Category: Cartooning

It’s Sunday, Charlie Brown

On Facebook the Charles M. Schulz Museum is featuring the 9th Sunday installment of Peanuts, originally published just a month after Monte was born.

‘Peanuts’ March 2, 1952

In 1952 Schulz was still inking lines with a brush, before switching to a pen. The characters hadn’t yet developed their individual personalities, but Chip Kidd has commented on Patty’s fascination with mud. Note that Kidd gets the year wrong.

From ‘The Art of Charles M. Schulz’ by Chip Kidd, 2001

The third Peanuts collection, “Good grief, more PEANUTS!” was the first with Sunday strips. Published in 1956, it doesn’t include the 3/2/52 strip.

Loud and Soft

More viewing on HBOmax. There was quite a contrast between watching this one night…

… and watching this the next night but, unlike the trailer, in Japanese with English subtitles.

https://youtu.be/x0ZrjocXVJ4

Only Yesterday is as quiet and gentle as Godzilla vs. Kong is the opposite of that. 1966 was the highpoint of their youth? Why yes, mine too.

Who Binge Watches the Watchmen?

One thing I didn’t need was another streaming video service, but I got talked into giving HBOmax a try. Over the past three days I’ve watched the nine episodes of HBO’s Watchmen sequel.

The series pushes hard on culture war issues. The presentation owes a lot to the stylistic influence of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. Some hardcore Watchmen fans have complained the series doesn’t remain true to Alan Moore’s original vision, but it carried me through from one episode to the next. HBO has made the soundtrack available on YouTube, and it’s worth scrolling through the playlist for tracks that may be of interest.

The White Man’s Jazz

TCM has its restored print of King of Jazz back in rotation. Paul Whiteman was as much the King of Jazz as Murray “the K” Kaufman was the Fifth Beatle. Both titles were self-proclaimed and completely untrue.

Nonetheless, Whiteman’s significance can’t be overlooked, and King of Jazz, from 1930, includes his two most significant contributions. He commissioned George Gershwin to write “Rhapsody in Blue,” and he hired Bing Crosby.

The movie is a fascinating time capsule from the early era of sound on film. It opens with a Walter Lantz cartoon with a brief appearance by Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, the character that was stolen from Walt Disney, forcing him to create Mickey Mouse.

https://youtu.be/HDReQ6T-54k

Wacky Over Khaki

Another 1943 cartoon by Bob Clampett that pokes fun at a Disney feature is the controversial “Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs.” What makes it controversial is the fun is at the expense of Black people. This video commentary was posted yesterday.

https://youtu.be/E5hnDTNB4Nw

In 1980, four years before Clampett’s death, Leonard Maltin wrote in defense of the cartoon that, “Many independent film makers have labored for years to create a short film as personal and unique as COAL BLACK, which was just one of a dozen shorts Clampett had to put on the assembly line in 1943.”