Word: freleng
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Cartoon directors are kids at heart, and the Warner aces (Jones, Avery, Friz Freleng, Bob Clampett) were brilliant kids, all in their 20s or early 30s, when they created Porky, Daffy and Bugs. Freleng was the anchor, making crisp vaudeville comedies. Clampett bent his stories and pummeled his characters into manic, surreal, endless inventive farce; his great period (1942-46) deserves a book of its own. Jones' films were about people--all right, barnyard critters, but human withal--who endured life's vithithitudes (as Daffy would say) with amazing grace and Charlie Chaplin's physical...
DIED. ISADORE ("FRIZ") FRELENG, 89, animator; in Los Angeles. In 1930 Freleng joined Warner Bros., where he animated the A list of cartoondom: Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, Yosemite Sam. Freleng won five Oscars for his blend of frenzied action and idiosyncratic characters...
...spent in their company, it takes a stern suspension of belief to remember that these star actors were born and raised in the genially warped minds of a cell of young cartoonists 40 and 50 years ago. Of the six major Warner's directors--Jones, Isadore ("Friz") Freleng, Robert McKimson, Bob Clampett, Fred ("Tex") Avery and Frank Tashlin--the first three spanned virtually the entire life of the shop, from the early or mid-30s until it was closed in 1963. In 1937 Warner's hired Mel Blanc, the man of a thousand funny voices, most of them sounding like...
...cassette buyers should understand what Critic Manny Farber realized about the Warner's cartoons in 1943, "That ( the good ones are masterpieces, and the bad ones aren't a total loss." It would be fine if films with such titles as Porky in Wackyland (Clampett), Show Biz Bugs (Freleng), Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2th Century (Jones), What's Opera, Doc? (Jones) and Duck Amuck (glorious Jones) were embraced by the canons of academe. But imagining this, one can also hear Daffy grouse, "What a revoltin' development thith ith." Better, perhaps, for the Warner siblings to wear their garlands lightly...
Here is a rarity: a muckraking movie that was not made for TV. The subject of this Canadian melodrama is a religious cult like the Moonies, and Director R.L. Thomas' tone is about as judicious as Friz Freleng's. David (Nick Mancuso), depressed over a short-circuited affair, falls in with some "Heavenly Children" who presoak his brain with homilies and then scrub it clean of all hope, feeling, self. Although it has plenty of impact, Ticket is often too busy being outraged to bother with niceties of characterization and plot. (Just how does David become converted...