Art that is this narrowly conceived, that does not look outside its closed doors to either the real world or a wide assortment of other artists has no humanity to it. There is no opinion, no comment on the world. it's just product. Product made under the guidance of pure fear and distrust of anything remotely creative.
When a whole era and society degrades to the point where everything is blind absorbtion or stealing, then the art and culture gets more and more primitive. Eventually everything degrades to no style or substance at all.
Skill declines and is replaced by superficial imitation or sheer nondescript blandness, ideas disappear, humanity dissolves.
Stuff just happens arbitrarily, blandly at great expense so that corporations can feed the masses with ground faceless product until the executives eventually bankrupt their companies and retire with giant bonuses. [Link]
Over on Z Recommends today we reviewed Music Tales, an album of drawn-and-quartetered versions of classical compositions used to sound-illustrate fairy tales and children's stories. A subsequent interview led us briefly to Warner Brothers' fantastic operatic adaptations, "The Long-Haired Hare" and "What's Opera, Doc?" which have Rossini and Wagner spinning in their graves to this day.
What strikes me as most interesting about the comparison has hit me only in hindsight. In our review I gently criticized the album for its inclusion of moments of graphic violence in some of the stories, elements that have been easily and deftly removed by other authors; in Tomie de Paola's Favorite Nursery Tales, for example, the story of the Three Little Pigs is no worse off for having the wolf give up and go home rather than being "boiled to bits" in the pigs' pot.
I missed the Bugs Bunny connection from the outset when I asked the group's violinist if their "mashups" had any antecedents in the modern era, so I'm grateful she mentioned the cartoons. But even then I didn't recognize the other parallel, which is their willingness to display violence. Fairy tales may contain more visceral violence than classic cartoons, but the thread certainly runs through them both, and some fairy tales have been so thoroughly sanitized that some critics are beginning to welcome the reintroduction of at least a touch of violence in stories old and new. I'll stand by my criticism, though, to the extent that I'm talking about a toddler audience, not one of older children. When our daughter Z is a bit older we will enjoy the old Bugs Bunny cartoons together. At three, not a chance!
Apparently some networks took their concern about cartoon violence even further when it came to "The Long-Haired Hare." From Wikipedia:
The ABC version of this cartoon cuts the entire sequence where Bugs is dressed as a bobby-soxer looking for Giovanni Jones's autograph and gives him a dynamite stick disguised as a pen.
The CBS version of this cartoon is a little more heavily edited (as the censors hated the cartoon due to its violence). Not only is the bobby-soxer sequence that was cut from ABC also cut here, but also the scenes where Giovanni Jones beats Bugs up every time he ruins his singing lessons (i.e., Jones breaking, then smashing Bugs' banjo over his head; Jones slamming Bugs' harp on his neck; Jones pulling Bugs from the tuba, tying his ears to a tree branch, and pulling his body back so it'll snap back and have his head hit the branch).
Most websites don't list the cartoon titles included in Looney Tunes collections, but after a lot of digging I confirmed that "Long-Haired Hare" is included in Looney Tunes' Golden Collection Vol. 1. I couldn't find the studio's lesser-known Wagnerian masterpiece mentioned as being included in any collection - if you know where to purchase it, let me know in the comments!
Both cartoons can currently be viewed on YouTube, so why not settle in to watch a couple of hilarious, not to mention history-making cartoons?
Rebecca Whipple has completed animation for a new piece entitled "SteveMartin On The Loose a.k.a. The Big ShaBang." The piece is 4:55 and the stills she sent me to post as a sneak peek are gorgeous.
Music is being composed by Benito Meza. Here's a clip with him playing (he's the clarinetist):
You can read/view previous coverage of Rebecca Whipple on TiP here and here, or view more work on her website.
John Kricfalusi has an interesting post up today about a new DVD set of Popeye cartoons. After pointing out the many great things about Popeye and plaintively asking why they are off the air* he starts picking at the color palette of the few color cartoons on the disc, comparing the colors of the Popeye "Ali Baba" and "Sinbad" cartoons. See if you can tell which one is "very rich with lots of subtleties" and which one is the "My Little Pony version."
