It was announced a month ago that arguably the best DVD rental store on the face of the earth, Le Video, in San Francisco's Inner Sunset district, would be, barring a rapid infusion of cash, closing by May 15th. Luckily, a fundraiser was quickly organized via Indie A Go-Go.
As their website notes, not just the killer collection is at risk, but the tradition of the brick and mortar video store and the key role it plays in film discovery, education and social interaction.
Le Video has been a San Francisco institution for over 30 years and features a collection of cinematic rarities from all over the world (and from every era) that cannot be touched by Netflix, Amazon and/or other various streaming video services.
The good news is that LeVideo made its initial goal of $35,000. There are 26 more days in the fundraiser - and Mr. Blogmeister wholeheartedly supports raising the ante!
The Puppetoon Movie, a feature-length compilation put together by George Pal and stop-motion historian Arnold Leibovit in 1987, is now available again on a limited edition Blu-ray.
Saw The Puppetoon Movie on the big screen back during its late 1980's theatrical run.
I was thrilled and delighted to find that it included Mr. Blogmeister's favorite Puppetoon ever made, the charming and romantic Together In The Weather, starring Punchy & Judy.
Reviews thus far include a thorough and well-written piece on the DVD release by Francis Rizzo III for
DVD Talk.
George Pal frequently featured swing jazz in his 1930's and 1940's Puppetoons.
Yes, admittedly, Pal's Jasper series, seen in the 21st century, can be a tad dated, but they nonetheless have incredible soundtracks to match the stop-motion invention. Swing-to-bop master Charlie Barnet provides the memorable music in Jasper In A Jam.
Here's a clip from the Puppetoon DVD, including a commentary by stop motion animator Bob Baker, who worked with Mr. Pal on the series, and historian/archivist Steve Stanchfield.
Channel Four, known for some pretty darn wonderful documentaries on music, produced this top-notch look at George Pal.
Even in the era of wall-to-wall CGI, this blogger finds Pal's imaginative special effects in such films as War Of The Worlds still positively mind-blowing after six decades.
The latest scoop from Animation Scoop - there's a new feature film forthcoming from a studio much beloved by Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog, the incomparable Aardman Animations.
Since Mr. Blogmeister adored the Aardman features Chicken Run and Wallace And Gromit: The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit, this is truly jolly good news among this week's reeking current events stench.
Of course, ranking high on the short list of all-time favorite films is The Wrong Trousers.
When a October 10, 2005 fire at the Aardman Animations warehouse, the hope was that the company would be able to return from the damage. This blaze wiped out just about all the original sets for the Wallace and Gromit films and panels of original storyboards. . . as fully "up in smoke" as a 35mm nitrate camera negative of a Gale Henry or Alice Howell Universal comedy!
Well, they did make it all the way back, thank Wensleydale, and the official trailer for the upcoming Aardman opus, to be released in 2015, is here - the epic, the sensational, the big screen spectacle topping the special effects and severed-limb packed "300" movies. . . the Shaun the Sheep feature film!
While this will not be a horror flick that crosses Shaun Of The Sheep and Shaun Of The Dead, one sincerely hopes that the next feature from Aardman proves itself at the box office as an enormous international hit and Aardman gets to make more features (maybe even starring Wallace & Gromit). So today, the respectful tip of the Jack Buchanan top hat goes to the outstanding creative artists of Aardman Animations!
Submitted for your approval are yet more stop-motion pitches for Your Favorite Product, including a historic German advertising film for LEGO, a most jaunty Quaker Oats ad animated by Joop Geesink's Dollywood Studio and Dave Allen's epic King Kong Volkswagen spot.
Although Your Blogmeister is not under the impression that wolves are interested in Del Monte Zucchini as anything other than a side dish, who knows - haven't had any wolves as pets, maybe they adore canned zucchini.
The following ad encouraging parents to crank up their kids yet further with super-sugary Apple Jacks cereal reminds me more than a little of Art Clokey's classic Budweiser commercial and very funny Lawn Party short subject.
From the sublime to the pastoral to the ridiculous to (DISCLAIMER, dear readers) the politically incorrect, always with imagination to spare - classic animated ads.
Your Blogmeister finds the jaunty stop-motion animation of George Pal's stylish mini-musicals for Horlicks Malted Milk and Philips astounding and weirdly beautiful.
The Philips ads pre-date the elaborate musicals the stop-motion specialists would later produce in the 1940's George Pal Puppetoon series for Paramount.
As the underlying theme is the "music 'round the world" content of programs to be heard in the 1930's via cutting edge Philips radios, in 2014 this means frequent lapses into stereotype. The view from Holland of American culture, and especially black music - gospel, jazz and blues - can be both awestruck and grotesque.
