by me. The next jazzy interlude is far better with Benny Goodman doing a light take on All the Cats Join In. Given the designs and everything else I feel absolutely comfortable saying this is Jack Kinney's work and as a result even in just the animation this is the most vibrant and compelling segment. In addition with its John McGrew sense of space (most likely aided by Ward Kimball) and comic book sense of hooliganism this is one of the most daring pieces in the whole of Disney. In fact it is so radical I'm surprised Disney released it at all and no wonder why it has been often censored.

In a radical change of pace we get Without You though unlike the previous dramatic piece it works well with the whole and solo. It is a very short piece that manages to not feel lightweight. Part of this is without a doubt due to the song choice which is perfectly emotional, but even in the animation which is primarily done with still animation. The follow up to this is another comic retelling of American folk with Casey at the Bat. There's not much here to distinguish it from the Martins and Coys so I'll move on again.

Two Silhouettes is a nice enough short with an idea if in the hands of somebody like Norman McLaren could make one of the greatest shorts of all time. As is it is pleasant enough of a sketch if not one living up to its potential. Next is the big one Peter and the Wolf. Fairly rightfully made into the most popular segment not only does it do great justice to Prokofiev's grand poem, but also follows through on Disney's relationship to Eisenstein in the best possible way. Winnie the Pooh himself explains how in a charming opening that leads into a strange melding on animation with the soft more Disney-esque designs of the comedic segments being used in a heightened way for more effective drama than the supposed artistic segments. Its a daring threat of violence applied to an unsuspecting design reminiscent of Pinocchio and almost as good. Holloway's narration does begin to grate though and it would have been a greater short had they kept him to just the introduction.

And now the Goodman Quartet presents us with After You've Gone which has oddly become something of a mascot for the film. It's not as great as it could be, but as a Disney film built on the joys of free association in the arts it's a great deal of fun which doesn't overstay its welcome. Not even The Andrew Sisters at their best, which this is surely not, could make Johnny Fedora and Alice Bluebonnet any good so I won't even try instead skipping forth to the end of the film with The Whale Who Wanted to Sing at the Met a.k.a. Willy the Operatic Whale. I hope you like whale puns too because this very light and predictable short offers not much more than that being completely unambitious and merely enjoyable though Nelson's singing is grade A.

Lady and the Tramp
With the next step forward Disney once again secures themselves by going smaller on a story level while jumping several steps forward artistically. This sometimes too cute romance was the first of their widescreen films and it is probably for this risk that they went back to the Bambi school of animation and it's an interesting contrast between that film artistically and what a decade of animation advances could do. The film has a more realistic style despite being so smooth. Part of that might be because of the ability to afford more frames per second and detail to those frames, but likely the culprit is advances with inking particularly with regards to colouring. They manage to really convey paintings here without having to alter the animation style as they did in olden days (to give a good example compare the scene with the rat here with the close up of the hunter back in '39). There's become no need for a break to the audience allowing for the illusion of reality better than ever.

Of course to go back to the use of widescreen, most of it is straightforward composition with characters standing sideways and building character. If anything this just shows how quick the Disney animators were to learn from their live action counterparts. Though they do make a compelling use of depth of field imitating live action in a way very rarely seen in animation. In fact I'd argue that for better or worse this film's triumph is in making animation live action. By all accounts this is the result of Reitherman who while primarily tasked with 'directing' the climax with the rat had a strong influence over the production taking some of Wilfred Jackson's more Disney-esque designs and playing with them through models and other 'living' conceits.

101 Dalmatians
After the noticeable financial failure of Sleeping Beauty Disney had to scale back in a big way for the next few features and so despite reportedly hating the look Disney went to the then new Xerox process of animation which took away from the round soft look of Disney animation to a harsher scratchy angular look. That wasn't the only major change either as to speed up the process of making an animated feature the company had more animators doing a team job with the exception of villain Cruella De Vil who was expertly animated by Marc Davis as a swan song before working full time on the park. His feverish musically inclined style is truly perfect for the character and breaths some much needed life into a film that is perhaps too small. Other major works by him include Tinkerbell, Malificent, and Mr. Toad.

