humor

Aug

2014

Ten Thoughts on Make Mine Music

I had never heard of Make Mine Music (1946) before beginning this project. It’s another package film made on the cheap while the Disney studio was struggling in the aftermath of World War II. It’s sort of a low-rent Fantasia – a collection of unrelated vignettes set to jazz music. And wouldn’t you know it, there just happen to be ten such vignettes. How convenient!

The Martins and the Coys is technically the first short of the film, but it’s the one I watched last. After I finished the movie, I looked it up online and discovered that the copy I had viewed was missing this segment. Turns out, it was edited out of all of the home video releases in America because of concerns about excessive violence. Well! How can I hear that and not dig up a copy? I was only able to find a terrible quality Italian-dubbed version of it on YouTube, but I suffered through it because I care, readers, I care. A few seconds in I paused to go and read the lyrics in English because I had no idea what the hell was going on, but then I muddled through to the end. The cartoon is a twist on the Hatfield/McCoy feud. All of the Martins and Coys look exactly alike, which I would say suggests inbreeding except there isn’t a single woman among them, so I’m thinking cloning. Well, not a single woman except for one of our two stars. The families wipe each other out except for one young and hot representative from each side, a young man and a young woman (I don’t know which comes from which family because it was in Italian). They fall in love, get married, the ghosts of their dead relatives freak out, and then the newlyweds beat the ever-loving shit out of each other. The end. I don’t know if I would have edited it out for the violence so much as for the scene where a chicken is pecking food out of a sleeping Coy’s beard. It was seriously gross.
Blue Bayou is next (or first, if you’re not as obsessive a completist as me). It pretty much does what it says on the tin – there’s a bayou, and it’s blue. A bird flies around. It’s sort of pretty. Nothing really happens. The music’s real slow, and I’m falling asleep five minutes into this movie.
All the Cats Join In and I am jolted awake. Benny Goodman and his Orchestra play a jumping jam to accompany some cartoon teens getting together to swing, baby, swing. It’s awesome. We see the pencil drawing the scene and there are a lot of clever bits made from this conceit. A car full of kids zooms away too fast for the pencil to finish drawing it, so it has to catch up to the car at a stoplight. A boy teen yawns when a girl teen with a big butt is interested in him, so the pencil erases the weight off and he’s…wait, that’s not clever, it’s a painfully offensive relic of its time. Never mind. Hey, a naked girl! Very racy for a Disney flick – this was back when Walt was still trying to be all grown-up about things. I thought it was pretty sexy while I was watching it, with the girl in the shower and getting dressed and all, and then I learned there were bare boobies in the original version, which were also edited out for home video. Human boobies – bad. Centaur boobies – A-OK!
Without You brings me back to Slumberland. It’s a lovely song but nothing’s happening on the screen – just scenery changing. At least when Fantasia was dull, it was pretty. Even the animation in this segment seems bored.
I’m guessing you’ve probably heard of Casey at the Bat. This is a gag-filled “musical recitation” by Jerry Colonna of the famous poem. I won’t go through it joke by joke (even though having visual jokes described to you is hysterical) but the last bit with Casey in the rain in the empty park, repeatedly throwing balls to himself, swinging and missing, crying uncontrollably, is bleakly hilarious.
Oh, hey, Dinah Shore sings this next one, Two Silhouettes! I remember her from a talk show and…lesbian golf or something? Anyways. It’s two shadowed ballet dancers prancing in front of an animated background. The dancers are real, they’re completely silhouetted, and it looks pretty cool. I found myself wondering if they were wrapped head-to-toe in green-screen material, which might explain why, considering they are dancing a ballet, they don’t actually move around all that much.
Peter and the Wolf is up next, an animated acting-out of Prokofiev’s tune. The opening – with the narrator, Sterling Holloway, explaining how each instrument represents a character – is very Fantasia. The cartoon is silly fun, but I have some issues. The wolf is drawn in a very Satanic manner and it is constantly drooling. The animators are clearly trying to influence us to root against this noble beast. The good cat tries to eat the good bird and we’re all supposed to forgive and forget, but the wolf just tries to defend himself – Peter and his menagerie come hunting for him, remember – and somehow he’s the bad guy? Prejudice! Wrote a song about! Like to hear it? Hear it go. Also, the wolf clearly eats Sonia the duck – we actually see her ghost go to Heaven – but then the filmmakers wimp out and make it so she’s alive at the end. The Martins and the Coys shooting each other to death was fine, but a wolf eating a duck is a step too far? America has weird values.
After You’re Gone has Benny Goodman back again as each member of the Goodman Octet is represented by an animated instrument going wild. It’s non-realistic and incredibly fun and somewhat nonsensical – I particularly liked the fingers in tutus dancing on the keyboard – and it’s over way too soon.
Johnnie Fedora and Alice Bluebonnet is about two hats that are in love. There’s not much more I can say about it, except excessive time spent on Tumblr led me to expect the fedora to say “M’lady” a lot while wearing a trenchcoat and holding a My Little Pony.
I almost jumped off my sofa in excitement when I realized the final installment was The Whale Who Wanted to Sing at the Met. I had the book and record set of this as a kid – those of you of a certain age may remember these, you turned the page when you heard the bell. I loved the damn thing, but it had been so long that I had forgotten the entire story. I always thought it was a stand-alone Disney short, I had no idea it was a part of a feature. So I was pretty excited to see the actual cartoon for the first time, and I wasn’t disappointed. Seriously, get this DVD just for this short (I’d say watch it on YouTube but I can’t find it). It’s about an opera-singing whale named Willie who dreams of being discovered. Nelson Eddy does all the voices and he’s superb. There is an extended dream sequence of Willie singing opera’s most famous roles at the Met – him immense, his co-stars normal sized – and it’s perfection. He’s Pagliacci with a HUGE red nose and a tiny, tiny hat. It’s just…see it. Make Mine Music has a lot of really great ups and a few really boring downs, but this final segment makes the whole film.

