Word: cartoons
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Darkness of a movie house, bind them with the fetters that a $4.00 admission fee lashes to its victims and force them to watch a cinematic travesty. He could not have known that his epic fantasy trilogy, The Lord of The Rings, would one day become a sloppy animated cartoon billed as the triumph of the imagination in movies. He could not have known...or he might not ever have written the books...
...formulaic and even trite in the books. Moreover, his animations are wooden and lazy -- groups of figures will stand without moving while a battle rages around them. The synch of the lips and sound falters and only for brief moments can you forget that this thing is a cartoon. Bakshi superimposes animation and live footage, washing the whole scene in psychedelic colors, negative images and painted color. Yet for all the apparent flash, Bakshi's imagination runs dry quickly and soon the characters, landscapes, and action repeat themselves...
...sword fightin' and horse ridin', because Tolkien subtly leads you into his world and somehow makes you care about what goes on there, makes you afraid of the evil which threatens it, and involves you in the adventures as if you were there. Bakshi's world is merely a cartoon, somehow you can't get around that whether you know the books or not, as my companion who had never read them attested. Perhaps Bakshi asked for a leap of imagination that was too great for me to make -- Tolkien certainly asks for one that is too great for many...
...these dangers; he also knew that the task of translating this ring-cycle to the screen had stymied some of the most formidable names in Hollywood, including Walt Disney, and still he plunged ahead. Bakshi brought to this project none of the brass and sass that animated his earlier cartoon features including the X-rated Fritz the Cat and the jive-talking Heavy Traffic. If reverence had wings, his new picture would fly. The fact that it hobbles simply proves again that the road to Mordor is paved with good intentions...
...foreground constantly throngs with figures, and this is where trouble begins. To achieve such massed scenes, next to impossible in normal animation, Bakshi first created a live-action film and then had the cartoon traced over it, virtually frame by frame. The technique allows for large-scale battles and much hacking and hewing, as well as some distracting side effects. When the crowds are especially dense or the action swift, the superimposed cartoon fades to a sketchy approximation. The live actor-models flicker like ghosts behind a thin wash of color, and the viewer feels an urge to apply...