i'm gonna do the best i can

more old cartoon stuff. i really love the Cab Calloway Bettie Boop cartoons.

i love the live action footage of Calloway and his orchestra at the beginning of this one. it's such a treat. the guy must have been amazing to see on stage in a smokey, hip club back in the day. he moves like a human cartoon! i have a soft spot and fascination with rotoscope animation, and this stuff is some of the best. even though he gets transformed seemlessly into some weird creature within this bizarre cartoon world, it still perfectly captures Calloway's spirit and charisma. another thing i like about this one is the dark nature of the trippy cave scene; "Minnie the Moocher" is, pretty obviously, a song about a prostitute who starts dating a druggie/drug dealer who gets her hooked on opium. some people have said the animators/studio wasn't aware of the subtext of the song when it was used, but the crazy visuals in the background relating to drug paraphernalia suggest otherwise. there's just such a delicious, dark, seedy element to this cartoon i can't easily describe, but i really like it.

this one is considered by many to be one of the greatest cartoons of all time, and i'm inclined to agree. it's astounding that it was animated entirely by a single person, Roland C. Crandall, as a sort of pet project. the animation is so lively in this one. and Cab Calloway gives another incredible performance, this time performing his standard that he was famous for, "St. James Infirmary Blues," which also happens to be one of my favorite songs. Calloway's version is quite good, which i suppose it should be. again we have the great rotoscope work, this time with Koko being possessed by Calloway, crazily dark and trippy background images in a cave, and an ending that can only be described as "wacky." good stuff.

this is the last Bettie Boop cartoon to feature Calloway, and he pretty much carries it from beginning to end. the story doesn't make much sense, and isn't as good as the first two, but it has its moments. i like the song in this one, as Calloway's rotoscoped dancing as the Old Man of the Mountain is entertaining as always. it's also notable for having inspired Tim Burton and Danny Elfman in the production of the Nightmare before Christmas. Tim Burton cited the Cab Colloway characters as inspiration for the character Oogie Boogie, and wanted Elfman to specifically base him on the character in Minnie the Moocher. but Elfman was more inspired by the Old Man of the Mountain character, even borrowing a line of dialogue for Oogie's musical number: "whatcha gonna do now?" "i'm gonna do the best i can."

i find the world of 20's-40's cartoons so fascinating. it's given me an idea about doing a comic in the style, set in the 20's or 30's, and has all the dark shit and vice that is represented in cartoons of the era, like these. maybe even seriously deal with issues like racism, sexism, homophobia and stuff that was rampant in cartoons and in the attitudes of the day. i need to ferment it some more.

it's the only way to live

i got a car!!! it happened suddenly. i wasn't even looking for her. but then i saw her, and after being inside her, i knew i must have her. things worked out pretty good. i don't think i was very savvy, but maybe i didn't come off as too much of a country bumpkin dumbass either. anyway, i really like her.

i think i'm going to call her Ramona.



otherwise...i'm happy that it's Buster Keaton month on TCM.

don'tcha know me?

finally watched Dead Ringer the other day. i'm a huge Bette Davis fan, and i liked the idea of her doing a horror/thriller-ish type of movie. well, actually, it turned out to be more like a thriller/mystery sort of thing.

Bette Davis plays twin sisters Edith and Margaret. Margaret married Edith's one true love under false pretenses twenty years ago, which obviously kinda pissed Edy off, so the two never speak again until Edith's former lover and Margaret's husband passes away and they meet up at his funeral. Edith discovers her sister is and has been living the high life all these years, living in a big Hollywood mansion, hob-knobbing and wearing glamorous clothes while she's barely been able to afford to eat, and her little dive bar that she runs is about to be shut down because she's three months behind on rent. what unfolds is an expertly laid-out and suspenseful plot for Edith to kill her rich twin and assume her identity.

