It's Mermay!

 
 
 
 

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Musical Monday with Thousand Foot Krutch

I am not particularly religious, so that might be why I generally find rock bands that bill themselves as "Christian" to be underwhelming. That is NOT the case with Canadian band Thousand Foot Krutch.

"War of Change" is a fabulous, hard-rockin' song with a visually interesting video that takes full advantage of the black-and-white film. This is a solid Ten out of Ten Stars!

 

It's the Sunday Comics Section with Wonder Woman!

Here's everybody's favorite Amazon, seen through the lens of Canadian cartoonist and children's book illustrator Kate Beaton:

Click here to see an index of hundreds of strips and single panel cartoons created by Beaton under the heading "Hark! A Vagrant!" from 2016 - 2018.

We're putting words in Fanny's mouth!

 We've been having a little late-night fun with 'Flapper Fanny Says', with the viewers/side-chatters of my YouTube Channel coming up with the jokes to go with some Ethel Hays and Gladys Parker drawings. Going forward, we'll be sharing the results as an extra post on every other Fanny Friday!

In addition to the post here, you'll be able to vote for your favorite of the jokes on the YouTube Channel's Community Page, here. (And if you like what you see, please subscribe to the channel, and come by and hang out with us some night!)

This is the cartoon (selected for today, because it's almost fitting for Mermay):

Here are the five best of the jokes the YouTube viewers came up with:

"There are plenty of other fish in the sea... like blobfish."

"Is that a harpoon in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?"

"You get we your way, I'll get wet mine."

"Oh, I don't come here to swim. I'm here to show off my suit."

"'Just the tip' of my toes."

Fanny Friday!

Rarely has there been a wackier race

Ker-Choo (1933)
Starring: Bonnie Poe and Gus Wicke

Director: Dave Fleischer

Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

It's the Grand Prix, cartoon-style, with all the craziness you'd expect!

"Ker-Choo" is one of those cartoons where almost anything I might say about it will ruin the fun of watching it for the first time. While it remains funny if you watch it more than once, the biggest enjoyment will come from watching the race (as well as the cartoon animals watching it in the stands) for the first time; the wacky bizarreness of it all will bring joy to even the grumpiest soul!

This is one of the Betty Boop-headlined cartoons where the entire gang is here -- with Bimbo and KoKo the Clown being among the drivers competing against Betty -- and each gets their moment to shine. In fact, I think Bimbo and KoKo between them deliver two of the funniest gags in the film, with KoKo even turning what might have just been a simple transition scene into a moment of hilarity.

While there are many reasons I think you'll enjoy this cartoon if you're into Pre-Code Era animation, the most important one is the unique place it has cinematic history: It was the first tale (and perhaps the only tale so far) of a race being won through germ warfare! Further, this cartoon may also be the true origin of "twerking"!

One word of warning: The race music may get stuck in your head for a day or so after watching this!

It's Mermay!

It's a little known fact that mermaids enjoy sports-fishing!

 
  
 

Musical Monday with Lady Gaga

Well... sort of. It's Lady Gaga's "Poker Face" filtered through the stylings of 1940s western swing by There--I Ruined It. (It's a lotta fun, and it'll kick off your work-week in just the way you need!

The fight in the fountain!

I've failed to find the original version of the cartoon embedded below, so I can't give proper credit nor do I even remember the actual title... but I found this short cartoon featuring an indignant mermaid and her attempts to defeat a statue of a little boy peeing hilarious when I first saw it many, MANY years ago and I find it hilarious today. I hope you do, too!

And if anyone out there knows the original source and creator of this animation, please let me know, so I can give them proper credit and put a review header on this video. (It's an easy Nine of Ten Stars, by the way.)

Flapper Fanny

Barnacle Bill makes landfall!

Barnacle Bill (1930)
Starring: Billy Murray and Margie Hines
Director: Dave Fleischer
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

Barnacle Bill (voiced by Murray) has a girl in every port--and nothing's going to keep him from getting it on Nancy (voiced by Hines!

"Barnacle Bill" is an early appearance of the characters that would eventually evolve into Bimbo and Betty Boop--the second for Betty, actually. You can see hints in what both characters would eventually become, but Nancy Lee/Betty is equal parts grotesque and cute in this iteration. (She still is an anthropomorphic dog, like Bimbo, but it's downplayed more here than it is in her third appearance in "The Mysterious Mose".)

