kingofbreakfast: Bats and dogs

Paul Dini (

kingofbreakfast) wrote,
@ 2008-01-04 15:43:00

Current mood:

pleased

Bats and dogs
Out in stores today, DETECTIVE #840 features the epilogue to the Bats/Ra's battle running through the Bat-books for the last few months. Big welcomes to Dustin Nguyen and Derek Fridolfs who assume art chores beginning with this issue.

Also, more devastation and revelations in COUNTDOWN #17.

***

A few folks, including Brermatt, have asked me what I thought of the New Goofy cartoon "How To Hook Up Your Home Theater" which I finally saw last night. More than the actual cartoon itself, I liked the fact that Disney is starting to show new 2D animated shorts before their features again. As much as the short has been touted as a return to the classic Goofy cartoons of yore, I found it hampered by the same frenetic pace that plagues most modern "wacky" cartoons. The best classic (pre-1960) theatrical cartoons leave a little breathing room between the gags. "...Home Theater" seemed to charge off in all directions at once, trying to dazzle the viewer with non-stop comedy but winding up a hyperactive hodge-podge. Also, (SPOILER) a dream sequence Goofy has about being in some televised action happens for real at the end of the short, and I found that unnecessarily repetative and a boring way to end the cartoon. (END SPOILER) I'm not sure if it was poor direction or executive meddling, but it seemed like the animators were under a lot of pressure to be fast and wacky, but not necessarily funny. In the end it seemed no better or no worse than the Goofy "How To..." shorts made for "The House of Mouse" series a few years back. That said, it was head and shoulders over most of the abandoned Warner Bros. theatrical shorts from a couple years back. Hopefully Disney will be encouraged to bring out these shorts with more regularity. If they start making five or six new shorts a year with the classic characters and the same crew, I am sure they will eventually create some great cartoons.

(Post a new comment)

	cats_n_crying 2008-01-05 12:15 am UTC (link)
	Re: Detective: Dude. That's cold. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	kingofbreakfast 2008-01-05 01:32 am UTC (link)
	Eh. Ra's had it comin'. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

cats_n_crying
2008-01-05 02:48 pm UTC (link)

Oh, that's for sure. I mean it in the good way, especially as I was just recently thinking, "Hm, it's strange how Ra's never was part of that group," and now... well, the only thing I wonder now is how long until one of his followers tracks him down and saves him. Even if that happens, it's still a novel ending for that character.

But yow. Cold.

Edited at 2008-01-05 06:35 pm UTC

(Reply to this)(Parent)

	sithmagician 2008-01-05 12:46 am UTC (link)
	"If they start making five or six new shorts a year with the classic characters and the same crew, I am sure they will eventually create some great cartoons." So, you're saying that if Disney seat a thousand monkeys at a thousand typewriters...? (Reply to this)(Thread)

kingofbreakfast
2008-01-05 01:45 am UTC (link)

No, but if they give the shorts unit time, talent and money with which to grow, I think they will produce some good stuff. You can't just throw a unit of animators together and expect "Red Hot Riding Hood" on the first try. Starting off with a Goofy "How To..." short was a smart move. It's an established franchise with a character you knoow. Now let's see them do something really hard, like a Mickey short where he's a scrappy little hero, or a Donald where he does something more than torture bees or chipmunks.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

sithmagician
2008-01-05 08:09 am UTC (link)

I guess my reply probably came across as cynical, but we are talking modern day Disney.

I'd like to see the genre brought back, something that's just done for fun at the beginning of a feature and not necesarily what they used to get you into the cinema, just a nice bonus.

A bit of a coincidence, but some friends and I were discussing this the other day, which sent me on a youtube chase to find some of those short films that we used to get. I still get a good laugh out of Steve Martin's Absentminded Waiter: http://youtube.com/watch?v=cY8Mik06kvE

(Reply to this)(Parent)

brermatt
2008-01-05 12:53 am UTC (link)

I completely agree with you on the hyperactivity of the short - going for wacky instead of funny. I read a hugely positive review of it today from a newspaper, who rightly said that National Treasure 2 paled in comparison, but I wasn't as thrilled with the cartoon as they were.

For me, though, this new "How To" short fails not in the pacing or level of humor, but in the lack of pathos for Goofy in the cartoon. I think this was fully driven by plot, and it was assumed that everyone knows Goofy and everyone would identify with the perils of complicated home electronics. Basically, I just didn't care whether Goofy got his TV hooked up or not.

(Reply to this)(Thread)

kingofbreakfast
2008-01-05 01:57 am UTC (link)

Yeah, it was surprising how generic Goofy was played in the cartoon. That could have been any character there. Once again, like a lot of screwball characters, Goofy is reduced to being a wacky character in a wacky world. The store is wacky, the delivery people are wacky, the laws of physics are wacky...there's no contrast. A funny character bringing choas to an orderly world is funny. A funny character vicimized by a world where everything is wacky; not so much. In AQUAMANIA for example, Goofy's mania for boats gets him into trouble, and his frantic struggles to survive the situation he's created get him out of it. Not the greatest cartoon ever made, but the character motivates the action, not the situastion.

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	mutant_buster 2008-01-05 07:00 am UTC (link)
	Im glad to hear that. If theres one thing Disney does well its encouraging the sparks of new art. (Reply to this)

	momoyeahmomo 2008-01-07 11:52 am UTC (link)
	isn't Disney also touting that they're going to return to 2-d animated features? I'm hoping that sparks something because I'm getting just a bit tired of all the CGI movies. Not that I dislike them, just getting tired of them (Reply to this)(Thread)

kingofbreakfast
2008-01-12 11:48 pm UTC (link)

Yes. They are in the middle of a movie based either on the fairy tale "The Frog Prince" or "The Frog Princess," there are fairy tales with both titles. Originally it was called "The Frog Princess" but the princess of Disney's tale is black and African-American groupes looked at the title as an insult. So it was changed to "The Princess and the Frog." My understanding is that from the get-go the decision to use a largely black cast and set the fairy tale in 1900 New Orleans has brought the film under scrutiny from various watchdog groups. I've heard from several sources that the story process on this one is especially tortuous as in addition to the usual Disney executive chain of command adding their story notes, the notes from the watchdog groups also have to be included. Nothing like PC meddling to make an entertaining cartoon feature. I think the main reason this picture was greenlit was not that the story or characters were all that compelling (both have been completely reworked from scratch many times during the film's inception) but that the Disney Princess line needed to appeal to a more diverse demographic.

(Reply to this)(Parent)

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