Video Cabinet in Limbo: animation

Showing posts with label animation. Show all posts

Mel Brooks' 'The Critic' (1963)

(click on poster image to enlarge in a new window)

Prior to his career as a producer / director for TV and feature film, Ernest Pintoff received an Oscar for Best Animated Short in April of 1964 for his film 'The Critic', which had premiered in
New York the previous May.

In a gentle lampoon of the style of innovative animated films created by
Norman McLaren and other filmmakers from The National Film Board of Canada, 'The Critic' featured the voice of Mel Brooks as an outspoken senior citizen sitting in the audience.

Brooks had been writing for TV since the 1950s and
'Your Show of Shows', which led to his stand-up partnership with
Carl Reiner and their string of comedy albums that began in 1961.

In 1962 Brooks provided the book for the Broadway musical production of 'All American', but the show flopped, and it would be many years before Brooks returned to Broadway.

Brooks collaborated with Buck Henry to create TV's
'Get Smart' in 1965.
1968's 'The Producers' marked his return to movies, and his debut as a feature film director.

- For a very thorough examination of the creation of 'The Critic' and other Mel Brooks short films, follow the link to
Smarter Than The Average!

- For more about Ernest Pintoff's animation, follow link to
Cartoon Modern, where you can view 'Flebus', a cartoon he directed for Terrytoons in 1957, and Frederator has posted about Pintoff's
'The Interview', from 1961.

Rocket Robin Hood episode 'Dementia Five'! (1968)

Rocket Robin Hood was an animated TV series produced in Canada from 1966 - 1969.

Remembered fondly by many who grew up in that era, it was a sci-fi adventure series that took Robin Hood and his
Merry Men and put them in an outer-space setting in the year 3000.

I recall absolutely adoring this show as a kid, and being shocked revisiting it years later years to discover how clunky the limited animation was and how simple the stories were.

Watching the show's opening theme though, ▼ I can still see now what I saw in it then...

- As a small bonus, also check out one of the 'expository vignettes' about one of Rocket Robin's men.
Follow the link this small clip of Friar Tuck, which left an indelible memory for me, and may be responsible for some of my adult eating habits...

Sometime during the second season of the show, personnel change in it's production team brought in background designer
Richard H. Thomas and director Ralph Bakshi.

Bakshi had worked his way up in the field of animation while working for Terrytoons and Famous Studios, before opening his own studio in 1968. It was in '72 that Bakshi released his adaptation of R.Crumb's 'Fritz The Cat', his first in a series of animated feature films.

By the third season of 'Rocket Robin Hood', Bakshi and Thomas had given the look and feel of the series a new, slightly darker, more psychedelic tone that often made for some curious results.

Below ▼, 'Dementia Five' - - by far the 'trippiest' episode of the series...

- As a bit of trivia, much of the 'Dementia Five' episode's storyline, script, voice talent and animation cels were re-used in a Spider-Man cartoon (produced at the same studio for American TV), for the 1970 episode 'Revolt In The Fifth Dimension', which you can currently watch at You Tube - -

- Spider-Man: 'Revolt In The Fifth Dimension', Part 1
- Spider-Man: 'Revolt In The Fifth Dimension', Part 2

(Thanks are due to animation historian Jerry Beck for re-kindling many fond memories at one of his Comic-Con 'Worst Cartoons' presentations.)

'Welcome To Eltingville' pilot (2002)

A faithful re-creation of characters created by comics artist / animation writer Evan Dorkin that have appeared in his anthology comic book, 'Dork'.

The one-and-only TV episode of 'Welcome To Eltingville' ran on the Cartoon Network's 'Adult Swim'.

It could have made a great series...