In the Merry Old Land of Pepper

August 6, 2009

yellowsubmarine_barContributed by Brendan S.

Two of my all-time favorite movies, 1939’s The Wizard of Oz and 1968’s Yellow Submarine, have several things in common besides being musical fantasies- they’re practically parallel in a number of ways:

The Wizard of Oz Yellow Submarine
Colorful, peace-loving kingdom under siege by evil despots and their minions:
The Wicked Witch of the West
The flying monkeys		 Colorful, peace-loving kingdom under siege by evil despots and their minions:
The Chief Blue Meanie
The Dreadful Flying Glove
The Mayor of Munchkin City The Lord Mayor of Pepperland
A sepia-toned Kansas A bleak, grey Liverpool, England
Dorothy wanting more than her drab surroundings Ringo: “Nothing ever ‘appens to me.”
The song “Over the Rainbow” The rainbow gate to Pepperland
The Kansas farmhands each having counterparts in Oz The Beatles meet their Pepperlandian doubles- namely Sgt. Pepper’s band
Evil talking trees throw apples at Dorothy and the Scarecrow The Apple Bonkers drop large apples on the heads of innocent victims
The Yellow Brick Road served as the path to Oz The Yellow Submarine brought the Beatles on a perilous journey
Highly intellectual albeit slightly befuddled individual who befriends the main characters:
The Wizard		 Highly intellectual albeit slightly befuddled individual who befriends the main characters:
Jeremy Hilary Boob, Ph.d.
The Emerald City, which led to the Wizard’s palace The Sea of Green, which led to Pepperland
The Wizard, in his hot-air balloon, accidentally leaves Dorothy stranded in Emerald City Old Fred, on board the submarine, Old Fred, on board the submarine, stranded in the Sea of Phrenology at one point
Brief but effective use of classical music:
“Night On Bald Mountain” by Mussorgsky		 Brief but effective use of classical music:
“Air On a G String” by Bach and “Peer Gynt Morning Suite” by Grieg
On her broom, the Wicked Witch skywrites “Surrender Dorothy” over Oz in hideous black smoke The Flying Glove left behind a trail of smoke jetting the skies of Pepperland while terrorizing the populace
The Scarecrow, Tin Man and Cowardly Lion successfully infiltrate the Witch’s army to rescue Dorothy The Beatles crudely disguise themselves as an Apple Bonker to infiltrate the Meanie army and bring Pepperland back to its glory
Act of kindness used to defeat the bad guys:
a bucket of water thrown at the Wicked Witch		 Act of kindness used to defeat the bad guys:
music was used as a weapon against the Meanies & completely restored Pepperland
With the Witch having been killed, the flying monkeys and army are free from her control The Blue Meanies decided to give up their evil ways and join in the eternal celebration/happiness
In spite of it all being a dream, Dorothy spoke fondly of her adventure in Oz, the good and the bad Back in our world, the flesh and blood Beatles speak of the great time they had in Pepperland-even with more Blue Meanies lurking in theaters

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1 Comment | Yellow Submarine, knock-offery, villains | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by The Editor

Reitherman Reruns and Clampett Cheats

March 28, 2009

robinhood_bar

Mark Mayerson and Thad Komorowski (whose blogs I should have added to my BlogRoll a long time ago, recently rectified) posted an excellent video each on the subject of animation re-use. The first, posted by Mr. Mayerson, shows many examples of Disney animation re-use, particularly in the films of director Wolfgang Reitherman. Warning: this video is set to a jaunty chanson française.

The second, created by Mr. Komorowski, shows many examples of extensive animation re-use in cartoons by famed director Bob Clampett. Warning: this video is set to awesome music by Raymond Scott.

I find this stuff fascinating, especially the Disney one. It’s like rotoscoping². It also appears that dancing is difficult/laborious/expensive to animate from scratch. But: why bother completely re-doing something picayune but complicated like a dancing scene when the audience hasn’t seen the original version in years? The re-use of animation in the dancing scene is certainly not the biggest problem occurrant in Disney’s Robin Hood, nor the most egregious example.

3 Comments | 101 Dalmatians, Beauty and the Beast, Bob Clampett, Robin Hood, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, The Aristocats, The Jungle Book, The Sword in the Stone, ex situ, knock-offery | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by The Editor

Ex Situ: Fear and Trembling in the Hundred Acre Wood

February 6, 2009

pooh_bar

I’m a big fan of the classic Disney Winnie the Pooh shorts.

Well, except for the later one where the characters started to look all Don Bluthy.

And that one they did in the 1980s with Jim Cummings instead of Sterling Holloway; the animation in that is almost unwatchably poor, and Rabbit sounds a little off.