as far as suspense goes, this one was a real nail-biter for me. maybe it's just because i like Bette so much, but once she kills her sister, it's a non-stop roller coaster of "will she get caught??" it's hard to believe she was considered washed-up at the time she made this movie. she turns in such a great performance as both sisters, and manages to play them both with very distinct personalities, and while they're both deeply flawed characters, they're also sympathetic. it couldn't have been easy to portray twins. it's like an adult, homicidal Patty Duke show!

at first when Edith murders Margaret and it becomes obvious that she's switching places with her, i was like "pffffffft, this'll never work! so stupid." but even if it is a pretty unbelievable scenario, even in an era before forensics and ballistics and all that stuff, this movie does a pretty great job of covering itself. because Margaret's husband died only the day before, and then her sister supposedly commits suicide the next day, any strange behavior her servants and friends will of course notice can be blamed on this. there's this one great scene in which it's Edth's first full day in her sister's gigantic mansion, and her butler tells her the police are waiting to speak to her in the living room (about her sister's suicide), and once she gets to the bottom of the stairs, she freaks out because she doesn't know where the room is obviously. so she tells the butler to bring them to her, watches which way he starts walking, then says she changed her mind and goes into the correct room. XD i just love characters like this, that are kinda bad and you really shouldn't be rooting for, but they're so clever and dedicated and resourceful that you have to admire them.

another thing i like about the movie is the sense of loneliness and isolation that developes, perhaps a side effect of her assuming a new life that Edith didn't anticipate. not being able to truly be herself to a single person in the world quickly becomes stifling, and maddening. she also discovers, as the layers of her sister's sordid affairs peel back, that she also inherits a whole host of unforseen problems from her sister. it's really, really interesting stuff. i thought the ending kinda sucked; i mean, i guess i knew it could only end one way, but i felt like it would've been better if it had ended about ten minutes earlier and left just a couple things hanging, though definitely pointing in a certain direction. or maybe had gone somewhere more over-the-top and dramatic, since the rest of the movie was kind of like that, but it was just kind of depressingly low-key. but i guess that was kind of the style of the time or whatever. overall it was a blast, one of Bette's best movies i think, just kind of an eh ending that doesn't really do the rest of the movie justice. this really makes me want to see more Bette movies, especially Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte.

also started watching this new Avengers cartoon the other night before bed; they had this marathon or something of it on. it was pretty good. i think Wasp Girl or whoever is pretty annoying though, and i wish they'd gotten a better female character to be on the team, but then i realized that Marvel kinda doesn't have any good female heores that aren't a part of some other team, haha. but yeah, the animation's pretty good, the stories are okay. i'm not sure if Captain America is really as crazy as they depict him. and i'm disappointed because i fell asleep right as they were introducing Black Panther. :/

they'll rot your brain

i love cartoons, but particularly ones that push the envelope and go a little above and beyond typical wacky cartoon hi-jinks. i'm really not into those older merrie melody/warner bros. shorts where 99% of the comedy comes from parodying and spoofing famous people and movies of the day. i understand why it was popular and humorous at the time, but honestly i don't get a majority of the references, and secondly i prefer for any kind of media, really, to have a timeless appeal. for these reasons, i much prefer the later Looney Tunes, especially those directed by Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng and Bob Clampett.

Bob Clampett might be my favorite animater/director ever. silliness and weirdness are cartoon staples, but he knew how to push it above and beyond, making a joke or gag that was merely funny and weird into something really laughably outrageous.

one of the things that first got me about his stuff is how far he was willing to stretch the very physical limitations of reality for the sake of ridiculousness. walls, doors, props, whatever, became the consistency of rubber. and his expressions and poses! look how great and elastic they are!

what an awesome wild take on Daffy! Clampett knew how to use Daffy to his full potential, and made probably my favorite Daffy cartoons, even better than the Chuck Jones duck season/rabbit season ones. though it doesn't ever fail to amuse me the endless and creative array of ways Daffy's face gets rearranged every time he gets blasted. but i digress.

