Now I remember this special from when I was a kid, but I think I saw a different version of it. I didn't recall Tony Danza being so... Tony Danzish. I also seem to remember they spent a little more time with each short.
But never mind that. There are lots of very interesting things to be seen here from Disney in 1986. We've seen a lot of specials made around the Bronze Age, but this special was made back when Disney didn't have an awful lot to brag about that was recent. The special does focus mostly on the obvious films ("Mary Poppins", "Fantasia", etc.) However, there's a lengthy clip from "The Black Hole" of all things, a very fast look at "Return to OZ", and scenes from the very rarely seen short "Who Killed Cock-Robin" and even "Song of the South"! It's always fun to see Disney show love to the films it hardly gives the time of day to now.
For an extra treat, enjoy this utterly baffling preview of "Star Tours" from the same year:
I want to live on the planet where "TRON" accurately predicted what space travel would be like.
But I also shared this very strange and almost-totally-forgotten Holiday special appropriate for today: "Nickelodeon's Thanksgiving Fest/Extravaganza!" I think it needs it's own post, don't you?
If my foggy memory is correct, this was aired in 1989 and ran several times during Thanksgiving Day (making it seem like it went on for hours and hours). This special seems a little rushed in parts, especially in the beginning of "Thanksgiving Dream", but it showcases a nice variety of animation directors who made those wonderful Mtv networks bumpers.
I rather like the shorts by Joe Ahlbum more than the longer stories. Kevin Altieri's "Thanksgiving Nightmare" is kinda fun, but gives me a nasty "Capitol Critters" flashback, and Joe Pearson's aforementioned "Dream" is just... strange. It feels too much like one of those "sappy" episodes of "Animaniacs", like "A Gift of Gold". Highlights are the narrator acting like it is an unimaginable horror that the story takes place in a pre-Atari world (really) and a bad guy who inadvertently made Oogie Boogie and Clayface my crack pairing.
I hope we all have a lovely Thanksgiving and a wonderful holiday season. And since it is something of a tradition around here:
It made me cry. I was going to go on and on about how I wanted to watch this again for the first time ever since it was broadcast and share it here to get us all psyched for "The Muppets"... but then those final ten minutes happened...
Watch it. Please. I can't describe how good this is, especially given how emotional it must have been for everyone. Watch it if it's the last thing you ever do.
Well not the last thing ever, obviously, I mean I'll want you to come back to the site and read and look at my drawings and stuff.
Even though none of us -NONE of us- will ever do anything an micrometer as awesome as what Jim Henson could have done while phoning it in.
I mean, Jesus, we're talking about a guy who pitched a kid's show in the early 80's by stating, "I want to promote world peace to the children of the world." Not, "Let's sell toys" or "Let's cash in on whatever those little brats are into now" or any normal show pitch for that time. No, Jim Henson said, "Let's use television to make the world a better place." Dude. Dude!!!
If only a thousand people today had that same kind of crazy-optimistic-awesome attitude, respected children that much, and had that much faith in humanity, we'd all be in a better world.
I can't be coherent at all. Nothing I can say can make you understand what watching this did to me.
Hooo... man. So "Muppets: Legacy" (heh) premiers this week. I'm psyched for it, and I hope to see more -much more- of these wonderful characters because I have missed them so.
"This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move."
-- Douglas Adams (1952 - 2001)
WARNING For CONCERNED PARENTS Before We Get Rolling: This review will contain language that refers to gross things that happen in nature and that will happen to your children because of nature and that, depending on their age, you ought to have explained to them by now because they are pretty alarming when you aren't expecting them.
Oh, boy. Where do I begin? Where do WE, dear reader, begin with this one? This thing called "Tree of Life", that we are gathered here today to get through?
This is the kind of deeply strange movie that just begs to be discussed. If we are absurdly lucky, such a film gains some mainstream attention and a wider range of discussions. Though one might argue whether, in this case, it is the film itself or the many and varied opinions it prompted that are more fun. (Indeed, some of the online reviews once "Tree of Life" was made available to a much wider audience through it's DVD release are almost sublime. This is largely because you really wouldn't know what you are getting into with this movie unless you've been reading up about it since the beginning.)
