Join our celebration of Popeye’s 75 years in the movies! Click here to find out how to join our Popeye blogathon! (And click here to listen to our Popeye podcast.)
Category Archives: cartoon blogathon
The 2nd Annual ‘ONE’ OF MY ALL-TIME FAVORITE CARTOONS BLOGATHON is here!
Grab some cereal and pretend it’s Saturday morning. Our three-day blogathon devoted to bloggers’ favorite animated films is underway!
If you are one of the participating bloggers:
- Please post the names and URLs of your blog and the cartoon you are blogging about, in the “Comments” section below, so that we can link to them.
- The only deadline is that we request you post your blog entry by the end of the day on Sunday, Nov. 13 — and the sooner, the better. (Inquiring cartoon buffs want to know!)
If you are one of our visitors, click on the appropriate blog and/or cartoon title below to link to the blogger’s entry about said cartoon. Keep us bookmarked, as we will continue to update the list below throughout the weekend as bloggers submit their entries. This blog will also be doing end-of-the-day wrap-ups of blog entries submitted on each day.
So sit back this weekend, and enjoy a guilt-free line-up of classic cartoons on us!
Below are the blogathon entrants:
Movie Movie Blog Blog – Mickey’s Garden (1935) and A Single Life (2014)
Once Upon a Screen – Swooner Crooner (1944)
BNoirDetour – Key Lime Pie (2007)
Film Music Central – My Neighbor Totoro (1988)
In the Good Old Days of Classic Hollywood – Bambi (1942)
Reelweegiemidget Reviews – The Lego Movie (2014)
Cinema Shame – Perfect Blue (1997)
Caftan Woman – A Christmas Carol (Richard Williams, 1971)
Pop Culture Pundit – Frozen (2013)
Epileptic Moondancer – Akira (1988)
Wide Screen World – Hanna-Barbera’s World of Super Adventure (1980-84)
The Midnite Drive-In – Heavy Metal (1981)
Moon in Gemini – Waltz with Bashir (2008)
Silver Scenes – To Spring (1936)
Dell on Movies – The Brown Hornet (1979-84)
A SINGLE LIFE (2014) – Setting a new record for longevity
The following is my second of two entries in The 2nd Annual ‘ONE’ of My All-Time Favorite Cartoons Blogathon, hosted at this blog from Nov. 11-13, 2016. Click on the above banner, and read bloggers’ entries on a variety of animated films!
(WARNING: Major spoilers abound!)
The Oscar-nominated A Single Life is only two-and-a-half minutes long, but it’s probably the best one-joke cartoon since Bambi Meets Godzilla.
A lone woman is about to enjoy a pizza when a knock comes at her door. She opens the door and finds a small package containing a 45 RPM record of a song titled (guess what?) “A Single Life.” She starts to play the record while eating her pizza, but at one point the record skips. The woman returns the record needle to the correct point but discovers that, during the skip, a bite of her pizza went away.
The woman plays with the record needle and finds that she can make the pizza bite reappear and disappear. When she investigates further, the woman discovers that placing the needle at different points on the record can actually take her to different points in her life. If you had a favorite “trippy” song that you’d swear could take you through time and space, you haven’t heard anything yet.
About the only other thing I can say without giving away the surprises of the cartoon (embedded below) is that it, like life itself, is over much too quickly. So enjoy it while you can — life and the cartoon, that is.
(If you enjoyed this blog entry, click here to read my first entry in this blogathon, about the Mickey Mouse cartoon Mickey’s Garden.)
MICKEY’S GARDEN (1935) – Mickey Mouse’s bad trip
The following is the first of my two entries in The 2nd Annual ‘ONE’ of My All-Time Favorite Cartoons Blogathon, hosted at this blog from Nov. 11-13, 2016. Click on the above banner, and read bloggers’ thoughts about some of their favorite animated films!
A 1935 page from “Good Housekeeping” promoting the cartoon.
(WARNING: Major spoilers abound!)
Practically everyone has a stake in the “Who’s the bigger hero in pop culture” sweepstakes, whether it’s The Beatles vs. The Rolling Stones, or Batman vs. Superman.
When it comes to cartoons, me, I’m a Bugs Bunny man. Mickey Mouse is just too domesticated for me, especially for a character that started out as an anti-social, country-tainted rodent.
