Gerald McBoing Boing won the 1950 Oscar for best short subject cartoon, but what's more amazing is that kids today are still intrigued by this fun program. Based on the unlikely premise that a young boy named Gerald speaks not in words, but in sound effects like "boing," this simply drawn and animated series appeals to every child's sense of the ridiculous. Gerald is reprimanded for his inab…
Ub Iwerks was one of the greatest animators of the silent and early sound eras: he animated "Steamboat Willie" and other early Disney shorts virtually by himself. But the films he produced at his own studio after breaking with Walt Disney in 1930 lack the vitality of his earlier work. During the '30s, the animators with Disney, the Fleischers, Warner Bros., and MGM developed a new style of …
There is more pure, unadulterated joy in just the opening montage of classic moments and characters from Chuck Jones cartoons than in most recent feature films. Jones is the best known of the Warner Bros. stable of legendary animators. He is certainly the most honored. After winning three Oscars, the Academy in 1996 bestowed upon him its Lifetime Achievement Award. With impeccable comic timing …
Cinderella (Two-Disc Special Ed
The 28 cartoons in this collection were made by the Warner Bros. artists for the Army-Navy Screen Magazine during World War II, and were rarely--if ever--seen by the general public. The title character's name is an acronym for "Situation Normal: All Fouled Up" (substitute another "F-word" if you must), and most of his adventures are mildly didactic: Snafu ignores an Army regulation and/or …
The centerpiece of the third disc of this popular series is the two-part adventure "Jupiter Jazz," which offers hints about the shrouded past of hero Spike Spiegel. Spike returns to his old haunts on Callisto in search of a mysterious woman, and comes into conflict with his former underworld associates: the icy Vicious, apprentice mobster Lin, and transgendered barroom musician Gren. Direc…
In the tradition of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Santa Claus Is Coming to Town, Davey and Goliath is the long-standing children's stop-motion 3D-animated television show many of us grew up admiring. Conceived by Art Clokey, creator of Gumby, in the mid-1960s, these stories were embraced as a welcome alternative to the "violent" children's programs and cartoons of the times. What set Davey…