Hey, remember when Disney didn’t suck and blow simultaneously?
Deep down, most of us suspect that ol’ Uncle Walt was a sexist, racist, feeb-informing Machiavellian rat king. (Still, who doesn’t love Pinocchio?) And while there’s no doubt Disney’s recent corporate merge with Pixar and subsequent shakedown (leaving prodigies Lasseter, Catmull and Jobs steering the ship) will bring back much of the first company’s long lost artistry, the question bears repeating: have the past 20 years of Disney output blown epilepticpygmy goats,or what? Wtf happened?*
Never mind. Let’s focus on the semi-positive and take a look Disney’s chaotic neutral, pre-sucky years. I know I’m not the only one with fond recollections of the many offbeat live action flicks Disney produced in the late 70s and early 80s. Uncle Walt was in cryogenic deep freeze and the company’s heyday was fading, but gems like TRON, Something Wicked This Way Comes, and most poignantly their ridonkulous sci-fi space epic, The Black Hole all have a special place in this gal’s personal What Made Me Weird lexicon.
Yvette Mimieux gets some much-needed laser surgery.
Produced on the heels of Star Wars’ popularity, The Black Hole is one of Disney’s last gasps of cornball genius. Sure, it’s got problems. No originality, for starters. As one reviewer put it “[this is] nothing but a ‘creepy old house’ movie set in space.” Also, the screenwriters seem to have been unsure what demographic they were writing for, resulting in a plot that insults adult viewers’ intellects while still managing to scare the ever-loving crap out of children (and making The Black Hole the first PG-rated film in Disney history). Hokey dialog and unfortunate wardrobe choices abound. But if I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a hundred times; you can’t go wrong with Ernest Borgnine. If that’s not enough to entice you, there’s John Barry’s amazing score, the incredible scale models and sets, scene after scene featuring beautiful, richly colored matte paintings of deep space, and Anthony Perkins getting the Cuisinart treatment.
Best for last, the Maximilian <3 Reinhardt 4-Ebber (In Hell) ending:
Every once in a while something so amazing slips past us that we can but weep in mourning of lost time, once the Amazing Thing is discovered at last.
I remember mention of The Mysterious Explorations of Jasper Morello when it was first released in 2005 but it was tragically lost in the rumbling noise of the Internet, before I could watch it. The IMDB synopsis of this gorgeous silhouette animation is as follows:
“Set in a world of iron dirigibles and steam powered computers, this gothic horror mystery tells the story of Jasper Morello, a disgraced aerial navigator who flees his Plague-ridden home on a desperate voyage to redeem himself. The chance discovery of an abandoned dirigible leads Jasper through unchartered waters to an island on which lives a terrifying creature that may be the cure for the Plague. The journey back to civilization is filled with horrors but in a shocking climax, Jasper discovers that the greatest horror of all lies within man himself. “
Today by pure chance I re-discovered this gem of animation on the ol’ YouTube and am about to buy the DVD to finally put an end to my ignorance. Has anyone here seen this?
It happened well over a decade ago, but the memory is crystal: my best bud Gooby Herms, fellow purveyor of All That Is Wackadoo, leaped up from the threadbare couch bellowing “holy crap, you’ve never seen the Billy Nayer Show?!” With a table top drum roll, he popped his scuzzy bootleg of The Ketchup and Mustard Man into the VCR and pressed play. My jaw hit the floor… repeatedly. I’ve been an idolator at the shrine of BNS ever since.
When bandleader Cory McAbee and company released The American Astronaut in 2001, I knew the world was in for it:
Space travel has become a dirty way of life dominated by derelicts, grease monkeys, and hard-boiled interplanetary traders such as Samuel Curtis… this sci-fi, musical-western uses flinty black and white photography, rugged Lo-Fi sets and the spirit of the final frontier. We follow Curtis on his Homeric journey to provide the all-female planet of Venus with a suitable male, while pursued by an enigmatic killer, Professor Hess. The film features music by The Billy Nayer Show and some of the most original rock n’ roll scenes ever committed to film.
While these days everything Disney isn’t exactly perceived as cutting edge, things were different back in the day. Just think of gloriously creepy Fantasia and Pinocchio, both the fruit of Disney’s collaboration with Bauhaus painter Oskar Fischinger.
Disney intended to continue bringing in artists to further expand his studio’s horizons, and Destino was meant to be his next step in that direction. Salvador Dali thought very highly of Disney and cherished the project, completing for it 2 paintings at 135 sketches. A surrealist love story conceived and subsequently shelved in the 40s, Destino was finally unearthed, finished and released in 2003 on orders of Walt Disney’s nephew.
Update! If you’re in LA, you can see Destino for yourselves at LACMA through January 6. Thanks for the tip, 5000!
Though personally I would have preferred Dali traveled in time and worked with Peter Chung, this remains a fine testament to both Dali and Disney’s former glory. One more video beyond the jump.
Halloween is very nearly upon us. While it’s most often misrepresented by items such as this, I refuse to let commercial culture rob me of this treasured holiday’s mystery. ???? ? T??a?? (Hedgehog in the Fog), the eerie masterpiece of Russian animation featured in this post, could have easily been part of the “what made me weird” article – it affected me greatly as a kid, feeding my hungry chimera and igniting within my fevered brain the very spirit of adventure. I like to think this was the exact intended effect.
The story is simple: Hedgehog is on his way to pay his friend, the Bear Cub, a visit. They often meet for tea and count stars together. This time Hedgehog’s prepared a special raspberry jam for the occasion. Oh his walk he sees a strange white horse in the evening fog. The fog is so thick that Hedgehog wonders whether the horse would suffocate if it were to lie down in it. The beautiful animation drips with symbolism as the Hedgehog, driven by his curiosity, steps inside the fog and into another world. He’s lost and faced with fear, loneliness, hostility and eventual redemption.
Ever-present in my subconscious, Hedgehog In The Fog is a living dream, an embodiment of fascination with the great Unknown.
Having been a bit overwhelmed lately by blanched, washed out, sepia-tinted, Dover-collagey everything, surreal footage that looks like animated Lomo imagery is delightful change of pace. Plus? Ponies!
I can’t have been any older than 8 or 9 when my brain was permanently warped byThe Adventures of Mark Twain. My folks though they were treating me to fluffy kid’s fare. They were quite wrong. A full length feature directed by claymation innovator Will Vinton, the film follows the existensial journey of Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher as crew members aboard the funky, Verne-inspired flying machine of a very suicidal Mark Twain.
It’s been well documented that Twain –who was born and died with the arrival of Halley’s Comet– was a deeply depressed, reclusive misanthrope in his later years. In the film, disgusted with the human condition, Twain is determined to hunt down the comet and crash into it. “I will continue on doing my duty, but when I get to the other side, I will use my considerable influence to have the human race drowned again, this time drowned good. No omissions. No ark.”
Worried about their own fate, the kids plot to hijack the ship. With the aid of an inter-dimensional portal aboard, they meet several characters from Twain’s various short stories, including Captain Stormfield, the Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and The Mysterious Stranger (this last sequence has got to be one of the impressive displays of clay animation around, not to mention the creepiest):
