ReFrederator Blog

Great Director’s Week rocks on! Today we are assaulted by Tex Avery’s 1945 gem “Jerky Turkey,” and it’s every man, or bird, for himself. Wild, nutty, anything-for-a-laugh business with a gag inventory that’s evenly divided between cringe inducing corny and jaw dropping surreal. Lots of wartime jokes! Tex is usually given much of the credit in developing great Warner Brothers icons like Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, but by the time he was cranking out MGM Cartoons, Mr. A was not particularly sentimental about his characters. The smartass turkey who talks like Jimmy Durante and the dumb as a Plymouth Rock Pilgrim both come to a gruesome end here, and nobody seems overly upset — least of all the same said protagonists, who appear only mildly disgruntled.

I really like the character design for the dopey pilgrim; his body looks like it’s constructed entirely of water balloons. A year earlier, the same character [Read more…]

This week, ReFrederator salutes five great cartoon directors, starting off with a key film from one of the Warner Brothers biggies, Bob Clampett.

Our toon is “A Tale of Two Kitties”, the landmark epic that introduces a microbe sized fledgling who makes movie history, when he coins the phrase “I tawt I taw a puddy tat!” Here in his screen debut, he’s naked pink, more of a baby something or other rather than a canary, stalked by two cats who think they’re Abbott and Costello, and altogether much more lethally aggressive than the superstar we now know as Tweety.

The cartoon itself is top notch, full of laugh out loud stuff, and hysterical little character touches (the ‘Bud’ caricature is just a tad iffy, but ‘Lou as a cat’ is a spot on riot!) Plenty of Clampett’s trademark style on display here — wild over-the-top gags held together with hair [Read more…]

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ReFrederator happily presents “Piano Tooners” starring those harmonizing hambones, Tom and Jerry (no, no, not the cat and mouse… the tall and short human beings with noses that look like little black jellybeans) This one kicks off with a snappy rendition of the old standard ‘Margie,’ knocks around for a while in the guys’ workshop, then wraps things up with a big concert hall finish to the tune of “Doin’ the New Lowdown.” Rest assured there’s plenty of globby looking cartoon characters and rubbery animation along the way, as befits a 1932 RKO/Van Beuron release.

Man, I love this one! During the big finale, individual orchestra members start dividing, multiplying and transmogrifying like jazz crazy amoebas. They even take on a vaguely satanic look, when their sparse head hairs form wispy little horn-things! All very ‘thirties,’ all very snazzy.

So much for “Musical Moments.” Next week ReFredrator is off to new triumphs, celebrating Cartoonland’s [Read more…]

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