The very gag that "killed them all in Naples" and got the greatest reaction in one of my screenings!

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Well, I'll be seein' ya,
Duck Dodgers

Nothing of particular interest in this 1940 effort, except for.....??

The Homeless Flea
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Well, I'll be seein' ya,
Duck Dodgers

Guess the only way to explain this penny-pinching is just the line "Well, it's Terry".
I would figure that someone producing his first Technicolor would have run inside the Studio yelling "Let's do it grand, kids!" not economizing on such a detail.

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Well, I'll be seein' ya,
Duck Dodgers

In the last days I've highlighted what I judge some of the best moments from Terrytoons, but there are several reasons why Terry Studio was considered a B one.
The animation was nothing worth of note, with exceptions being the works of Tytla, Vinci and Tyer. The sound effects (I consider them one of the most important elements in a cartoon) were of the lowest quality one can imagine(no matter if a character falls from the top of a mountain right into a lake or from a diving board into a pool: you'll always hear that same darn "splash"), musical score was rarely good (the posts I've made show some very good exceptions).
There's more but the main reason to classify Terry as a B Studio was the reuse of animation (and even soundtrack). So you can see the very same sequence originally made for a 30s cartoon reused even in the 50s (!!).

Judge for yourselves with what I consider a good example.

Catnip Capers (1940)

Enjoy this rarely seen WW2 effort by Bob Clampett.
The highlights are the marvellous sequences animated by Scribner.

Wacky Blackouts
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Best,
Duck Dodgers

Here's a delightful Huey short, one of his best entries ever.
No particular reason to post this, but it makes the first page of my blog look more PC.

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See youse,

Andrea

We'll have to wait till the end of the year or maybe even 2009 to have this on DVD, so enjoy a great copy of it. One of the best Popeye entries in my opinion, and one of the best shorts made at Famous.

Cartoons Ain't Human
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Well, I'll be seein' ya,
Duck Dodgers

One of the most celebrated work of Tytla during his Terry days was the animation of the fight betwen Mighty Mouse and the demon cat in "The Green Line". Enjoy it.

Green Line
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See ya around,
Duck Dodgers

Try to find what kind of relation to our beloved world of classic animation there's in this Harold Lloyd clip (Thad, give them a chance to guess). Next wednesday I'll give you the answer if you cannot come out with it.

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Best,

Andrea

I like all Buzzy entries, but this really rocks, expecially for the end: best variation of the piano teeth as real teeth gag ever!

Awful Tooth
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Best,

Andrea

Here I present you, courtesy of Leviathan and The G Man, a great print of one of the best Little Lulu cartoons, "Snap Happy". It includes some wild takes and cartoony violence that were not common in other Lulu entries.

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Well, I'll be seein' ya,
Duck Dodgers

Maybe I'm just crazy about cartoons wolves....

"The Wolf's Pardon" is really one of the best shorts Terry ever produced. Again the influence of WB and MGM Avery cartoons is more than evident, the plot is clever and everything seems to work excellently.

Do you have the same opinions about it? Ah, yes, first ya gotta watch it.....

The Wolf's Pardon
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And now, waddayasay, fellas?

Here's a nice Captain and the Kids entry. Kind of Disney-like entertaiment that makes you smile but not laugh. The short takes too time building complex gags that do not deliver real fun (the whole sequence with the ventilator, including the ending gag. Really makes you smile for how elaborate the whole concept was, but is this indeed funny?).
By the way, there's a sequence very similar to one later used in "Swing Shift Cinderella" (not sure if we can talk of reused animation by Avery's unit).

CK
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See ya,
Duck Dodgers

Here's a nice entry by the short-lived team of directors made by Michael Lah and Preston Blair. It's a good cartoon, Disney-like with soft gags, surely more inspired by Tom and Jerry cartoons by Hanna-Barbera than Avery's efforts.
The "mysterious stranger" sequence is a great mixture of animation, musica and sound effects and reminds a similar bit in "Mickey's Parrot".
Let me know what you think about it.

P.S.: Sorry for the TV logo. That's the best copy I could find.

BB and the Bean
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Best,
Duck Dodgers

This is one of the best cartoons made at Screen Gems, the main reason being probably that it was written by Bob Clampett.
It stars a favorite of ours, the cat-that-looks-like-Sylvester-but-Sylvester-he-is-not. My favorite part is when the sexy female puppet says to the cat that if he wants something all he has to do is just whistle and the feline character starts to whistle in every possible way.
According to my friend Larry T this short looks like a Davis cartoon made at WB. I strongly agree.

Up n Atom
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Well, I'll be seein' ya,
Duck Dodgers

I don't know who animated this sequence, part of it cut from many prints of "The Hen-Pecked Rooster", but it's certainly a great work.
Unless Viacom does not release the short on DVD (will it ever happen?)the only way to find a complete version of this scene is start catching for some ultra-faded 16mm print of it that COULD (almost the totality I've seen do not have it) be uncut.
By the way, there's more that was left out and happens just before the scene I've posted: Herman and Henry are shown at that very same table, Henry singing happily and drinking.
And yes, I'm still that lazy and didn't put the original language in it. A good friend of mine will probably do it in the following months.

