Invitation to the Dance

I know I posted another scene from this movie, but I really wanted to share this clip from YouTube with you guys. It's a scene from a documentary about how the movie involved using a reference model for the animators. The end result is a very beautiful scene from the movies: the colors, the dancing, the music, the flawless mixing of Gene Kelly with this animated princess, everything was just beautiful. Just watch and see!

Cousin Tex

A Pixie-Dixie cartoon and the first one I believe. This series reminds me of watching a Tom & Jerry cartoon. After all, the last cartoon of that series was released the same year this was made. Coincidence? Pixie and Dixie are cute but don't have much to offer. Mr. Jinks on the other hand, wow! Jinks was the real star of these cartoons. He's such a wonderful character and even has a distinctive voice. Creating such a character with limited animation is really hard to do, but Hanna, Barbera, and Daws Butler really pull it off. It's because of Jinks that makes this series my favorite H-B cartoons outside of Yogi Bear and Quick Draw.

Well, even if the story in this one isn't too far off from a T&J cartoon like "Pecos Pest", it's still very enjoyable. I liked Cousin Tex (after all, he is better than Cousin Batty. Ask Yowp about that one.) The branding iron joke was my personal favorite and the ending was pretty unexpected. Carlos Vinci and Mike Lah animate this cartoon. Kudos to H-B for this little gem.

Nowhere Bear

Another classic H-B cartoon. Ed Love's designs and expressions on Ranger Smith are worth watching. H-B must have let each animator have a distinctive style, kind of like the classic Warner Bros cartoons.

El Kabong Meets El Kazing

This is kind of odd for me, considering that I usually discuss theatrical cartoons with full animation, but I'd like to talk about the early Hanna-Barbera cartoons.

I've really began to appreciate this era of animation a lot. Even if the animation is extremely limited, the designs of the characters were still very pleasant to look at and the staging of these cartoons was simple, but easier to understand. Now, I don't know much about these early H-B shorts, but thankfully my blogger friend Yowp does. The link to his blog is somewhere on the side of mine. Visit it! It's worth it!

Anyway, I've really begun to love Quick Draw McGraw in particular. Everything aout this guy is just so damn funny. His actions, motifs, and most importantly, his voice. Daws Butler does a wonderful job portraying Quick Draw and Baba Looey. I know he based a lot of these characters on TV and movie stars of the 50's, like Yogi Bear was Art Carney and Mr. Jinks was a mix of Crazy Guggenheim and Marlon Brando. I'm not sure where Quick Draw's comes from. Maybe it's original?

I really get a kick out of the El Kabong cartoons. Thanks to the writing by Mike Maltese with George Nichol's animation, this has become my personal favorite Q-D cartoon. And, as a bonus, the prototype Snagglepuss in in this one! The Burt Lehr voice is still there, but he's orange and more of a wise-ass villian than a patsy ham and sort of a hero. The part where Snaggle hyphen puss demostrates his "Kazinger" always gets me! Even Baba Looey gets into the act at the end, as El Kapowey. "champion of champions, I theen"!

Orange Snagglepuss from, "The Lyin Lion" (1960)

Long story short, this cartoon just rocks! I'll probably post more posts dedicated to these shorts, so keep a look out by visiting regularly. Again, for more information about the early H-B cartoons, visit Yowp's blog (the link's on the right.)

Invitation to the Dance scene

I stumbled onto this scene while surfing through YouTube one day. I gotta say, it looks good. I have't seen the whole movie yet, but now I want to! It's too bad it isn't on DVD...

Anyway, this scene involves the great Gene Kelly dancing to Sinbad's theme from Scheherazade (Rimsky-Korsakov). What drew me in was how the animator managed to make a legless animal like the snake to dance so elegantly. Since not a lot is known about this little gem, I'm trying to figure out who animated this. I know it's from Hanna-Barbera's department at MGM, but I don't know who animated it. I'm thinking Ken Muse or Ray Patterson. Just to guess...

Anyway, check it out. It's great to kill 2 minutes. :)

Invitation to the Dance: Snake Dance (1956)
by Cartoonzof2006

Pecos Pest

Very hilarious! Jerry's uncle Pecos makes a great one-shot character. I'm not sure who does his voice, though it sounds like Stan Freberg.

I'm not sure why, but these facial expressions just crack me up (especially the middle one!). Maybe it's out of knowing Tom's fear of Uncle Pecos.

Tom and Jerry - Pecos Pest (1955)
Uploaded by Cartoonzof2006

Tee for Two

Another favorite of mine from the Tom and Jerry filmography. I think people who play golf will really like this short. I happen to know some people who golf like Tom, too. Unfortunatly, I'm one of them!

These are some great backgrounds painted by Robert Gentle from Klangley's site. Thanks, buddy! :)

Johann Mouse

This is my favorite Tom and Jerry cartoon! And it's not hard to see why. This Academy Award winner employs good animation from the Hannah-Barbera department at MGM, wonderful voice acting from Hans Conried, and, of course, the music. The music featured in this short is from my favorite classical composer, the great Johann Strauss II of Vienna. The songs featurred are, in order:

-Wiener Blut Walzer (Vienna Blood Waltz), Op. 354
-Der Kaiser Walzer (The Emperor Waltz), Op. 437
-Tritsch-Tratsch (Chit-Chat) Polka, Op. 214
-An Der Schönen, Blauen Donau (On the Beautiful, Blue Danube), Op. 314
-Perpetuum Mobile, "Musikalischer Scherz" (Perpetual Motion, "Musical Joke"), Op. 257
-Wein, Weib Und Gesang (Wine, Women and Song), Op. 333

But enough of my technical mumbo-jumbo. Here's the 'toon.

Tom and Jerry - Johann Mouse (1952)
Uploaded by Cartoonzof2006