An other key way that they scaled back is with the aspect ratio going so far as to paint a full academy frame (though it was usually shown in 1.78). Two of the usual group of directors return with Wolfgang Reitherman replacing Wilfred Jackson. They slip comfortably back into such a full ratio, but it definitely seems uninspired in its framing after the massive boon of Sleeping Beauty. The script too is pretty meh with poor characterization even with Pongo the closest we get to a lead hurting the heist nature of the film. That said as usual the backing characters particularly the barnyard three and the goons do a good enough job injecting personality into the film to make the climax really work. A lesser effort that will at least entertain the kids.

The Sword in the Stone
With a follow up that equally lacks narrative weight and misses the novelty of the new style The Sword in the Stone in memorable almost exclusively for the music which is the first by long time Disney collaborators The Sherman brothers. Though even on this front they would later do far better work for the company. In that respect this is the first Disney film without any ambition. There is nothing to prove and nothing to experiment with which is made all the more unfortunate considering how enjoyable the source material is. That said the film is enjoyable and could be considered as an experiment in authorship as it is the first Disney feature to be directed by one person and even Disney's involvement was minimal as his interest was in growing the parks rather than animation. The man tasked more or less as being the new Disney was Wolfgang Reitherman (one of the nine old men) who I've already talked about a little. It's not the best first impression, but one that perfectly defines his reign within the company. That said there's a ton of personality in the animation, maybe even more than before with Bill Peet's Merlin being the prime example of this.

Based heavily on Disney (that master sorcerers seemed to always remind animators of Walt Disney probably says everything) with features obscured by a ragged beard there's not a second in which Merlin isn't tricking the audience with a weird sense of anger coming from the structure of his design, but a comedic looseness to his expression. Contradictions like this spring up all the time within Merlin's design which better expresses his fascinating character from the book than anything in his narrative characterization or even Karl Swenson's funny performance. Peet wasn't normally an animator (only being credited on two other films), but what little show he gave was always great. That's not to diminish his work as a writer which was truly fantastic. Providing ideas like crazy nearly all of the great one offs amongst the shorts could be given to him. This ties well into the battle between Merlin and Mim which is the closest the film gets to any sort of suspense and story interest. Animators typically love the hell out of it, but I find it to be merely okay as with the rest of the film (which I swear is not as bad as I'm making it out to be). Certainly she provides more danger than say the wolf and that fish, but she provides nothing to the story just being another episode that adds nothing to the characters or film. That would be okay if the film treated it in kind, but instead it treats the scene as the important climax. With narrative that makes no sense, but as animation I suppose it could work.

If there is a point to the film one could argue that it is with recognizable transformation with much of the film being dedicated to morphing characters as far from themselves while keeping character. In that sense I feel the colour coding is a bit of a cheat, but even that aside the film works well in retaining character even when morphing shape sometimes within just the blink of the eye. So as climax in this context the Mim fight makes perfect sense and the film looks all the better as a result (even if I believe my hypothesis to be an accidental aspect).

[matrixschmatrix]

Still on the Disney features kick myself-

The single most distracting element of Snow White, for me, is the almost faceless rotoscoped look Snow White and the Prince have- they look like they come from a different universe from the rest of cast, and while I can imagine it working ok in its own context, they look faceless and characterless in the context of the more traditionally animated dwarves, and the spectacularly powerful look of the Queen. That said, I liked it more than I remember liking it last time I saw it; the dance with the dwarves is a genuine delight, and some of the best original music I recall hearing in a Disney movie.

It feels a bit padded in the beginning (it takes forever for the dwarves to actually meet Snow White in that scene with them being afraid to go upstairs) and the Snow White as the dwarves' creepy mom/maid/object of adoration thing is pretty uncomfortable, but to me it makes up for it with the uncharacteristically dark stuff at the end, the Queen's transformation and genuinely freaky delighted cackling at her own evil, her kicking the bucket into the skeleton in the dungeon, and the obvious implication that the vultures are going to eat the Queen's corpse at the end there- it doesn't feel sanded down, in the way I associate with Disney. Dunno if this will be a list contender, since the historical context doesn't necessarily do it for me, but I'm glad to have rewatched it.