Aug

2014

Ten Thoughts on The Three Caballeros

I saw The Three Caballeros (1944) once when I was very little, but all I remember is the theme song and wondering why the other two caballeros with Donald weren’t Mickey and Goofy. This film is better known than its thematic predecessor, Saludos Amigos, because of more frequent theatrical and home video releases, but it’s essentially another package film, and another tour through Latin America as seen through the Disney lens.

The opening sequence, which is also the framing sequence throughout the film, is Donald celebrating his birthday (Friday the 13th) and receiving presents from Latin American friends. He receives a film projector and gets tangled in the screen while setting it up and stays remarkably composed, given his well-known history of anger management issues. The first short he watches is called “Aves Rares,” or “Strange Birds,” and Donald indicates birds by making a shadow puppet of wings and flapping them. He makes the shadow puppet of wings with his…wings. It’s very confusing. It’s like making a shadow puppet of arms with your hands. Why not just use your arms? I spent so much time thinking about this that I missed most of the strange birds.
Pablo is the titular (heh) star of the next short, “The Cold-Blooded Penguin.” He’s a penguin at the South Pole (or “Polo Sur”) who hates the cold so he makes his bathtub into a boat to sail to a nice warm South American island. It’s a fun cartoon but there’s a bit at the end where the bathtub is filling with water and he’s frantically trying to bail it out, and it only works if we don’t know that penguins can swim. Which is something they’re actually pretty well known for. I’m okay with a penguin having a bathtub but my suspension of disbelief only goes so far.
More strange birds of South America! Did you know that toucans can’t make love because they wallop each other with their beaks whenever they try to kiss? No? Me, neither. I’m beginning to think that this feature is not living up to its remit to educate its audience about Latin America.
“The Flying Gauchito” is about a little Uruguayan boy named Gauchito (“Little Cowboy”) who, while out hunting condors finds a winged donkey named Burrito (“Little Donkey” – think about that the next time you order the beef at Chipotle). First off – hunting condors? That’s a thing? Second, it’s here that I realize how much Spanish vocabulary this movie is hurling at us with no explanation, just plopped in the middle of otherwise English sentences. It’s like the screenwriters for this flick were Dora the Explorer and El Dorado from The Super Friends. Anyway, Gauchito enters Burrito in a race and he wins but then Burrito’s wings are revealed and everyone accuses him of cheating and so they fly away and – in the words of the older Gauchito, who’s narrating the story – “Neither him nor me was ever seen again as long as we lived.” The end. Uh…okay? That was abrupt. Did you fly into the upper stratosphere and freeze to death? Did you go off and live happily in the Andes with your donkey-bird? I feel like there’s more to this story. It’s all very “Poochie died on his way back to his home planet.”
Hey, José Carioca is back! He’s that sketchy Brazilian parrot from Saludos Amigos. This oughta liven things up. José takes Donald on a tour of South America, which eats up the rest of the film. Baía is first, which is lovely (it looks like foreign money) although the song is a little dull. They jump into a pop-up book to interact with the locals, including singer Aurora Miranda (sister of Carmen, who was a famous entertainer mostly remembered for wearing a hat made of fruit). Donald and José go ga-ga for Aurora in a particularly unconvincing mix of live-action and animation. Aurora has crazy eyes. Maybe it’s from having to interact with rear projection so much, but I’d play it safe and stay away, fellas.