But and the Honey Tree and and the Blustery Day are brilliantly conceived, witty, well-animated, and charming.

The latest lucrative incarnation,  My Friends Tigger & Pooh, if that is it’s real name, leaves quite a bad taste in the mouth.

  • First of all: Tigger (a one-note sidekick character if there ever was one) is given top billing.
  • Secondly: There’s some sort of Blue’s Clues/Scooby-Doo knock-offery nonsense about super sleuthing by super sleuthers. Despite being wholly inappropriate and out of character, I’m not even sure “sleuth” is a real word.
  • Thirdly: Christopher Robin has all but been ousted in some sort of phantasmagorical coup d’état and replaced by a girl named Darby.

It’s this last point which is the rub. I imagine Disney created Darby in order to have an original, and therefore unambiguously copyrightable, work. However, this leads to philosophical quandaries, as Xen has noted:

The Hundred Acre Wood does not exist. This is self-evident to most of you, but let me clarify. Those of you familiar only with what Disney has done with the intellectual property may be unclear on the fact that Christopher goes from the real world into the imagined world of the Hundred Acre Wood in a way quite reminiscent of darling Alice into Wonderland. To reiterate, the Hundred Acre Wood is a projection of Christopher Robin’s imagination and is therefore contingent on him to exist. If he does not perceive it, it simply is not.

…

This tomboy should have her own imagined world in which to walk and work through a repressed sexual encounter or first awareness of her own mortality. The Hundred Acre Wood is personal and off-limits to persons not stuffed with cotton and psychoemotional detritus.

It’s a good point about fictional characters intruding on other fictional characters’ meta-fictional fictions. Seems kind of creepy and unfair. Xen also goes into detail about how each Hundred Acre Wood denizen symbolizes a different aspect of Christopher Robin’s personality, but I’m certainly not going to spoil any of that.

Fear and Trembing in the Hundred Acre Wood
> Catena Ex Situ

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4 Comments | Blue's Clues, My Friends Tigger & Pooh, Scooby-Doo, Winnie the Pooh, ex situ, gender, knock-offery, philosophy | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
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Ex Situ: Kimba The White Lion versus The Lion King

August 5, 2008

This Ex Situ refers to one of the most heated controversies surrounding Disney’s The Lion King. No, not that SEX/SFX dust cloud thing. No, not the “Original Theatrical Cut” DVD’s fraudulent advertising. Nor the fact that the filthy, treacherous, often mentally handicapped hyenas are all voiced by minority actors. Nor that troubling Riefenstahlesque imagery. Nor the confusion over whether Timon is Rosencrantz and Pumbaa is Guildenstern or vice versa.

This Ex Situ’s particular controversy is: that much of The Lion King seems to have been wholeheartedly ripped off from the influential 1960’s Japanese anime Kimba the White Lion. Perhaps not the overall plot, but several scenes and characters in The Lion King bear a suspiciously uncanny resemblance to scenes and characters in Kimba.

Over at Kimba W. Lion’s Corner of the Web, there’s a ranting, unwieldy, and unfortunately cyan page discussing the whole issue:

It is my opinion that the creative people at Disney most definitely knew of Kimba as they were making The Lion King– but somehow, before the movie could be released, it was decided that the tie must be denied. Even if that means a slap in the face for Osamu Tezuka, the “Walt Disney of Japan”.

It’s pretty damning evidence.

Remake of Tezuka’s Popular Story Turns Into Denial? >Catena Ex Situ

2 Comments | Kimba the White Lion, The Lion King, ex situ, knock-offery | Tagged: , , | Permalink
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Mini-Analyzations

July 8, 2008

  • Anyone else read WALL•E as a sort of white flag between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates? How, in the future, all that’s left is a tough, very primitive PC is all that’s left in the vast wasteland of Earth and here comes this sleek and sexy Mac that is better in every way, and yet at the very end, the two have to band together for the future of mankind? The one damning thing is that WALL•E sounds like a Mac when he boots up. Hmm…
    -Contributed by Doc Happenin
  • After reading the post about WALL•E I just wanted to throw something out there that I’ve been thinking about. I was compelled to contribute to your finely crafted blog when I followed the link and saw him on a pile of trash and in the heap was a discarded doll of Sully. [Ex Situ: Is WALL-E Environmental or Hypocritical?]
    Pixar is very pro-environmental and for this to be stated – “I don’t have a political bent, I don’t have an ecological message to push” – is a slap in the face. If we use Monsters, Inc. as a case study we can prove that they do, in fact, have a political and environmental slant.
    The main premise of Monsters, Inc. is to uproot the current system of energy consumption and production and to find alternative means for generating energy. Fear wasn’t a viable energy source anymore because it was fading fast while, obviously, by the end of the film they made laughter seem to be endless and more efficient. It reeks (no pun) of the fight between fossil fuels and alternative energy – be it wind, solar or whatever. aside from this, the rest of the movie is wrought with big business maneuvers, corporate scandals and cover-ups and a communist finale – Sully, a worker, takes control of the company.
    I think they do push their agendas and do it in a way that most people never fully catch on. It’s propaganda with crayons and celebrity voices and they send it home with your kids happy meals.
    -Contributed by Raymond K.
  • Seven Samurai → The Magnificent Seven → ¡Three Amigos! → A Bug’s Life
    -Contributed by The Editor