By comparison, Sleeping Beauty is goddamn absolutely making my list- they go on and on in the features about how they were going for the effect of a living tapestry, and to me, they nailed it- it doesn't move all that much, but each individual frame feels as composed as an artwork in its own right. Then too, the Techniscope format gives it a real pop, and Maleficent is something like an evolution of Nosferatu's use of sharp angles and shadows, and she moves around like Batman in The Long Halloween. It has a force to it, the way that Leone movies do, and there's no deflating cutsie shit- I actually really enjoyed the godmothers and the business with the kings, and the dorky prince feels adequate, if a bit perfunctory. The music's really impressive in this one, too, fitting classical music to imagery the way Fantasia had. And the ending, with the thorns and the dragon and so forth, is up there with Night on Bald Mountain level of powerful animation. I think what makes a good Disney movie for me is the Hawks formula of three great scenes and no bad ones- and a Disney movie that has the level of visual power of Sleeping Beauty without lumping in either an impossible-to-ignore ugly message, painful sub-Broadway songs, or irritating cutesy sidekicks, that's more or less automatically pretty great.

(Incidentally, there's a pretty great short on the Sleeping Beauty blu, Four Artists Paint One Tree- the Disney animators come across as unbelievably square, but their art is actually really cool, and it works as a process documentary for a difficult-to-capture process)

[knives]

Honestly I think I would like Sleeping Beauty far more if they had kept to the original idea of making it a film without dialogue. Too bad Disney got spooked so early.

[matrixschmatrix]

Eh, I can see where the bantering godmothers are an imposition of the Disney house style into something that could feel more elevated, but a.) I actually find them pretty charming, as they're cute without being infantile- they remind me of a Miyazaki grandmother in that respect- and b.) the strength of the more elevated stuff around it is enough to satisfy me. Without them, it would be virtually dialog free, at least in terms of anything load-bearing.

[Gregory]

When I saw Sleeping Beauty on blu, my jaw was on the floor for how lovely it looked (thanks largely to Eyvind Earle, who was one of the artists in the 4 Artists short mentioned above). Unfortunately, the designs, colors, and backgrounds are more impressive than the animation per se. It's the effect of having hired people who can paint amazing things but can't really employ a coherent style of animation. This long after Snow White, it still seems like Disney just couldn't mesh its more realistic characters and the cartoony ones have it look like they exist in the same world. The film also fails in the way that so many Disney features fail for me: the absence of any compelling or interesting characters, with the possible exception of Maleficent, and even she is mostly made up of a lot of stock-villain qualities. The three fairies, like so many of Disney's characters don't make any lasting impression, and Aurora and the Prince—at the center of the film's action—are about as interesting as Barbie and Ken. The art direction and the great tale being adapted are practically all that holds this together.
The Disney feature I like the most is Pinocchio, which is a fine adaptation of the original story because even though there were substantial changes, what the creators put in place of the original is every bit as compelling and fascinating to see. The shortcoming of Disney's other fairy tale adaptations is that, in Sleeping Beauty for example, they change and greatly simplify, even sanitize the old story, losing the earthiness (in more than one sense of the word) that I find in the Grimm classic, but offer little in its place aside from a lot of really gorgeous eye candy.

[Michael Kerpan]

Pinocchio is also my number 1 animated Disney film (and has been for decades), followed by Dumbo (which shot up markedly after my recent rewatching on Blu-Ray). Snow Whit (probably) comes in third. I always consider Sleeping Beauty pretty but rather inert -- and _thought_ I preferred Cinderella. Recent re-watching of Cinderella sent its stock tumbling. Fantasia leaves me ambivalent -- I found the "making of" feature on the Blu-Ray more enthralling than the film itself.

I can't quite fit in some Disney stuff I liked a lot when last seen (when my children were young) -- like the earliest Winnie-the-Pooh films and Jungle Book. I keep waiting for Blu-Ray releases of these...