I can’t understand a damn word either of these birds is saying.
Before we resume our tour, we finally meet the third caballero – Panchito Pistoles, representing Mexico. They sing the title song – “We’re three happy chappies, with snappy serapes, you’ll find us beneath our sombreros…” and then they all fire guns into the air. And it’s still less offensively stereotypically Mexican than what I saw on Univision at the laundromat this morning.
And suddenly a group of big-headed Mexican children straight out of a Little Golden Book are teaching me about the true meaning of Christmas and it’s all very earnest and it has something to do with piñatas and I have to check to make sure I’m still watching the same movie.
That last segment is where this movie really goes off the rails and never comes back. It’s not bad – it’s kind of great – it’s just insane. The trio of birds fly over Mexico on a magical serape taking in the sights. Why don’t they use their wings? Don’t ask silly questions. Donald starts horn dogging it again on the live-action ladies. Cartoon birds love live-action ladies. They fly over Acapulco Beach and all three birds go nuts dive-bombing the hot bikini babes. There are no men, by the way – they must all be at a different beach. (Can I go there?) The interaction between the actors and the animation is much better in this segment – at one point the beautiful ladies catch and bounce Donald in a blanket and it’s flawlessly done. I completely bought into it.
And then Donald drops acid with the animators, that’s the only explanation I can find for this last section. His unnatural lust for human women has finally driven him mad. I don’t even know how to describe it. He’s up in the sky gathering stars and he’s chasing this singer and then there’s a woman dressed like a flower and then he dances with an adorable cactus lady and José and Panchito keep appearing and inexplicably tormenting him and the flashing colors and the noise and I think the filmmakers had some issues to work out. And then Donald gets inside a bull costume made of fireworks and bullfights with Panchito but then José lights the fireworks and they explode and that’s the end of the movie. (Add tequila, churros and a donkey and it’s a trip to Tijuana I took in 1996.) The Three Caballeros isn’t a bad flick. Some of the travelogue sections get a little dull, but the humor veers between classic Disney and batshit crazy, both entertaining in their own way. Plus the theme song is catchy as hell. I give it two and a half caballeros.

Jul

2014

Ten Thoughts on Victory Through Air Power

Victory Through Air Power (1943) is an odd film. It’s the first example of wartime propaganda produced by Disney. I had never seen it before – hadn’t even heard of it until I was deciding which movies I was going to watch for this series of posts. Apart from the opening sequence, it wasn’t ever shown on TV and it wasn’t released on home video until 2004, so it’s fairly unknown, despite it being only the eighth Disney feature. It really is blatant, unashamed propaganda – it’s based on the book of the same name by Major Alexander P. de Seversky, who appears in the film in the live action sequences giving a lecture to the American people and, most particularly, to military and government leaders, about the necessity of increasing America’s commitment to develop long-range bombing and of building a better fleet of long-range bombers. That’s it. That’s what the whole movie’s about. Like I said, it’s an odd film.