But there’s one chapter in the Mickey Mouse chronicles that’s as hallucinogenic as anything I’ve ever seen: Mickey’s Garden.
The cartoon starts mildly enough, with Mickey and his dog Pluto going hunting — for bugs that are destroying Mickey’s home garden. They don’t have to go hunting for very long. Pluto soon ends up in an on-point position that’s probably the ugliest “pose” you’ll ever see for Pluto.
How ugly? This ugly.
Mickey sees insects swarming all over his vegetables and quickly sprays them with poison from the extermination gun he’s holding, causing the bugs to exit in fear. Just the sight of these weird bugs, who look like escapees from a Max Fleischer cartoon, is enough to tip you off that this cartoon is going to be very trippy.
The bugs go into hiding (in holes that they “draw shut” as though they were sleeping-bag zippers). Mickey continues his rampage until he realizes he’s out of poison. He runs off to refill his gun, and the bugs, once again safe, return to pig out at the garden.
Mickey returns to his shoot-out with the bugs, but the gun quickly gets jammed, so Mickey uses a tree branch to try and unclog it (rather stupidly aiming the gun right at himself all the while). Meanwhile, Pluto’s attempt to subdue one of the bugs results only in his getting his head stuck in a pumpkin. Panicking, Pluto runs around wildly, eventually ramming the plunger of Mickey’s gun, unjamming it at just the wrong time. The poison sprays all over Mickey, causing him to fall backwards on the ground and wildly hallucinate (a great bit of animation, as the Earth around Mickey becomes gravity-free and wavy).
When Mickey regains consciousness, he finds that he and Pluto are now bug-sized, while the actual bugs tower over the duo. Guess who’s the hunter and who’s the prey now.
It doesn’t help matters that the bugs have been drawn to the vat containing Mickey’s poison mixture and, far from being done in by it, drink it up happily as though it’s bootleg liquor. Armed with their enormous size and drunken sense of power (and the cartoon is only halfway over at this point), they have a field day terrorizing Mickey and Pluto.
For an animated milieu that’s usually pretty subdued, the remainder of the cartoon has some of the wildest imagery that Disney would conjure up prior to Fantasia). One wonders if the makers of the Beatles cartoon Yellow Submarine didn’t have a look at this short before proceeding with their movie; some of this cartoon’s villains have similar character quirks and end up meeting very similar bad ends.)
I’ll leave it to you to discover the rest of this cartoon’s glories (the cartoon is embedded below). Suffice to say, for an unheralded Mickey Mouse cartoon, it’s rather visually astounding, particularly since it’s practically dialogue-free and the images have to carry the day (which they do, superbly).
(If you liked this blog entry, click here to read my second entry, about the recent Oscar-nominated cartoon A Single Life.)
Just two weeks until The 2nd Annual ‘ONE’ of My Favorite Cartoons Blogathon!
Do you have a favorite cartoon that you’d want to take with you to the proverbial desert island? Join our blogathon and tell everyone about it! Click on the above Betty Boop-based banner for the blogathon rules!
Announcing THE 2nd ANNUAL ‘ONE’ OF MY ALL-TIME FAVORITE CARTOONS BLOGATHON!
Last year around this time, bloggers and cartoon buffs came out of the woodwork to express their appreciation of animated films that they have enjoyed. It was a very popular blogathon, and one of its entrants suggested that I revive it in the future. So, here it is, and here are the rules (same as for last year).
Rules:
- Here’s your opportunity to sound off about one of your favorite animated films! Does a particular cartoon make you laugh, cry, think, or just plain fill you with joy? Post a blog entry about it here, and share your enthusiasm with the world!
- Notice that I said it can be one of your favorite cartoons. This is not a contest in which you have to summon up superior evidence that your cartoon of choice is the greatest one ever made. Just write about the reasons why you like it.
- The cartoon you choose can be of any length (short subject, feature film, television special) from movies or TV. It can be in “traditional” hand-drawn format or CGI. If you choose to write about a TV cartoon series, you can write about either the reasons why you like the entire TV series so much, or you can focus on a particular episode of the series. As long as you write an entertaining and reasoned blog in support of your choice, it will be accepted here. Also, duplicate entries are acceptable at this blogathon.
- Please leave me a message in the “Comments” section below that includes the name and URL of your blog, and the name of the cartoon you choose to write about.
