Cool News
Junior Mintz: Bob Clampett DVD of BEANY AND CECIL and John Carter of Mars test footage!!!
Hey folks, Harry here. Junior Mintz happened upon a rare and radiant jewel of an animation dvd the other day... the BEANY AND CECIL special edition DVD. The key jewel in addition to the hours of great entertainment from the two leads... is behind the scenes extras including designs and pencil animations for an abandoned JOHN CARTER OF MARS serious series in conjunction with Edgar Rice Burroughs. I have ordered this dvd about 5 minutes before I posted this... For animation geeks, this is a must have. DVDEXPRESS has about 50 copies left... oh wait, that's probably less by now....
Yo, Harry!
Earlier this week I was ranting against the Walt Disney Co. for their
mindless butchery of the video/DVD release of MAKE MINE MUSIC. Ever fearful
of encurring the wrath of outraged parents (and thereby alienating potential
consumers) the Disney trolls have been systematically going through their
animation library and deleating images, scenes, and in the case of "The
Martins & The Coys" entire sequences they have now deemed too politically
insensitive for today's young minds. To digress for a second, I want to
point out Disney seems do be doing a fairly slap-dash job of it, for on the
back of the MELODY TIME DVD package they accidentally still left in a small
image of Pecos Bill with the cigarette dangling from his mouth. Ha, ha,
Mousekadolts! Not so easy to erase history as you thought, eh?
Anyway, now I'm happy to report some good news regarding an animation DVD
release. While heading home from my day job at the Cinerama Dome candy
counter, I bopped into my local DVD dealer and discovered Image
Entertainment's superior BEANY & CECIL - The Special Edition. If you are a
fan of cartoons, puppets, or coolness in any form, you must buy this right
away. Beany & Cecil, for those few of you out there sadly not in the know,
started life as an early TV puppet show in the late 40's. The show was the
brainchild of genius animation director Bob Clampett, creator of such classic
Warner Bros. shorts as PORKY IN WACKYLAND, THE GREAT PIGGY BANK ROBBERY and a
zillion others. Each day loyal viewers (including Albert Einstein) would
tune in to watch Beany-boy and his pal Cecil the Seasick Sea Serpent match
wits with their running enemy, the caped and smirking con-man Dishonest John.
The characters were revived in the early sixtes for a popular cartoon series
and the DVD contains the best of the puppet and animated incarnations.
The puppet segments are works of loopy genius, the writing boasting a very
hip, almost improvised style of banter. The voice work by Daws Butler and
Stan Freberg is flawless - their deadpan delivery shooting the concept of a
boy and his talking sea serpent out of the boundaries of a kiddie show and
into the realm of absurdist theatre. It's no wonder Groucho Marx used to
watch this show every day.
The cartoons are gorgeously styled and designed with limited but expressive
and imaginative backgrounds. The writing, similar in approach to Rocky and
Bullwinkle (but not as good as the B&C puppet segments) generally has enough
appeal for kids and adults, though the non-stop puns grow wearisome after a
while. Even so, there are a few real gems here, including THE WILDMAN OF
WILDSVILLE, featuring early 60's comic Lord Buckley as beatnik Go Man Van
Gogh, Clampett's systematic deconstruction of all things Disney in BEANYLAND,
and Clampett's second-great parody of Snow White, SO WHAT AND THE SEVEN
WHATNOTS, which places the classic story in the Rat Packish environs of 1962
Lost Wages.
The disc contains much, much bonus material, including footage from a WILLY
THE WOLF SHOW pilot, sort of an "American Bandstand" hosted by puppet William
Shakespeare Wolf and Don Ameche (!) and development artwork and test footage
from TWIG, a propsed 1957 series that placed a live boy on an island of
puppets a full tweleve years before the Krofft Bros. would hatch Pufnstuff.
Of special interest to animation geeks will be the abandoned test footage
from Clampett's proposed but aborted JOHN CARTER OF MARS series. Created
back in 1936, the surviving pencil and color tests show hints of a series
that could have easily outshone the Fleischer SUPERMAN cartoons in terms of
its artistic vision and quality of animation. It's even more remarkable to
think that Superman himself had not yet appeared in print and the Man of
Steel's animation debut was more than five years in the future!
