Cartoon Director of the Month Project

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Let the night air cool you off
This thread is aping the other thread, but I don't know what else to call it. Camo and I talked about it for a minute in profile comments, but the gist of this thread is the same as the other thread. The only differences are we are doing animated short film directors. I think the main focus at first should be for shorts of the 1930's for the upcoming countdown. Shorts don't last very long, so this should be pretty simple and easy. I don't think most of these directors will even last us a whole month, so we might be able to get a couple directors a month if we are efficient. Hopefully there is some interest in this. I made a list of potential directors for this thread:

Tex Avery
Friz Freleng
Dave Fleischer
Wladyslaw Starewicz
David Hand
Len Lye
Wilfred Jackson
Norman McLaren
Robert Clampett
Chuck Jones

Ub Iwerks
Lotte Reiniger
Oskar Fischinger
Hugh Harman
Kenzo Masaoka
Noburo Ofuji





Directors

Dave Fleischer
Swing You Sinners! (1930)
Bimbo's Initiation (1931)
Popeye the Sailor (1933)
The Peanut Vendor (1933)
Red Hot Mama (1934)
King of the Mardi Gras (1935)
Christmas Comes But Once a Year (1936)
Greedy Humpty Dumpty (1936)
Somewhere in Dreamland (1936)
Out of the Inkwell (1938)








I messaged a few people asking if they were interested so hopefully they join in. I'll also try to bring attention to it through the shoutbox and stuff as i'm sure some will want in. I'm ready to start whenever you are though. These Director of the Month's aren't supposed to be like the Hall of Fames with you having to join and watch everything. People can come in and out and decide what they want to watch and what they don't so we can start anytime and if others want in then they're welcome whenever.

So whenever you are ready pick the first director and we can pick a few of their shorts each to watch then when we're finished i'll pick the next director, etc.



Let the night air cool you off
I think I'll go with Dave Fleischer first. I'm sure I've seen some of his films, because he has directed some iconic films (or at least films with iconic characters like Popeye, Betty Boop, and Superman) that we don't see talked about as much as Looney Tunes, Tom & Jerry, or Disney.



I think I'll go with Dave Fleischer first. I'm sure I've seen some of his films, because he has directed some iconic films (or at least films with iconic characters like Popeye, Betty Boop, and Superman) that we don't see talked about as much as Looney Tunes, Tom & Jerry, or Disney.
Good choice. Fleischer's Superman may have the best animation in anything i've seen, the actual stories are kind of boring but the animation is incredible. According to Letterboxd he directed 321 films in the 30's so i don't think we're gonna struggle How many do you want to do?



Let the night air cool you off
Good choice. Fleischer's Superman may have the best animation in anything i've seen, the actual stories are kind of boring but the animation is incredible. According to Letterboxd he directed 321 films in the 30's so i don't think we're gonna struggle How many do you want to do?
Do you want to choose 3-4 each? Or do you want to dig a little deeper since he has so many and they are so short?



Do you want to choose 3-4 each? Or do you want to dig a little deeper since he has so many and they are so short?
How about five each then we'll see if we want to continue with him or not after those?



Cool, anything other than Cobweb Hotel then since we've done this.

Going to be interesting, i'm not familiar with the brothers at all outside Superman. Don't think i've ever seen a Betty Boop cartoon and while i watched a bunch of Popeye's as a kid i'm not sure which ones were his or even remember them that well since they tend to be repetitive.



My Picks:

Swing You Sinners!
Somewhere in Dreamland
King of the Mardi Gras
Christmas Comes But Once A Year
Red Hot Mama

Kind of just went random by average rating, trying to mix it up a bit, there's 1 Betty Boop, 1 Popeye and 3 different things there.



Let the night air cool you off
I have to mow my lawn, clean my room, fix a broken window, go for a jog, and then clean up, but after that I'll come back here and try to format that first post in a way that looks presentable and has all the information we need in case somebody else pops in and wants to know what is going down.

I'll throw out these five I'd like us to look at:

Popeye the Sailor (1933) - I want Popeye represented, and this is the first one?
Bimbo's Initiation (1931) - I think this is a well known cartoon? I haven't seen it
Out of the Inkwell (1938) - I think this one might be controversial, so maybe we should address it?
Greedy Humpty Dumpty (1936) - Probably a silly retelling of Humpty Dumpty? I know nothing about it, chose it at random
The Peanut Vendor (1933) - I only chose this because the poster picture on IMDb is f*cking terrifying.

And I know we've already done Cobweb for a HOF, but I'll probably watch it again and say something about it. It was pretty enjoyable at the time.