Head over to John K.'s blog and let him show you how great Popeye was and is. [Link]
* In my opinion, it's the violence between human characters that did Popeye in. You can only get away with cartoonish violence as a major plot device when you are dealing with animals, i.e. Tom and Jerry.
Michel Gagne, the animator behind this summer's animated film Ratatouille, shares sketches, musical compositions, and animations used to develop the taste visualizations in the film. Above, cheese. Many more of interest at the link. [Via]
And does much more. This is a roughly six-minute excerpt from Les Blank's film of the same name, and in it Herzog discusses television (against which he advocates "real war"), the uneasy role of the filmmaker as "clown," and the lack of an "adequate language of images" in Western civilization.
Animator Will Finn posted a great letter he got from Ward Kimball back in the early '70s in response to a probing fan letter. Kimball had already created some of the most memorable characters in Disney films - he created the crows in Dumbo, and had a field day with Alice in Wonderland, animating Tweedledum and Tweedledee, the Mad Hatter, and the Cheshire Cat - and Finn was a 15-year-old high school student at the time and he got some great advice.
Kimball's style of animating was truly transformative. In Alice, for example, he took characters that had already been illustrated in book form and made them very much his own.
I have transcribed the letter below for those of us fond of ASCII text, which can be copied, pasted, printed, and discovered better than a letter-sized JPEG. I have corrected a couple of misspellings but otherwise this is the letter as it was written. You can read from a scan of the actual typed letter on Finn's blog.
Dear Will Finn:
Good Christ! When you write a letter, you really write a letter! When I was in my second year high school I could hardly get through a sentence. From the gist of your essay I take it that you are shot in the ass to become an animator. Well, that's just fine. It helps to know just what you would like to do this early in the game. However, take caution. Don't try to rush it or force it. First off, you gotta finish high school. Then you have to take the first important step: ART TRAINING! This means at least three years in a reputable art school or art college. And be ready for that jungle out there you gotta be a jack-of-all-trades. By this I mean, you gotta know all the insides and outs of film making. And with animation in mind this means: BASIC DRAWING, LIFE DRAWING, DESIGN, LETTERING, ARCHITECTURE, COLOR THEORY, MATERIALS AND THEIR USE, PAINTING, MODELING, ART HISTORY, WORLD HISTORY, ANATOMY, HUMANITIES, FILM EDITING, SOUND CUTTING, RECORDING, STORY SKETCH,---You name it, you gotta be with it. What I am trying to say is that becoming an animator is a growth process that involves basic curiosities for all things, because man, animation is just not making things move, it is THINKING, THINKING, THINKING! You can't know enough about everything. Curiosity is the key word. See everything! Do everything! Find out what makes everything tick. How does it work? What motivated this---What motivated that. Learn from others, BUT DON'T COPY THEM! Try to retain your individualism while learning the basic rules. Don't be docmatic because you're going to change your mind about what you like and what you dislike hundreds of times before you're thirty! This will happen if you develop your imagination along with your curiosity. You gotta be able to draw a grand piano from any angle as well as a pretty girl looking over her shoulder. Learn a musical instrument. Any goddamned instrument. Play it to have FUN. This will help you if you become an animation freak. Remember this: You really can't animate a person dancing a boogie, a Charleston, a frug, a twist, a ballet, unless you can do 'em yourself, or at least analyze clearly the basis for each step. You can read all the animation books in the world but learning the art has to be done while doing. You notice that I have ignored some of your topics of discussion, but this is done to stress the point that you should be thinking of first things first and this means finishing your education as required and then going on to specialize in additional training, all the facets required of a truly, well-rounded animation. Go see the "Yellow Submarine" if you have not already done so. Go see "Fritz the Cat" and if it requires parental guidance, then bring your old man! See everything, as I said above. Go to film festivals. Be a Laurel and Hardy fan. Study Buster Keaton. Study their timing and how they stage a gag or a comedy situation.
Of course, Hanna Barbera are pretty crude compared to Disney's. But this is a problem of economics. H&B are filling a need and it is a business just like selling washing machines. We all can't be part of an organization such as Disney's with almost untold capital to underwrite full animation. Lots of Cartoon Co.'s would like to indulge in full animation, but the economic realities of the jungle prevent it. It's o.k. to have an idol and a goal but a realistic assessment of what's going on in the world of animation and the reasons behind it all are very important. Blah! Blah! Blah! If you find that you don't at first like this reply to your seemingly knowledgeable letter, put it aside and read it again at a later date, and you will see that hidden between the lines is a lot of good advice, even though the writing is crude, to say the least!