With Pal, these at times cringe-worthy moments in his Dutch and American puppet animation films are the direct byproduct of both his love of music and genuine fascination with masks, carvings, costumes, totem poles and tiki motifs from Asia, the South Seas and Africa; snobs referred to it as "primitive art" - just "art" sounds more like it.
It's apparent, even in the earliest of George Pal's puppet animation short subjects for Philips, that he had an aesthetic goal of bringing the world to stop-motion.
This content notwithstanding, the brilliant visual presentation and invention of George Pal and his hard-working animators shines through.
Pal's studio would go on to produce dozens of imaginative puppetoons and innovative special effects for such feature films as Destination Moon and War Of The Worlds.
Again, from the sublime to the ridiculous, here's some stop motion fun in lower budget yet memorable commercials from the 1950s.
The following animated cigarette ads, although very well executed, are hardly an original idea. The legendary painter and filmmaking innovator Oskar Fischinger produced an incredibly imaginative and elaborate theatrical commercial for Muratti Cigarettes (alas, not available online or on DVD) in 1934.
Still, Your Blogmeister, as ever easily amused, enjoys the square dancin' smokes in the following Lucky Strikes ad.
When watching these ads, the (much later) stop-motion work of Henry Selick and Aardman Animations and classic George Pal cartoons, the thought arises, "eat your heart out, CGI!"
""The Gumby stories were an act of love for all children." Art Clokey
We begin this blog's final Much Ado About Gumby piece spotlighting the clay animation of Art Clokey with a note on the series' distinct chronology.
The Four Phases Of Gumby
1953-1958 Gumbasia and the first two seasons of Gumby cartoons: all directed and written by Art Clokey
1960-1964 Art was involved in writing and direction, but the responsibility for the films increasingly would be handled by Ruth Clokey during this time. There's a lot more dialogue and new characters Prickle and Goo were introduced.
1965-1968 Produced, directed and edited by Ruth Clokey and written by Sneaky Pete Kleinow and Ray Peck.
1986-1994 The last series and The Gumby Movie, produced by Art Clokey.
The late independent filmmaker Robina Marchesi produced Gumby Dharma, a brief but illuminating documentary about Art Clokey in 2004.
Gumby and Pokey narrate and there is a brief yet funny appearance by voice artist Dallas McKennon. Quite a bit of interview footage includes Art's son Joe Clokey, stop-motion animators Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas, James & The Giant Peach, Coraline) and Tim Hittle as well as friend of this blog, historian and film programmer Gary Meyer.
Unfortunately there is no interview footage with Art's first wife, Ruth, a key figure in the creation and development of Gumby and the producer of the late 1960's episodes, or Art's second wife, Gloria, who passed away in 1998. Art, well into his 80's at the time this was produced, showed courage in baring his soul, warts and all.
Art, as tens of thousands did in 1965-1967 (but relatively few from his WW2 generation) chucked it all, including his family and studio, to "tune in, turn on, drop out". Ruth Clokey continued the series through the end of its 1960's run. Animator and steel guitar wizard Sneaky Pete Kleinow wrote the theme song for the 1967-1968 Gumby series and, with Ray Peck, penned the majority of the storylines.
Since Art, at the age of eight, was abandoned by his own mother (who left his dad and ran off with a policeman who had been boarding with the family), this comes across to latter-day observers and armchair psychologists as a sad and uncanny replay of his own childhood. In truth, the stable family structure seen in Gumby and Davey & Goliath in no way shape or form paralleled anything in Art's own life, at least until his adoption by genial professor and world traveler Dr. Joseph W. Clokey.
Meanwhile, Art, no longer making Gumby cartoons after the 1960s series, but nonetheless a claymation Don Quixote, continued his lifelong quest for creative freedom and began working on his second experimental film, Mandala, in 1973.
Mandala stands as both fitting followup/companion piece to the imaginative Gumbasia and a unique stop-motion addition to the animation tradition of "motion painting", mastered first by Viking Eggeling, Alexander & Claire Alexeiff, Oskar Fischinger and Len Lye back in the 1920's and 1930's, then later in the films of Norman McLaren and Jordan Belson. It's likely that National Film Board Of Canada artist Ishu Patel saw Mandala, and so did many others in the experimental animation field.
In the 1970's, hard times hit Art and Gloria Clokey. During the early phases of Mandala's production, the tragedy of the Art's life struck when his daughter Anne Helene, responsible for much of the sculpting and color design on the film's opening sequences, committed suicide in 1974, by all accounts as a direct result of trauma from witnessing the death of a friend. The television distribution of Gumby stopped, and with it all residuals, and Art & Gloria dropped out of sight for the better part of a decade.