Historical trivia aside, "Barnacle Bill" is worth checking out for its non-stop stream of sight gags and nifty twists on cliches that were old even at the dawn of the 1930s. It also shines as a mini-operetta, with Barnacle Bill and Nancy hilariously singing their way through their romantic interactions. Other highlights include Bill escaping his ship for shore leave against his captain's orders, the surprising love game Bill and Nancy end up playing, the gossiping neighbors, and a very cute surprise finale.

This classic cartoon is only some 8 minutes long. Check it out for the fun, or check it out to see the origin of one of the most famous cartoon characters to ever be created... but check it out!

It's Mermay!

Some say mermaids are just imaginary creatures... but we have photos that prove otherwise! 

 
  
 
 

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Happy birthday to Jessica Morris

 

 Actress Jessica Morris turns 44 today. Here are a few photos in celebration. (And here are reviews of some of the films she's either starred or has been featured in!)

A Special Musical Monday with Mike Oldfield

As some of you out there might know, I began my professional life as an entertainment writer, focused mostly on music reviews. I did that for roughly four years, after which I was so burned out on music that my car radio stayed tuned to talk and news-stations from 1993 through 2000... and I hardly played any music on my system at home. To this day, I still have not been to a life concert, or even watched one on television.

Major exceptions to my time away from music were certain works by Jerry Goldsmith, John Williams, Beethoven, and/or Handel... and everything by one of the 20th century's great composers and guitar players, Mike Oldfield.

I have loved Mike Oldfield's music since I first heard "Ommadawn". I prefer his long-form instrumentals over his pop/rock songs, but everything he's done is good. Even his weakest releases are far, FAR better than the best that many other modern song-writers and musicians produce.

Mike Oldfield turns 70 years old today. I honor him on his birthday, and I thank for enriching my life, inspiring my creativity--characters and storylines have all sprung into my head while listening to Oldfield--and bringing light into my world during my darkest times. 

 

This post also celebrates over five decades of brilliant music composed and performed by giving you a chance to listen to some of my favorite songs from him, along with a few videos. Only a few of them actually that fit the black-and-white format around here, starting with a fan-made one (which features a little nudity, so be careful where you watch it), but I hope you'll be inspired to check out more of his music and come to love his work the way I do.

Here's another fan-made video, mostly abstract and set to some very pretty Oldfield tunes.

"Five Miles Out"--the title track from the 1983 album that is Mike Oldfield's greatest masterpiece. "Taurus II" (a 27-minute long track that occupied most of Side 1 of the LP record when it was first released) is his very best work, containing some of his greatest themes and melodies.

"Magic Touch" from Islands (1987)

It's a Mohammed Monday

 

THIS WEEK WITH JESUS & MO

 

It's Fanny Friday!

It's Mermay!

Mermay continues with a public service announcement: The Mermaids Will Always Win.

It's National Teacher's Day the Fanny Way

Low-budget Amateur Film with an Excellent Script!

Sirene en Captivte (Mermaid in Captivity) (2014)
Starring: Fallon Hammer, Nick Sarnelli, and Lucas Waldron

Director: Alyssa Waldron

Rating: Six of Ten Stars

A cruel freakshow operator (Sarnelli) captures a mermaid (Hammer) and puts her on display. But some beings are not meant to be caged...

If you've been around this blog for a while, you know we like to go digging in obscure corners of YouTube for student and amateur films and then share those we think are worthy of your time and attention.

We came upon "Mermaid in Captivity" while looking for items that tied in with the Mermay theme we presently have going on. It's another one of those films made by young high-schoolers or college kids trying to emulate the old-time silent movies, presumably for a class project. Overall, it's slightly better than most such efforts, but there are two things that writer/director Alyssa Waldron did better with this effort than a majority of her filmmaking peers.

First, she clearly had a general sense of what she could and couldn't pull off with the resources she had at her disposal. She didn't attempt to show us the mermaid swimming under water, but through excellent use of intertitles and some creative camera work that is meant to seem like we are looking through the mermaids eyes as she swims to the surface, she still manages to convey the notion of a mermad in her natural habitat. While a better job could possibly have been done on the aquarium the mermaid is placed in, it could also have been far worse.