Let the night air cool you off
I'm not sure how I'll do it, but I'll hyperlink posts in corresponding spots on the first page once we get started. It's basically in beta at this point, but I'll figure it out.



Let the night air cool you off
It looks like I mistook The Peanut Vendor with somebody's else's film of a similar title, and Fleishcer's is a little harder to find. I'm swapping it out to Stoopnocracy.

I'll start watching some of these today.



It looks like I mistook The Peanut Vendor with somebody's else's film of a similar title, and Fleishcer's is a little harder to find. I'm swapping it out to Stoopnocracy.

I'll start watching some of these today.
Tomorrow for me i think. Haven't had much free time the last few days and what i have has mostly went to UFC haha.

gbg said she might join in with some if she has the time and it's something she is interested in btw.



It looks like I mistook The Peanut Vendor with somebody's else's film of a similar title, and Fleishcer's is a little harder to find. I'm swapping it out to Stoopnocracy.

I'll start watching some of these today.
Also it's on Archive.org as well as Dailymotion ftr:

https://archive.org/details/1933Flei...ngPeanutVendor



Let the night air cool you off
I went ahead and watched The Peanut Vendor

I originally chose it because I saw the poster image for it on imdb and thought it looked scary, but it was an image for a Len Lye film similarly titled. This film is actually animated at first followed up with some sing-along, dance thing starring a woman named Armida. It makes total sense to me that Fleischer would be into music and dance, because what I've seen of his animation has a rhythmic motion to it that other animation doesn't have. It looks like his drawings all flow and slide in a way that mimics different dance styles. That said, let's not spend half the film away from animation, yeah? Come on, man. The animation is really great and makes you feel good, and while the stories and humor doesn't match the levels of most of the Looney Tunes guys, it occupies a different lane. I have a feeling that I'll be able to say the same thing for most of these Fleischer cartoons, but at least for this one, I can say the live-action bit pretty much ruins all momentum and just falls flat.



Let the night air cool you off
Swing You Sinners! (1930)

I wasn't expecting something this great right away, but I loved watching this film. It has that same rhythm and motion I expect from Fleischer, and really it's almost like Fleischer just directed the greatest music video of seen... eat your heart out Childish Gambino, but this film is more creative and just as dark, even if it goes for more slapsticky stuff (btw I still haven't seen that music video that everyone was spraying out to, I just thought it would be fun to talk some sh*t) I don't know if our main character was executed and then went to hell or if he was just freaking out or if any of that matters, but we get some top notch creepy, animated, hellish imagery that makes great use of the black and white limitations. One thing I noticed was how Fleischer would animate both background and foreground very well, with the background sometimes being the focal point such as when the main character and the bird tussle at the beginning and we get a dizzying effect from the background being twisted and spun around to reveal a mashup of the two characters that is pretty much lighthearted stuff with an undertone of discomfort that would set the tone for things to get darker and darker with the progression of the film. Eventually they make it to the graveyard or hell or whatever it's supposed to be and at times the background would almost feel like it was melting or quivering or something like that and just felt uneasy. And of course there are a lot of ghastly figures popping up from graves and descending onto the main character, all of most of which had rounded shapes which just added to the weird vibes like something Dali would paint if he decide to do a graveyard cartoon instead of melting clocks. I'm probably overrating this because it's the first time I saw it and I didn't know what to expect, but first impression, I'd give it a full



You can't make a rainbow without a little rain.
I went ahead and watched The Peanut Vendor

I originally chose it because I saw the poster image for it on imdb and thought it looked scary, but it was an image for a Len Lye film similarly titled. This film is actually animated at first followed up with some sing-along, dance thing starring a woman named Armida. It makes total sense to me that Fleischer would be into music and dance, because what I've seen of his animation has a rhythmic motion to it that other animation doesn't have. It looks like his drawings all flow and slide in a way that mimics different dance styles. That said, let's not spend half the film away from animation, yeah? Come on, man. The animation is really great and makes you feel good, and while the stories and humor doesn't match the levels of most of the Looney Tunes guys, it occupies a different lane. I have a feeling that I'll be able to say the same thing for most of these Fleischer cartoons, but at least for this one, I can say the live-action bit pretty much ruins all momentum and just falls flat.

I watched The Peanut Vendor too, and I agree about the live action ruining the short. I liked the animated part at the beginning, (especially the polar bear and the lions), but I was bored during most of the woman singing. The song wasn't a good song, and it felt out of place in the short. I was happy when the animation started again after the song, but by then, it was just too little, too late.