May 1, 2005
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Bakshi Tribute @ The Egyptian
The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse – “Night of the Bat Bat”. Freakin’ hilarious! You can see John K. all through this. The pacing, the humor, the exaggerated poses… Awesome. This actually may be the perfect cartoon.
Wizards BG via the Ralph Bakshi blogWizards. While it was interesting to see Bakshi do a very art-school-collagey movie with different styles and media, the very Lord of the Rings-inspired story was slow and tedious. It also lacked the great ‘physical’ drawing style of ‘Heavy Traffic’ and ‘Fritz The Cat’.
Coonskin
Is Coonskin awesome or what?!? We had already seen this blaxploitation cartoon several times on video, and here it was on the big screen – can we say how much we LOVE the character designs, the character animation, the soundtrack, the mindblowingly trippy violent sequences… everything! And to think that there were NO PENCIL TESTS, no retakes. The Scatman Crother’s song at the beginning of the movie – “I’m a Nigger Man” – was also written by Bakshi. Our respect and admiration for this animation legend is reaffirmed.Favorite bits:
- Black Jesus!!!
- Cop’s death – hallucination sequence.
- His portrayal of the Mafia and The Godfather is trully weird.
Link: Interview with Bakshi about Coonskin
Eddie: Seeing this film (which IMHO is the greatest animated film ever) and hear Bakshi speak reminded me why I got into animation. His approach, attitude, and the way in which he said FU to the way animated features were made, made him my hero. Not only that, but the films he made were different from anything else out there. Can you imagine the big hole in animation if Bakshi hadn’t done what he did? He’s still my hero.
Thanks to Jon M. Gibson for organizing the program at the Egyptian.
Tonight is Lord of The Rings and American Pop. After enduring Wizards, we might skip LOTR.
MORE BAKSHI…
Whatever happened to Spicy City? We saw a few of these ‘cyber-noir’ shorts years ago (on DVD; no HBO in Australia) and we remembered that a few of the stories were quite interesting, conceptually. And most of the character/BG stylizations were reminiscent of European comic books…
images taken from Gary’s ‘Spicy City’ page -
Comments (3)
It was so amazing to see Coonskin on the big screen. Yes, my housemate and I drove down from SF on impulse. It was such an unsettling thing to be in LA again and see Ralph and a few Spümcø types.And then seeing that gorgeous animation. All those old hands from MGM finally given a chance to do whatever the hell they wanted. All those scenes that come out of nowhere and slap you on the head with raw energy. I’d seen it before, but it was a muzzy VHS copy, and this was a beautiful copy, with far less stuff cut out. It was brutal and wonderful. Yeah. Coonskin is one of the best animated flicks ever, with all its warts.(And… a lot of people were laughing at Wizards somewhat derisively, but I let it wash over me. The climactic battle… really hit me hard. Maybe because I was already in a weird state from my trip.)
All those old hands from MGM finally given a chance to do whatever the hell they wanted. All those scenes that come out of nowhere and slap you on the head with raw energy. I’d seen it before, but it was a muzzy VHS copy, and this was a beautiful copy, with far less stuff cut out. It was brutal and wonderful.SEO Packages
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