Bosko the Doughboy (1931, Hugh Harman)
The Stop Button Posted by on May 1, 2012
Watching Bosko the Doughboy, I kept thinking, “too soon.” It’s a comedy cartoon about World War I, specifically trench warfare. In the cartoon, Bosko is the only human. The rest of combatants are animals–dogs, cows, a pig or two, a lot of birds. The battle scenes are graphic read more
Glimpses of Old England (1949)
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 29, 2012
Even though it does have some rather nice direction–a miniature posing as a real English village–Glimpses of Old England does not credit a director. One must assume the producer (and narrator) James A. FitzPatrick did not want to distract attention from himself. While he’s a compl read more
Hare Conditioned (1945, Chuck Jones)
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 28, 2012
Embarrassingly, I didn’t understand Hare Conditioned‘s title until I looked it up online. No, I won’t tell you. The cartoon is an enthusiastic chase through a department store, with star window attraction Bugs Bunny about to be shipped off the to taxidermy department. Bugs is lika read more
Manhattan (1979, Woody Allen)
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 27, 2012
Every shot in Manhattan, whether of the cityscape, the interiors or the actors, is so carefully and beautifully composed, it’s not surprising Allen lets the cast go a little loose. Gordon Willis’s black and white photography is luminous, giving the city an otherworldly, dreamlike feel. That feeling read more
It Was a Short Summer, Charlie Brown (1969, Bill Melendez)
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 26, 2012
“It Was a Short Summer, Charlie Brown” is a rather ambitious cartoon, both from Melendez’s directorial standpoint and Charles M. Schulz’s narrative. It starts with the beginning of the school year, then moves back–through the writing of a theme–to the summer. Sch read more
Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989, Woody Allen)
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 25, 2012
Crimes and Misdemeanors is not a particularly nice film. It juxtaposes two men in crisis–Martin Landau’s successful ophthalmologist has a girlfriend (Angelica Huston) who is threatening to tell his wife and Woody Allen’s failing filmmaker is crushing on the producer (Mia Farrow) o read more
Goliath II (1960, Wolfgang Reitherman)
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 24, 2012
Instead of padding Goliath II out to an exhausting fifteen minutes, director Reitherman and writer Bill Peet should have concentrated on making it a good seven minute cartoon. Worse, there are animation problems every few frames in Goliath, like whoever photographed the cells didn’t know how read more
A New Life (1988, Alan Alda)
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 23, 2012
Alda opens A New Life likes it’s going to juxtapose he and Ann-Margret’s lives immediately follow their divorce. For a while, it does. Alda’s got Hal Linden as a sidekick, Ann-Margret’s got Mary Kay Place. It’s all very even. She’s going back to school, he’s trying to figure out how to read more
Dogs of War (1923, Robert F. McGowan)
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 22, 2012
Dogs of War features some of Robert F. McGowan’s finest directorial work. Sure, he’s aping World War I movies–specifically trench warfare and no man’s land, which seem highly inappropriate subjects for comedy–but it’s incredibly well-directed. A lot of his setups read more
Cannery Woe (1961, Robert McKimson)
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 21, 2012
Are all Speedy Gonzales cartoons the same? Cannery Woe opens with starving Mexican mice needing Speedy to get them cheese. Sylvester is guarding the cheese. Woe does have a couple minor differences though. First, none of the mice have to whore off their sisters to Speedy. Second, he doesn’t e read more
Helping Grandma (1931, Robert F. McGowan)
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 19, 2012
Helping Grandma gives the impression directing Our Gang shorts for so long, McGowan lost (or never developed) any ability to direct adults. The way he holds shots on the kids, making sure they get their gags done, makes sense… even if it lacks any artistry. But in Grandma, he inexplicably hol read more
Here Today, Gone Tamale (1959, Friz Freleng)
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 17, 2012
I hadn’t seen Here Today, Gone Tamale before, but I’ve seen Freleng’s subsequent Chili Weather. The setup is the same–these starving, but lazy, Mexican mice can’t steal any cheese from Sylvester the cat, so one of them whores out his sister to Speedy Gonzales. In Tamal read more
The Nightlife (1930, James Parrott)
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 15, 2012
The Nightlife is an unfunny mess of asynchronous sound. If I’ve ever seen a Laurel and Hardy picture before, I can’t remember, and maybe starting off with one of their Spanish-language pictures was a bad idea. There’s no ambient sound for most of the short and it often feels like read more
Wild Wife (1954, Robert McKimson)
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 14, 2012
Wild Wife is easily McKimson’s best cartoon (of those I’ve seen, anyway). I was going to start by talking about McKimson as an unlikely feminist, since Wife mostly concerns a housewife whose male chauvinist pig husband berates her for not getting enough done. The cartoon then flashes ba read more
Big City (1963, Paul Weld Dixon)
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 12, 2012
Big City doesn’t have much ambition, so it should be hard to screw it up. But director Dixon manages. He’s not much for creative composition. City looks like a bunch of moving postcards, which is fine… it’s a travelogue after all. There is one sublime sequence of storefronts read more
Two Chips and a Miss (1952, Jack Hannah)
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 10, 2012
Two Chips and a Miss is a weak seven minutes. While some of the fault is Hannah’s direction, it’s mostly just his animators. They’re incredibly lazy when it comes to their figures. Hannah’s even lazier when it comes to filling out the cartoon. Chip and Dale are both romancin read more
Now or Never (1921, Fred C. Newmeyer and Hal Roach)
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 8, 2012
Now or Never takes a long time to get to the basic comedic plot–Harold Lloyd is stuck taking care of a little kid on a train ride. The kid, played by Anna Mae Bilson, is absolutely adorable and a perfect foil for Lloyd. She’s his costar, not romantic interest Mildred Davis, which is som read more
The Goddess of Spring (1934, Wilfred Jackson)
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 7, 2012
The Goddess of Spring is the story of Persephone and Pluto. She’s the Goddess of Spring, he’s the Lord of the Underworld. He kidnaps her, life on Earth gets very cold. The cartoon’s striking because of the movement. It’s hard to describe the animation. The figures are proble read more
Hearts and Diamonds (1914, George D. Baker)
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 5, 2012
Hearts and Diamonds involves a lovable fat man (John Bunny) out to marry a rich woman. Eventually it becomes all about baseball, which makes very little sense. It turns out the woman, played by Flora Finch, loves baseball so Bunny ends up holding a game to impress her. Until the game, which drags o read more
Slipstream (1989, Steven Lisberger)
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 4, 2012
A lot of Slipstream plays like The Road Warrior with gliders. In this post-apocalyptic wasteland, everyone flies around because of a jet stream ravaging the surface. It’s never clear where this jet stream is located and not, in a geographic sense, because they always manage to safely take off and read more