Hoiman
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Well, I'll be seein' ya,
Duck Dodgers

In the last days I've been rediscovering Disney's "minor" features ("Make Mine Music", "Fun and Fancy Free", etc.).
Among them my favorite one still remains "The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad", expecially for the beautiful animation and enjoable characters.
In fact I do consider it one of the best Disney's works. Classification as a feature is straining though, considering those are actually two featurettes tied together with very little link among themselves.
If you have not seen this production, buy the DVD because Disney officially released it years ago. I was extremely pleased to discover it in his uncut beauty (the Toad's featurette was baly edited in Europe, expecially in UK and in Italy, were many scenes were cut or shirtened).

I hope you'll like this charming musical bit from the first half of the movie. Now wouldn't you want to be for one day one of those two happy-go-lucky fellows?

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"Scrap Happy Daffy" has always been a favorite of mine since I was a child. Not only it shows all the cuts and cinematographic techniques Tashlin was so famous and celebrated for, but it also includes no less than two original songs created just for the short. For years I tried to understand the lines of the first song, when Daffy fastly and wildly enumerates all kind of objects that can be used for the scrap campaign. Thanks to the subtitles in the LTGC 5 everything si clear now..

In fact the last LTGC 5 should be bought just because it includes a restored version of this cartoon. For years I had to watch on TV a copy that started with the title card and ended with a "The End" card never used for any WB classic cartoon, omitting the iris out in the process. Guess the same happened to you, folks.

Enjoy this marvellous copy of the cartoons, and if you haven't bought the LTGC 5, that's one of the reasons to do it. And soon too.

On his great blog Thad made, in the past, some posts about "cartoon plagiarism".
Thought this short could perfectly be included in that series, so I apologise in advance for stealing his clever idea and making this post.
The cartoon in question is "Sour Grapes", with more than an inspiration from Tashlin's "The Fox and Grapes". Not only the plot is incredibly similar, but the short also follows the same spot-gag structure showing the Fox (brilliantly animated by Tyer) trying to get the grapes.
However, the title itself reveals from the beginning the final punchline.

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By the way, the fox in the cartoon is named Foxy Fox, while this card shows another name for the character

What follows is a marvellous scene animated by Bill Tytla for "Mighty Mouse and the Wolf". This is one of the best Terrytoons: good animation (Tytla's is excellent), great gags and excellent musical score.
The sequence I'm highlighting shows the influence that Tex Avery's MGM cartoons were having at the time even on "B-Studios" and is probably the best of all the short (among the funny ones in it another favorite is the one in which a group of zoot-suited wolves is watching some bathing beauties).
If you are enough lucky maybe you can find this gem in someone's garage sale

MightyMouse&TheWolf
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Let me know what you think about it!

Best,
Duck Dodgers

Prepare for the kind of awesome that might very well blow an appendage right off your body. This old Sprite commercial was submitted by Basketbawful reader Wild Yams, who said: "Speaking of awful commercials, I'd like to present my all-time favorite worst basketball commercial in which Kobe and Tim Duncan square off against each other with their posses for a rap-off, then Missy Elliot shows up to take over while Kobe and Tim play a game of one-on-one."

He is so not kidding. But I guess this is how you had to obey your thirst back in 1998.

Bless Red Auerbach and his curmudgeonly soul. He was an early advocate of the fast break. He invented the concept of the sixth man. He fined his players for eating pancakes after midnight -- five bucks, payable directly to him -- and he wouldn't let them drink water during practice (he thought it weighed them down). And, for the record, that mixture of innovation and folk wisdom led to eight straight championships, and nine in 10 years. Not too shabby.

Even more awesome than all of that, though, was the fact that he hated floppers before it was fashionable to hate them. I take this to mean that he and Manu Ginobili would not have been the best of friends. (Okay, Red would have eaten his spleen for breakfast.)

[Hat tip to Deadspin and TrueHoop, via Bullets Forever.]

Current TV's amusing commentary on the state of social networks.

For those of you who might have missed all the fisticuffs and tomfoolery from last night's Red Sox-Rays game, here is the complete brawl between Coco Crisp and James Shields, as many of his Rays buddies jump in and wail on a pinned Coco as he lies on the ground.

And here's the dugout "disagreement" between Manny Ramirez and Kevin Youkilis. Nobody's talking about it, so make of it what you will.

Holy crap! I'm on seesmic and I have NOTHING to say!

*TEMA AMPLIADO Y ACTUALIZADO CONTINUAMENTE*

Chávez habla sobre Uribe y Colombia (1 de 4)
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Dedicado a mi amigo el forista de Clave Digital, Luis Fermin:

Ya les había dicho que "esperaba el próximo error.."* y seguiré en espera del próximo...

Duro debate entre los demócratas
Cargado por frankib2¡¡AGARRENLOS!!!

... Y eso que son del mismito Partido Demócrata.