Sonny the Clown, who is a down trodden clown, gets home from work after a long hard day at the clownery to care for his sick and dying mother only to endure her constant torment and ridicule. But he would give it all up if he could follow his dream of delighting audiences both young and old through his funny antics as the adorable and lovable Sonny the Clown.
Watch Sonny the Clown get tormented by Mama the Clown in the clips below:
I Yam What I Yam is the second Popeye theatrical cartoon short, starring William “Billy” Costello as Popeye, Bonnie Poe as Olive Oyl, and Charles Lawrence as Wimpy. The source of the quote is the comic strip, Thimble Theatre by E. C. Segar, in which the character Popeye first appeared.
I Yam What I Yam is the second Popeye cartoon and the first cartoon in Popeye’s own cartoon series; the first entry, Popeye the Sailor, was released as a Betty Boop cartoon. This is the first cartoon in which Bonnie Poe voices Olive Oyl. This was the first screen appearance of J. Wellington Wimpy.
Full cartoon
Popeye the Sailor Man is a cartoon fictional character, created by Elzie Crisler Segar, who has appeared in comic strips and theatrical and television animated cartoons. He first appeared in the daily King Features comic strip Thimble Theatre on January 17, 1929; Popeye became the strips title in later years. Although Segars Thimble Theatre strip was in its tenth year when Popeye made his debut, the sailor quickly became the main focus of the strip and Thimble Theatre soon became one of King Features most popular properties during the 1930s. Thimble Theatre was continued after Segars death in 1938 by several writers and artists, most notably Segars assistant Bud Sagendorf. The strip continues to appear in first-run installments in its Sunday edition, written and drawn by Hy Eisman. The daily strips are reprints of old Sagendorf stories. In 1933, Max Fleischer adapted the Thimble Theatre characters into a series of Popeye the Sailor theatrical cartoon shorts for Paramount Pictures. These cartoons proved to be among the most popular of the 1930s, and Fleischer—and later Paramount’s own Famous Studios—continued production through 1957.
An animated parable that deals with a familiar subject in an amusing way. We join in the business ventures of J.B. Edwards, an easterner who went west to create a fuel company called Consolidated Dragons. The company’s profits were sorely affected when the supply of dragons started to dry up. A solution had to be found–and was.
Directed by Brad Caslor & Christopher Hinton – 1978
Blowhard is a Canadian animated short film, directed by Brad Caslor and Christopher Hinton for the National Film Board of Canada in 1978. A satire of capitalism, the film centers on a businessman who moves to Blowhard, a town populated by dragons but without electrical power, and formulates a plan to profit and become rich by exploiting the dragons as a power source.
The film was made for the NFB’s Renewable Society series. It also served as a subtle comment on Western Canadian alienation, as businessman J. B. Edwards was “from the East” and the town of Blowhard was “in the West”. It was narrated by Maara Haas, and also featured Wayne Finucan as the voice of J. B. Edwards.
The film received a Canadian Film Award nomination for Best Animated Short Film at the 29th Canadian Film Awards in 1978 and it won a Golden Sheaf Award for Best Animation at the Yorkton Film Festival.
It was later broadcast in the United States on Cartoon Network’s O Canada anthology series of NFB animated shorts.
Bosko has a grand time on the farm, dancing with a cow, playing a horse’s tail like a violin and getting drunk with three pigs. Bosko dances and sings on the farm with pigs who get hold of a bottle of booze. The Booze Hangs High, released in December 1930, is the fourth title in the Looney Tunes series. The short features Bosko, Warner Bros.’ first cartoon character. The Booze Hangs High released in 1930, is the fourth title in the Looney Tunes series and features Bosko, Warner Bros.’ first cartoon character. When this cartoon aired on Nickelodeon, the part where the father pig regurgitates a corncob, flicks off the one kernel that remains on it, and puts it back into his stomach through a trapdoor was cut. This cartoon references Plane Crazy (a Mickey Mouse cartoon) and Song of the Flame (a musical operetta film). The latter features a song titled The Goose Hangs High from which this short gets its name.
Animated by Friz Freleng and Paul Smith
Bosko is an animated cartoon character created by animators Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising. Bosko was the first recurring character in Leon Schlesinger’s cartoon series and was the star of thirty-nine Looney Tunes shorts released by Warner Bros. He was voiced by Carman Maxwell, Johnny Murray, and Billie “Buckwheat” Thomas.
In 1927, Harman and Ising worked for the Walt Disney Studios on a series of live-action/animated short subjects known as the Alice Comedies. The two animators created Bosko in 1928 to capitalize on the recent success of talkies in the motion picture industry. They began thinking about making a sound cartoon with Bosko in 1928 before even leaving Walt Disney. Hugh Harman made drawings of the new character and registered it with the U.S. Copyright Office on January 3, 1928. The character was registered as a “Negro boy” under the name of Bosko.
After leaving Walt Disney in early 1928, Harman and Ising went to work for Charles Mintz on Universal’s second-season Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoons. In April 1929 they left Universal to market their new cartoon character.
Schlesinger saw the Harman-Ising test film and signed the animators to produce cartoons at their studio for him to sell to Warner Bros. Bosko became the star vehicle for the studio’s new Looney Tunes cartoon series. Bosko wore long pants and a derby hat, and he had a girlfriend named Honey and a dog named Bruno. He was also sometimes accompanied by Honey’s cat-like son named Wilbur and an often antagonistic goat, particularly in early cartoons.
Hold Anything is the third short in the Looney Tunes series from Warner Bros., released to theaters in October 1930. Featuring Bosko, it is loosely based on the lost film Hold Everything, one of whose songs, “Don’t Hold Everything,” features prominently in the cartoon. It was directed by Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising, and animated by Isadore “Friz” Freleng and Norman Blackburn.
Bosko is an animated cartoon character created by animators Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising. Bosko was the first recurring character in Leon Schlesinger’s cartoon series and was the star of thirty-nine Looney Tunes shorts released by Warner Bros. He was voiced by Carman Maxwell, Johnny Murray, and Billie “Buckwheat” Thomas.
In 1927, Harman and Ising worked for the Walt Disney Studios on a series of live-action/animated short subjects known as the Alice Comedies. The two animators created Bosko in 1928 to capitalize on the recent success of talkies in the motion picture industry. They began thinking about making a sound cartoon with Bosko in 1928 before even leaving Walt Disney. Hugh Harman made drawings of the new character and registered it with the U.S. Copyright Office on January 3, 1928. The character was registered as a “Negro boy” under the name of Bosko.
After leaving Walt Disney in early 1928, Harman and Ising went to work for Charles Mintz on Universal’s second-season Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoons. In April 1929 they left Universal to market their new cartoon character.
