Word: cartoons
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Jones and Maltese (and composer Carl Stalling and versatile vocalist Mel Blanc) was their development of the Warners' stock company. Porky Pig was the harassed middle-management type, Elmer Fudd the chronic, choleric dupe. Bugs Bunny (introduced by director Tex Avery in 1940's A Wild Hare) became the cartoon Cagney--urban, crafty, pugnacious--and then the blase underhare who wins every battle without ever mussing his aplomb; one raised eyebrow was enough to semaphore his superiority to the carnage around...
...Hears a Who! He wrote two delightful memoirs, Chuck Amuck and Chuck Reducks. And for a 1985 Museum of Modern Art tribute to Warner Bros. animation, he drew new Bugses and Daffys on the Manhattan museum's walls--a tacit acknowledgment from the world of high culture that this cartoon man was a significant creator of modern...
...team, and that was more than enough; that was heaven. Even in the 60s, when the genre was long past its vital prime, yet the industry keep producing bantamweight musical series starring Doris Day, Elvis Presley, Frankie and Annette. As recently as the 90s, Disney?s tremendously successful cartoon features were musicals, with songs that hit the top of the charts. For ages, the genre was both popular and officially revered: nine times in the first 40 years of Academy Awards, and five times between 1958 and 1968, the top Oscar went to a musical...
...viewer?s eyes always go to Kelly?s body; not for nothing is the documentary called "Anatomy of a Dancer." You might start with the face: its cartoon-hero smoothness, with that possibly synthetic Pepsodent smile, is mocked by the crescent of a scar on his left cheek (childhood bike accident). But you?d soon notice his form-fitting couture: the sleeves of a tight white sweater rolled up to expose Popeye forearms or, in the dream sequence of "An American in Paris," the nowhere-to-hide body suit in which he assumes the impossible poses of Toulouse-Lautrec...
...with his feet. It was in these solo "stunt" numbers that Kelly and Astaire seemed to compete with each other most explicitly; each invented ever-more outlandish and amazing virtuoso bits with props and especially film tricks. Gene dances with his shadow self ("Cover Girl") or with Jerry the cartoon mouse ("Anchors Aweigh"). Fred dances slo-mo in the foreground while the background dancers move in regular time ("Easter Parade") or up a wall and across the ceilings ("Royal Wedding"). And though the "Got-ta Dance" ballet in "Singin? in the Rain" is terrif, it?s not the number that...