in this cartoon, i love how giddy Daffy is as he bastes himself with gravy at the end. XD it's so funny, and dirty at the same time!

apparently it's impossible to find a video of, but this is one of my favorite Looney Tunes ever, "Old Grey Hare" from 1944. The dialogue is just so snappy and right, and Clampett milks every bit of comedy out of an aged Bugs and Elmer Fudd, taking the expressions and actions to a new extreme with their gummy mouths, furrowed brows and rubbery wrinkles. i also really love the facial hair choices of Elmer with a cookie-duster mustache and Bugs with a cottony Red Fox beard.

but my absolute favorite subject to explore in animation is malice, rage, mental breakdown, violence and craziness. while there were probably other animators technically better in other ways, to me, Clampett was one of the first animators to really master exploring the darker side of human emotions in cartoons, and exploiting them for comedic effect.

(i particularly love the cartoon with this dog. he's probably supposed to be a parody of someone with his weird, floppy hair and accent, but he stands alone as a funny character. i love that the majority of the cartoon takes place underwater and he and Bugs Bunny can inexplicably exist without breathing just fine.)

the only other animators i can think of that come close to Clampett's brilliance at capturing rage and insanity are Tex Avery and John Kricfalusi. it's hard to find Tex Avery's stuff online for some reason, and while he mainly stuck with more traditional cartoon idioms, he won my heart with how far he was willing to go to keep topping a gag. i have in mind one scene in particular that practically changed my life when i saw it, but again, i can't find it.

while Clampett and Avery were both extremely talented in their portrayals of  intense inner turmoil, it was almost always from a place of slap-stick and good-naturedness, whereas John K. took his influences in a directly darker place. the cartoonishness of his characters and ridiculousness of the situations softened the blows just enough to make them funny, but what i love about John K.'s animated sequences of Ren losing it is that often times you're unsure whether you should be laughing or not.

Ren: "i'm So Angry" - YouTube
this is probably the scariest and most threatening Ren's ever been, so much so that Nickelodeon forced edits to portions of his descriptions of what he plans to do to Stimpy and Sven. i love the juxtaposition of teetering between funny and flat-out disturbing.

Happy Happy Joy Joy - Dailymotion
probably everyone is acquainted with this episode or at least this song, but it amazes me that some 10-15 years later, it's still hysterical to me, particularly the seemingly crazy, non sequitur ramblings of Stinky Wizzleteats in the middle of his song (which apparently are all quotes from children's songs and a Western movie by Burl Ives, who Wizzleteats is a parody of). the whole episode is really good, particularly the parts where Ren fights the power of the happy helmet and loses, and the preceding scenes in which he is constantly insane with happiness.

Ren: "THESE HANDS" - Youtube
this is probably my favorite insanity sequence from Ren and Stimpy. to me, the threats of Ren's violence and his maniacal ramblings were much more disturbing than any of the actual cartoon violence he inflicted on Stimpy. i love how it actually goes there, with Ren contemplating breaking Stimpy's neck in his sleep. XD

edit: oh yeah, how could i forget Space Madness?? i think Ren's first great insanity sequence. it contains two of my favorite quotes: "it is not i who am crazy. it is i who am MAD!" and "we're not hitch-hiking anymore! we're RIDING!" XD

besides the dialogue and exaggerated body language and expressions of the characters, John K. is a genius when it comes to creating a mood through background and music. i love when the backgrounds go from being normal settings to surreal, splotchy spaces, indicating a character has snapped or is about to become unhinged. sometimes the music choices are ham-fisted and obvious, further adding to the comedy, but oftentimes they're beautifully in contrast to everything that is happening, such as his liberal use of relaxing classical music to scenes of disgusting things, or just plain absurdity.

i feel like he really dropped the ball with Adult Party Cartoon, but the classic Ren and Stimpy will never cease to amaze me. they just don't make cartoons like that anymore.