Schlesinger saw the Harman-Ising test film and signed the animators to produce cartoons at their studio for him to sell to Warner Bros. Bosko became the star vehicle for the studio’s new Looney Tunes cartoon series. Bosko wore long pants and a derby hat, and he had a girlfriend named Honey and a dog named Bruno. He was also sometimes accompanied by Honey’s cat-like son named Wilbur and an often antagonistic goat, particularly in early cartoons.
Fritz the Cat is a 1972 American adult animated black comedy film written and directed by Ralph Bakshi in his directorial debut. Based on the comic strip by Robert Crumb and starring Skip Hinnant, the film focuses on Fritz, a glib, womanizing, and fraudulent cat in an anthropomorphic animal version of New York City during the mid-to-late 1960s. Fritz decides on a whim to drop out of college, interacts with inner city African American crows, unintentionally starts a race riot, and becomes a leftist revolutionary. The film is a satire focusing on American college life of the era, race relations, the free love movement and serves as a criticism of the countercultural political revolution and dishonest political activists.
Original trailer
The film had a troubled production history, as Crumb, who is politically left-wing, had disagreements with the filmmakers over the film’s political content, which he saw as being critical of the political left. Produced on a budget of $700,000, the film was intended by Bakshi to broaden the animation market. At that time period, animation was seen predominantly as a children’s medium. Bakshi envisioned animation as being a medium that could tell more dramatic or satirical storylines with larger scopes, dealing with more mature and diverse themes that would resonate with adults. Bakshi also wanted to establish an independent alternative to the films produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios, which dominated the animation market due to a lack of independent competition.
The intention of featuring profanity, sex, and drug use provoked criticism from more conservative members of the animation industry, who accused Bakshi of attempting to produce a pornographic animated film, as the concept of adult animation was not widely understood at the time. The Motion Picture Association of America gave the film an X rating, making it the first American animated film to receive the rating, which was then predominantly associated with more arthouse films. The film was highly successful and also earned significant critical acclaim for its satire, social commentary, and animation innovations. The film’s use of satire and mature themes is seen as paving the way for future animated works for adults, including The Simpsons, South Park and Family Guy. A sequel, The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat (1974), was produced without Crumb’s or Bakshi’s involvement.
Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson & Hamilton Luske (1955)
Lady and the Tramp is a 1955 animated musical romance by Walt Disney Productions. The 15th Disney animated feature film was directed by Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson, and Hamilton Luske, and features the voices of Barbara Luddy, Larry Roberts, Bill Thompson, Bill Baucom, Verna Felton, and Peggy Lee. The film was based on the 1945 Cosmopolitan magazine story “Happy Dan, The Cynical Dog” by Ward Greene, and tells the story of Lady the pampered Cocker Spaniel as she grows from puppy to adult, deals with changes in her family, and meets and falls in love with Tramp the homeless mutt.
Lady and the Tramp was released to theaters on June 22, 1955, to box office success. It was the first animated film to be filmed in the CinemaScope widescreen film process, as well as Disney’s first animated film to be distributed by their Buena Vista division. It initially received generally mixed reviews by film critics, but critical reception for the film has been generally positive in modern times.
As they had done with the deer on Bambi, the animators studied many dogs of different breeds to capture the movement and personality of dogs. Although the spaghetti eating sequence is probably now the best-known scene from the film, Walt Disney was prepared to cut it, thinking that it would not be romantic and that dogs eating spaghetti would look silly. Animator Frank Thomas was against Walt’s decision and animated the entire scene himself without any lay-outs. Walt was impressed by Thomas’s work and how he romanticized the scene and kept it in. On viewing the first take of the scene, the animators felt that the action should be slowed down, so an apprentice trainee was assigned to create “half numbers” in between many of the original frames.
Tramp takes Lady for an Italian candlelit dinner at Tony’s Restaurant. The comedic characters of Tony and Joe, two Italian chefs, lighten the tone of the film, even though they aren’t on screen for too long. It is Tony who sings the song ‘Bella Notte’ as the two dogs eat their spaghetti and meatballs. The music is by Sonny Burke and the lyrics are by Peggy Lee.
“Exactly. Life on a leash. Look again, Pidge. Look, there’s a great big hunk of world down there, with no fence around it. Where two dogs can find adventure and excitement. And beyond those distant hills, who knows what wonderful experiences? And it’s all ours for the taking, Pidge. It’s all ours.”
Tramp
This Disney animated classic follows a pampered cocker spaniel named Lady (Barbara Luddy) whose comfortable life slips away once her owners have a baby. When, after some tense circumstances, Lady finds herself on the loose and out on the street, she is befriended and protected by the tough stray mutt Tramp (Larry Roberts). A romance begins to blossom between the two dogs, but their many differences, along with more drama at Lady’s household, threaten to keep them apart.
It would be impossible to describe in words Monkey Doodle. It’s one of those things you have to see to believe. This oddest of oddities features unique designs and bizarre, detailed animation. The Thunderbean version of this film was restored using 4 prints from 4 different sources.
By the age of 17 Les Elton was billed as a “Comedy Cartoonist” doing popular lightning sketches on the vaudeville circuit. He eventually drew for both the Philadelphia Record, Public Ledger, and the St. Louis Globe Democrat. He also developed his own comic strip. In 1916 he joined the Bray animation studio where he primarily illustrated comic strips based on animated cartoons produced by the studio. Elton left Bray Studios in 1917.
In 1917 he patented a way to combine live action and animation. His 1931 animated cartoon Monkey Doodle featuring “Simon the Monk” was produced by former Bray staffer Jaques Kopfstein with the help of his stepson and animator Robert Bentley. The Eltons then went to California, where in 1935 Les produced another animated cartoon The Hobo Hero.
Caravan Palace, a French Electroswing five-member group based in Paris, created the rushing number Lone Digger. The crew is made of Charles Delaporte as the bassist & programming, Hugues Payen on violin, and Zoe Colotis giving the vocals. The band has Antoine Toustou on the trombone and electronics, and Camille Chapeliere playing the clarinet. Django Reinhardt is the group’s main inspiration. They also cite Vitalic, Cab Calloway, Justice, Lionel Hampton, and Daft Punk as their influences. The band was created in 2005 after a film company hired three band members to provide the soundtrack for silent X-rated films. In October 2008, the band’s debut album, Caravan Palace (Wagram), was released. It charted in France, Belgium, and Switzerland, reaching #11 on the charts. The animated video depicts a violent fight at a strip club staffed and visited by various anthropomorphic animals.