There's an awful lot to unpack here. This is the kind of movie where Sean Penn, who is upset for... some reason, travels up an elevator in a tall and beautifully photographed building mostly made of glass. Upon reaching the top floor, Sean finds that he is... dreaming? In Heaven? At any rate, all the people in the story who died are there on a beach. But so are the people who are still alive, sometimes with younger versions of themselves. They all go in the water. There are gulls. There is a carnival mask in the water. Then Sean travels back down the elevator and walks outside the building. And he doesn't say anything but it is easy to read in his expression the sentiment, "Well. That happened."
We all know what those kinds of movies are like, right?
The bulk of the film is taken up by the Sean Penn character remembering his childhood and his relationship with his brothers and especially with his parents. Especially, and in excruciating detail, his relationship with his parents. (If you are wondering, yes, this is where Brad Pitt is involved. The film has a scene that is practically gift-wrapped for us not-crazy "Fight Club" fans.) One parent is loving and gentle and kind all the time with no flaws, the other preaches tough love and Sean-As-A-Lad's opinion of this parent could write the lyrics to a million Linkin Park songs.
You win no prize for guessing which parent fills what roll. More on that in a bit.
"There are two ways through Life," intones the first (audible) narration, "the way of Nature and the way of Grace". But this being a Terrence Malick film, and knowing that Malick loves nature and especially loves showing his sad little human characters wandering oblivious through the beauty around them, I already called baloney on this theory. The film never comes to a definite conclusion on this issue, and all things considered, I guess that's for the better.
Anyway, characters make bold, barely audible or whispered statements like this about Life, the Universe, and Everything all through the movie. And the sh*t-youself gorgeous onscreen images that this narration intrudes on are, I suppose, meant to be taken as Answers. Sure, why not?
Grace, we are assured, is all beauty and faith and kindness and self-sacrifice and emotion and female Other-ness. Nature, on the other hand, is out for itself, is brutal, violent, and Daddy Issues. Once again, given that this is Terrence "The World Is Just Awesome" Malick, this is baloney... up to a point.
So... yeah... whaddaya say we talk a little bit about the sexual politics in this here movie? Because being a viewer with a uterus, they... bugged me a little. Just a little tiny bit. Okay so obviously father represents Nature and mother stands in for Grace. Father never does anything truly awful, but he is hated and almost vilified, while mother... ah, mother, mother, mother. The paragon of female sainthood and the only major female in the whole shebang. She can do absolutely no wrong and exists for no other reason than to LOVE in all-caps, bold typeface, and red crayon. She is a mysterious nurturer, healer, and bringer of life.
As a reminder, we women, we mysterious Others, as part of the whole "bringer of life" deal also, among other slightly more nuanced things than what is portrayed in this film, hemorrhage gore and blood out of our uteruses periodically. During this time, and mostly because this process is as painful and upsetting as you might assume, we can be angry, we can even be violent, and we can be utterly out for ourselves.
I bring this up because I wish that this film, whose title alludes to one of the icons of biology, approached it's characters a little more... well, everything really. Hell, they're barely even characters; they're talking symbols. (By the way, dear male readers who are being utter sissies about that last paragraph. Deal widdit. Cause I do. Every month.)
The flashbacks to Sean-As-A-Lad take up the great bulk of the film.
(Long awkward pause...)
Yeah, I know, right?!? I was made to expect the whole history of life on Earth and maybe a tiny dramatization of the family and how their story measures against the astonishing tale of life! Well, it turns out that History of Life sequence lasts, at my most optimistic estimate, maybe a grand total of fifteen-twenty minutes! And it's only about a half-hour in! So for me, the film suffers from premature ejaculation, a man-problem that is also upsetting and disgusting (but not as gory. Usually.)
Let's talk about that sequence, fellow paleo-geeks. Briefly, Terrence, I am disappoint. Had I know you were just going to do a *shorter* History of Life on Earth than "Fantasia", well...!
Breaking things down, we get about ten minutes of the formation of the Solar System and Earth, a couple seconds each of single-celled life, early multicellular life, jellyfish, corals, ect. There's a blink-and-you-miss-it shot of an early tetrapod -- and suddenly a swan-necked elasmosaurus, some sharks, and the much-ballyhooed CGI dinosaurs.