Theatrical Gumby retrospectives curated for Landmark Theatres by Gary Meyer coaxed the Clokeys out of early retirement, starting in the late 1970's.
The clay-boy's adventures were a most unexpected smash hit with audiences. These sold-out shows, along with Eddie Murphy's Saturday Night Live spoof - a jaded, cigar-chomping Borscht Belt showbiz variation on the beloved Gumby - brought the character back into the public eye.
Eventually, this resulted in the production of a new Gumby series and The Gumby Movie. As with all the series, the Marin County-produced episodes have many imaginative moments and the genuine affability of the characters shines through. The musical segments tend to be the most successful - especially those featuring The Gumbys. All the Premavision Gumbys can be seen on via The Gumby Collection channel on YouTube.
It was great that Gumby and Pokey had a 50 year run. Shall close this series with a fun fact about Your Blogmeister's favorite clay-boy: The Gumby Album, from 1989, was produced by Pat Patrick of the SUN RA ARKESTRA!
For background material throughout this four-part series, big time acknowledgements from Your Blogmeister go to the Gumby World website, a Gumby filmography which is part of the
Wikipedia entry for Art Clokey, and, posthumously, documentary producer/director Robina Marchesi. And last but not least, thanks, Art, Ruth, Gloria and all the claymation artists who made the magic happen!
The team of Eric Morecambe & Ernie Wise, along with Benny Hill, were among the last comedians influenced by the rollicking humor of English music halls.
Morecambe & Wise, A.K.A. Eric and Ernie, brought that tuneful joie de vivre into the television age.
Morecambe & Wise started performing together in 1941 and grew up watching variety shows, the British version of vaudeville. It would be an understatement to suggest that music is a cornerstone of their comedy.
The contagious silliness factor and good humor of the Morecambe & Wise musical sketches works for me and also is reminiscent (in a very good way) of the American team from numerous absurdist 1930's movie musicals produced by RKO Radio Pictures, Bert Wheeler & Robert Woolsey.
Too bad Allan Sherman was never a guest star on the Morecambe & Wise show (I can hear the intro now: "Hello Eric, Hello Ernie. Hello, Harvey, Sheila, Bernie").
The Morecambe & Wise Show proved a rousing success in Great Britain, first on radio (beginning with the You're Only Young Once show in 1953-1954) and then on television, with the BBC-TV program that ran from 1969-1977 representing its apex.
Eric and Ernie's musical comedy variety program, unlike the post-1960's seasons of The Benny Hill Show, never quite made it to television in Your Blogmeister's neck of the woods, the San Francisco Bay Area, unfortunately.
It's official: this blog loves Morecambe & Wise, much as it loves a comedy team that inspired them, Laurel & Hardy!
For the first few years of this blog, rather arbitrarily, the 20th of every month was set aside to post Burt Bacharach music. Here are some Bacharach tunes, originally introduced in some very entertaining 1960's movies - enjoy!
Started running out of Bacharach clips that hadn't been previously posted on Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog multiple times quite awhile back. Should new clips of Burt or such prime interpreters of his music as Dionne Warwick, Dusty Springfield, Elvis Costello, Trintje Oosterhuis, Ron Isley and Diana Krall get uploaded to YouTube, there shall be more, but only on the 20th of a given month.
Today, the Brit-com aficionados from Way Too Lazy To Write A Blog pay tribute to the comedy team that got big laughs in the legendary Beyond The Fringe revue and the BBC television show Not Only But Also - Peter Cook & Dudley Moore.
As comedy and showbiz fans ponder and mourn the recent passing of powerhouse Sid Caesar, today's posting remembers another wild and crazy guy (and favorite of this blog) who blasted into the comedy zeitgeist in the 1950's, the great Spike Milligan.
Like Marty Feldman, he was a trumpet player who, instead of leading a British bebop big band, became a comedian. The musical nature of Spike's writing proved a constant in his career as a performer and author.
Born in British India in 1918, Spike made his name as a writer, cast member and co-founder of BBC radio's The Goon Show.
In over 200 radio shows and a few TV and film appearances, The Goons - Spike, Peter Sellers and Harry Secombe - for all practical purposes threw out the comedy playbook and invented a new one.
After The Goon Show, Milligan began doing standup comedy and guest appearances on various TV variety programs.
He would soon follow up The Goon Show by producing, writing and starring in his own sketch comedy program Q.
Very likely the first time Americans saw Spike Milligan was on the short-lived but glorious 1970 sketch comedy show, The Marty Feldman Comedy Machine.