Director: Double Ninja (doubleninja.com)
Production Company: Cumulus (agence-cumulus.com)
Executive Producers: Thomas Vernay and Yann Wallaert
Hamilton Luske, Clyde Geronimi & Wilfred Jackson (1953)
When there’s a smile in your heart There’s no better time to start Think of all the joy you’ll find When you leave the world behind And bid your cares good-bye You can fly, you can fly, you can fly, you can fly, you can fly!
Peter Pan is a 1953 animated adventure fantasy film produced in 1952 by Walt Disney Productions. Based on J. M. Barrie’s 1904 play Peter Pan, or the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up, it is the 14th Disney animated feature film. The film was directed by Hamilton Luske, Clyde Geronimi, and Wilfred Jackson. Featuring the voices of Bobby Driscoll, Kathryn Beaumont, Hans Conried, and Bill Thompson, the film’s plot follows Wendy Darling and her two brothers, who meet the never-growing-up Peter Pan and travel with him to the island of Neverland to stay young, where they also have to face Peter’s archenemy, Captain Hook.
In 1935, Walt Disney began considering plans to adapt Barrie’s play into an animated feature. He purchased the film rights from Paramount Pictures in 1938, and began preliminary development in the next year. However, following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Disney shelved the project when his studio was contracted by the United States government to produce training and war propaganda films. The project sat idle in development for the rest of the decade until it experienced a turnaround in 1949. To assist the animators, live-action reference footage was shot with actors on soundstages. It also marked the last Disney film in which all nine members of Disney’s Nine Old Men worked together as directing animators.
Disney’s Nine Old Men were Walt Disney Productions’ core animators, some of whom later became directors, who created some of Disney’s most famous animated cartoons, from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs onward to The Rescuers, and were referred to as such by Walt Disney himself. The Nine Old Men consisted of Milt Kahl, Marc Davis, Frank Thomas, Eric Larson, Ollie Johnston, Woolie Reitherman, Les Clark, Ward Kimball, and John Lounsbery.
Peter Pan was released on February 5, 1953, becoming the final Disney animated feature released through RKO before Disney founded his own distribution company. The film was entered into the 1953 Cannes Film Festival, Upon its release, the film earned positive reviews from film critics and was a box office success. Its representation of the Native Americans received retrospective criticism.
In this Disney animated film, Wendy and her two brothers are amazed when a magical boy named Peter Pan flies into their bedroom in pursuit of his rebellious shadow. He and his fairy friend Tinkerbell come from a far-off place called Neverland, where children stay perpetually young. Enchanted, the kids follow him back. But when Pan’s nemesis the pirate Captain Hook causes trouble, the kids begin to miss their old life.
Continue watching after this video to see the film in its entirety.
“It’s bad enough you sell your waking life for-for minimum wage, but now they get your dreams for free.”
Guy Forsyth
Waking Life is a 2001 American experimental adult animated film written and directed by Richard Linklater. The film explores a wide range of philosophical issues, including the nature of reality, dreams and lucid dreams, consciousness, the meaning of life, free will, and existentialism. It is centered on a young man who wanders through a succession of dream-like realities wherein he encounters a series of individuals who engage in insightful philosophical discussions.
The entire film was digitally rotoscoped. It contains several parallels to Linklater’s 1991 film Slacker. Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy reprise their characters from the 1995 Before Sunrise in one scene. Waking Life premiered at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival, and was released on October 19, 2001, where it received critical acclaim.
All we see and all we seem is but a dream within a dream
By Roger Ebert (2009)
It is hard to say how much of Richard Linklater’s “Waking Life” (2001) is a dream. I think all of it is. His hero keeps dreaming that he has awakened. He climbs out of bed, splashes water on his face, walks outside and finds himself dreaming again. But the film isn’t one of those surrealist fantasies with pinwheels coming out of the hero’s eyes or people being sucked down into the vortex. It’s mostly conversational, and the conversation is all intriguing; the dreamer must be intelligent.
Or perhaps not. Perhaps he’s channeling it from outside. A woman in a coffee shop tells him her idea for a soap opera plot, and he asks her how it feels to be a character in his dream. She doesn’t answer, because how can she, since she’s only a character in his dream? On the other hand, where did she come up with that plot? He tells her he could never have invented it himself. It’s like it came to him in a … no, that doesn’t work. It’s like it came in from outside the dream.
And what is dreaming, anyway? A woman in the film speculates that when we dream, we are experiencing ourselves apart from our physical bodies. After we die, she says, doesn’t it make sense that we would keep on dreaming, but that we’d never stop dreaming because now we were apart from our bodies? No, it doesn’t make sense, I think, because our dreams take place within our physical brains. Maybe not. Maybe we only think they do.
“Waking Life” is philosophical and playful at the same time. It’s an extravagantly inventive film that begins with actual footage of real actors and then translates them into animated images; it’s called motion-capture, and you can see it in “Beowulf” and “300,” but it was startling when Linklater made his film in 2001, and showed it didn’t need to cost millions. A founding member of the Austin, Texas, filmmaking crowd, he collaborated with a software genius named Bob Sabiston, who did it all on Macs. It’s visually bright and alive — a joy to regard.
Simple Simon is a 1935 ComiColor Cartoons animated short film produced by Ub Iwerks. It is a humorous retelling of the classic nursery rhyme. This short film was released on November 15, 1935. The musical score was created by Carl Stalling.
The ComiColor Cartoon series was a series of 25 animated short subjects produced by the Ub Iwerks studio from 1933 to 1936. The series was the last produced by the studio; after losing distributor Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1934, the Iwerks studio’s senior company Celebrity Pictures (run by Pat Powers) had to distribute the films itself. The series was shot exclusively in Cinecolor.
Most of the ComiColor entries were based upon popular fairy tales and other familiar stories, including Jack and the Beanstalk, Old Mother Hubbard, The Bremen Town Musicians, and The Headless Horseman. Grim Natwick, Al Eugster, and Shamus Culhane were among the series’ lead animators/directors, and a number of the shorts were filmed using Iwerks’ multiplane camera, which he built himself from the remains of a Chevrolet automobile.
Ub Iwerks was an American animator, cartoonist, character designer, inventor, and special effects technician, known for his work with Walt Disney Animation Studios in general, and for having worked on the development of the design of the character of Mickey Mouse, among others. Iwerks joined Disney as chief animator on the Laugh-O-Gram shorts series beginning in 1922, but a studio bankruptcy would cause Disney to relocate to Los Angeles in 1923. In the new studio, Iwerks continued to work with Disney on the Alice Comedies as well as the creation of the Oswald the Lucky Rabbit character. Following the first Oswald short, both Universal Pictures and the Winkler Pictures production company insisted that the Oswald character be redesigned. At the insistence of Disney, Iwerks designed a number of new characters for the studio, including designs that would be used for Clarabelle Cow and Horace Horsecollar.