The opening sequence, “History of Aviation,” is the only part of the film that was occasionally shown over the years since this film’s release, since it stands on its own and isn’t quite as propaganda-y as the rest. It’s a cartoon telling us – well, the history of aviation. And it’s very cartoony – although the narration is straightforward, there’s a lot of humor in the animation. You could replace Orville Wright with Goofy and I’d believe it’s another installment in his “How To” series. Overall, this segment is pretty awesome. It’s entertaining and even educational.
There’s a close-up on a newspaper. The headline we’re meant to see says, “U.S. War Dept. Plans Air Corps,” but the headline beneath that reads “Rich Filipino Brings Natives Here.” I think I’d rather watch that cartoon.
According to “History of Aviation”, pilots in the first world war were quite polite to each other at first, even friendly. The very first dog fight began when a French pilot snapped a picture of his German counterpart as their planes were passing, but when the French pilot developed the film, the German pilot was making a nasty face at him. So the next time they passed the French pilot threw a brick at him. I am beginning to doubt the historical accuracy of this cartoon.
Into the first live action sequence, and Seversky is wasting no time. He starts right off with the great risk America is at of being bombed by the Germans. This was released just a few months after Pearl Harbor, by the way. The filmmakers know how to play to the fears of their audience – essential for any good piece of propaganda. And this is pretty effective propaganda. It’s very clear and persuasive. There’s an interesting segment about how Germany’s dominance of the air led to their successful invasions of France and Norway.
The music is amazing. The orchestral score keeps dropping in bits from “La Marseillaise,” “Rue Brittania,” and “America the Beautiful” (to name just a few) whenever we’re meant to get teary about those songs’ respective countries. It works. (The film was nominated for an Oscar for Best Score.)
Hey, that silhouette of a WWII tank kind of looks like a Dalek! Oh…wait…I probably have that backwards…
This may come as a shock, but the segment on the importance and logistics of supply lines is a little dull.
There are a lot of impressive, effective images in this movie. A champagne bottle smashes against a supply ship, launching it. Cut to: a torpedo hits the ship in the exact same spot, sinking it.
There’s a symbolic bit where a circle with a swastika at the center, representing the German front, is besieged on multiple sides by arrows, representing the Allied forces, trying to burst through the circle to reach the war machine factories at the center, when one of the hypothetical long-range bombers flies straight through and drops a bomb which explodes in the center and then all the arrows which couldn’t puncture the circle scatter in all directions. It reminds me so much of a cartoon from a high school health class about a bunch of sperm trying to fertilize an egg. (Minus the swastika, hopefully.)
The movie ends with some severe war porn – animated shots of American planes bombing the hell out of Japan, the entire country’s infrastructure destroyed. There are no people shown but it’s really quite disturbing. While I’m sure it was meant to inspire the people of 1943 who had just endured such a frightening sneak attack on American soil, today the delight we’re meant to take in the destruction of our enemies is rather chilling. But then there’s a giant eagle and it’s fighting an evil octopus, and the eagle kills the octopus which releases the daggers it had been plunging into the Pacific islands with its tentacles and then the eagle lands on a post and turns to gold and the post is a flagpole and the American flag is waving and The End. What the hell did I just watch?

Jun

2014

Ten Thoughts on Saludos Amigos

Saludos Amigos (1942) was Disney’s first “package film” – a feature made up of individual shorts. I had never seen this movie before – I had never even heard of it. Which, as it turns out, is kind of a shame…

There are four animated shorts in this movie, linked by a live-action travelogue about Disney artists touring South America for inspiration. They were actually on a goodwill tour commissioned by the State Department to counter some of the influence of Nazi Germany on Latin American countries, because Disney cartoons were very popular there. That last part isn’t mentioned in the movie, which is a shame because it’s kind of bad-ass. Walt Disney vs. the Nazis. That’s a bio-pic waiting to happen.
The first short shows us Donald Duck visiting Lake Titicaca and the nearby town, and everything is quaint and exotic and primitive and hoo boy is it 1942. It’s funny, though. I mean, it’s Donald Duck getting mad and there’s a snooty llama. How can it not be funny?
The second short is Pedro, about a baby plane on his first flight, picking up the mail from Mendoza, Argentina, and bringing it home to Santiago, Chile. It’s adorable. Who’s a cute widdle baby plane? You are, Pedro! Yes, you are!
The animators keep forgetting that Pedro is carrying the mail bag. It vanishes and reappears from scene to scene. Seeing as how the whole cartoon is about Pedro delivering the mail, that’s kind of an important plot element to neglect to draw.
A lot of the non-anthropomorphic animals in Disney shorts act as either the straight man or the antagonist to the main character. In the third short, El Gaucho Goofy, Goofy’s horse is just as ridiculous as he is, and it works very well.
El Gaucho Goofy ends with Goofy saying “Hasta la vista” and for a second I forget what year it is and I’m sure he’s going to end it with “baby” but then he doesn’t. Obviously.
There are live action shots of the carnival in Rio, and there’s not a single drag queen to be seen. I don’t care if it is 1942, I don’t buy it.
The final short is Aquarela de Brasil (Watercolor of Brazil) and it’s gorgeous, particularly the opening sequence where a paint brush creates the Brazilian rain forest. Even though they’re twenty years apart, and one is Latin American themed and the other Polynesian, I was reminded of the Enchanted Tiki Room – I wonder if there was some inspiration drawn from here. This short marks the first appearance ever of José Carioca, the cigar smoking parrot. José would go on to be hugely popular in Brazil, starring in his own series of Disney comics. He likes to get boozy, so I’m a fan.
Blink and you miss it, but just before the last sequence the paint brush drains the bottle of cachaça that Donald just got hammered on and uses the strong alcoholic liquid as its paint for the final samba scene. Brilliant.
If you can put up the theme park history tour, the shorts in this flick are pretty great. Don’t expect a movie, expect a couple of fun cartoons. It’s worth a watch.