- Below are banners to advertise the blogathon. Once you have completed Step # 4, please grab a banner, display it on your blog, and link it back to this blog.
- The blogathon will take place from Fri., Nov. 11, through Sun., Nov. 13, 2016. Once you have posted your blogathon entry on one of those dates, please post its URL in the “Comments” section so that I can link our blog back to it. There are no assigned dates, so post your entry at any time during the three days of the ‘thon (although as I always say, the sooner the better!).
Have fun with your blog entry, and clearly show us why you adore the cartoon of your choice! Here are the entries so far:
Movie Movie Blog Blog – Mickey’s Garden (1935) and A Single Life (2014)
Once Upon a Screen – Swooner Crooner (1944)
BNoirDetour – Key Lime Pie (2007)
Film Music Central – My Neighbor Totoro (1988)
In the Good Old Days of Classic Hollywood – Bambi (1942)
Reelweegiemidget Reviews – The Lego Movie (2014)
Cinema Shame – Perfect Blue (1997)
Caftan Woman – A Christmas Carol (Richard Williams, 1971)
Pop Culture Pundit – Frozen (2013)
Epileptic Moondancer – Akira (1988)
Wide Screen World – Hanna-Barbera’s World of Super Adventure (1980-84)
The Midnite Drive-In – Heavy Metal (1981)
Moon in Gemini – Waltz with Bashir (2008)
Silver Scenes – To Spring (1936)
Dell on Movies – The Brown Hornet (1979-84)
Day 1 Recap of ‘ONE’ OF MY ALL-TIME FAVORITE CARTOONS BLOGATHON
Apparently, when you invite bloggers to write for a cartoon blogathon, you open up a door to their second childhood! Find out what we mean as we review the entries from
Movie Movie Blog Blog has never before had such an enthusiastic response to a blogathon topic; only 3 more entries await submission. We had no idea that others were as eager to chat about their favorite cartoons as we are! If you missed any of yesterday’s entries, click on the appropriate blog name below to link to the blog and read the entry.
Our first double feature comes from Love Letters to Old Hollywood, who extols the obvious virtues of the Disney movies Sleeping Beauty and 101 Dalmatians.
BNoirDetour extols the virtues — obvious and otherwise — of Who Framed Roger Rabbit‘s fulsome heroine, Jessica Rabbit.
Epileptic Moondancer appreciates the trippy imagery of the Disney theatrical feature Alice in Wonderland and the TV series “Rick and Morty.”
Serendipitous Anachronisms enjoys watching Pluto develop a sudden craving for Thanksgiving turkey, in Cold Turkey.
Take the pop movie quiz offered by Silver Screenings, and see how many legendary celebrities you recognize in Tex Avery’s short Hollywood Steps Out.
Monsters lead such in-teresting lives, as Moon in Gemini proves when she chronicles Bugs Bunny’s encounters with orange-haired Gossamer in Hair-Raising Hare and Water, Water Every Hare.
Bugs Bunny strikes again, as VocareMentor.com critiques Bugs’ adventures in Sherwood Forest in Rabbit Hood.
The Movie Rat covers Daffy Duck’s battle with an unseen animator in Duck Amuck.
The Wonderful World of Cinema expresses her enjoyment of the rich cats in the Disney feature The Aristocats.
Mildred’s Fatburgers discusses the unique affection felt by a vociferous bulldog for a nonchalant kitten in Chuck Jones’ Feed the Kitty.
Sylvester the cat and his friends have quite a rousing evening — much to the consternation of Sylvester’s master, Porky Pig — in Bob Clampett’s Kitty Kornered, the bill of fare for Movie Fan Fare.
Here’s Bugs Bunny one more time — this time in outer space, as he matches wits with Marvin the Martian in Hare-Way to the Stars, courtesy of The Midnite Drive-In.
And you didn’t think the blogmeister wasn’t going to chime in on this topic, did you? I had to offer my take on two of my all-time faves, the theatrical Popeye cartoon The Spinach Overture and the Looney Tunes TV spin-off “Tiny Toon Adventures.”
*
We still have three more ‘toon entries to go, so keep us bookmarked. And if you’re interested in participating in a Christmas-themed movie blogathon, keep the last weekend before Christmas open on your calendar. As soon as our ‘toon blogathon is over, we have an announcement to make about a new, upcoming blogathon!
moviemovieblogblog.wordpress.com 