Dizzy Dishes is an animated cartoon created by Fleischer Studios in 1930, as part of the Talkartoon series. It is noted for being the first cartoon in which Betty Boop appears.
The cartoon begins with four anthropomorphic flapper cats singing the jazz song “Crazy Town”. Chef Bimbo waits on a hungry gorilla and then goes to the kitchen to prepare an order of roast duck. When he is about to bring it to the gorilla’s table, he sees Betty Boop performing on stage and falls in love at first sight. He forgets about the hungry gorilla and dances on stage with the duck. The gorilla, furious, goes after Bimbo, who escapes on a wooden train.
The as-yet-unevolved Betty Boop is drawn as an anthropomorphic female dog. She is merely a side character; the main plotline revolves around the incompetent chef Bimbo and the irate gorilla. “Crazy Town,” sung by the flapper cats in the beginning of the cartoon, is also the theme song for the 1932 Betty Boop film Crazy Town.
Animated by Grim Natwick and Ted Sears
Betty Boop is an animated cartoon character created by Max Fleischer, with help from animators including Grim Natwick. She originally appeared in the Talkartoon and Betty Boop film series, which were produced by Fleischer Studios and released by Paramount Pictures. She was She was featured in 90 theatrical cartoons between 1930 and 1939. She has also been featured in comic strips and mass merchandising.
A caricature of a Jazz Age flapper, Betty Boop was described in a 1934 court case as “combining in appearance the childish with the sophisticated—a large round baby face with big eyes and a nose like a button, framed in a somewhat careful coiffure, with a very small body of which perhaps the leading characteristic is the most self-confident little bust imaginable”. Although she was toned down in the mid-1930s as a result of the Hays Code to appear more demure, she became one of the world’s best-known and most popular cartoon characters.
Inspired by a popular performing style, but not by any one specific person, the character was originally created as an anthropomorphic French poodle. Clara Bow is often given credit as being the inspiration for Boop, though Fleischer told his artists that he wanted a caricature of singer Helen Kane, who performed in a style shared by many performers of the day. Kane was also the one who sued Fleischer over the signature “Boop Oop a Doop” line.
Betty Boop is regarded as one of the first and best-known sex symbols on the animated screen. She is also a symbol of the Depression era and a reminder of the more carefree days of Jazz Age flappers. Her popularity was drawn largely from adult audiences, and the cartoons, while seemingly surreal, contained many sexual and psychological elements.
Lightning rips through the black midnight sky
Revealing the moons mad, chaotic grin.
Children awake in their beds
Screaming for their mothers to come in.
Rain taps upon the window
Like some lunatic who begs to be let in.
Thundering gods battle over earth
As the devil begins to grin.
The Pink Panther is a sly, lanky animated cat created by Friz Freleng and David DePatie. The iconic feline was first created in 1964.
Pink Pajamas is the second theatrical cartoon produced in the Pink Panther series. The Pink Panther sneaks into a house to stay the night, but ends up having to hide from the residence’s drunk owner. When the Pink Panther’s cover is blown, the homeowner, believing that he is suffering from alcohol-induced hallucinations, has a local Alcoholics Anonymous representative come to his home to rehabilitate him. But reality soon sets in when they realize that the Pink Panther actually does exist – as such, they immediately run outside and chase after the garbage truck that has just hauled off the discarded alcohol.
The animated Pink Panther character’s initial appearance in the live action film’s title sequence, directed by Friz Freleng, was such a success with audiences that the studio signed Freleng and his DePatie–Freleng Enterprises studio to a multi-year contract for a series of Pink Panther theatrical cartoon shorts. The first entry in the series, 1964’s The Pink Phink, featured Pink harassing his foil, a little white mustachioed man who is often considered a caricature of Friz Freleng, by constantly trying to paint the Little Man’s blue house pink. The Pink Phink won the 1964 Academy Award for Animated Short Film, and subsequent shorts in the series, usually featuring the Pink Panther opposite the Little Man, were successful releases.
In an early series of Pink Panther animated cartoons, Pink generally remained silent, speaking only in two theatrical shorts, Sink Pink and Pink Ice. Rich Little provided Pink’s voice in these shorts, modeling it on that of David Niven (who had portrayed Clouseau’s jewel thief nemesis in the original live-action film). Years later, Little would overdub Niven’s voice for Trail of the Pink Panther and Curse of the Pink Panther, due to Niven’s ill health. All of the animated Pink Panther shorts utilized the distinctive jazzy theme music composed by Henry Mancini for the 1963 feature film, with additional scores composed by Walter Greene or William Lava.
In celebration of Dr. Seuss’ birthday, born on this day in 1904, I present to you Horton Hears a Who!
Horton Hears a Who! is a 1970 animated television special based on the 1954 Dr. Seuss book Horton Hears a Who! It was produced and directed by Chuck Jones and was first broadcast on March 19, 1970. The special contains songs with lyrics by Seuss and music by Eugene Poddany, who previously wrote songs for Seuss’ book, The Cat in the Hat Song Book.
Directed by Chuck Jones and Ben Washam
Voiced by Hans Conried, Chuck Jones, and June Foray
Narrated by Hans Conried
Music by Eugene Poddany
Horton Hears a Who! is a children’s book written and illustrated by Theodor Seuss Geisel under the pen name Dr. Seuss. It was published in 1954 by Random House. This book tells the story of Horton the Elephant and his adventures saving Whoville, a tiny planet located on a speck of dust, from the animals who mock him. These animals attempt to steal and burn the speck of dust, so Horton goes to great lengths to save Whoville from being incinerated.
“A person’s a person, no matter how small.”
Horton the Elephant
The above quote is the most popular line from Horton Hears a Who! and also serves as the major moral theme that Dr. Seuss conveys to his audience. Horton endures harassment to care for and ensure the safety of the Whos, who represent the insignificant. Horton Hears a Who! has been well-received in libraries, schools, and homes across the world. Much of the plot has been incorporated into the Broadway musical production Seussical.
Creator and fancier of fanciful beasts, your affinity for flying elephants and man-eating mosquitoes makes us rejoice you were not around to be Director of Admissions on Mr. Noah’s ark. But our rejoicing in your career is far more positive: as author and artist you singlehandedly have stood as St. George between a generation of exhausted parents and the demon dragon of unexhausted children on a rainy day. There was an inimitable wriggle in your work long before you became a producer of motion pictures and animated cartoons and, as always with the best of humor, behind the fun there has been intelligence, kindness, and a feel for humankind. An Academy Award winner and holder of the Legion of Merit for war film work, you have stood these many years in the academic shadow of your learned friend Dr. Seuss; and because we are sure the time has come when the good doctor would want you to walk by his side as a full equal and because your College delights to acknowledge the distinction of a loyal son, Dartmouth confers on you her Doctorate of Humane Letters.