[matrixschmatrix]

I agree that there's an inert quality to Sleeping Beauty, though I think that's something I find common to a lot of early Disney- the lush animation seems to make it a series of stills rather than something with a real sense of motion, and the actual action always feels a bit perfunctory- and certainly, it's pretty hard to care about our theoretical leads (though I think I like Aurora more than Cinderella or Snow White, if only for the really beautiful scene with her singing in the woods.) But for me, those are absolutely endemic problems to Disney (and a lot of other Disney inspired work, actually) and it's hard to care in the face of the awe inspiring visual style of the thing. Maleficent doesn't really need to do or say much, it's gotten across in the way she is drawn and particularly in the flow of her cloak, and the lines of her movement- it really does feel like expressionist cinema to me.

[bamwc2]

Now that I've submitted a 60s list, I'm jumping into this one. I'll write up a couple of spotlights later on, but first I have a question. I doubt that it would make my top 50, but what do the members of the board think about including something like Dangerous When Wet? It's 95 minutes with around five of them featuring an animated Tom and Jerry. If this could count, then why not a film with an even shorter animated sequence like Annie Hall? I'm not trying to be pedantic here, but I am genuinely interested in what could qualify. If we're allowing stop motion (which I think the first post allows for), then could we vote for King Kong or Jason and the Argonauts?

Also, I know that posting this will win me no friends here, but I'm going to stick with feature length animation only. The process of making a short versus a feature strikes me as too dissimilar, and I feel as though I would be doing both an injustice if I ranked them together.

Oh, and thanks for the suggestions earlier in the thread. I haven't heard of many of them, but look forward to the discoveries!

[swo17]

So...you'll consider a feature film with only five minutes of animation, but not something like Tale of Tales?

[MichaelB]

Also, I know that posting this will win me no friends here, but I'm going to stick with feature length animation only. The process of making a short versus a feature strikes me as too dissimilar, and I feel as though I would be doing both an injustice if I ranked them together.

The nature of the medium is such that many of the greatest animators ever have only made shorts (Len Lye, Tex Avery, Yuri Norstein, countless others) and in a great many more cases the feature-length work is noticeably inferior to their finest shorts (Chuck Jones, Jan Švankmajer, the Quays).

So it seems wildly perverse to me to exclude work on the grounds of running time - you'd be behaving like that guy in Hannah and her Sisters who's only interested in paintings if they physically fit the intended spaces on his walls. And if you've seen that film, you'll doubtless remember Max von Sydow's reaction.

In fact, I'd argue that if you genuinely feel that animated features and shorts are a fundamentally different medium, then you'd be better off sticking to shorts.

[bamwc2]

No, I doubt that I would include any of the films that I mentioned in the previous post on my final list with the possible exception of King Kong. I was just trying to understand the limits of what could be chosen, and I now see that, that particular question was answered earlier in the thread (I read the whole thread half-asleep last night and must have forgotten).

As for the "perversity" of my self-imposed limitations, I will not deny that. Unfortunately, I have a highly perverse brain. As I've mentioned in the forum before, I have obsessive compulsive disorder, and not in that "I like things a certain way so I joke about having OCD" kind of way, but rather as in the "I've spent the better part of the last decade in intense therapy and taking high doses of medication" kind of way. I realize that excluding shorts is completely irrational, but the rational and irrational parts of my brain aren't exactly on speaking terms. For whatever reason there's something in me (probably the same thing that used to make me drive home from work in the middle of the day to make sure that my door was locked) that screams bloody murder at the thought of grouping a seven minute long Looney Tune alongside a series of 80 minute plus films.

And yes, Michael, I am aware of how great animated shorts can be. Remember, I reviewed the BFI Švankmajer set at your request a few years back on Beaver? Actually, I have you to thank for turning me on to his work, and at least two of his films will likely be on my list.

[zedz]

Also, I know that posting this will win me no friends here, but I'm going to stick with feature length animation only. The process of making a short versus a feature strikes me as too dissimilar, and I feel as though I would be doing both an injustice if I ranked them together.

The nature of the medium is such that many of the greatest animators ever have only made shorts (Len Lye, Tex Avery, Yuri Norstein, countless others) and in a great many more cases the feature-length work is noticeably inferior to their finest shorts (Chuck Jones, Jan Švankmajer, the Quays).