The dinosaurs are in the movie for a minute. Maybe a minute and a half. They look perfectly fine I suppose, except for the silly-looking, silly-acting Unidentifiable Theropod. But after that minute and a half the film is totally done with them. Actually, it's done with nonhumans in general, and we're zipped forward to modern times and the story of the boring-ass family. Yeah, I had a bit of a problem with this.
So... A film that wants to show how us humans fit in with the entire history of life, except it really, really doesn't, to the point where the gorgeous nature shots end up being just strange. And it takes place in a world where men are tough, women are wimpy, and little boys do really weird things with dresses (do I even want to know what was going on in that whole scene? Cause I don't even know.)
That said, its a truly beautiful film. And I liked the music. And man oh man I wish the History of Life sequence had gone on much longer, because for all its flaws that part is indeed gorgeous. The film is also so relentlessly "arty" that part of me cannot wait to parody it whenever the opportunity comes up.
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Sketch of the Day
The Teal Deer version of this review. Click for huge:
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I am going to be very busy indeed early this winter so this is as good a time as any to make an announcement. When this blog turns three years old (this coming January), I will be changing the format EVER so slightly.
Instead of making myself write at least two new posts a week on specific days, I'm relaxing my own self-imposed schedule. I'll still have at least one new thing per week/a grand total of at least fifty-two posts per year, I promise, but it will come whenever I can write about it.
I should note that the original "Make myself post something every M/W/F or T/Tr every week unless I am very definitely unable to" schedule was to get me conditioned so that NOT having new posts each week would feel weird and wrong. (It worked. Oh boy, did it ever.) And I did this because when I was a young newcomer to the Internet, I would find awesome websites that looked fascinating and unlike anything else out there -- and that never updated. I didn't want my website to wind up like that and I still promise it won't.
So all in all, it will be a little change, but one that will lower my blood pressure a tad.
During extremely busy times when I fear I have no time to write this blog it always makes me happy to stumble upon something that is well worth talking about and bringing to everyone's attention.
I'm sure we're all familiar with Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston's seminal doorstopper on the art and history of Walt Disney studios, The Illusion of Life. What's not so well known is the 1981 television special of the same title. YouTube user YensidTun has kindly uploaded the whole special, and you can watch it as a playlist through this link. (Embedding disabled, but you'll want to watch this fullscreen anyway.)
Originally aired as part of "Walt Disney Presents", the special is hosted by Hayley Mills who was apparently originally meant to voice Princess Eilonwy (the premise of the special is that she is revisiting the Disney studio for the first time in years to see how the animation process has changed.) Yes, this is 1981 and "The Black Cauldron" is just getting started. There's no indication of the spectacular debacle the film's development would become, and make sure you keep an eye out in the very end of the show for some concept art that was entirely new to me (oh my God, Lyon could have been in the movie?! [Cries at What Could Have Been.])
With this in mind, "The Illusion of Life" makes a fantastic companion piece to a wonderful podcast that I just discovered and is sadly long dead but well worth listening to: the Animation Podcast. I'm not going to go too crazy here; just listen to the first three episodes (an interview with Andreas Deja). I guarantee you will be hooked.
Right then. Time for a massive Sketchdump! Everything's hosted at Flickr so click for the normal size pictures.
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Shortly after returning home from the Zoo, I played with my semi-neglected, just-there-to-follow-people Twitter. Just for fun, here are the tweets, reposted in a way where they will hopefully actually make sense:
Trish - And now using my Animorph powers I bring you ZooTweets! Or, "What 'Zookeeper' Would be Like if Trish Wrote it (which thank God she didn't)"
Hooded Merganser - Consarn it, I am not "just a duck"! There's 400 species of us! You got that giant mutant brain, why don't you f***ing learn something?
Tawny Frogmouth - Please, for the love of God, stop hooting at us.
Baird's Tapir - Things I've been identified as today because parents can't be arsed to read the f***ing sign: a pig, an elephant, a bear, Alf...
Green Anaconda - "Ahh, a giant snake!" You know what? I get it. I hear it all the damn day. I know everyone hates me, why remind me?