You’re wrong as the deuce And you shouldn’t rejoice If you’re calling him Seuss. He pronounces it Soice.
The facts of life are presented in a parody of the reproductive processes from conception to birth.
Bruno Bozzetto is an Italian cartoon animator and film director, creator of many short pieces, mainly of a political or satirical nature. A 60-years career behind, Bruno Bozzetto is esteemed as one of the most eclectic and influential Cartoonists of yesterday and of today. His minimalist style focuses on the content more than the aesthetics to talk about universal themes with an educational approach and through a scratching irony that make his films suitable for a young adult audience.
“Synthesis is the most important goal for an artist. It’s a marvelous and yet difficult goal to achieve.”
The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad is a 1949 animated anthology film produced by Walt Disney Productions and directed by Clyde Geronimi, Jack Kinney and James Algar. It consists of two segments: the first based on the 1908 children’s novel The Wind in the Willows by British author Kenneth Grahame, and the second based on the 1820 short story “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” by American author Washington Irving.
The Wind in the Willows
This segment is based on the novel by Kenneth Grahame. The story is set in and around London, England, United Kingdom between June 10, 1907 and January 1, 1908. The protagonist J. Thaddeus Toad, Esq. is introduced as an “incurable adventurer” who “never counted the cost”. As the story’s “one disturbing element”, although he is the wealthy proprietor of the Toad Hall estate, Toad’s adventures and “positive mania for fads” have brought him to the brink of bankruptcy. As a last resort, Toad’s friend Angus MacBadger volunteers as Toad’s bookkeeper to help Toad keep his estate which is a source of pride in the community.
One summer day, MacBadger asks Toad’s best friends Ratty and Moley to persuade Toad to give up his latest mania of recklessly driving about the countryside in a horse and gypsy cart, which could accumulate a great deal of financial liability in damaged property. Ratty and Moley confront Toad, but are unable to change his mind. Toad then sees a motor car for the first time and becomes entranced by the new machine, having been taken over by “motor-mania”.
To cure Toad’s new mania, Ratty and Moley put Toad under house arrest. However, Toad escapes and is later arrested and charged with car theft. At his trial, Toad represents himself and calls his horse Cyril Proudbottom as his first witness. Cyril testifies that the car which Toad was accused of stealing had already been stolen by a gang of weasels. Toad had entered a tavern where the car was parked and offered to buy the car from the weasels. However, since Toad had no money, he instead offered to trade Toad Hall for the car. The prosecutor and judge show disbelief toward the statement, so Toad then calls the bartender Mr. Winky as a witness to the agreement; however, when told by Toad to explain what actually happened, Mr. Winky claims instead that Toad had tried to sell him the stolen car. Toad is found guilty on the spot and sentenced to 20 years in the Tower of London. As the months passed by, Toad’s friends make every effort to appeal his case, but to no avail.
On Christmas Eve, Cyril visits Toad in disguise as his grandmother and helps him escape by giving him a disguise of his own. Toad quickly runs to a railway station and hijacks a steam locomotive and drives out of the station heading toward the river bank without getting caught by the police on another train, coming to Ratty and Moley’s house. Just then, MacBadger vists Ratty and Moley to tell them that he discovered that Mr. Winky is the leader of the weasel gang, and that Toad had indeed traded his estate for the stolen car; Mr. Winky himself is in possession of the deed. Knowing that Toad is still guilty in the eyes of the law and the deed bearing his and Mr. Winky’s signature would prove Toad’s innocence, the four friends sneak into Toad Hall and take the document after a grueling chase around the estate.
The film then ends on New Year’s Day with Toad exonerated and regaining his house while it is implied that Mr. Winky and the weasels have been arrested and imprisoned. As MacBadger, Ratty, and Moley celebrate the New Year with a toast to Toad, who they believe has completely reformed, Toad and Cyril recklessly fly past on a 1903 Wright Flyer; Toad has not truly reformed and has developed a mania for airplanes.
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
The second segment is based on the original story by Washington Irving. Although the film introduces the story as Ichabod Crane, later individual releases retained the story’s original title. (As a short story, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” was originally published in The Sketch Book with other stories, not as a single volume as pictured in the film.)
In October 1790, Ichabod Crane, a lanky, superstitious yet charming dandy arrives in Sleepy Hollow, New York, a small village outside Tarrytown that is renowned for its ghostly hauntings, to be the town’s new schoolmaster. Despite his odd behavior, appearance, and effeminate mannerisms, Ichabod soon wins the hearts of the village’s women and forms good friendships with his students. Brom Bones, the roguish town hero, does his best to pull pranks to Ichabod. However, he is very good at ignoring these taunts and continues to interact with the townspeople. One day, Ichabod meets and falls in love with Katrina van Tassel, the beautiful daughter of the wealthy Baltus van Tassel and Brom’s unofficial fiancee. Despite being obsessed with Katrina’s beauty, Ichabod mainly desires to take her family’s money for himself. Brom, who has never been challenged like this, proceeds to compete with the schoolmaster, but Ichabod wins Katrina over at every opportunity. Unbeknownst to both men, Katrina is only using Ichabod to make Brom jealous and force him to try harder for her affections.
The two love rivals are invited to the van Tassel Halloween party. Brom attempts to get Ichabod to dance with a plump woman instead of Katrina, and later attempts to have him fall through a cellar door, but both attempts backfire. While both men dine, Brom catches Ichabod accidentally knocking the salt shaker over and nervously tossing salt over his shoulder. Discovering that Ichabod’s weakness is superstition, he decides to sing the tale of the legendary Headless Horseman. The horseman supposedly travels the woods on Halloween each year, searching for a living head to replace the one which he has lost, and the only way to escape the ghost is to cross a covered bridge. Everyone else, including Katrina, finds the song amusing, while Ichabod on the other hand starts to fear for his life.
Riding home from the party, Ichabod becomes frightened of every sound and sight which he hears in the dark woods. While traveling through the old cemetery, Ichabod believes he hears the sound of a horse galloping toward him, but discovers the sound is being made by nearby cattails bumping on a log. He and his horse begin to laugh – however, their laughter is cut short by the appearance of the Headless Horseman, wielding a sword and riding on the back of a black horse. After being chased through the dark forest, Ichabod, remembering Brom’s advice, rides across the covered bridge to stop the ghost’s pursuit. The horseman stops and throws his flaming head, revealed to be a jack-o’-lantern, right at Ichabod’s face.
