T. J. Dobbin
@tjamesdobbin
I write about Bugs Bunny cartoons and other facets of old animation along with general cinema interests at www.strawberrypenguin.ca . I am based in Atlantic Canada, where it is very cold and very windy.
Book mail arrived. Arthur C. Clarke is one of my favourites from adolescence. His Space Odyssey novels were as important to me as Kubrick's film. I had read those, Childhood's End, and all his short stories. None of these 3, however! I will plot some time in the near future for another run at A.C.C.
animation can be timeless, but this is one of the most unmistakably Great Depression coded scenes in a pre-code cartoon.
Thrift store find today. Classic Hollywood films on DVD that aren't garbage public domain knockoff discs are a rarity at my local thrift stores. These are the Warner DVDs of Follow the Fleet (1936) and Shall We Dance (1937).
Also picked up the 6-volume VHS set of David Attenborough's The Private Life of Plants (1995). Love the mosaic across the spines.
Picked this up today from my friendly neighborhood used bookseller. Flipping through it putting me in the mood to rewatch every Kurosawa again.
New Wave Video and Radiance are collaborating on their own respective releases of Takashi Miike's Visitor Q and Gozu (Gozu on 4K UHD). I'll be buying the New Wave versions (my Visitor Q is in transit); I love their Visitor Q packaging and they're teasing a special box package for Gozu. I can't wait.
This read through has been inspired by Jay & Miles X-Plain The X-Men, a superlative podcast of 500+ episodes, which I've been listening to for 8 years (and which has been around 12 years), approaching their final batch of episodes, with an indepth coverage of Morrison's New-Men as their grand finale
Just started a reread of Grant Morrison's X-Men. It's been about ten years. A lot of superhero comic book art from 20-25 years ago has aged rather poorly, but Frank Quitely's illustrations and the manner in which they're inked and coloured holds up so well for a series from this period.
Frank Miller's 300. This is a book I've read a few times before, but only in digital, and as you can tell when you see the real thing, it's a highly compromised book to condense on a computer screen. This thing has absurd coffee table book dimensions.
After I finish my Star Trek original series rewatch I'll be revisiting the 6 films, and plan to read the novelizations alongside them; thus far this year I've been able to find 5 of them in thrift stores, picking up Wrath of Khan and Undiscovered Country last week.
Found this for $1.99 earlier today. It's a hardcover facsimile edition of L. Frank Baum's first two Oz novels (Wonderful Wizard of Oz and Land of Oz), complete with original illustrations from W.W. Denslow and John R. Neill.
Been spending a lot of time lately on second hand markets, browsing thrift stores. Gonna share some of the books I've obtained this month. First up, The Tale of the Heike. Have always wanted to read this and watch the Naoko Yamada animated series.
Tonight, Willow and I scale trash mountain with this VHS double feature.
Here are some awesome/cursed little guys I found at the thrift store. They did not come home with me, but I did spend about five minutes admiring them.
Just saw that James Burrows passed away, co-creator of Cheers. Only yesterday I found this absolute steal at a thrift store and grabbed it immediately, Cheers for $25 (perfect condition box, discs appear untouched). I avoid most streaming services and have been meaning to deep dive Cheers for years.
The Van Boring comic strip ran from January 1934 to June 1936, Tashlin's first directed Looney Tune Porky’s Poultry Plant is released August '36, this comic charts his early developments as an artist, learning how to block a scene and get the most out of the frame, and discover his comic sensibility
Frank Tashlin got his start in animation working under Amedee J. Van Beuren on Van Beuren studio cartoons. He quit in 1933 and went to Warners, while also starting a newspaper comic strip spoofing his former boss, in "Van Boring". Tish Tash's comic is finally getting a hardcover release this fall.
That said ...The Hunger is still the better of the two films I watched today. Damn, what a good day for watching films this has been.
Beginning to feel well enough to resume my projects. Next on the docket is Ub Iwerks and his frog Flip.
My Fleischer Cartoons Greatest Hits Blu-ray arrived today, along with my best friends in enamel pin form.
In this episode I express some anger I have for the superhero movie system and at one point say that I hate every MarvelDC movie on some level (even while enjoying some), because they're effectively an industry of plagiarism. That's not an exaggeration. This is an ongoing problem.