1 Comment | A Bug's Life, Mini-Analyzations, Monsters Inc., WALL-E, knock-offery | Tagged: | Permalink
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From the archives: Stone-age Inconsistencies

May 29, 2008

The following was contributed by Brendan S.

The original Flintstones TV series, enjoyable as it’s always been, was rife with a number of inconsistencies- Fred’s car seating anywhere from two people to both his family and the Rubbles, the five distinctly different designs for supporting character Joe Rockhead, whether Wilma’s maiden name was “Pebble” or “Slaghoople” and so on- but they were small potatoes compared to what would follow in the subsequent spinoffs that managed to throw everything out of whack: pretty much trashing the continuity of its flagship program in the process! (The Frankenstone/Shmoo episodes immediately come to mind.)

How is it that a teenage Pebbles & Bamm-Bamm were members of a band that played early ’70s ‘bubblegum’ music, while pre-adolescent versions ‘kiddie’ versions of Fred, Wilma, Barney and Betty (their parents, mind you!) could have fun with such ’80s pastimes as Walkmans & personal computers? Equally ludicrous- Dino as a puppy and making the future Mr. Slate the same age as Fred and the gang!

Okay, they were following the ever-changing trends of Saturday morning television respectively aping both The Archie Show and Muppet Babies, but the whole Flintstones aging and de-aging thing continues to this very day!

Now, granted, there were two episodes from the old show in which Fred dreamed he was an elderly codger and they worked. Adding to the confusion, however, Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm were adult newlyweds in a pair of ’90s tv specials. On the current Post Cereal commercials, they’re infants again! (The Pebbles ads, at least, being a little closer in spirit to vintage Flintstones in that many of that show’s obscure supporting characters occasionally turn up!)

Could that alien being the Great Gazoo have possibly thrown the entire Bedrock universe off-kilter with his magic out of revenge for being stranded in the Stone Age? It’s certainly a much more believable explanation for all these latter-day discrepancies, wouldn’t you say?

The following was contributed by Brian B.

Why does Fred wear a tie? He works for a construction company, he drives the bulldozer. I don’t know any construction workers that wear ties. Perhaps if Fred was a foreman or a supervisor (foremen are usually covered with dirt hence no tie, but I’m giving the benefit of the doubt here) perhaps then he might have use for a tie. As near as I can figure, it was because Ralph Cramden wore a tie. Ralph drove a bus, not a bulldozer. If Ralph was going to dig dirt all day I doubt he’d wear a tie. Perhaps Wilma made him wear it, maybe she thought it looked sexy. But when he came home from work he was probably covered with dirt, and probably bathed immediately (I hope). So then he would have had a chance to change into something sexy for Wilma.

4 Comments | Muppet Babies, The Archie Show, The Flintstones, from the archives, knock-offery | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
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From the archives: Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors as a Star Wars Knock-off

February 6, 2008

jayce_bar.jpg

Contributed by Russell P.

jaycezv0.jpgDid anyone ever notice how Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors was a complete plagiarism of Star Wars? Young man in a search for his father, guided by a wise sage, and accompanied by a space pirate and comedy robots!

You can just tick of the characters against those of Star Wars,

  • Jayce=Luke Skywalker
  • Herc=Han Solo
  • Gillian=Obi Wan Kenobi
  • Oone (the magic lance guy)=C3P0
  • Ardrick=Anakin Skywalker
  • Sarboss=Emperor Palpatine
  • Flora=Leia Organa Skywalker (sort of)
The Lightning League is also very reminiscent of The Rebellion. The thing is, it probably avoided Lucasfilms prowling eyes due to it being a cartoon, despite paralleling Star Wars far closer than Battlestar Galactica (which was actually involved in a case with Lucas over plagiarism).
What entertained me about Jayce, was how despite the Sci-fi setting and the fact they had a starship, was that every week they would resort to a land battle using customized mining vehicles, (Armed Force, Drill Sargent etc.). The sort of plots they used to actually promote this situation were laughable. Still it was an excellent cautionary tale about the abuses of genetic engineering and botany.

2 Comments | Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors, from the archives, knock-offery | Permalink
Posted by The Editor