Ring-Tailed Lemur Couple - Yeah, we're just gonna spoon in front of your kids. Maybe do other things. Hope you parents don't mind.
Christopher the Lion - Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...
Day Gekko - STFU ABOUT CAR INSURANCE!!! I get it, God!
Sleeping African Wild Dogs - So I guess it's cool if I come bark outside your window while you sleep, yah?
Capybara - Capybara don't give a f***.
Red Pandas - The hell we're not "real pandas"!
Ostrich - (Stands right up next to the fence and *stares* at you long enough to realize you are a mammal looking at a dinosaur...)
Trish - This has been ZooTweets! A collection of Tweets based off the most redic things I overheard at the Zoo today.
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In lieu of the Sketch of the Day, I bring you this lovely short film made by a father-son team, shared recently by the usually snarky Topless Robot. It takes a minute or two to find it's footing, but if you aren't misty-eyed after the events that follow the soccer scene, I don't trust you.
(Disclaimer: I was weeping openly by the end and I don't have kids. According to some of the comments on TR, this is much, much rougher for people who do. Just warning you.)
(If you need a laugh after this, one that also involves a little kid with God-tier powers, Everything is Terrible is here for you.)
Recently, I returned to the Franklin Park Zoo to tour with some friends who had never been. I took lots of pictures (which you'll see in this post) and of course did a lot of sketches (saving those for the next post) and met lots of interesting people (oh, they'll be in both posts.)
So first off, this giant hay sculpture which greeted us upon entrance to the Zoo. It's here to celebrate the arrival of the newest additions to the FPZ family: a pair of Red Pandas. It's also bound to scare children.
Let's get the elephant in the room out of the way.
Okay. So, the last time we went to Franklin Park, a large portion of the Zoo was closed off so that the movie "Zookeeper" could be filmed there. As you may imagine, the Zoo has a pretty ambivalent relationship with the movie. On the one hand, certainly attendance has gone up. On the other, how sick do you suppose they are of fielding questions like, "But where are the elephants?" and "You don't really feed the gorillas chain restaurant food, do you?"
Speaking of signs that raise unsettling questions...
So how often do people wear high heels in the Zoo that it's enough of an issue to warrant mention here? And ye Gods, squirt guns?!? Man, I thought the grown-a** adults banging on the glass or clapping or yelling at the sleeping animals were bastards! (Especially since one such character acted all p*ssy like *I* was in the wrong for asking them to quit it. I'll say it again and I won't apologize. There are times when you wouldn't want to witness people getting messily mauled by angry animals and then there are times like this...)
But we're not here to watch humans acting like bastards; we're here to be mammals looking at dinosaurs!
As I mentioned before, the Franklin Park Zoo has a truly awesome Aviary. Apparently, and this is based off the testimony of older relatives who visited often when they were younger, this is the oldest part of the Zoo. Currently, it houses everything from Tawny Frogmouths to these Gouldian Finches. I wonder how many people don't know these little fellows were NOT entirely made up by that printer ad campaign?
Okay, who taunted the gorillas?
Aw, wah. I was looking forward to seeing these guys again. I love that FPZ houses an excellent selection of my favorite animals, none of which are particularly popular.
Which is to say, this is the place to get a plush version of your favorite unpopular endangered species.
These Peafowl were free-roaming throughout the "children's" zoo, which seems to me like a disaster in the making. Now, is this fellow moulting or just growing in a new train?
This Ostrich walked right up to the fence to size me up, it seems. I calmed down quick enough to sketch like crazy and take some reference pictures.
Et voila, Ostrich feets! Note to self: use this next time you draw tyrannosaurus feet.
One of the best-loved wildlife sanctuaries run by the Massachusetts Audubon Society, the Blue Hills Trailside Museum is so-named because it essentially serves as an interpretive center for a series of extensive paths that lead up into the Blue Hills. It had been a very, very, VERY long time since the last time I visited, so when my lovely aunt asked if I wanted to join her on a hike, I jumped at the chance.