That's just the beginning. Bob Clampett was widely known for keeping extensive archives so everything from his earliest animation drawings to Cecil gag
sketches by Ren & Stimpy creator John Krcifalusi (reportedly a Clampett
protogee') is included herein. The good stuff on this DVD goes on and on,
seemingly without end, not unlike Cecil himself. Kudos to Robert Clampett
Jr, Greg Carson, Milton Gray and everyone else involved with this looney
labor of love. I give it three big serpent-slurps.
Junior out.
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It must be friday the first!! Ha ha! Give yourself a point if you got that one. And now that I've annoyed everyone with this stupid post, I'll go away.
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I've been first 2 times today without having read the actual scoop. I feel guilty, so I'll comment a bit on this: It's good to know the Disney suits are having trouble with their butchering. The cartoon you speak of looks older than the hills, but if you say it's good, I believe it. You learn something new every day. I was going to say something about Superman, but tragically I just noticed I've forgotten much of my Supes history. There, I hope that will be enough to regain my peace of mind for having been first! Augh!
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Flame on y'all...
But now I get the gag from that Pinky and the Brain segment where they pose as a kids shows puppets... replacing "Meany & Treacle" with Alberta Einstein being a fan...
It all makes sense now!
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There's an oxymoron if I ever heard one. Since when do we require the media in this country to display ethics? (The answer is never, in case you're thinking otherwise.) For god's sake, look at the bias in political reporting that we put up with every day! But let someone do something questionable regarding Star Wars reporting and WATCH OUT! it's the rampage!
Since we've digressed onto this stupid topic, let me say this, I read Harry's infamous post, I was a journalism major in college, and HE DID NOTHING UNETHICAL OR WRONG. Obviously the folks at CA disagree, as is their right, but don't be fooled by their huffing and puffing, gentle reader.
And besides, Harry never billed himself as a no-nonsense journalist. This is basically a gossip web site. Start making gossipy web sites confirm everything they pass on, and you can all close up shop. For example, look at this article. (Amazing, we're actually commenting about the ARTICLE in this talkback!) It's full of personal opinion, emotional reactions to the DVD in question, and couldn't be said to be hard journalism. Which is exactly the way we want it, or we wouldn't be clicking around on this website in the first place.
So please, Patrick and everyone at Coming Attractions, or Coming Soon, or Oh My God I'm Coming, or whatever, enough already. The stuff you're whining about is like complaining when a politician lies.
Shaxpeare -
As a kid, Beany and Cecil were right up there with the Bugs Bunny, et al, and actually much funnier. To this day, I still use the term "Lost Wages" to refer to Los Vegas. Now, if only we could get a Jay Ward collection, especially Fractured Flickers (even better and more adult oriented than Rocky and Bullwinkle, etc. - it was only shown post-primetime). Now, everyone sing along ... "R, R-A, R-A-G, R-A-G-G (gigi?) ....
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It's too bad that John Carter of Mars, and the Pellucidar novels havn't been given their due in cinama. With the effects they could do today, they would both be a blast!We fans know that a Wookie is fine as a sidekick, but not even in the same league as Tars Tarkus, and that Jabba the Hutt stole his sand barge from the Princess of Helium (okay, She's a bit of an Air...er.. Gashead; but Carrie Fisher looked sharp in her "Borrowed" clothes.)Really though, both of these projects would be a lot of fun to see, if they were done right- seriously, the way the Salkind's did Three Musketeers and Superman. And can't you just imagine what a midair fight between dirigible and it's biplanes, and a formation of intellegent flightless Pterosaurs riding on the backs of 50 foot span Pteranodons would be like? LIVE for that, baby!
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I "happened upon" this DVD almost five months ago! It is truly great for all the reasons you've mentioned, JM, but don't act like it's some brand-new release you're "scooping" us on. Any animation buff worth his salt pre-ordered this puppy back in January and has absorbed its god-like contents several times between then and now. ^_^ Don't get me wrong; nice write-up, though.
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I saw the headline and thought someone had finnally pulled their collective head outta their ass and were set to do ERB's Martian books right.. Damn, guess I'll just have to wait for Doc Savgae ( he said, not holding his breath)
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yes! I can't wait, my dad used to rent these cartoons when I was a kid and make us watch them because he watched them as a kid, and they were probably my favorite cartoons at the time. Bob Clampett was a genius. (nothing important to say in that post)
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