[extropy-chat] Vintage Cartoons for your holiday

[pjmanney]

>What's Opera Doc? (1957)
>http://video.yahoo.com/video/play?vid=cfaf9b53f177c714363e3ae15d68903c.79e4167a
>bfb722243c59a5ad326f8edf
>
>One Froggy Evening (1956)
>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saU-Bl0feSs

Excellent list, Amara!  I have to say that "One Froggy Evening" is perhaps the most perfect piece of visual storytelling ever made.  It is funny for all ages, concise, elegant, has no dialogue (except for the frog's singing) and therefore is accessible to all.  It's also profound.  It relates a great truth about human behavior that resonates far into the future (as depicted at the end by a future construction worker in a glass bubble-helmet) -- wishful thinking and greed destroys us, yet it makes the world go round.  Time may pass and technology may change, but our self-destructive human foibles are still with us.  Ain't it the truth.

"What's Opera Doc?" is my other favorite cartoon of all time -- a perfect marriage of high culture and low humor.  And Bugs Bunny in drag (and in this one, Valkyrie drag at that) is one of the few cultural icons we can proudly pass down to our descendents.

If you've never seen these, you are missing out on two major pieces of animation history.  And if you've seen better motion picture storytelling, I'd like to know where.

The incomparable Chuck Jones wrote and directed both.  What a genius.
 He's on my personal short list of those I'd like to bring back from the dead.  F@#%ing genius.  <sigh>

Wishing you all a wonderful 2007,
PJ