Second, the script for this film is excellent. The unfolds swiftly, the characters are well-drawn, and the shocking twist that kicks off the finale is extremely well set up and filmed. While the lack of budget and developing skills of the director/cinematographer behind the camera and the actors in front of it are apparent, might tempt some viewers to stop watching when the carnival owner goes into black-hatted, mustache-twirling borderline parody of a silent movie melodrama villain... but that would be a mistake. The story in this film, and how it's presented, is far superior to many productions at this level. (I don't know if Waldron went onto a career as a writer, but I certainly hope so. She seems to have had the talent for it.)

Take a few minutes to watch this film by clicking below.

Musical Monday with Oingo Boingo

Before they were Oingo Boingo, Danny Elfman and his fellow bandmembers were known as the Mystic Knights of Oingo Boingo and they performed covers of 1930s and 1940s songs while putting on bizarre and elaborate shows.

This music video featured in today's post was made as a proof-of-concept/test shoot for what eventually became the full-length movie "Forbidden Zone" (1979), directed by Richard Elfman.

Johnny (1977)
Starring: Marie-Pascale Elfman and the Mystic Knights of Oingo Boingo
Director: Richard Elfman
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

Back when training films were entertaining...

... the Department of Defense produced a series of animated shorts starring Private Snafu, a character who did everything wrong so the enlisted men would not as World War II raged. These were created by top-notch talent who were established writers and artists and filmmakers and animators who had been drafted and then assigned to positions where their talents could do the most good for training and/or propaganda purposes.

The main talents behind the "Private SNAFU" series were director Chuck Jones (with animators he'd worked with at Warner Bros.), voice artist Mel Blanc (another Warner Bros. animation regular), and writer Theodor Geisel, (an old hand at political cartoons and propaganda who is better known under his pen name Dr. Seuss), and it's another series of 1940s-era training films that makes me wish the things I've had to sit through over the years were half as entertaining.

This is the first of several "Private SNAFU" we'll be bringing you over the next many months. We're not leading with the best of them--today's featured cartoon is amusing, but there are far wilder entries in the series--but this one seemed perfect for our Mermay celebration (which the still above probably already clued you into).

Private SNAFU: A Lecture on Camoflage

Starring: Mel Blanc

Director: Chuck Jones

Rating: Six of Ten Stars

Flapper Fanny on the Fifth!

 It's Cinco de Mayo, and Flapper Fanny is here!

Magicians and Mermaids and Babes--Oh My!

The Mermaid (1904)
Starring: Georges Méliès
Director: Georges Méliès
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

A magician (Méliès) uses water from an empty fish tank to summon fish, a mermaid, and sirines. Along the way, he performs a variety of other summonings, as well as transformations of both himself and the mermaid.

This is one of the more impressive performance videos that Méliès produced. The transitions that create the in-camera effects are generally so smooth that they rival effects you see made today, 120 years and technology that Méliès couldn't have dreamed of later.

The only weakness of this film arises because of circumstances beyond Méliès' control, such as the wind blowing the hammock and the positions of the fish swimming around in the aquarium. Most viewers--especially back in 1904 when this film premiered--will have their attention focused on the main action, though, so the weird little disruptions in motion and teleporting fish escapes notice... just like they would during a live magic show where keeping the audience focused on a specific thing is important to maintaining an illusion. Since I, as a reviewer, am looking for flaws, I pointing out some very nitpicky weaknesses in this otherwise excellent effort from a trailblazing special effects artist.

But you shouldn't take my word for it. Take a minute out of your busy day to watch a little old-time movie magic by clicking below!

It's Mermay!

For several years, artists have been posting pictures of mermaids every day in the month of May in observance of MerMay. This tradition was originated by veteran animator and illustrator Tom Bancroft to encourage young artists to hone their skills and share their work.

We're going to kinda-sorta take part in MerMay this year, with each Picture Perfect Wednesday this month spotlighting Chicks of the Sea!

We're kicking things off with Ann Blyth in a couple of promotional photos for "Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid". (We may even get around to posting a review of that film later this month.)

 

 
Here's a vaguely sea-related song to get the month started right. (Maybe we'll post a song every Wednesday, too, if we find ones that are appropriate!)

It's a Mohammed Monday!

 
THIS WEEK WITH JESUS & MO