My review of the latest Looney Tunes Super Stars DVD, Sylvester & Hippety Hopper: Marsupial Mayhem, is now online at Jerry Beck’s Animation Scoop. You can view it at this link.
Marsupial Mayhem
Filed under classic animation
Thad’s Books
My review of the latest Looney Tunes Super Stars DVD, Sylvester & Hippety Hopper: Marsupial Mayhem, is now online at Jerry Beck’s Animation Scoop. You can view it at this link.
Filed under classic animation
Those idiots at WHV need to release the rest of the Famous Studios Popeye shorts and the Censored 11 cartoons. It’s frustrating how poorly managed these companies have become. The recession has been taking a far bigger toll than I previously thought.
Who drew that specific frame grab above? Rod Scribner? The way Hippety Hopper’s eye is drawn made me think of him. Manny Gould perhaps?
It’s Scribner, from Bell Hoppy.
Hmm, for some reason I can’t seem to post a comment on Animation Scoop, so I’ll post it here. No sense letting it go to waste.
Re-watching the cartoons on this set, my favorites (that is, the ones to make me laugh the most) were “Hop, Look and Listen”, “Hippety Hopper”, “Hoppy Go Lucky”, “Bell Hoppy”, “The Slap-Hoppy Mouse”, and “Goldimouse and the Three Cats”. The only two outright duds were the cheater “Freudy Cat” and the ho-hum “Claws in the Lease”.
I didn’t really have a big problem with the restoration on this release, though certain moments were dark (especially in “Hoppy Daze” for some strange reason). I would rank this above the Porky set, though, because at least none of these cartoons were dubbed versions or generic Blue Ribbons.
It’s interesting to note the differences in tone between the sole Freleng short here and the rest by McKimson. “Goldimouse” is a bit edgier and brasher, but it’s also a lot funnier than most of the post-55 McKimson cartoons on the set. Freleng’s comic timing was still genuinely solid.
And speaking of post-55, while the animation definitely took a hit during this time, I do genuinely like the animation by Keith Darling on a couple of those earlier shorts. They had a Virgil Ross-like elegance to them.
I thought this set was rather decent. Sure, the series can get repetitive, but wouldn’t the same reply to most of the Warners series such as the Roadrunners series. I still can’t tell what one gag come from what one cartoon for that series (with some exceptions). Anyway, the only cartoons I didn’t care for was the aformentioned cheater cartoon and the one with Durante(?) type cat coaching Sylvester.