The next morning, Ichabod’s hat is found at the bridge next to the shattered jack-o-lantern, but Ichabod himself is nowhere to be found. Sometime later, Brom takes Katrina as his wife. Rumors begin to spread that Ichabod is still alive, married to a wealthy widow in a distant county with children who all look like him. However, the superstitious people of Sleepy Hollow insist that he has been “spirited away” by the Headless Horseman.
Hazardous Hare terrorizes town with his trance-like stare.
Hazardous Hare is a character created by Tavis Moon of Hobo Moon Cartoons. To find Hazardous Hare and other Hobo Moon Cartoons T-shirts, posters, and other merch feel free to visit our MERCH page.
Watch the new official video for The Beatles’ Here, There and Everywhere by Trunk Animation!
“Follow the band on tour, as they face an ever-changing backdrop of cities, hotels, roads, and gigs, with only each other to rely on. A magical dancer appears to each of them, representing inspiration and creative freedom.”
Rok Predin, Trunk Animation
The Beatles’ 1966 album Revolver changed everything. Spinning popular music off its axis and ushering in a vibrant new era of experimental, avant-garde sonic psychedelia, Revolver brought about a cultural sea change and marked an important turn in The Beatles’ own creative evolution. With Revolver, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr set sail together across a new musical sea.
Here, There and Everywhere is a song by the Beatles from their 1966 album Revolver. A love ballad, it was written by Paul McCartney and credited to Lennon–McCartney. McCartney includes it among his personal favorite songs he has written. In 2000, Mojo ranked it 4th in the magazine’s list of the greatest songs of all time.
The Kings Of Siam is Ged Haney’s first film. Completed in 1992, before the days of digital assistance, it took seven years to complete. A pair of Siamese Twins live and work as part of a travelling fair. One dreams of being a rock and roll star, while the other dreams of scoring the winning goal for England in the 1966 World Cup final.
Written, Animated, and Directed by Ged Haney
Music by Ged Haney
Additional animation by Emma Calder and Lesley Bushell
Produced by Pearly Oyster Productions for Channel 4
This Felix the Cat cartoon begins in the chilly North but most of the action takes place in sunny Dixie with Felix dancing to Uncle Tom’s banjo and fighting the evil Simon Legree. It was released with post-synchronized sound added by the distributor.
Uncle Tom’s Crabbin’ is a 1927 Felix the Cat cartoon and part of the Classic Felix the Cat series. The cartoon starts with Felix walking in the dead of winter, looking downbeat as Old Man Winter goes on the prowl. After some traveling, he arrives in the deep south, where the countryside and weather is much more pleasant.
The purpose of showcasing this video is not to highlight racial stereotypes, but rather to study the history of animation with an open mind, to learn to be more accepting of others, and to highlight the progress we have made as a society in art and American pop culture, though it may seem that progress happens much too slowly.
Felix the Cat is a cartoon character created in 1919 by Otto Messmer and Pat Sullivan during the silent film era. An anthropomorphic black cat with white eyes, a black body, and a giant grin, he was one of the most recognized cartoon characters in film history. Felix was the first animated character to attain a level of popularity sufficient to draw movie audiences.
Oscar-winning filmmaker Guillermo del Toro reinvents the classic story of a wooden puppet brought to life in this stunning stop-motion musical tale.
Sing along to Ciao Papa from Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio. From the mind of Academy Award-winning filmmaker Guillermo del Toro and award-winning stop-motion legend Mark Gustafson, Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio is a story you think you may know, but you don’t. In theaters November and on Netflix December 9.
Ciao Papa Performed by Gregory Mann
Music by Alexandre Desplat
Lyrics by Roeban Katz & Guillermo Del Toro
Pinocchio is a fictional character and the protagonist of the children’s novel The Adventures of Pinocchio by Italian writer Carlo Collodi of Florence, Tuscany. Pinocchio was carved by a woodcarver named Geppetto in a Tuscan village. He is created as a wooden puppet, but he dreams of becoming a real boy. He is known for his long nose, which grows when he lies.
Ghoulish, macabre, demonic, depraved, bizarre, eerie and weird have all been used to describe his work and the characters therein. Adorable, sweet, charming, humorous, enchanting, tender and captivating are also adjectives used to describe the same body of work, as well as the man himself, the extraordinary artist Charles Samuel Addams. His rare gift was the ability to enjoin such dichotomies in wonderfully crafted cartoons and drawings loved by millions worldwide.
Born in Westfield, New Jersey in 1912, Charles Samuel Addams’ prodigal artistic talent lead him to become one of America’s best cartoonists. In 1933, at just 21 years of age, The New Yorker magazine first published his work. Addams went on to become one of that magazine’s marquee contributors until his death in 1988. His body of work spans almost 60 years of output and is estimated to contain several thousand works. Over 15 books of his artwork have so far been published, appearing in many languages across the globe. Addams works appear in a number of prestigious permanent collections including The New York Public Library, The Museum of the City of New York, The Smithsonian Institution, The Cooper Hewitt and The Library of Congress.
Charles Addams is most widely known for the creation of The Addams Family of characters who formed the basis of the TV show that first appeared in 1964. Now famous, Morticia, Fester, Gomez, Wednesday, Pugsley, Grandma, Lurch and Thing existed in various forms and aspects within the Addams cartoons prior to the sitcom. It was in working with the idea of a television production, that Addams coalesced a motley group of unnamed characters into the specific personages he then collectively called The Addams Family. These Family members appear in only about 80 initially published works, while the majority of his works are occupied by hundreds of other characters, from Aviators to Zoo Keepers. Addams themes deal as much with modern life as with ancient times and his topics span art, travel, relationships, the workplace, animals and children, to name a few.
Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson, Hamilton Luske & Jack Kinney (1948)
Melody Time is a 1948 American live-action/animated musical film produced by Walt Disney. The tenth Disney animated feature film, it was released to theatres by RKO Radio Pictures on May 27, 1948. Made up of seven segments set to popular music and folk music, the film is, like Make Mine Music before it, the popular music version of Fantasia. Melody Time, while not meeting the artistic accomplishments of Fantasia, was mildly successful. It is the fifth Disney package film following Saludos Amigos, The Three Caballeros, Make Mine Music, and Fun and Fancy Free.
“In the grand tradition of Disney’s greatest musical classics, such as Fantasia, Melody Time features seven classic stories, each enhanced with high-spirited music and unforgettable characters. A feast for the eyes and ears full of wit and charm. A delightful Disney classic with something for everyone”.