Jun

2014

Ten Thoughts on Bambi

Bambi (1942) was supposed to be Disney’s second film, the follow up to Snow White, but the source material was considered too adult and so the project was put on hold for several years. I saw Bambi once before, but I was older and it didn’t have quite the traumatizing effect on me that it seemed to have had for so many others. I still think it’s kind of messed up, though (but I’ll get to that).

The shots of the forest are great – the layering of the animation cels creates a three-dimensional look that’s almost jarring after the relative flatness of Dumbo. But we already saw this two years ago, in The Reluctant Dragon, where we saw a scene from Bambi being assembled. These movies sure do take a long time to make…
You will never convince me that the squirrel and the chipmunk aren’t post-coital. The way the chipmunk is curled up asleep under the squirrel’s tail. The way they’re both yawning and smiling so sleepy and contended – they’re practically glowing. We’re not even four minutes in and I’m beginning to see why the source material was considered too adult.
Bambi’s got gay face.
So what the hell is the back story with Bambi’s absentee dad? All the other animal families are looking pretty anthropomorphically nuclear, so why does Bambi Senior keep his distance from his kid and his baby momma? She should bring him on Maury and get a paternity test. Make that stag pay some support.
This movie has probably the least plot of any of the Disney movies so far, and that’s saying something. Sure are a lot of cute baby animals, though. Every time Thumper talks I clench my fists under my chin and open my eyes real wide like I’m a character in a manga.
The scenes of Bambi having difficulty walking are animated so well I’m sure one of his legs is going to snap.
“That’s all right. He can call me a flower if he wants to. I don’t mind.” We never learn what Flower the skunk’s real name was – forever after, he’s Flower. He is obviously crushing hard on Bambi, and i can totally identify – I’ve met plenty of guys I was willing to reinvent myself for. “Call me whatever you want, just call me!” Reclaim your name, Flower, and with it your dignity. These things never end well. Trust me. I once spent a whole date pretending I wrote crossword puzzles. I didn’t even get dessert out of it.
So wait, Bambi’s dad is known as the Great Prince of the Forest just because he’s survived longer than all the other stags? That’s all it takes? The owl looks pretty old, how come he doesn’t get a title? He restrains himself from eating all the cute little chipmunks and bunny rabbits, I think that’s worthy of more respect than just being good at hiding and running and blending in with tree branches.
Forty minutes of idyllic pastoral tranquility and unbounded animal cuteness and then DEATH DEATH DEATH
“Come…my son.” Was that supposed to be a surprise? I think we all figured it out when you were standing on the rock acting all cool after Bambi was born. I think even Bambi figured it out before now and he’s slower than a snail on pot. So Bambi goes off with his dad to grow up and learn to not be such a nancy boy and he comes back and proves his manliness – stagliness? – by defeating his rival for Faline’s affections (Is this our first implied threat of rape in a Disney film? Does kissing an unconscious woman count?) and the hunting dogs and a forest fire, and the movie ends with his kids being born and him up on that same damn distant rock with his dad. Faline will be left doing all the work while he goes off to bro off with his pops and get revered by all the forest animals as the Great Prince of Not Dead Yet. Bambi is a wonderful movie but it’s sure got some weird ideas about parenting.

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