Rebecca Whipple, who I interviewed last year about her amazing "Language of War" watercolors, has begun working in animation. She produces individual drawings or paintings and then scans and stitches them together into animated sequences, and has so far been creating shorts which recreate short scenes from films. The first series she's showing is a pair of related film sequences, one from George Lucas' Star Wars and one from Akira Kurosawa's 1958 The Hidden Fortress, each showing the film's respective hero on the attack. Her process echoes that of Jeff Scher, but the end result is in a visual language and rhythm that is uniquely her own.
TiP:How long did these films take you to produce? What is the frame rate?
Rebecca: The Hidden Fortress animation took me about a month, but only because it was the first animation I did, so I had to learn the program. I could do the same piece now in about two weeks. The Star Wars sequence took longer because the drawings were more exact, about a month and a half or two (once again I was still learning the programs.) The frame rate is 15 fps, the same as the original film.
TiP:How did you select the films and scenes you used? What is the relationship between the two?
Rebecca: George Lucas admittedly took inspiration from the characters and story of Hidden Fortress for Star Wars. I picked the two scenes because the movements were parallel, the hero running in pursuit of the enemy; I wanted to compare the motion.
TiP:Any more in the works?
Rebecca: This project is in collaboration with Mark Bartlett, theorist and critical analyst, who is going to write an essay about the same material, i.e. the film scenes. There will be a few more film scene pairs, based on related kinds on motion, comic, action, dance, etc. This is a side project for me, and therefore, as I am working on it between other projects, it will take a while to complete. I would also like to stress that the version available of this work online is low resolution. I wish I could put a full resolution version online, but questions of ownership prevent me.
A note on another animation work: I have just finished a five-minute animation of a very different sort; it is a dream animation starring Steve Martin. It has taken up all of my energy over the last 5 months and is quite exciting. The music is not finished, so I can't show it yet. Benito Meza, a breathtaking clarinetist who plays with the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, is writing and producing the score.
The idea is to enable convenient video collecting for enjoyment offline, in the living room, or anywhere else at the user’s convenience. What is lost is the context of a video on a page with the comments and links surrounding it. What’s gained is the opportunity to build a permanent web video library.
The product is free, and Real plans to make money by charging people to burn videos to DVDs (CDs are free). Beyond the RealVideo format, playback works for Windows Media, QuickTime, and most importantly Flash.
This is the best thing the NBA has done in years, and it will involve some significant datalogging in addition to just selling the games. The New York Timesreports:
For the moment, users cannot search the clips for, say, every Steve Nash assist, but that is coming. According to Steve Hellmuth, a senior vice president with the N.B.A., league employees are breaking down game films and logging events within each team’s possession.
For instance, if San Antonio’s Tim Duncan pulls down a rebound and then dunks, N.B.A. employees would tag the video with those two events; in the future, viewers searching for Duncan’s rebounds or dunks could quickly find that sequence.
There are about 500 such highlights in each game, and because only humans can log these events, the tagging process is labor intensive. Mr. Hellmuth said the league has about 40,000 games on tape in its archive, mostly from 1990 and later, and about 3,800 have been logged. Those games are already being used by coaches to scout other teams, as well as league executives who review the calls of game officials.
My first purchase, once they work their way backwards far enough, will be the 2003 Western Conference Finals, Game 6, where Dallas Mavericks' center Dirk Nowitzki lost it during the last tense minutes of the game and turned positively toxic, screaming at his teammates and literally attempting to beat the San Antonio Spurs himself despite his vomitous disgust for his poor teammates. Dirk, that was the day you became the first NBA star I truly love to hate! I have wished many times that I could revisit that game, and soon I will have that very pleasure.
From there I'll hop back to some millennial games to get my Speedy Claxton fix, and then I'll dig deeper to watch some stuff from the Dennis Rodman days to see if he was really all my wife claims he was or if she's just nostalgic. Yikes, I can feel my life slipping away as I write...