So it seems wildly perverse to me to exclude work on the grounds of running time - you'd be behaving like that guy in Hannah and her Sisters who's only interested in paintings if they physically fit the intended spaces on his walls. And if you've seen that film, you'll doubtless remember Max von Sydow's reaction.

In fact, I'd argue that if you genuinely feel that animated features and shorts are a fundamentally different medium, then you'd be better off sticking to shorts.

I was just about to say exactly the same thing. I think the presumption of greater artistry in animation should probably work in the opposite direction, since almost all feature length animation must, of necessity, take production shortcuts that shorts needn't. If I were being argumentative, I could sort of justify a list that excludes features entirely, but the opposite? No way.

And doesn't it strike the original poster as a little screwy that they're prepared to vote for five minutes of (mediocre) animation if they're surrounded by a whole lot of irrelevant live action, but not if they come without the alibi?

[swo17]

If I were being argumentative, I could sort of justify a list that excludes features entirely, but the opposite? No way.

Even without arbitrary restrictions, my own top 50 is only going to be maybe 10% features. There's no way I could come up with anywhere near 50 feature-length animated films that I like enough to include on a list like this.

[matrixschmatrix]

Haha, I should say that I honestly (though very briefly) considered restricting this project to feature lengths, on the grounds that I often find it extraordinarily difficult to have a conversation about a short- particularly a single short that's intended to be purely comedic, as opposed to an avant-garde artsy one or a particular Looney Tunes director or whatever. I also like the idea of coming up with 50 truly great animated features, just as a challenge- you could blow through enough shorts to make a list in a day, really, but given the expense and frequent shittiness of full features, it would be a hell of a difficult thing to hit the mark. That said, my internal debate was short lived, both because it does seem like a wildly artificial restriction for a medium that's pretty clearly built more on shorts than on features, and also because I was afraid I would be internet murdered.

I'm still finding that, however many shorts I watch, I have difficulty talking about a lot of them, though that may also derive from my years of experience in passively watching cartoons as a kid.

[knives]

I'm assuming you're talking about Looney Tune type stuff more so there say the Quays. In those cases I find it best to talk about the animation itself and maybe a little of the joke craft with a complete ignoring of the story or what have you which is usually just a set up for a series of jokes to begin with. Like, right now I'm revisiting the Jones Tom and Jerry cartoons (so much better than the Hanna and Barbera turds) and I'm continually amazed at the new ways in which Jones expresses emotion as well as motion. Just a flick of a whisker or turn of the brow can build so many ideas. There's also these fuzzy little lines in walking he encourages that a guy like Ben Washam exploits to the finest detail which is astonishing. It gets all the better because like in a short such as Snowbody Loves Me everyone knows how much external motion to carry the characters. So we get Tom running across some house as a feral blur yet Jerry diving into the cheese is a solid motion barely leaving a puff of smoke with all the grace that can be managed under that speed.

[matrixschmatrix]

Fair enough, but I think one of the things I'm finding challenging in this project is getting the language to talk about animation properly, since it's different than how you would talk about something live action, and that's exacerbated in a short that's about craftsmanship as much as storytelling or character or whatever. Obviously avant garde stuff is a different kettle of fish.

On a different note, has anyone seen the StudioCanal Cagliostro blu? Seems like it'd be worth picking up, if only because the US dvd is so pricey anyway, but if it's lousy I'll hold off.

[knives]

This is beginning to make me think I should have followed through on my thought of making an animation terms for dummies guide. I've just been so busy with work stuff that I haven't had time to follow through on any of the points. What's really hard is that especially with American animation the importance of terms varies wildly. For instance while at Termite Terrace a director, generally speaking, is a director in how we understand the term that's not true at most places like Fleischer (and later Famous) the director is more like a supervising producer ala Selznick. Instead to get an autuerist sense at these sorts of places look at who the head animator or even just top credited animator is. Likewise while there's no cinematographer there are layout artists who often times are more important than the directors. They determine a lot of what a film looks like. This is most clear with Friz Freleng who radically changed his style once he promoted Hawley Pratt to layout artist.