Unfortunately, the 10+ seasons of Spike's Q series, at least on Your Blogmeister's home turf, the San Francisco Bay Area, did not get TV distribution in the United States, even during the 1970's and 1980's stretch when British comedy - Python and Python offshoots (Fawlty Towers, Ripping Yarns), The Two Ronnies, Benny Hill and such lesser known shows as Dad's Army and Up Pompeii (starring Frankie Howerd)- could be found everywhere on the boob tube, especially via a then more prosperous PBS. Granted, non-Python British comedy (Peter Cook & Dudley Moore, Tommy Cooper, Les Dawson, Sid Field, Flanagan & Allen, George Formby, Tony Hancock, Kenneth Horne, Jimmy James, Morecambe & Wise, Eric Sykes, Kenneth Williams, Norman Wisdom) was also seldom seen.
Thanks to YouTube DailyMotion and other online portals, it is possible now for comedy-challenged Americans to spend a bit of time in Spike's surreal comedy world.
Onscreen, he was the silliest of the silly, but offscreen was quite the activist in the environmental and animal rights arenas, as well as a prolific author. His books included a seven-volume autobiographical account of his World War II service. Hitler, Nazis, fascism and pompous twits in general were frequent targets of his humor.
Since Spike was known as a poet and author of Silly Verse for Kids, let's finish this post with one of his poems!
February 14 is both Valentine's Day and the birthday of Benny Kubelsky, a.k.a. Jack Benny. We are thrilled and delighted to celebrate Jack's 39th birthday! First and foremost, read this superb overview of Benny's lengthy career that author Trav S.D. has penned on his Stars Of Vaudeville blog.
Jack started in vaudeville but found his voice - specifically, his vain cheapskate characterization - on radio, beginning in 1932. Unquestionably, Jack was one of the guys most responsible for making the medium the national sensation it was throughout the 1930's and a balm to hurting hearts in the Great Depression. Many of the radio shows are available online via archive.org and David Von Pein's Old-Time Radio Channel on YouTube.
It could be argued that the funniest of Jack Benny's radio programs - although entries from all eras remain a riot - date from 1946-1950, by which time the writers and cast had created quite the well-oiled machine. The Jack Benny shows compare with Burns & Allen, Bob & Ray and, decades later, satirists The Firesign Theatre) as the apex of comedy produced for radio.
Jack's television show, appropriately titled The Jack Benny Program, ran for 244 episodes, from 1950 through the 1964-65 season, and has braved the test of time quite well. While not available in its entirety in a gargantuan box set, a good number of hilarious episodes are to be found on this Shout! Factory DVD release.
The TV series began as an outgrowth of the radio shows, and for quite awhile, he was doing both, along with tours/fundraisers that raised millions for symphony orchestras. Jack was one busy guy and darn energetic for 39!
Among the funniest episodes of both the radio and TV versions of the show were those which entirely consisted of jokes at the expense of rotund yet good-natured Jack Benny Program announcer Don Wilson!
As the 1950-1965 television show evolved, it would differ from Benny's radio work or later TV specials in its use of way-out sight gags and willingness to "break the fourth wall". The television show spotlighted the talented crew of continuing cast members and supporting comedians from radio (especially Mel Blanc, Eddie “Rochester” Anderson and exceptionally goofy comic/Irish tenor Dennis Day), while repeatedly having fun razzing the pop culture images of Jack and his guest stars.
At Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog, we even find Jack's much-maligned feature film, The Horn Blows At Midnight, very funny.
Now that we're living in an age in which comedies on both television and movies are few and far between - one would guess that The Suits have decided humor is insufficiently profitable - it's easy to be nostalgic for that last wave of outstanding screen comedians. One of the last, who would have fit right into silent era slapstick, was a trumpet player who became a comic in the 1960's, Mr. Marty Feldman.
Marty Feldman died in 1982 and boy, do we miss him!
Switching from our usual focus on vintage movies and animation, rooted strictly in the 20th century, there was the rare television event Your Blogmeister actually likes to watch earlier this week on February 4. Comedian and host Stephen Colbert interviewed Nadya Tolokonnikova and Masha Alyokhina, two musicians, songwriters and activists from Moscow performance art/ punk rock band Pussy Riot. The outspoken rock n' roll octet scared the hell out of "Bad Vlad" Putin to such an extent, he had Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina arrested and imprisoned.
Even through the interpreter, wry humor is quite evident throughout this interview.
It could have only been better if Pussy Riot got to also play music on the show. They appeared Wednesday night at the Amnesty International concert at Barclay’s Center in Brooklyn (and again, at least this time around, did not get the opportunity to play music). Many throughout the world applaud the band's courage and wish them well.