Walt Disney
Melody Time is considered to be the last anthology feature made by the Walt Disney Animation Studios. These package features were little-known short-film compilations that Disney produced and released as feature films during World War II. They were financially and artistically lightweight productions meant to bring in profits to allow the studio to return to fairy tale single-narrative feature form, an endeavour which they successfully completed two years later with Cinderella. While the shorts contrast in length, form, and style, a common thread throughout is that each is accompanied by songs from musicians and vocalists of the ’40s. This sets it apart from the similarly structured Fantasia, whose segments were set to classical music instead. As opposed to Fun and Fancy Free, whose story was bound to the tales of Bongo and Jack and the Beanstalk, in this film Walt Disney has let his animators and his color magicians have free rein.
Rose Pelswick, in a 1948 review for The News-Sentinel, described the film as an ‘adventure into the intriguing make-believe world peopled by Walt Disney’s Cartoon characters”. It also explains that “with the off-screen voice of Buddy Clark doing the introductions, the episodes include fantasy, folklore, South American rhythms, poetry, and slapstick”. A 1948 review by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette described it as a “mixture of fantasy, abstraction, parable, music, color, and movement”.
Once Upon a Wintertime
This segment features Frances Langford singing the title song about two romantic young lovers on a winter day in December, during the late 19th century. The couple are Jenny and Joe (unlike most Disney cartoons, Jenny and Joe lack spoken dialogue). Joe shows off on the ice for Jenny, and near-tragedy and a timely rescue ensues. This is intertwined with a similar rabbit couple.
Bumble Boogie
This segment presents a surrealistic battle for a solitary bumblebee as he tries to ward off a visual and musical frenzy. The music, courtesy of Freddy Martin and His Orchestra (with Jack Fina playing the piano), is a swing-jazz variation of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Flight of the Bumblebee, which was one of the many pieces considered for inclusion in Fantasia.
The Legend of Johnny Appleseed
A retelling of the story of John Chapman, who spent most of his life roaming the Midwestern United States (mainly Ohio and Indiana) in the pioneer days, and planting apple trees, thus earning his famous nickname. He also spread Christianity. Dennis Day narrates (as an “old settler who knew Johnny well”) and provides the voices of both Johnny and his guardian angel.
Little Toot
The story of Little Toot by Hardie Gramatky, in which the title protagonist, a small tugboat in New York City, wanted to be just like his father Big Toot, but could not seem to stay out of trouble. The Andrews Sisters provide vocals.
Trees
A recitation of the 1913 poem Trees by Joyce Kilmer, featuring music by Oscar Rasbach and performed by Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians. The lyrical setting accompanies animation of bucolic scenes seen through the changing of the seasons. To preserve the look of the original story sketches, layout artist Ken O’Connor came up with the idea of using frosted cels and rendering the pastel images right onto the cel. Before being photographed each cel was laminated in clear lacquer to protect the pastel. The result was a look that had never been seen in animation before.
Blame it on the Samba
Donald Duck and José Carioca meet the Aracuan Bird, who introduces them to the pleasures of the samba. The accompanying music is the 1914 polka Apanhei-te, Cavaquinho by Ernesto Nazareth, fitted with English lyrics. The Dinning Sisters provide vocals while organist Ethel Smith appears in a live-action role.
Pecos Bill
The finale follows about Texas’ famous hero Pecos Bill. Raised by coyotes, he became the biggest and best cowboy that ever lived. He out hissed the Rattlesnake. And learned about all of the animals. It also features his horse Widowmaker, who’s been saved by the vultures that try to eat him. He brought the rain from California to save Texas from the drought. But when he woke up from the river, he heard a cow mooing. There was the band of evil rustlers stealing the herd of cattle. But they didn’t know the herd they stole was Bill’s. So he lassoed them and knocked out all of their teeth one by one. The Rustlers were now finally reformed and started to sing, “Yippee-I-Yay!” Then, Bill and Widowmaker traveled through the desert. He got a stick and then he dug the rio grande. And it recounts the ill-fated romance between Bill and a beautiful cowgirl named Slue Foot Sue, with whom he fell in love at first sight until a jealous Widowmaker made Sue to get literally stranded at the Moon at their wedding day. This retelling features Roy Rogers, Bob Nolan, the former’s horse Trigger, and the Sons of the Pioneers telling the story to Bobby Driscoll and Luana Patten in a live-action frame story.
Bad Seeds takes us to a bizarre world populated by carnivorous plants that can change shapes the way a chameleon changes colours. The film deftly connects growth with rivalry and evolution with competition, crafting an increasingly shocking duel that’s peppered with allusions to the Western, the Cold War, board games, and much more.
Written, animated, and directed by Claude Cloutier
Canadian filmmaker Claude Cloutier has crafted another gem with his latest animated short, Bad Seeds. This modern-day fable explores our fatal obsession with progress, as played out in a battle between two carnivorous plants. Deftly connecting growth with rivalry, and evolution with competition, Cloutier has constructed a stunning work that’s peppered with nods to iconic historical figures and a wide variety of pop culture references.
Named as an official selection at over 27 film festivals, Bad Seeds has already garnered the Best of the Fest and the Comedy Short awards at the Los Angeles Animation Festival, the Audience Award at the Sommets du cinéma d’animation in Montreal, Canada, and Best Animated Short at the New York City Short Film Festival, along with awards at other prestigious venues.
Training Pigeons is a 1936 Fleischer Studios animated short film featuring Betty Boop and Pudgy the Pup.
Betty and Pudgy are on the roof of their tenement building, trying to get her pet pigeons back in their cage. One stubborn bird refuses to return to the roost, despite Betty’s pleas. Pudgy, imagining himself a might hunting dog, attempts to catch the bird, with little success (at one point, Pudgy spots the pigeon on top of a flag pole, and as he tries to climb up the pole, the flag spanks Pudgy). When the pigeon gives Pudgy the slip, the little dog eventually wanders into the forest, where he falls asleep from exhaustion. The pigeon takes pity on Pudgy, and flies him back to Betty’s home. When Pudgy wakes up on the roof, he tears up the picture of the hunting dog in frustration.
Animated by Myron Waldman and Edward Nolan
Mae Questel as Betty Boop
“You come on down! I said come on down, you nutsy-doopsy!”
Betty Boop
Unlike other studios, whose characters were anthropomorphic animals, the Fleischers’ most successful characters were humans. The cartoons of the Fleischer Studio were very different from those of Disney, both in concept and in execution. As a result, they were rough rather than refined and consciously artistic rather than commercial, but in their unique way, their artistry was expressed through a culmination of the arts and sciences. This approach focused on surrealism, dark humor, adult psychological elements, and sexuality. Furthermore, the environments were grittier and urban, often set in squalid surroundings, reflecting the Great Depression as well as German Expressionism.
To the Lovers, the Dreamers, and You… Keep believing.
Rainbow Connection is a song from the 1979 film The Muppet Movie performed by Jim Henson as Kermit the Frog. Rainbow Connection reached No. 25 on the Billboard Hot 100 in November 1979, with the song remaining in the Top 40 for seven weeks total. Paul Williams and Kenneth Ascher received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song at the 52nd Academy Awards.
