Hey guys! It seems like Twitter has gotten pretty depressing lately, so I’d like to liven things up with some LOONEY TUNES. Starting today, I’m going to be posting my thoughts on all 1000 of the original Warner Bros. cartoons, with a gif from each short to go along with it.
As an animator, the @WBLooneyTunes cartoons are my biggest inspirations, so I thought it would be fun to take a look at all the great films that brought us Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Wile E. Coyote, etc.
These are just my opinions on the cartoons, by the way, so if you disagree or have a different reaction, I’d love to hear from you (assuming anyone is reading this).
Also, as a note, these films are from the ‘30s, ‘40s and ‘50s, so some of them have racial gags that would be considered offensive today. I’m going to try and look at the cartoons while keeping in mind the historical context.
It seems that a lot of people on here believe THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939) was the first movie ever made in Technicolor, but there were many color films before it. The first film ever released in full-color three-strip Technicolor is the Disney cartoon FLOWERS AND TREES (1932).
Ted Eshbaugh's Technicolor cartoon version of THE WIZARD OF OZ was actually made even earlier, but FLOWERS AND TREES was the first released to theaters.
Prior to FLOWERS AND TREES, many films were produced in Technicolor's two-color process, which allowed for a limited palette of reds and greens. Those two-color movies have a really unique look that I really like. Here's an example from 1930's KING OF JAZZ.
THREAD: In 1937, the Nazis exhibited art they deemed “Degenerate” in order to mock it. I was looking through a list of these amazing artists the Nazis hated, and I was ashamed at how many of them I didn’t know, so let’s look at their work together! Here’s Alexej von Jawlensky.
All of these artists were targeted by the Nazis because they were "modernist." In other words, they were pushing boundaries and making experimental work that went beyond straight realism. These boldly colorful works by Arnold Topp are a good example.
César Klein's work is so cool. He was a German Expressionist painter, and designer of silent movies like GENUINE (1920).
I couldn't pick my favorite films from 2023, so instead, here are my favorites from 100 years ago!
Best movie of 1923: SAFETY LAST. Harold Lloyd's masterpiece is just as funny and thrilling as it was a century ago.
Best Animated Short of 1923: BEDTIME. These Ko-Ko the Clown cartoons from the Fleischer studio blow my mind whenever I watch them. So much creativity popping out all over the place. This print comes from @cartoonsonfilm.
Best Stop-Motion Short of 1923: VOICE OF THE NIGHTINGALE by Ladislas Starevich. The early use of color gives the short a dreamlike atmosphere. Incredible stuff.
THREAD: Anybody have a favorite bit of water animation?
The best for me might be Disney’s PINOCCHIO from back in 1940. Amazing mix of stunning realism and painterly abstraction. You could only get a look like this in animation.
Aleksandr Petrov’s paint-on-glass water in THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA is absolutely gorgeous.
Studio Ghibli is always good at water. I love those fish waves in PONYO.
THREAD: One of my favorite movie periods is the Pre-Code Era (1929-1934), the racy period before the Hays Code kept movies of the ‘30s, ‘40s and ‘50s under strict moral guidelines. Here are some of my favorite Pre-Code lines, like this one from 1933's MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM.
One of the harshest of all movie insults, delivered by Joan Blondell in the great 1933 musical FOOTLIGHT PARADE.
Another ace line reading from Joan Blondell, also from FOOTLIGHT PARADE.