Bernardo Villela is like a mallrat except at the movies. He is a writer, director, editor and film enthusiast who seeks to continue to explore and learn about cinema, chronicle the journey and share his findings.
Continuing the theme of under-utilized characters I now turn my attention to the Looney Tunes. In the short film game the Looney Tunes are without question my favorite cadre of characters. I love some of the smaller personages especially, however, they are fewer and further between than other groups. The Looney Tunes while they do have depth in talent are buoyed mostly by their titanic personalities. Having said that the two Ralph Phillips shorts that Chuck Jones directed have always been favorites of mine. They are lyrical and whimsical celebrations of childhood imagination. Of all the characters in the Warner canon he is who I’d most want to see more of owing mostly to the fact that he has only these appearances. Establishing him as a dreamer makes him suited for shorts or a TV series and he could be easily incorporated into the Looney Tunes comic published by DC Comics, I’m uncertain if he ever has been.
So here are the two shorts, the first of which was nominated for an Academy Award.
In keeping with the concurrent themes of animation, the “amusement park studios” I also got around to thinking (based on last week’s post) about some lesser-known or under-utilized characters. I think that the animated short proceeding a feature is still a viable commodity and on occasion you will see a new attempt at one. Usually the new class are characters established previously in a feature, even when that character is new. Following the success of Who Framed Roger Rabbit there were a few shorts made to try and prolong the character’s notoriety. I’m not certain but I think these were the only two made. I thought, and still do think, they’re great. They’re a tip of the hat to the classics in a hyperactive interpretation of animated slapstick tropes.
Here’s a short I was reminded about recently by a post my cousin made on Facebook. There are a few reasons I decided to post it. In light of my recent trip to the Disney parks clearly the great shorts of the studio era. Here’s one that exemplifies Disney’s style even in a small piece, there’s music (lyrics included) and emphasis on visuals. It’s a fluid piece that encapsulates the dream-state implicit in the story. It’s very well done.
I first saw this film a long while ago on a site called Atom Films, now atom.com. It was likely the best film I saw when I did frequent it. It’s a simple and beautiful film that tells a wonderful tale of first love and exploits many filmic elements well.
I was fortunate to find this film again after so long although in three parts. With all of them posted below it should flow well enough.
I was reminded of this one in an email from my grandfather.
As many of you know Walt Disney was quite fond of South America, Brazil in particular. Some of the studio’s best, but not necessarily most celebrated works, were about South America like the short vignettes that comprised the features Saludos Amigos and Three Caballeros. While they were in many cases pedagogical and didactic they were also entertaining and brilliant introductions to Latin cultures that in many cases highlighted the hallmarks of Disney’s Golden Age on of them being their inventive, mutative animated montage that brings one of the greatest Brazilian songs ever written vibrantly to life.
Here again I present to you one short, somewhat representative work of brilliant, bold, experimental, surrealist animators. This short is the results of a BBC commission that was subsequently rejected. No doubt it was a case of not truly understanding who the artist are.
For more information on them visit their Wikipedia page. If interested there are several collections of their work. You can purchase, rent or look them up online.
This selection is courtesy of Edmund Davis-Quinn who caught this in a post by Roger Ebert when I had missed it. The description and the film say it all. A great little doc.
The Vimeo description says: “On an unseasonably warm November night in Manhattan on our way to get ice cream, we stumbled upon what appeared to be a vintage shop, brightly lit display window and all. As we began to walk in, a man sitting out front warned us that we were welcome to explore, but nothing inside was for sale. Our interests piqued, we began to browse through the collections the man out front had built throughout his life. This is a story of a man and his home.”
Yet again I’d prefer to introduce you to an animator through one quick example of his style rather than a barrage. Should you enjoy it there are many examples of his works on Youtube and elsewhere on the web.
Below you will find some biographical information on Švankmajer, which accompanies the YouTube video:
Švankmajer (born 4 September 1934 in Prague) is a Czech surrealist artist. His work spans several media. He is known for his surreal animations and features, which have greatly influenced other artists such as Tim Burton, Terry Gilliam, The Brothers Quay and many others.
Švankmajer has gained a reputation over several decades for his distinctive use of stop-motion technique, and his ability to make surreal, nightmarish and yet somehow funny pictures. He is still making films in Prague at the time of writing.
Švankmajer’s trademarks include very exaggerated sounds, often creating a very strange effect in all eating scenes. He often uses very sped-up sequences when people walk and interact. His movies often involve inanimate objects coming alive and being brought to life through stop-motion. Food is a favourite subject and medium. Stop-motion features in most of his work, though his feature films also include live action to varying degrees.
A lot of his movies, like the short film Down to the Cellar, are made from a child’s perspective, while at the same time often having a truly disturbing and even aggressive nature. In 1972 the communist authorities banned him from making films, and many of his later films were banned. He was almost unknown in the West until the early 1980s.
Today he is one of the most celebrated animators in the world. His best known works are probably the feature films Alice (1988), Faust (1994), Conspirators of Pleasure (1996), Little Otik (2000) and Lunacy (2005), a surreal comic horror based on the work of Edgar Allan Poe and the Marquis de Sade. Also famous (and much imitated) is the short Dimensions of Dialogue (1982), which shows Arcimboldo-like heads gradually reducing each other to bland copies (“exhaustive discussion”); a clay man and woman who dissolve into one another sexually, then quarrel and reduce themselves to a frenzied, boiling pulp (“passionate discourse”); and two elderly clay heads who extrude various objects on their tongues (toothbrush and toothpaste; shoe and shoelaces, etc.) and use them in every possible combination, sane or otherwise (“factual conversation”). His films have been called “as emotionally haunting as Kafka’s stories[1].”
He was married to Eva Švankmajerová, an internationally known surrealist painter, ceramicist and writer until her death in October of 2005. She collaborated on several of his movies including Faust, Otesánek and Alice. They had two children, Veronika and Václav
Rather than another marathon I will give you one example of the work of Jirí Barta. If you enjoy it an entire collection of his shorts is available on YouTube (at the moment). Below is the description found on Vimeo. Enjoy!
”Laid-off old mannequins spend their cracked and broken lives in an old, abandoned warehouse. New mannequins are brought to the warehouse. They are old as well, but from a younger generation. The two groups must live together, but it’s not easy at all.” written by Anon, taken from IMDB
To recognize and honor the fact that two National Film Board of Canada produced animated shorts were up for the Oscar this year I figure this Short Film Saturday Should honor one of the great animated films ever produced, an NFB production from 1988 entitled The Cat Came Back. It too was nominated for an Oscar and I also seem to remember that Cartoon Network way back when they, you know, showed cartoons included it in its all-time top 10 amidst the titans of animation like the Looney Tunes, Tom and Jerry and so forth in terms of a single animated short. I can’t really argue against that. Anyway you slice this thing it’s great. Click the link below and enjoy!