The Trailside Museum is somewhat similar to the Maine Wildlife Park, which I have sung the praises of quite a bit on this Blog previously. It's not as extensive or big, and there is a smaller variety of wildlife on display. Of course, since all the live animals are unable to live in the wild on their own, this is definitely a good thing. Let's take a look at the star exhibit:
OK, folks, take a good look. This is the one snake in New England you might be justified in freaking out over. Just this one.
Actually, no. No, forget that. See, it turns out that the Timber Rattlesnake has more reason to fear us because it is in the same unenviable and almost surreal predicament that many sharks and large land carnivores have found themselves in. Humans are terrified of them even though they try hard to avoid us, and just because they've injured maybe a few dozen of us, we have killed MILLIONS of them. Or, in the Timber Rattler's case, ALL of them, since they are essentially extinct in Massachusetts, very definitely extinct in Maine, and their numbers elsewhere in the northeast don't inspire confidence.
I also need to make a donation! I don't know who built this or even what it is, but I remember it from when I last came here as a child. I'm all for periodically updating museums, but it's nice to see some things stay the same.
So, let's hit the Red Dot Trail! My father, sister, and I climbed this trail many many times and I wonder if anything has changed?
I got old. That's what changed. Ah, well, it's worth the pain in my knees to see views like these. So, have some shots of nature showing off. All the pictures in this post are hosted at my Flickr, so click to go to the big versions.
If nothing else, we're learning that the landscape of eastern Massachusetts is mostly big chunks of granite held together by trees.
"That's very nice, Trish, but where's the fall foliage?"
Ah, well, there is an Observatory at the top of Blue Hill that nearly all the trails lead to. The building is obviously quite old, and was clearly built to hold only five people at once comfortably. That means it gets very claustrophobic very quickly, since everyone who climbs the trails ends up in the top of the somewhat skinny tower (sometimes with very small children and babies, sometimes with dogs. Yeah.) Fortunately, I was able to snap these before I had to get out:
"Winnie the Pooh" is adorable and sweet and, miraculously, completely and utterly unironic, unsarcastic, and unhip (ie, it's not the bad sort of hip; more on this in a bit). It features terrific character animation by such Disney legends as Andreas Deja, Eric Goldberg, and Mark Henn and some cute songs by Zooey Deschanel and -heh- one of the songwriting minds behind "Avenue Q" and "The Book of Mormon". The animation is digital (using the ToonBoom software) but beautifully simulates the look of the beloved "Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh" from back in the late 70's and the use of straight-up CGI is kept to the very barest minimum.
And "Winnie the Pooh" is also very definitely for young children (and their attendant adults of course). And it is short. Really, REALLY short. Like, barely qualifying as a theatrical-length film short. Like, were it not for the prologue and opening credits, it'd just make it to one hour short. That short.
Now, as we have seen, short animated films are not a bad thing, especially because they tend to be tight as heck and leave little room to screw things up. So every minute in "Winnie the Pooh" is dedicated to fun character moments and furthering the refreshingly basic plot (Pooh is hungry, he and the gang get caught up in searching for Eeyore's tail, a note left by Christopher Robin gets misinterpreted and this sparks another adventure, etc.)
And I probably don't even have to explain why an animated film for children that does not include any instances whatsoever of gross-out humor, sexual innuendos, cute animals singing catchy songs with horribly inappropriate lyrics, cute animals begging to eat at Chain Restaurant You Must Beg Your Parents To Take You To After The Movie, coprophagy, or Happy Madison alumnae is a freaking Godsend. (Side Note: You used to not have to worry about these things so much but we live in strange times.)
If there is anything negative I have to say about "Winnie the Pooh" it is that it is not *quite* as good as "The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh". (In particular, the Backson song ain't got nothin' on the Hephalumps and Woozles number.) It more closely recalls a particularly lavish episode of the Saturday morning cartoon. It is however much closer to the original Disney Pooh shorts and anthology film, and the way the characters get to play with the text again is wonderful.
There is also a fantastic gag involving Owl, Piglet, and a pit trap that is way too fun to spoil here and appears as though it was written just for kids who think the way I did at that age (and still do, of course).
For more posts in this ongoing series, go here, or click the Chronological Disney Animated Canon tag below.
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Picture of the Day!
I hope everyone had a lovely Halloween. In lieu of a drawing, I bring you this lovely autumn market scene: