Brian Olsen's Blog, page 7

Ten Thoughts on Melody Time

Melody Time (1948) is (sigh) yet another package film from the Disney studios. After The Reluctant Dragon, Saludos Amigos, The Three Caballeros, Make Mine Music, and Fun and Fancy Free, I’m kind of running out of enthusiasm for the format. Disney’s still feeling the financial hit of the war, so he’s still throwing a bunch of shorts together on the cheap and calling them features. Better things are coming once we hit the fifties, but for now, let’s put our heads down and see what he’s served us this time, shall we?

We’re off to a promising start. Lots of stars in the opening credits, although I confess the Andrews Sisters, Roy Rogers and Trigger are the only names I immediately recognize. And the sequence for the title song is well done – “Melody Time” is sung by some stylized masks, created by a paint brush. That whole “brush creates the characters” thing has been done before, but it’s cute here and I like the design of the masks. It’s making me hopeful that maybe this wasn’t slapped together as haphazardly as Fun and Fancy Free seemed to be.
“Once Upon a Wintertime” is our first story. Two young lovers are enjoying a sleigh ride pulled by two enormous horses – they’re like the horse from “What’s Opera, Doc?” with longer necks. There’s not much of a story, at first – they stop and go ice skating and make lots of hearts in the snow so we know they’re in love. But then he does something dopey and she gets mad and storms off and because women – am I right, fellas? – she doesn’t see the “Thin Ice” sign. The ice shatters and he tries to save her but he fails miserably and knocks himself unconscious. Her chunk of ice drifts through some rapids towards a deadly drop over a waterfall – wait, where the hell were they ice skating? Whoever made that “Thin Ice” sign was really underselling the danger. Anyway, the animals, led by the poster children for Horse Growth Hormone, rescue her, and she’s back in love with her man even though he did nothing but make the situation worse. Then a close-up on their loving faces fades to a photo of the two of them in a living room. It’s meant to suggest that they lived happily ever after, except I swear that it’s a different woman in the photo. I guess at some point she wised up. Or drowned.
“Bumble Boogie” gives us a jazzy rendition of “Flight of the Bumblebee” while the titular bug tries to escape a Dali-esque hellscape of plant/musical instrument hybrids trying to kill him. It’s an acid trip worthy of Fantasia and I love it.
“The Legend of Johnny Appleseed” is next. The whole thing is a little too Jesus-loves-me-this-I-know for my tastes, but given John Chapman’s real life religiosity that’s probably appropriate. John’s a scrawny little fella who wants to head west with the pioneers (because there’s “plenty of room” – nobody out there already, nope, just unclaimed, uninhabited land as far as the eye can MANIFEST DESTINY), but he doesn’t think he has the suitable skill set to survive out there. His guardian angel appears in a vision, because Johnny is out of his god-damned mind, and convinces him to head west with just a pot on his head, a bag of apple seeds and a Bible. Pretty sure the angel was muttering, “Kill them, Johnny, kill them all and take their eyes,” but my copy didn’t have great sound so he might have been saying something else. Long story short, Johnny spends the rest of his life planting apple orchards all over the country and becomes beloved by the good-hearted pioneer folk for providing them with God’s chosen fruit. After forty years of walking and planting, looking like someone you’d change subway cars to get away from, he dies underneath an apple tree (cyanide poisoning from eating too many apple seeds if I had to guess), and his angel comes to take him to Heaven. They need him, you see, because the afterlife doesn’t have any apple trees. And in a twist worthy of a Christmastime stop-motion “secret origin of Santa” special, it’s revealed that clouds are actually Heaven’s apple orchards, planted by the ghost of Johnny Appleseed. Betcha they didn’t teach you that in your Godless public school, did they, sonny? I hate apples but luckily I’m unlikely to ever get to Heaven.
I did some research on John Chapman after watching this movie (damn you, Disney, for prompting me to learn), and apparently the apple trees were beloved by the pioneers mostly for real estate reasons – orchards were required to maintain their claim on otherwise unclaimed land. Johnny had religious objections to grafting, so the wild apples that grew from his trees were pretty much inedible and only used for making hard cider. Thanks for getting our ancestors drunk, Johnny! Your legacy lives on today!
Next up is…oh, dear…”Little Toot.” (Must…resist…fart jokes…) Little Toot is a tugboat and he’s adorable as hell, and the toe-tapping song is sung by the Andrews Sisters, so I pretty much love this from frame one. Toot doesn’t take his job seriously – he just wants to play! – and he accidentally sends an ocean liner crashing into the city, toppling buildings and (presumably) killing thousands. Oh, Toot! You scamp! (Toot doesn’t talk so you could say he’s silent but deadly.) He gets banished to the deep ocean where he saves another ship and all is forgiven and Toot’s a hero. Hooray! Three toots for Little Toot! Toot! Toot! Too – oh, excuse me. I had cucumbers with lunch.
Joyce Kilmer’s poem “Trees” is set to music for the next segment, in which we watch a tree experience the changing seasons. Snore. I fell asleep just typing that. Nothing that wasn’t done better in Fantasia, or even Bambi. On the line, “Only God can make a tree,” the camera pulls back and the tree is in the shape of a cross with a glowing nimbus of light around it. Even the Veggie Tales cast would look at this and say, “A little heavy-handed with the religious stuff, don’t you think?”
“Blame It on the Samba” has…can it be? José Carioca! Donald Duck! Is that Panchito Pistoles? Could it be the Three Caballeros reunited? Oh, no, it’s not Panchito, it’s that irritating Woody Woodpecker rip-off, the nameless Aracuan bird. Oh, well. This segment is still pretty great, despite being a Caballero down. The music is fun and the birds never speak so I don’t have to worry about their complete incomprehensibility. I get worried when a live-action woman shows up, as the unnatural carnal lusts of cartoon fowl are well-documented, but the birds seem to be too caught up in the music to bother her. Also, unlike in other movies, they’re scaled to actual bird size compared to her, which I find weird for some reason. Like most cartoons with José and Donald together, the animators say goodbye to sanity about halfway through and things get really fun. This is definitely a highlight of the film.
Our next, and final, segment opens with tumbleweeds rolling across the desert at dusk while a lonesome voice croons, “Bluuuuuueeee shadooooows…on the traaaaaiiilllll…” Consider the mood well and truly set. It’s the story of “Pecos Bill,” told by live-action Roy Rogers to those two annoying kids from Song of the South, Bobby Driscoll and Luana Patten. (Luana was also the little girl in Fun and Fancy Free, so I guess she was not murdered by the living ventriloquist’s dummies as I hoped feared.) Trigger’s there too, but unfortunately he doesn’t do too much. (I say unfortunately because he’s a better actor than either of the kids.) So, yeah, Pecos Bill, lost in the desert by his parents as they headed west, found and raised by coyotes. (We actually see baby Bill headed to the coyote’s teat to nurse, but just as he’s about to get his lips around her we cut to mama’s face as her expression turns from surprise to pleasure. It’s…unsettling.) Bill basically gets super-powers from living with animals, and Roy sings a bunch of tall tales about Bill’s adventures, which are a lot of fun (apart from the one about the “painted Indians” – I won’t go into it, but…ugh). Then he meets Slue-Foot Sue and falls instantly in love. When we first see Sue she’s riding a giant catfish down a river, while the catfish jumps through the hoops she’s making with her lasso. I kind of fall in love with her, too. Sue meets an unfortunate end – on their wedding day, she gets bucked from Bill’s jealous horse and lands on the moon, stranded there forever, never to be seen again. And that’s why coyotes howl at the moon, Roy tells us in another Rankin-Bass kind of moment. The ending is meant to be silly but it disturbed me a little. Poor Sue, another strong female character fridged to provide motivation for the male protagonist.
And that just about exhausts my thoughts on the subject. Melody Time had more hits than misses, which is about the best you can hope for in these package films. It’s hard to judge them as features, since they’re really collections of cartoon shorts with only the flimsiest of connecting themes. This one’s worth having on in the background while you do housework, I guess. But Disney can do better.

Ten Thoughts on Fun and Fancy Free

I’m watching every Disney movie from the beginning for this series. Sometimes it’s Pinocchio, and it’s so beautiful and amazing that it’s a struggle to contain myself to just ten thoughts. Sometimes it’s Song of the South, and ten thoughts don’t seem nearly enough to elucidate the depths of my revulsion.

And sometimes it’s Fun and Fancy Free.

Fun and Fancy Free (1947) was another of Disney’s package films, made up of two shorts that were originally intended to be features on their own, but, due to financial concerns from the hit the studio took during the war, plus concerns about the artistic merits of the pieces, they were scaled back and bundled together as one movie so that they could hopefully make a little money to fund later, better pictures. The results are unsurprising.

The credits are promising. Edgar Bergen! Dinah Shore! And Mickey, Donald, and Jiminy Cricket are slipped into the credits along with the actors. That’s cute.
We open with Jiminy singing a fun song (which I later find out was cut from Pinocchio, because the key word for this film is “leftovers”) while roaming around somebody’s house. He comes across a fish in a bowl and I wonder for second if it’s Cleo, but it’s not quite sexy enough. More cute than sexy. (I feel so dirty right now. In case you haven’t read the rest of this series, there’s a disturbing recurrence of sexy fish in Disney movies. It’s not me, it’s them.) And there’s a cat that tries to eat Jiminy, so it’s definitely not that wimp Figaro. By this point it’s clear that JC is in a modern house – given that Pinocchio was set in ye olde timmes, I’m questioning how long crickets live. He comes across a sexy French cancan doll and it cries out, “Mama,” as if it were a baby doll. Creepy. Who lives here?
The first animated short is “Bongo.” It’s about a circus bear who escapes to live out his dream of living in the wilderness. I think it worked out better for Disney that he could burn this off here, rather than developing it into a film of its own. The animation is fine, but nothing special – it’s short feature quality, not full-length. The plot is uninspired. It’s not bad, it’s just kind of dull. There are a lot of long stretches where Dinah Shore sings a perfectly lovely, perfectly sleepy song and nothing much is happening on-screen.
But there’s a circus train! Is it Casey? IS IT CASEY?!?! It’s not Casey. Just some dumb old non-anthropomorphic train. Darn it.
Bongo can ride a unicycle across a high wire while juggling twenty objects but in the forest he trips over a root and can’t climb a tree.
Finally Bongo meets a pretty girl bear and the plot picks up a little. He’s wearing clothes and she’s naked, which is a little disconcerting. The big romantic complication comes when she slaps him and he thinks she’s rejecting her, but actually, as Dinah Shore tells us via the magical medium of song, “a bear likes to say it with a slap.” It, in this case, being a declaration of love. It’s all very “He Hit Me (And It Felt Like a Kiss)”. At first I’m worried about the problematic message this is sending kids about partner abuse, but the she-bear is into it, and I ultimately decide it’s a nice message about initiating your partner into the joys of consensual S&M play. Very forward thinking of you, Walt. Very sex positive.
Back to the framing sequence, and Jiminy Cricket finds an invitation to child actor Luana Patten (she played the annoying little girl in Song of the South) to come to a party next door. He hops over to gate-crash and stumbles upon a complete and utter horror show. It’s a live action sequence with little Luana being thrown a party by adult comedian/ventriloquist Edger Bergen. THERE IS NO ONE ELSE AT THIS PARTY. A grown man is throwing a party for a little girl he is not related to and there are no other guests. The whole living room is decorated and he’s putting on a show just for her. He offers her cake and candy and I keep checking my phone for an Amber Alert. Oh, I guess technically there are other people at the party, Bergen’s dummies Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd. WHO MOVE AND TALK ON THEIR OWN. What the flaming hell? Were children of the forties completely inured to nightmarish homunculi? Because I’m convinced I’m going to wake up tonight to see Mortimer Snerd standing over my bed with a cake knife.
The cartoon for this sequence is “Mickey and the Beanstalk,” which is reasonably well-known from being snipped out of this movie and shown on its own from time to time (with Bergen’s narration mercifully replaced by that of Ludwig von Drake). It’s pretty good – it works as a short a lot better than “Bongo,” although I’m not sure it would have held up as a feature. I can tell it’s unfinished, even though I didn’t learn its history until after I watched – it’s very jumpy, with Bergen’s narration covering big gaps in the narrative.
I will grudgingly admit that the wisecracks from McCarthy and Snerd, interlaced throughout the short, are pretty funny. They comment on it like a 40s version of Mystery Science Theater 3000. They’re funnier when I can’t see them because their jokes aren’t drowned out by my screaming.
And, uh…that’s pretty much that. One mediocre short, one decent short, one terrifying framing sequence, all wrapped up in just over an hour. That was…a movie. I guess? Maybe we’ll do better next time…

Alan Lennox and the Temp Job of Doom – Free!

Alan Lennox and the Temp Job of Doom, the first book in the series The Future Next Door, is now FREE! I made it free a few days back and it’s been bouncing around on several of Amazon’s top free ebooks list – staying in the top ten for Technothrillers pretty consistently. If you haven’t tried it yet, you’ve got no excuse now!

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Alan Lennox has been assigned yet another soul-crushing temp job, keeping him from his first loves – drinking, playing video games, and looking for a boyfriend. But Alan’s new job proves to be anything but boring when his co-workers start turning up dead. The mysterious megacorporation Amalgamated Synergy has taken a deadly interest in Alan and his three roommates, and the hapless quartet are woefully unequipped to deal with the psychotic secretaries, murderous middle managers, and villainous vice-presidents hunting them down. Their investigation leads them deep into Amalgamated Synergy’s headquarters, but can Alan and his friends stay alive long enough to discover who – or what – waits for them on the top floor?

Ten Thoughts on Song of the South

Oh, boy. Take a deep breath. Hold your nose, maybe. Here we go. Song of the South (1946) was Disney’s first dramatic live-action film, though it does (thankfully) contain some animated segments. It’s based on the “Uncle Remus” stories of Southern African-American folklore collected by Joel Chandler Harris. And I feel like there’s something else notable about it I’m forgetting…oh, right. It’s kinda racist. I had never seen the film before, and odds are neither have you. Its last release in theaters was in 1986, and it’s never been released for the home market in North America, only overseas (and even then the last release was in the UK in 1991). So, it’s kind of hard to come by. Lucky for you, I’m nothing if not resourceful. So let’s dive in, shall we? (After the cut – this is a long one…)

The film starts with adorable little Johnny, his parents John and Sally, and their…servant? nanny? mammy?…Aunt Tempy. Oh, hey, look, that’s Hattie McDaniel! They’re on their way from their home in Atlanta to Sally’s mother’s cotton plantation in rural Georgia. John works for a newspaper, and he’s been writing…something…that has people upset, and he has to go back to Atlanta to continue his vaguely defined good work. He’s leaving his wife and son at the plantation where they’ll be safe, and little Johnny is very unhappy about his father leaving. That is, as we say in the business, the “inciting incident” for the movie – Johnny’s absent daddy.
As soon as they arrive at Gramma’s plantation, Johnny is given Toby, a little black servant of his very own. Toby’s so excited to have a white boy to serve! I’m sure they’ll be the best of friends, just as they would have been in real life. It’s sort of hard to tell when this movie is set. Toby looks to be about eight years old (same as Johnny), and he’s clearly one of the servants. The film goes out of its way to avoid using the word “slave,” but while watching it I assumed that’s what was going on. Reading up on it afterwards, I discovered that the filmmakers’ intention was to set it during Restoration, after the Civil War. But hey, the power dynamic between the rich white folks and the poor black folks is pretty horrific either way. (I had guessed that John was an abolitionist and that was the reason his work at the newspaper was so dangerous, but now I don’t know what the hell he’s supposed to be doing. Theater reviews? The Lonely Hearts column? We never find out.)
Johnny decides to run away, and on his way out he meets Uncle Remus. He’s heard about Remus from his parents, who got all nostalgic for the great stories Remus told them when they were children. Johnny passes a group of black adults singing Remus’ praises (literally – it’s a remarkably well composed and harmonized song) while the man himself is elsewhere, at a small campfire, telling his stories to a group of black children. White Johnny eavesdrops and Remus is suddenly ALL ABOUT THIS WHITE KID. Fuck the poor black children forced to work as servants, the rich white kid misses his rich white daddy! I hate pretty much everyone in this movie, but I particularly hate Johnny. He is white privilege incarnate and the narrative of the movie rewards him for it. He cries about something in every goddamn scene and his tears are sweet nectar to me.
Remus offers to run away with Jimmy (that’ll go over well with Gramma Plantation Owner, I’m sure), but first – a story! Finally, animation! We start off with Uncle Remus singing “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah,” which I don’t need to tell you is pretty great. He meets up with Br’er Rabbit (whose shirt I love – pink, with a big pointy collar – I’d wear it), who, coincidentally, is also running away from home. We also meet Br’er Fox and Br’er Bear, and I’m not yet sure which of these cartoon animals are good and which are bad, but my sympathies are immediately with Br’er Bear. I like ‘em big and stupid.
Yadda yadda yadda, lesson learned and Remus takes Johnny home. Everybody goes to bed and Remus and Gramma have a friendly chat about how Johnny is missing his Pa. It almost seems like they’re conversing as equals until Remus suggests that Gramma write a letter to Pa and she cuts him off with, “If I want your advice I’ll ask for it.” When does Django get here? Nice night for a fire.
In the morning Toby comes to Johnny’s room to pour him a basin of water for washing and he’s a goddamn child and he’s working but Johnny throws a pillow and they laugh and it’s okay because their friends! Momma Sally comes in and walks right by Toby and doesn’t acknowledge his presence in any way. Doesn’t say hello. Doesn’t even look at him. Johnny is forced to wear a frilly lace collar by his mom because he deserves bad things, I mean because his paternal grandmother is coming for a visit. He ducks out and meets some new kids – hey, look, poor white kids! Not fitting into the noble rich white boy/kind-hearted black servant boy dynamic they are, of course, evil. Except for the pretty little girl, whose dress is dirty so we know she’s poor but whose hair is perfect so we know she’s a main character – her name is Jenny. When Jenny’s evil brothers start chanting, “Look at the little girlie, wearing a lace collar,” I find myself joining in because I hate Johnny so, so much. The incidental  music agrees with me as it picks up the tune. Johnny slowly walks away alone, all dejected like Charlie Brown in the rain, and the music taunts him and it’s wonderful. (Toby bolted at the first sign of trouble, as he always does, because of course they’re going to make “being afraid” a primary characteristic of one of the three black leads.)
There’s a whole thing with Jenny’s dog I’m skipping. Another cartoon brings a welcome break from the racism. “How Do You Do?” is a great song and it makes me with I were riding Splash Mountain. The mix of animation and live-action is beautiful – a quick sequence of Remus lighting Br’er Frog’s pipe is brilliant. But oh, god, tar baby. (All right, I know, “tar baby” is one of those terms that’s racist only because people thought it sounded racist, and it wasn’t really offensive at the time of this movie. Fine, one point in Song of the South‘s favor, a million against.) Br’er Rabbit is stupid as hell to fall for this trap – he is obviously talking to a hot ball of tar wearing a hat – and he deserves to be eaten. I’m not any fonder of Br’er Fox so I’m hoping Br’er Bear eats them both. Oh, and the lesson of the tar baby story, according to Uncle Remus? “It just goes to show you what comes of mixing up with something you got no business with in the first place.” Holy. Crap.
Gramma says Johnny needs friends his own age and Sally agrees and suggests a birthday party and neither mentions Toby, who spends every damn waking moment with Johnny. And when Johnny’s told of the party, he also doesn’t mention Toby, only asking if Jenny can be there. So were the filmmakers aware of this and they didn’t want to come out and say “he needs white friends,” or were they unaware of how astonishingly racist they were being by treating the unlikely friendship of the rich white boy and his poor black servant that they themselves had set up as if it didn’t count as a real friendship? I say a little of both.
Johnny gets trampled by a bull. Hooray! Or something by a bull – there isn’t a mark on him, but he falls into a coma anyway. Die, Johnny, die! The servants are all standing vigil outside the Big House like he’s Princess Diana. Toby is crying. He is not your real friend, Toby! If you were his real friend they’d let you inside! They send for Uncle Remus, who tells Johnny a story which brings him back to life, because elderly Southern black people have magic powers. But Daddy’s decided to stay so Uncle Remus isn’t needed as a father surrogate anymore and he heads back to his shitty little cabin with a smile, just so, so, happy to have been of service to the white people and man, fuck this movie. The film ends with Johnny and his friends singing and playing with all the cartoon animals, and while it’s supposed to be a happy magical ending I prefer to pretend that it’s Johnny in the moment of his death having some kind of Jacob’s Ladder-style hallucination.
Yipes. This was actually worse than I thought it would be. I mean, it wasn’t Birth of a Nation, I do believe that the fimmakers believed that in showing a friendly relationship between a black man and a white boy that they were making a positive film. But they weren’t. The race relations depicted in this movie are ignorant and idealized, and that’s not just by today’s standards. From what I’ve read about the making of this film and how it was received, it was racist by 1946 standards. And that’s pretty damn racist. Seriously, I could write a whole essay just on Toby. He’s a great example of the double-think of racists who don’t know they’re racists. Their friendship serves two purposes: to give Johnny someone to talk to in scenes where he’d otherwise be alone, and to demonstrate how children don’t judge each other based on superficial differences (hah!). Except, in every other way the narrative of the film reinforces again and again that Johnny has no friends. The contradiction is never acknowledged. Even Johnny’s friendship with Remus, which is the central relationship of the movie, is meant to serve only as a temporary substitute for Johnny’s need for his absent father, and as soon as Pa gets back, Remus is out. The message of the film is exactly the opposite of what Disney said he intended. In Song of the South, friendships between white and black people don’t count.

Short story featured

My short story, This Is What He Should Have Said, is featured today at Short Story Symposium, a blog devoted to introducing readers to new short fiction. Check out the link for a brief excerpt from the story!

Site changes

Hiya! I’m making a few changes to the site, so things might look a bit odd until it’s all sorted out. The biggest change is I’m bringing my blog back, and putting it front and center here on the home page. For the time being, everything here will continue to show up on my Tumblr blog, Peace of Cake. I’m pretty active over there, so if you’re a Tumblr user, please follow me – in addition to writing about writing, I post funny stuff from comics, Doctor Who, and other geeky endeavors.

Over here, I’ll keep it strictly related to the world of writing. That doesn’t mean it’ll just be a place for to hawk my wares, but I’ll be keeping the out-of-context panels of Batman saying something gay to a minimum.

The first thing I’ll be doing is importing any relevant posts from Tumblr over here, including my series Ten Thoughts on Disney, in which I watch every Disney feature film from the beginning and offer up some quick comments. I’ll be attempting to post-date these, so – if I do this correctly – they won’t show up as “new” posts. Be sure to check the archives if you’d like to read them!

I’ve added a sidebar with links to my mailing list and my books – it’ll only show up here, the rest of the site continues as is. If you’ve got any suggestions on how to further spruce up the place, please let me know in the newly-reactivated comments!

 

New York Comic Con 2014 – Day Three!

Last day at the con, for me. Panels and cosplayers beyond the cut…

I got there bright and early – well, eleven-ish, which for me is practically dawn – and was reminded of just how packed this con gets on Saturday. So many people! And I’m a New Yorker, I’m used to crowds!

I spotted these two right of the bat, posing for pictures – the Hound and Arya from Game of Thrones. With chicken.

I had time before my first panel, so I braved the show floor once again. It was slow going – lots of bodies, minimal walking room.

Right inside the entrance was a big pavilion set up to promote the third Hobbit movie. I didn’t poke around, it was too crowded, but the giant Smaug head was cool. (It opened its eyes from time to time.)

A quintet of archers! I could be wrong on which versions of their characters they’re doing, but I believe that’s shipwrecked comics Green Arrow, movie universe Clint Barton Hawkeye, comics Clint Barton Hawkeye, Kate Bishop Hawkeye, and Mike Grell era Green Arrow. Ptwang!

I chased these two down to get a picture – love my classic Doctors. That’s Four and Two. They were both very nice and she gave me an actual jelly baby! Somehow I’ve gone my whole life without having a real one. It was quite good.

First panel was (deep breath) “These Are My People/Aliens/Zombies/Vampires/Dragons!: Building Community in the SciFi/Fantasy World.” It was a panel of prose writers discussing how to engage with and build a readership. It was a great panel – extremely helpful. To be honest, a lot of the tips I’ve probably heard before, but I tend to be bad at following through and it was useful to hear it all again.

The panel was moderated by Petra Meyer from NPR Books, and featured (left to right) Sanford Greene, Trevor Pryce, Arwen Elys Dayton, N.K. Jemisin, Nicholas Sansbury Smith, Richard Kadrey, Daniel Jose Older, and (not pictured) Jerzy Drozd. There was a huge focus on social media – everyone was very insistent on how important it was to get yourself out there on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr and connect with your readers on a genuine, personal level. I tend to be terrible about that, but I’m trying to get better. (Case in point – I was just going to post these pics on my personal Facebook page, like I usually do, but I thought they might be of interest to someone besides my friends and family. Hadn’t really intended on posting such a long-winded account of my entire weekend…so for the three of you still reading, I hope you’re enjoying it.)

Well, I said everyone was insistent about social media, but there was one exception. Trevor Pryce was very down on the whole idea of it. He was insisting on the importance of direct, personal interaction with fans – he writes children’s literature, and talked about going into schools, or even panels such as this one. It’s a valid point – certainly in-person communication is better, I don’t think anyone was arguing that it’s not – but it seemed like he had blinders on about the topic. I doubt most of the aspiring writers in the audience have a whole lot of opportunities to speak to crowds of people – we don’t have publishing houses behind us to get us invited to speak at comic con. The other writers were being much more helpful, with tips we could actually follow, and he kept interrupting or rolling his eyes or making snide comments. The other panelists didn’t seem to mind – or they didn’t express it if they did – but I thought it was a little rude. Dayton was saying something about how her fans enjoy when she talks on Facebook about her travels, and he loudly said, “No!” (Or maybe “Don’t!” – I can’t quite remember.) Everyone laughed politely, but it was essentially an attempt to shut down someone he didn’t agree with. I don’t know if he was pushing back because everyone else disagreed with him and he felt defensive, but it really turned me off. Had the opposite effect of what he was advocating, in my case – I’ve got plenty of nieces and nephews who read, but I don’t have any interest in picking up his books for them.

I’m spending a lot of time on what was really a small bump in the panel. It was otherwise really terrific. Nicholas Sansbury Smith started out as a self-published author (unlike all of the others), and he had some great advice about how to interact with Goodreads, a community I’ve had some difficulty getting used to. After the panel, I was pausing to tweet outside the door and he came out. I ambushed him and told him I appreciated his advice. We chatted for a bit and he offered some more good tips. So this is my plug for his being so nice and helpful – I’m going to try out the first book in his series, Orbs, and you should too! Find him at nicholassansbury.com.

I tried to get into a panel on “Strong Female Characters,” but the line had been capped – Saturday’s quite busy, remember. So, lunch instead. (Both days I brought a sandwich with me – the lines and the prices are not worth it. Pro tip!)

I spotted this delightful woman cosplaying as Ma Hunkel, the original Red Tornado. I am a massive golden-age comics fan so I have to get pictures of anybody I can find cosplaying as a forties hero. Ma Hunkel was a great character and this costume is spot on. She said her husband was the original Flash, and I spotted him later (but didn’t get a picture). He looked great, too.

Then it was back up the show floor for a bit, where I met this strapping young lad.

He can master my universe any time. (Ugh. I hate myself for that.)

Barf and Dark Helmet! Dark Helmet kept calling everyone assholes. But in a funny way.

I promised Kate Danley – katedanley – I would stop by the 47North booth and say hello on her behalf, so here’s a very rare shot of me at the con, along with 47North’s Courtney Miller.

Do you like my shirt? I sort of love it. On Thursday I was dressed for work, and on Friday I wore a nice button-down for the speed dating thing (blergh), so I wanted to be sure to proclaim my fandom on Saturday.

I had to rush downstairs to get to a panel, but I paused long enough for a shot of this villainous duo:

Brainiac and Lex Luthor!

When I say I was rushing to get to the next, what I mean is I was slowly fighting my way through this:

I needed to be at the other end. I just wanted to be sure to give you a sense of the crowd. I know it’s nothing on San Diego, from what I’ve heard, but still. That’s a lot of geeks in one place. Isn’t it great? And a little scary?

As much as I was afraid of not making my panel, I couldn’t just run by a Weeping Angel without looking. That would be foolhardy! Of course, an image of a Weeping Angel becomes a Weeping Angel, so sorry for killing you all.

I made it to the panel on time – “#YesAllGeeks: Let’s Talk About Harassment in Fandom.” Unfortunately, I didn’t get any pics, but it was moderated by Diana Pho and featured Mikki Kendall, Marlene Bonnelly, Emily Asher-Perrin, and Robert Anders. It was a really interesting look at how far fandom, and convention spaces in particular, have come (or haven’t come) in the area of preventing harassment. NYCC has a clearly stated and posted policy regarding harassment, which was a great thing to see when I first walked in, but it’s still a massive problem at cons and in fandom in general, particularly online. The panelists all had great things to say, particularly Mikki Kendall – I made a note to myself to look her up later and check out some of her writing.

Then it was back down to Artists’ Alley for another walkabout, and to take a closer look at some of the artists I had to rush by yesterday. And of course, take some more picture of cosplayers!

Doom! Love the shredded Fantastic Four uniform in his hand – I didn’t notice that at the time.

Jubilee and Green Arrow! He totally flexed for the picture, and I appreciate that.

Classic TV Batman and Catwoman! So much awesome. He had a speaker hidden on him somewhere that was playing the theme song.

Teen Titans! That’s Speedy, Wonder Girl, Kid Flash and Aqualad. I spotted them a little later and they had the full set – there was also a Robin – but I didn’t want to bother them again. (Kind of wishing I had, now.) I like that Aqualad is giving me fish-face.

On my way out I passed Dark Phoenix and Vega (from Street Fighter). I asked for a picture and he started to step away – I made it quite clear that I wanted both of them. I wanted them to know I wasn’t just some creep who only wanted a picture of the hot girl. I was some creep who wanted a picture of the hot couple.

I thought an hour early would be sufficient to get into that day’s Doctor Who panel, but I was laughably wrong. The line was long since capped, so I went to my back-up, “Geeks, Gaymers and Crossplay,” presented again by NYTimesOUT.

From left to right, that’s JP Larocque, Matt Conn, Rex Ogle, Alexa Heart, Joey Stern, and moderator Jude Biersdorfer. It was a nice enough panel. Very white, and also pretty guy-centric, except for the moderator and Alexa Heart. Nothing particularly revelatory, but interesting stories from some fun people. Mostly a lot of talk about how far there still is to go, and lots of gaming discussion, which isn’t really my thing.

An audience member asked about intersectionality and I didn’t think it was handled too well – that was when the whiteness of the panel jumped out at me. Rex Ogle trotted out that trope about gay men all having “a strong black woman” inside them, which made me wince. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for diva worshiping, but gay men calling themselves black women smacks of appropriation. I feel the same when a drunk straight woman at a bar tells me she’s “basically a gay man.” No, honey. No, you’re not.

Other than that it was harmless fun, and it’s great that there are multiple panels about diversity and about LGBT issues to choose from at the con. (I’m moving on quickly because I was about to go off on a rant, and that’s not really what these posts are about…)

Marko and Gwendolyn from Saga! Gwendolyn was the one who asked about intersectionality at the panel. They were sitting in front of me and I had to get a picture. Saga is awesome, and you should read it.

I thought I would never get in to the next panel as it was just about to start, but my luck was changing.

“Women of DC Entertainment” had a star-studded cast. I’ll try to get this right – L to R we’ve got moderator Amanda Salmons, Shelly Bond (editor for Vertigo imprint), Caitlin Kittredge (writer of Coffin Hill), Babs Tarr (new artist on Batgirl), Meredith Finch (new writer on Wonder Woman), Becky Cloonan (artist on Gotham Academy), Gail Simone (writer of Secret Six), Marguerite Bennett (writer on Earth 2: World’s End), Bobbie Chase (DC Comics editor), and (not pictured because she snuck in late) Amanda Conner (artist on Harley Quinn).

This was fine. It was a corporate panel, rather than a discussion like the others I had attended, so it was all about plugging upcoming projects. With forty-five minutes and nine panelists, there wasn’t a lot of time for each person to speak. I came out of it excited for Gail Simone’s new Vertigo project, Clean Room, and for Gotham Academy. I came out less than enthused about the new team on Batgirl, but I’ll give it a chance. And I’m a big Earth 2 fan, and Bennett saying writing Power Girl and Huntress is her favorite part has has me hopeful she’ll handle it well, and we’ll get some actual characterization in between all the disaster porn this title promises.

And that was it. I wandered towards the exit, not really wanting it to be over. One last cosplayer:

I thought at first he was Man of Steel Superman, but the Javitz Center wasn’t a pile of rubble so I think he’s Nu52 Superman.

I remembered I only had one picture of myself so I tried for a selfie:

Meh. I was happy – that’s just what my face does. And that was it. One last thing to do – check out the loot!

Huh. Sideways again. Sorry. Anyway, I was obviously a little freer with my money on Saturday.

Starting from the top left – uh, if you turn your head and pretend the picture is oriented correctly, that is – that’s Flutter by Jennie Wood. I had never heard of her, but she was signing and selling at the GeeksOUT booth and I took a chance. I believe it’s teen fantasy romance with a trans twist, and the art looked good.

Next to that is the third G-Man collection, Coming Home, by Chris Giarrusso. I love his work – he did Mini-Marvels, a comedy strip in the back of most Marvel comics for a while. I had already read this in single issue form, but I wanted to support him, and I already own the first two volumes and wanted the set. Plus, he signed it and drew a sketch of G-Man. And he’s handsome. What else could I ask for?

Redshirts is just a book I bought, no story to tell. I heard good things and picked it up at the publisher’s table. It was pre-signed, but I didn’t meet the author.

In the Blood was free. Don’t know a thing about it. But hey, free stuff.

And S.H.O.O.T. First is another series I’ve already read in single issue format, but it was great and I wanted the trade. The artist was there, and he signed it. Atheists versus monsters – right up my alley! Fighting evil with the power of non-belief. Check it out if you haven’t head of it, it’s really good.

So I left New York Comic Con feeling excited and inspired, and not at all tired. I met some great people and a personal hero or two, had a lot of fun, bought some cool stuff, and, most importantly, got some good advice for my writing. How long until NYCC15?

New York Comic Con 2014 – Day Two!

Friday was a great day at the con – a good sized crowd, lots of people to interact with/gawp at but not so overwhelming as to induce terror. I took the day off from work so I could make the most of it. Lots more pictures today, after the cut!

Spider-man and Lydia (Winona Ryder) from Beetlejuice. This picture does not do justice to how tight Spidey’s costume was. I wish I had gotten him from the side, but I probably would have had to label my blog as not safe for work.

I started Friday down in Artists’ Alley. It’s my favorite part of the con. I love to take my time, wandering down each aisle, checking out the art and staring slack-jawed at my favorite artists. I don’t buy prints and I’m not into autographs, so I’m sure they all love me as I meander by, taking up table space and not buying anything, but I have fun. I don’t take pictures – I feel like it’s somewhat rude to take photos of art that they’re trying to sell – so unfortunately I’ve no documentation of the high point of the con for me.

Gail Simone – gailsimone – was signing at a table towards the back. Gail is one of my absolute favorite comic writers. I actually first fell in love with her writing before she even wrote a single comic – she used to write a comics parody column called You’ll All Be Sorry! and it was freaking genius. (I still try to describe to people how funny Conan and Hobbes was and always fall flat.) Since then she’s gone on to write – well, tons of stuff, but my personal favorites are her runs on Birds of Prey, Wonder Woman, Batgirl, Red Sonja and especially Secret Six (which is coming back – hooray!).

I follow Gail on Twitter and here on Tumblr and in addition to a truly bizarre and occasionally disgusting sense of humor (which I appreciate greatly), she talks often about the importance of diversity of all sorts in writing. I can’t exactly say I make my work consciously diverse strictly because of Gail – I’m a gay theater guy in New York City, I meet a lot of different kinds of people and it would feel false for me not to reflect that in my writing, plus I’m a strong believer that diversity in fiction is simply a good and positive thing in and of itself. But what I did get from her – both directly from her advice on social media, and indirectly though studying her writing – is how to go about presenting, and representing, the viewpoints of “the other,” of anyone living a life that’s outside your direct personal experience.

In my writing, I try to remain aware that, for example, just because I’ve got friends who are lesbians of color doesn’t mean I know what it is to be a lesbian of color. I do my research, I talk to people, and I do my best to make my characters as truthful to their own lives and experiences as I can, minimizing the forty-something gay white guy lens as much as possible. I absolutely positively get it wrong sometimes – maybe often – but I do what I can and I get better the more I do it. And Gail Simone’s work and words have really helped me find my way the times that I’ve gotten it right.

Plus, dang, she writes some funny, sexy, creepy comics.

So, back to the con. I try to avoid lines where I can, but Gail’s wasn’t outrageously long and there was a cute guy in a Wonder Woman costume in front of me. (I was too nervous about meeting Gail to flirt, but nerves don’t make me blind.) She was selling limited edition scripts of some of her comics, and I was thrilled to see they weren’t sold out. In fact, I got a copy of the one I wanted most – her final regular-run issue of Batgirl. So she signed it for me, and I worked up the nerves to babble out a much less coherent version of what I just wrote. She responded with something very nice which I can’t remember a word of. (Nerves don’t make me blind but they do make my Swiss-cheese memory even worse.) I think I even spoke over her. Blergh. Anyway. High point of the con, as far as I can remember.

I felt like I was taking up too much of her time already, so I didn’t ask for a picture. Here’s one of Ultron instead.

Love the severed Vision head.

Geeks are hot. Have I said that yet? Look at these two. Damn. Black Widow and Captain America, but you know that.

I always appreciate a good cosplay from outside the comic/sci-fi/fantasy worlds, ESPECIALLY if it’s from musical theater. This is Seymour and Audrey (and Audrey II) from Little Shop of Horrors. She went with domestic-abuse-victim Audrey, which is a little dark. That’s okay, I like dark.

I spotted those two on my way out of Artists’ Alley, on my way to my first panel of the day – “Playing with Magic.” It featured a roster of fantasy prose authors talking about the rules of magic within their respective fantasy worlds. The moderator was Steve Saffel, with authors A.M. Dellamonica, Illona and Gordon Andrews, Kim Harrison, George Hagen, Jeff Somers, and Sam Sykes. None of whom I have heard of, because for a writer I am shockingly ill-read in my own genres. I attended the panel because, after I finish The Future Next Door, my next series will be urban fantasy (exclusive!), and I was hoping for some tips and inspiration. It was a really interesting discussion, but all I really got from it was “magic should have a cost,” which, well, I kind of knew. But I’m glad I went anyway. Sorry, none of my pictures of this panel came out, but you know you’re just here for the cosplayers anyway.

I had to duck out early to get to a speed dating event for gay men I had signed up for. The less said about that, the better. I kind of wish I had taken pictures, but I imagine they would have asked me to leave. (Actually, everyone was very nice.) (But I don’t think I’ll be signing up for it next year.) (Buy me a drink sometime, I’ll tell you.)

Hey, look, it’s Xena!

I tried to make it to the panel “Doctor Who: 10 Years of Fandom,” but the line was capped. So I hopped over to “Carol Corps and Beyond: The Future of Female Fandom” instead. Doctor Who is my jam, but I’m glad I caught the panel I did.

From left to right – Sana Amanat, editor of Ms. Marvel and a whole bunch of other awesome Marvel comics; Gail Simone, whom I’ve already raved about; and Kelly Sue DeConnick, writer of Captain Marvel. Basically, I love everything these three women do. DeConnick was the only person announced as being on this panel beforehand, so I was pretty excited when I got in and saw the roster. (The panel was moderated by Abraham Riesman from New York Magazine, whom I sadly did not get a picture of.) (Sadly both because he was very good, and because he’s rather handsome.) (I revel in my shallowness. I almost wallow in it.)

Again, no notes and no memory make it hard for me to recount what went on in the panel – and I’m sure it’s been well-covered elsewhere on the internet – but the discussion was lively and fascinating. Amanat talked a bit about getting Ms. Marvel, which stars a teenage Muslim girl from New Jersey, made, and the massive wave of interest it generated before the first issue even hit the stands. They were quite polite to a questioner who asked the frankly ridiculous (and tired) question about how men should write women (“Like people,” I believe DeConnick answered, before expanding on that a bit.) Amanat talked about intersectionality too, in response to a question, which I was glad to hear – it’s a particular interest of mine in my own writing.

That was my last panel of the day, and it was a good one to go out on. I wasn’t quite ready to go home yet, so I went up to the vendors’ floor for another wander.

I did not ask why these guys were all in their underwear, and I didn’t really care.

They were far from the only guys at the con “cosplaying” like this. I suspect mostly they just liked having an excuse to walk around the Javitz Center almost naked.

I can’t throw stones. I played Malvolio once in an outdoor production of Twelfth Night in Fort Tryon Park. My costume for the mad scene was just my underwear and a straitjacket, and I used to do my costume change way earlier than I had to. It was very liberating, running around the park in my boxer-briefs. I highly recommend it. Maybe leave out the straitjacket, though.

Zombie Charlie Chaplin and Marilyn Monroe. Why not?

I went by the GeeksOUT booth again before I left. A lot of vendors’ booths have “Booth Babes” – hot women in very skimpy costumes – to drum up attention. GeeksOUT does the same thing (sort of). Lion-O!

Friday’s loot! Again, saving my pennies so as not to run out. That’s the signed Batgirl script I mentioned above. And the squeeze toy stress reliever I got for free at the speed dating event – it was sponsored by The Flash TV show. (Get it?)

A great Friday at the con. In previous years I’ve only done one day – Saturday – and I always felt exhausted and done after. I wondered if I’d call it quits after my first full day, but I went to bed raring to go. Bring on day three!

New York Comic Con 2014 – Day One!

I went to New York Comic Con, and it was amazing. If you follow me on twitter (@btolsen) you already got a lot of the play-by-play, but here are some pics and a lot more commentary. Behind the cut, because of a mountain of cosplay pictures.

I’m a pro! I had originally planned on only going to the con on Saturday, but I waited too long and the tickets were sold out. (I waited three days, but apparently waiting a half an hour would have also been too long.) I thought I was out of luck, but katedanley clued me in about the pro pass. All four days! I’ve got a golden ticket! It’s ours, Charlie!

Establishing shot! I headed up late for day one – I had to work on Thursday, but rushed up after to catch the tail end of the festivities. I started by walking the exhibitors’ floor – I always find this to be the most exhausting part of the con because of the crowds, and I thought Thursday would be the easiest day to tackle it. (Spoilers – I was correct.)

First cosplay sighting! Elastigirl and Mr. Incredible.

Fifth Doctor! There were a lot of Doctor Who cosplayers, I was happy to see. Didn’t get pics of as many of them as I wish. This is a pretty great Fifthie – I particularly like the magic marker drawn pattern on the sweater. Shows commitment. And it’s a smart costume for a con, because if you get hungry you can skip the overpriced food court and just eat the celery.

Really wish that guy vaping wasn’t in the back. Vaping. Ugh. I’ll just pretend he’s sucking on a sonic screwdriver.

I wandered by the GeeksOUT booth – gotta check in on my peeps – and met Jeff Krell, creator of the legendary comic strip Jayson. Jayson was created in 1983, although I discovered it in the ’90s in the Meatmen trade anthology of collected gay comics. Jeff was very nice, and I picked up a copy of the book he’s holding (which he signed for me). Looking forward to reading it – check out Jayson if you’ve never read it, it’s very sweet and funny.

Let me start by saying I don’t know why this picture is sideways and I can’t fix it. Sorry. Tilt your head. Or your monitor. Anyway, the whole reason I rushed to the Javitz Center after work was to attend a panel – “LGBT in Comics,” presented by NYTimesOUT and GeeksOUT (why does everybody shout OUT?). Pictured here, sideways, are panelists Phil Jimenez (of whom I’m a big fan) and Kieron Gillen (of whom I am also a big fan). Phil’s worked on tons of stuff, mostly as a penciller, though he did double-duty as writer on a terrific run of Wonder Woman. Kieron Gillen I’m mostly familiar with through his work as writer of Journey into Mystery and Young Avengers.

Here’s another panelist, Luciano Vecchio, penciler for some of Marvel’s digital Infinite Comics. To be honest, I had never heard of him before, but I took a picture because, come on. Look at him. And he’s Argentinian. You could hear the whole audience swoon when he opened his mouth. (Oh, did you think this was going to be an intelligent narrative about my con experiences? You haven’t read my work, then?)

Just another picture of Phil and Kieron, not as good but Phil seems to be looking directly at me, and I didn’t notice that until just now. Anyway, the rest of the panelists were Jamie McKelvie, penciler for Young Avengers, Annie Mok, mostly indie cartoonist, and Noelle Stevenson, co-creator of Lumberjanes, a comic about girls at a summer camp battling monsters in the woods which everyone should buy right now because it is AMAZING.

The panel was great. I’m afraid my memory is terrible and I didn’t take any notes, so I can’t relate too many details, but Annie Mok and Phil Jimenez in particular made a lot of great comments about working as LGBT in the industry. Phil raised the question about whether straight white cisgendered guys could get away with including diversity in their work much easier with major publishers because it would be seen as “cool,” whereas gay or trans or POC creators would be seen as pushing an agenda.

Kieron Gillen is great, and one thing I love about his work is how diverse and inclusive it is, but I winced a bit when he responded – he sort of handwaved it away as not an issue anymore. He wasn’t as dismissive as I’m making it sound – it didn’t seem to bother anybody else, so I’m probably being oversensitive. Whether the actual publishers at DC and Marvel feel the way Phil described anymore I would have no way of knowing, but certainly huge portions of fandom do. But those people suck, so let’s move on.

Hey, look, it’s Captain Marvel! Captain Marvel was very popular this year, I was happy to see. Also, the new Ms. Marvel, although I don’t think I got any pictures of any Kamala Khans, unfortunately.

Wonder Woman and Batwoman! I saw them holding hands leaving the LGBT panel and had to chase them down to get a picture. I would like to be both of these women when I grow up.

Thursday was obviously a short day, since I had gotten there so late, and after the panel I started the long schlog home.

Thursday’s loot! I had given myself a strict budget, and didn’t want to blow it all on day one. I got the aforementioned Jayson book, signed by the author, plus the first issue of Titan Comics Doctor Who: The Twelfth Doctor comics, which isn’t in stores yet.

I’ll break this up into three posts, one per day. More shortly!

Ten Thoughts on Make Mine Music

I had never heard of Make Mine Music (1946) before beginning this project. It’s another package film made on the cheap while the Disney studio was struggling in the aftermath of World War II. It’s sort of a low-rent Fantasia - a collection of unrelated vignettes set to jazz music. And wouldn’t you know it, there just happen to be ten such vignettes. How convenient!

The Martins and the Coys is technically the first short of the film, but it’s the one I watched last. After I finished the movie, I looked it up online and discovered that the copy I had viewed was missing this segment. Turns out, it was edited out of all of the home video releases in America because of concerns about excessive violence. Well! How can I hear that and not dig up a copy? I was only able to find a terrible quality Italian-dubbed version of it on YouTube, but I suffered through it because I care, readers, I care. A few seconds in I paused to go and read the lyrics in English because I had no idea what the hell was going on, but then I muddled through to the end. The cartoon is a twist on the Hatfield/McCoy feud. All of the Martins and Coys look exactly alike, which I would say suggests inbreeding except there isn’t a single woman among them, so I’m thinking cloning. Well, not a single woman except for one of our two stars. The families wipe each other out except for one young and hot representative from each side, a young man and a young woman (I don’t know which comes from which family because it was in Italian). They fall in love, get married, the ghosts of their dead relatives freak out, and then the newlyweds beat the ever-loving shit out of each other. The end. I don’t know if I would have edited it out for the violence so much as for the scene where a chicken is pecking food out of a sleeping Coy’s beard. It was seriously gross.
Blue Bayou is next (or first, if you’re not as obsessive a completist as me). It pretty much does what it says on the tin – there’s a bayou, and it’s blue. A bird flies around. It’s sort of pretty. Nothing really happens. The music’s real slow, and I’m falling asleep five minutes into this movie.
All the Cats Join In and I am jolted awake. Benny Goodman and his Orchestra play a jumping jam to accompany some cartoon teens getting together to swing, baby, swing. It’s awesome. We see the pencil drawing the scene and there are a lot of clever bits made from this conceit. A car full of kids zooms away too fast for the pencil to finish drawing it, so it has to catch up to the car at a stoplight. A boy teen yawns when a girl teen with a big butt is interested in him, so the pencil erases the weight off and he’s…wait, that’s not clever, it’s a painfully offensive relic of its time. Never mind. Hey, a naked girl! Very racy for a Disney flick – this was back when Walt was still trying to be all grown-up about things. I thought it was pretty sexy while I was watching it, with the girl in the shower and getting dressed and all, and then I learned there were bare boobies in the original version, which were also edited out for home video. Human boobies – bad. Centaur boobies – A-OK!
Without You brings me back to Slumberland. It’s a lovely song but nothing’s happening on the screen – just scenery changing. At least when Fantasia was dull, it was pretty. Even the animation in this segment seems bored.
I’m guessing you’ve probably heard of Casey at the Bat. This is a gag-filled “musical recitation” by Jerry Colonna of the famous poem. I won’t go through it joke by joke (even though having visual jokes described to you is hysterical) but the last bit with Casey in the rain in the empty park, repeatedly throwing balls to himself, swinging and missing, crying uncontrollably, is bleakly hilarious.
Oh, hey, Dinah Shore sings this next one, Two Silhouettes! I remember her from a talk show and…lesbian golf or something? Anyways. It’s two shadowed ballet dancers prancing in front of an animated background. The dancers are real, they’re completely silhouetted, and it looks pretty cool. I found myself wondering if they were wrapped head-to-toe in green-screen material, which might explain why, considering they are dancing a ballet, they don’t actually move around all that much.
Peter and the Wolf is up next, an animated acting-out of Prokofiev’s tune. The opening – with the narrator, Sterling Holloway, explaining how each instrument represents a character – is very Fantasia. The cartoon is silly fun, but I have some issues. The wolf is drawn in a very Satanic manner and it is constantly drooling. The animators are clearly trying to influence us to root against this noble beast. The good cat tries to eat the good bird and we’re all supposed to forgive and forget, but the wolf just tries to defend himself – Peter and his menagerie come hunting for him, remember – and somehow he’s the bad guy? Prejudice! Wrote a song about! Like to hear it? Hear it go. Also, the wolf clearly eats Sonia the duck – we actually see her ghost go to Heaven – but then the filmmakers wimp out and make it so she’s alive at the end. The Martins and the Coys shooting each other to death was fine, but a wolf eating a duck is a step too far? America has weird values.
After You’re Gone has Benny Goodman back again as each member of the Goodman Octet is represented by an animated instrument going wild. It’s non-realistic and incredibly fun and somewhat nonsensical – I particularly liked the fingers in tutus dancing on the keyboard – and it’s over way too soon.
Johnnie Fedora and Alice Bluebonnet is about two hats that are in love. There’s not much more I can say about it, except excessive time spent on Tumblr led me to expect the fedora to say “M’lady” a lot while wearing a trenchcoat and holding a My Little Pony.
I almost jumped off my sofa in excitement when I realized the final installment was The Whale Who Wanted to Sing at the Met. I had the book and record set of this as a kid – those of you of a certain age may remember these, you turned the page when you heard the bell. I loved the damn thing, but it had been so long that I had forgotten the entire story. I always thought it was a stand-alone Disney short, I had no idea it was a part of a feature. So I was pretty excited to see the actual cartoon for the first time, and I wasn’t disappointed. Seriously, get this DVD just for this short (I’d say watch it on YouTube but I can’t find it). It’s about an opera singing whale named Willie who dreams of being discovered. Nelson Eddy does all the voices and he’s superb. There is an extended dream sequence of Willie singing opera’s most famous roles at the Met – him immense, his co-stars normal sized – and it’s perfection. He’s Pagliacci with a HUGE red nose and a tiny, tiny hat. It’s just…see it. Make Mine Music has a lot of really great ups and a few really boring downs, but this final segment makes the whole film.