085 Summertime

 

Title: Summertime
Studio: Iwerks
Date: 06/15/35
Credits:
Produced by
UB IWERKS
Musical Score by
Carl Stalling
Series: ComiColor
Running time (of viewed version): 1:05:20-1:13:18: 7:58
Commercial DVD Availability: CTTFUICv1, B

Synopsis: Summer and Winter fight it out for supremacy. I suspect Winter's time will come again.

Comments: Blue winter demon. And a snow covered sun. Sun is hulking out. Snow man with a death march, revealing a demon faun. This is similar in many ways to the Lantz "Springtime Serenade" that came out about three weeks earlier. Sexy tree women silhouettes; dryads, I suppose. Centaur polo. A possible specific caricature on one of the centaurs; famous polo player? Ground hog reference, but no shadow issue. Wrongly named; the telegraph says it's springtime. There's the shadow reference. The Can Can plays. DId the fireflies actually go kamikaze? Actually a decent cartoon, if not spectacular. In some ways, it feels like a more effective (and less affected) Fantasia. I kind of wonder if C.S. Lewis based the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe on this cartoon... 

063 Mary's Little Lamb

1935 Number: 063
Title: Mary's Little Lamb
Studio: Iwerks
Date: 05/01/35
Credits: P.A. Powers Presents...
Produced by
Ub Iwerks
Musical Score by
Carl Stalling
Series: ComicColor Cartoon
Running time (of viewed version): 7:26
Commercial DVD Availability: CTTFUICv1, VOD

Synopsis: Pushy lamb hams it up during talent show performances by humans.



















Comments: First '35 I've watched for the blog since November 2010 (1/1/12). I wonder if there's a stylistic change in my writing.
Interesting title card. Weird little dancing walk cycle. Like tap dancing maybe? A main character in an Iwerks not designed to be as ugly as possible; how odd. (Explanation: Mary turned out to not be the main character.) Well, the teacher counterbalances that. Little Elmer; lots of Elmers. Deep voice. Lost opportunities in backgrounds, with things written but not provided as jokes. Reuse of animation. Little redheaded Percy seems to be just as girly as titular Mary. And then everyone in the class does a kind of limp wristed salute to him. ...'K. Even the ugly teacher does a slutty dance. Happy birthday plays a bit. It must have been almost new at the time. The teacher gets covered in soot without it becoming a black face gag. Mary more or less disappears from the narrative; she was only a delivery vehicle for the lamb. Silhouette crowd shot. Moving the background at a different rate than the foreground in the desk crawling scene. Integrated classroom without any racial gags. Inexplicable interlude with an anthropomorphic cow and horse; the cow is fully dressed, the horse has gloves and shoes. Cartoon opens with a pretty long background; a continuous shot for 57 seconds.

This is the first actual cartoon of a pretty full month. 18 cartoons and two that don't exist.

047 Old Mother Hubbard

Title: Old Mother Hubbard
Studio: Iwerks
Date: 04/03/35
Credits:
Produced by
Ub Iwerks
Musical Score by
Carl Stalling
Series: Comicolor
Running time (of viewed version): 42:08-50:13=8:05
Commercial DVD Availability: CTTFUIv1, VOD (I think; it might be v2)

Synopsis: Laundry dog gets job as jester.















Comments: I wonder if the word for underwear was intentionally bleeped or if it was forcibly bleeped. Shadows on the road. The song is reminiscent of what Clampett would still be using in 1939 for the Porky Pig Hotel. There's minimal effect on the world from the characters' actions. Hot white haired queen. I assume it is a specific caricature the dog does in the "cheer Up/what do you look so grumpy/be a regular guy" song (Frenchman? Charles Boyer?). In the storied tradition of cartoons, this ditches its title character.