In 2020, “Rainbow Connection” was deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Recording Registry.
Rainbow Connection was written by Paul Williams and Kenneth Ascher to be the first number in The Muppet Movie by Jim Henson. Williams describes it as “that down-home Americana comfort sound”.
“It’s the one that establishes [Kermit as] the lead character. We find Kermit sitting in the middle of the swamp. Kenny Ascher and I sat down to write these songs, and we thought… Kermit is like ‘every frog.’ He’s the Jimmy Stewart of frogs. So how do we show that he’s a thinking frog, and that he has an introspective soul, and all that good stuff? We looked at his environment, and his environment is water and air… and light. And it just seemed like it would be a place where he would see a rainbow. But we also wanted to show that he would be on this spiritual path, examining life, and the meaning of life.”
Paul Williams
“Life’s like a movie. Write your own ending. Keep believing, keep pretending.”
Jack Kinney, Hamilton Luske, William Morgan, & Bill Roberts (1947)
Fun and Fancy Free is a 1947 animated musical fantasy film produced by Walt Disney and released on September 27, 1947 by RKO Radio Pictures. It is the ninth Disney animated feature film and the fourth of the package films that the studio produced in the 1940s to save money during World War II. The Disney package films of the late 1940s helped finance Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, and Peter Pan.
This film is a compilation of two stories: Bongo, narrated by Dinah Shore which is loosely based on the short story Little Bear Bongo by Sinclair Lewis, and Mickey and the Beanstalk, narrated by Edgar Bergen which is based on the Jack and the Beanstalk fairy tale. Though the film is primarily animated, it also uses live-action segments to join its two stories. Mickey and the Beanstalk marked the last time that Walt Disney voiced Mickey Mouse, as he was too busy on other projects to continue voicing the character. Disney replaced himself with sound-effects artist Jimmy MacDonald.
As a live woman performs a striptease, she’s cheered on by an audience of small cartoon men. Some of them pop in the excitement as she brings down the house.
Guido Manuli is one of the most influential Italian animators and film directors. He started a long-standing collaboration with animation legend Bruno Bozzetto in the 60s; together they worked on cult movies like West and Soda, Vip Mio Fratello Superuomo, Allegro Non Troppo and many more. Bruno Bozzetto is an Italian cartoon animator and film director, creator of many short pieces, mainly of a political or satirical nature.
A 60-years career behind, Bruno Bozzetto is esteemed as one of the most eclectic and influential Cartoonists of yesterday and of today. His minimalist style focuses on the content more than the aesthetics to talk about universal themes with an educational approach and through a scratching irony that make his films suitable for a young adult audience.
“Synthesis is the most important goal for an artist. It’s a marvellous and yet difficult goal to achieve.”
The film follows the misadventures of Jack Skellington, Halloweentown’s beloved pumpkin king, who has become bored with the same annual routine of frightening people in the “real world.” When Jack accidentally stumbles on Christmastown, all bright colors and warm spirits, he gets a new lease on life — he plots to bring Christmas under his control by kidnapping Santa Claus and taking over the role. But Jack soon discovers even the best-laid plans of mice and skeleton men can go seriously awry.
Director: Henry Selick Story by: Tim Burton Music: Danny Elfman
Danny Elfman wrote the film score and provided the singing voice of Jack, as well as other minor characters.
The Nightmare Before Christmas originated in a poem written by Tim Burton in 1982 while he was working as an animator at Walt Disney Productions. With the success of Vincent in the same year, Burton began to consider developing The Nightmare Before Christmas as either a short film or 30-minute television special to no avail. Over the years, Burton’s thoughts regularly returned to the project and in 1990, he made a development deal with Walt Disney Studios. Production started in July 1991 in San Francisco.
Bewitched Bunny is a 1954 Warner Bros. Looney Tunes cartoon directed by Chuck Jones and written by Michael Maltese. The short was released on July 24, 1954, and stars Bugs Bunny. Jones created the character Witch Hazel who debuted in this cartoon.
This short was the subject of controversy in Canada, when, in July 1998, a viewer who saw the short on an airing of The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show on Global thought Bugs’ final line (after Witch Hazel is transformed into a beautiful female rabbit, but still laughs like Witch Hazel): “Yeah, I know. But aren’t they all witches inside?” was misogynistic. Charlotte Bell, Global’s Vice-President of Regulatory Affairs at the time, wrote back, denying that there was anything misogynistic about the line. The complainant then filed a formal complaint with the Broadcast Standards Council, incorporating the Global executive who denied the claim into her analysis and cited that “Bewitched Bunny” showed women in an unflattering light and that the Global executive she talked to was lying about the claim. Eleven months and three days after it received the complaint, the Council reached its conclusion: while the ending line can be taken as sexist towards women, the short as a whole does not, in fact, show women in an unflattering light nor does it break any of Canada’s broadcasting rules and regulations. For a while, the Global version of this short aired with the allegedly misogynist “witches” line replaced with “Yeah, I know. But who wants to be alone on Halloween?” (which was taken from the American TV special Bugs Bunny’s Howl-oween Special). When the verdict that the original line wasn’t in breach of any Canadian broadcasting rules, the edited version was swiftly replaced with the original. This controversy was briefly mentioned by Eric Goldberg on the DVD commentary of the fifth volume of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD set.
When a car hits young Victor’s pet dog Sparky, Victor decides to bring him back to life the only way he knows how. But when the bolt-necked “monster” wreaks havoc and terror in the hearts of Victor’s neighbors, he has to convince them that Sparky’s still the good, loyal friend.
Frankenweenie is a 1984 featurette directed by Tim Burton and co-written by Burton with Leonard Ripps. It is both a parody and homage to the 1931 film Frankenstein based on Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein.
Burton was fired by Disney after the film was completed, as the studio claimed that he had been wasting company resources and felt the film was not suitable for the targeted young audiences.
Tim Burton later directed a feature-length stop-motion animated remake of Frankenweenie with production help from Disney, which was released on October 5, 2012.
The 2012 feature-length remake of Burton’s 1984 short film of the same name is also both a parody of and homage to the 1931 film Frankenstein, based on Mary Shelley’s 1818 book Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. In the film, a boy named Victor Frankenstein uses the power of electricity to resurrect his dead Bull Terrier, Sparky, but his peers discover what he has done and reanimate their own deceased pets and other creatures, resulting in mayhem. The tongue-in-cheek film contains numerous references to and parodies of elements of Frankenstein and past film versions of it, other literary classics, various horror and science-fiction films, and other films which Burton has directed or produced.
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