I’m excited! I love classic animation and they’re planning to show a few things I’ve never seen before. The full schedule for the evening is up on TCM’s web page. It starts at 8 PM and runs through 2:30 AM.
Thank you for pointing this out. I may have to clear some space on the DVR.
Surely there are more animation buffs on the Dope than this? I’m going to have the computer up while I’m watching. I’m hoping a few more Dopers will offer up opinions and such.
Through sheer luck, this morning I was looking at the TMC schedule for things to record and watch when there’s nothing else to watch. I set recordings for all of them, and called my mom to suggest she do the same. She has at thing for Gerald McBoing Boing.
I just found this thread at 4:23 on 10/22.
:smack::smack::smack:
I watched the UPA shorts and I thought they were quite interesting. On the other hand, I watched the first few minutes of Gulliver’s Travels and I thought it was excruciating; for some reason, those voices just set my nerves on edge.
I watched all of it. I even sat all the way through Gulliver and I’ve never managed it before. I was traumatized by the fake out death near the end as a kid. When I got older everything else about it bothered me. Inconsistent animation, bad acting, and holes in what little plot they allowed it to have are all still annoying to me. I like a lot of Fleischer’s other work but Gulliver’s Travels really was kind of a stinker.
I wondered if they were going to leave the currently offensive parts in and was surprised that they did. I grew up with the original versions of Looney Toons and Tom and Jerry so I had an idea what to expect. I can see how the really racially insensitive parts would be shocking to someone who hadn’t been exposed to it early on. ( I hope I’m making sense. The cold meds have me a bit loopy.)
Somehow the start times didn’t really line up so what I’ve recorded is a little tough to enjoy, but I will persevere.
I watched all of it, but this was annoying as hell. At least I set up Tivo to record the entire series, so it could have been worse.
I don’t get Turner, dangit, but I’ve seen Gulliver’s Travels innumerable times. I’ve ebncountered this dismissive attitude to it many times, and never umnderstood it. A “stinker”? Why? It’s a beautifully animated, cleverly written piece of animation. The characters are weird and but endearing (they made a whole series of “Gabby” cartoons after the feature came out). The fit-together songs are clever. Lots of the animkation is stylishly clever (I especially like the from-under-the-bridge shot of the army of Lilliputians approaching the sleeping Gulliver).
A few years ago someone finally did a comic book adaptation of this, which I’ve just putrchased. It has, as a bonus, a great esay on early animation.
Besides their short cartoons, Fleischer did one more feature – *Mr Bug Goes to Town/Hoppity Goes to Town * – which I was never very fond of.
Damn, I just saw this thread and it’s too late. We used to subscribe to their monthly guide, but somehow let it drop. Damn.
Could someone please post a list, so that I can bat my head against the wall for missing it?
This happens when TNT has programming that doesn’t break up into 1/2 hour pieces. I find the start and end of the whole sequence and set up a manual recording for all of it. Wish I’d heard of this earlier, it may have been the animation they’ve shown previously. TNT is almost the only channel that will show B&W and silent movies also. They’ve also run the entire series of Tarzan movies, Bomba the Jungle Boy, and currently the Jungle Jim series. They had the silent Zorro serial and the Perils of Pauline also. Certainly one of my favorite channels.
I’m not a fan of the animation style where the characters look like they’re made out of water balloons, always squishing and sloshing around, if you catch my meaning. It’s a matter of taste, I suppose.
But the sound was really the worst part, for some reason: Gabby’s irritating voice, the schmaltzy prince’s song, etc. I could only stand watching a few bits and pieces before I gave up altogether.
De Gustibus and all, as you say.
Gabby’s voice is clearly one of the voices used for Popeye, and they were evidently trying for the same sort of non-cute character. They obviously thought the voice was a good cartoon voice, and it was deliberate It certainly wab’t unknown – Eugene Pallette (Friar Tuck in the 1938 Errol Flynn, and he was in a lot of Golden Age of Hollywood flicks) had an even more vgravelly voice, and it was thought to be an endearing trait. Or at least a recognizable one. (Eugene Pallette - Wikipedia )
To tell the truth, I didn’t find the schmaltzy song9s) any more irritating than other period songs, especially other period cartoon songs. I could listen to more of the Prince’s Forever than I could of Disney’s Snow White’s I’m Wishing.
This came on right after Gulliver’s Travels. It was cute, but slow paced.
Weren’t the songs in Hoppity Goes to Town written by Hoagey Carmichael, or am I misremembering that?
The Rotoscoping was too clever and the mix of it and regular animation was jarring and awkward. And the movie itself was a total snoozefest. I love the Fleischers, but this one stunk on ice.
This. Parts of the animation are beautiful and very well done. The inconsistency in the style from one part of the hand drawn animation to another is what really gets me. Some parts have a great, fluid motion that Disney would have envied at the time. Other parts seem thrown together and choppy. Look at the cartoony horses they use to pull Gulliver into town and the more realistic one the prince rides. Gulliver, the prince and the princess look like they were designed for an entirely different movie from all the other characters. Even their colors are different.
Wikipedia explains why:
I blame TCM for part of that. They should have cleaned up the sound and the picture quality. I had to turn it down when Gabby spoke and back up to hear the rest of the cast. The music in the opening sounded like it was being played from a warped old record.
Hoagy Carmichael wrote five and Sammy Timberg wrote one.