As promised, here’s more anime. Emma, A Victorian Romance, a 24-part series, isn’t Jane Austen, but it’s not giant robot battles, either.
We’ve watched only the first episode of Emma, but the series looks like a good selection for Eric’s girl cousins. I’ve spliced together a couple of scenes. See? No giant battling robots! 😉
[flv:/Video/2008/JUL/Emma.flv 448 252]
When Laserdisc was the best home video format available, studios would release expensive, deluxe editions of movies with all sorts of extras. I bought a few of them, including a box set from Disney of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It came with a hardcover book that was co-written by none other than Brian Sibley.
Eric says we’ve depleted his selections of superior Anime, but we’ll be looking through some other titles to see what might be worthy. This one is an oldie we watched before I started blogging. Grave of the Fireflies is from 1988, and it’s one of the most tragic and heart-wrenching movies I’ve ever seen. A teenage boy does everything he can to keep himself and his baby sister alive in Japan during World War II.
[flv:/Video/2008/JUN/GraveOfTheFireflies.flv 440 248]
Peanuts, June 22, 1952
Comic books, like the movies, were under attack in the 1950’s. Movie people were accused of being communists, and comic book people were accused of causing juvenile delinquency. A book by David Hajdu, called The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America, gives some serious thought to what happened and how it influenced later events beyond comic books themselves. Stephen Colbert, who’s obviously a comic book fan, interviewed Hajdu a couple of weeks ago.
[flv:/Video/2008/JUN/ColbertHajdu.flv 440 330]
There’s irony in the “TV 14” rating that’s so prominent during Colbert’s introduction. It’s almost like the Comics Code Authority seal that appeared on comic books after the big scare. Oh no! How did that commercial get left at the end of the interview?
EC Comics publisher William Gaines did a lousy job testifying before the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency in 1954. His entire testimony is at this link. He should have emphasized that his horror comics were inspired by radio shows such as Inner Sanctum, Lights Out, and The Whistler. But there was probably no defense against the public sentiment of the day. In a way, losing the comic book business was the best thing that could have happened to Gaines, because he was left with MAD Magazine, which was far more subversive and influential anyway, and it ended up being vastly more successful.
[flv:/Video/2008/JUN/WilliamGaines.flv 440 330]
When FiOS kicked in with all of the HD channels I wasn’t getting, but should have, I also started getting HD Video on Demand offerings. I like Gary Sinise’s work, so I watched a few episodes of CSI: NY. One was really good, another was pretty good, but one was flat-out lame. Here’s the big finish.
[flv:/Video/2008/JUN/CSI.flv 440 330]
This really gets my comic book fan hackles going. It portrays comic books as having a bad influence on kids, and I’m really tired of that misconception. In fact, it makes comic book readers look stupid, and their parents too, because in the show what those kids needed was some adult supervision.
How old is the character supposed to be whose friend drowned in the cardboard sub? At the oldest I’d say he’s 35. And the death happened when he was, say, ten years old. Better make it eight. Ten-year-old kids aren’t that stupid. OK, so that means the flashback takes place 27 years ago, in 1981. The drawings appear to be the character Bullseye, from a Frank Miller issue of Daredevil. Miller took over writing the series in late 1980, and that type of ad was long gone from comics by then. The age of the newsstand comic book was pretty much already over, and comic book shops had taken over. Further, there weren’t any “Laughing Larry” type figureheads that I can recall, for any of the cheap outfits advertising in comics. And the idea that he’d still be in business is, well, silly. But I bet the character actor playing Laughing Larry had a good time with the part, because he looks like he usually gets stuck playing a gangster.
Above is one of the original ads for the cardboard submarine, taken from a 1967 Marvel comic. I never owned one, but Boing Boing has a picture of the real thing, also from 1967, at this link. Hmm… maybe they’ll do a show where some kid dies abusing the Digi-Comp 1.
Of his essay “Regarding Schulz and Peanuts,” in The Comics Journal #290, Monte Schulz comments at this link, “I’ve had my say, as I wanted to say it, and that’s it.” In that spirit, I’d like to offer a closing of my own.
When the biography came out last fall, there was something of a companion piece in the form of David Van Taylor’s documentary for the PBS series American Masters, “Good Ol’ Charles Schulz.” I posted a few moments of it at this link, because I feel the emotional core of the program is in the ten minutes about the Schulz family during their years living at Coffee Lane in Sebastopol, California. Here is the complete segment.
[flv:http://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Video/Schulz/CoffeeLane.flv 440 330]
In my previous entry I included the song “Moon River,” and following the lead of the background music in the documentary, I used Henry Mancini’s recording. But in Monte’s essay he mentions the Andy Williams version, so I’ll toss that one in here.
[audio:https://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Audio/2011/Nov/AW.mp3|titles=Moon River performed by Andy Williams]