Word: bakshi
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...AMERICAN POP, Ralph Bakshi tries to do for pop music what Walt Disney did for classical in Fantasia, expanding the melodies into coherent, complex visual experiences. Unfortunately, while Bakshi's animation technique often stupefies, his jumbled, negative vision drags his effort down...
...Bakshi seems almost to be the next generation's Disney, provoking blushes (Fritz the Cat, rated X) and gushes (Wizzards, Lord of the Rings). By animating from real-life shots, he limns every nuance of motion, creating a super-reality. Land-scapes and interiors glow with a beauty and vividness that challenge the work of many non-animator cinematographers...
...Bakshi has taken on more than a lusting feline or a surreal novel, and tackles pop music of the twentieth century. That he seeks unity and tries to place it on the screen is admirable, but his attempt to attribute such various forces as blues and punk under one man's family is lunacy...
...opening titles chart out the ambitious journey: photos of America--at the turn of the century, through art-deco, to the protests of the sixties--swirl before the camera to a medley of the songs that will mark the movie's progress. Throughout, Bakshi returns to pictures by Jacob Riis or film clips from The War at Home to stress the parallels between his work and the real world. Yet it all rings false, especially given the true origins of today's popular music...
...thanks to sponsors like the National Film Board of Canada, dozens of artists doodle away. None produces characters so round or squeaky-cute as Disney's or as bawdy and animalistic as Bakshi's. Instead they often depict very real people in not-so-real situations. The best of these is Why Me?, the story of Nesbitt Spoon, an average CPA-type who learns from his doctor that he has only a short time to live--five minutes (and counting). Understandably, Mr. Spoon panics, and his creators have scripted their story so well that it matches perfectly the stages...