If you live in the LA area and want to drop a comment in my second LACMA covering post, the signature drive is still open- but I have something to tell you.
Unless Jerry brings me more updates in the next 15 minutes, I am going to be hitting the hay soon since I live in EST time zone.
Tommorow- Did the executives like it? And some surprises too! Did we get an audience. The post-screening coverage begins tommorow morning.
Welcome back to Classic Paramount Cartoons' coverage of the LACMA Paramount Animation screening. We need more seats. If you're in LA, and all you're doing is banging your paddleball wondering what to do, 5 bucks is all you need if you want to show up at 9 pm PST for a bunch of Paramount oldies. If you're also a South Park fan, show up earlier for an addition $5 for the feautre, "South Park: Bigger Longer And Uncut".
While the feature did fine of course, we need more people......If you want Paramount cartoons played on your DVD player or TV, or an official YouTube channel with better quality copies of stuff you can't find on public domain videos, please attend the screening.
Anyways, it looks like some great Paramount cartoons will be shown. And don't worry, nothing un-PC will be shown like the "Jasper" series.
If one person is committed to attending in the comments section from the LA area by 9 pm PST/11, I will post the opening/closing titles to a cartoon I hinted earlier, usually seen in Eastmancolor on an NTA print or with fake inserted Paramount logos, but in gorgeous 35mm Teechnicolor with original Paramount opening/closing logos, subject to Jerry Beck's permission.
Your pal ParamountCartoons here covering very briefly for the LACMA screening of Paramount cartoons at 9 pm PST following SOUTH PARK: BIGGER, LONGER AND UNCUT. Why is it so important? Since current Paramount Pictures execs will be seeing how well it does with an audience, which MAY influence their decision for a proper restoration for the home and digital market, specfically the DVD and Blu-ray.
Rumor has it the hardest-to-find theatrical print being shown is the pilot of the ultimate fall-holiday crossbreed of Gus, Fernidad the Bull, and Superman. Hint- the voice of Animaniacs' Slappy Squirrel wrote a live-action movie about this character for one of her famous bosses (which that movie will get a reboot)!!!!
For my complex hint of what one of the rarer cartoons is will be, be blown away by whatever it is, because there is a lot of bad faded NTA prints of that cartoons, and the audio has been in those prints either low pitched or time-compressed (sometimes you'll find bad prints at normal speed, though).
I'm going to get Jerry to take notice of this post......
Apparently, Jerry likes ANYTHING odd in animation, so my post involving Little Audrey's first forerunner- Santa's Surprise, and some UK/India remake that is a mess- was worth posting on The Brony Birtplace- Cartoon Brew. It's an honor really for someone who wanted to find years of a discovery (A Paramount copy of OLD MACDONALD, Betty Boops with original titles, etc.)
To see the story and not screenshots
GO HERE: http://www.cartoonbrew.com/classic/santas-surprise-redux.html
I am a fan of "The Fairly OddParents". I fantasize the edginess and sometimes the raunchiness if creator Butch Hartman decided to have a seperate extereme adult-oriented theatrical series as a companion to the "children's" television series counterpart of FOP. Also, the Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon competition was a real pain in the butt once I switched after I felt DragonBall Z was too violent and the cartoons on CN (even the old 90's ones and early 2000's) were stupid. The switch to Nickelodeon was very late for you 90's complainers. I thought Nickelodoen was too "cool" and "laid-back" when I was a child. Luckily, the Nicktoons channel got me caught up in some classic nick as well as Nick GaS. Keep in mind when I first watched a full episode of SpongeBob in school (on a Paramount videotape), I was getting into public domain cartoons, primarily the Paramount cartoon library.
Allthough the "edgy" series I imagined for FOP was not gang-oriented, but my imaginary series did have Timmy swearing.
This gang-film spoof (possibly has elements to Scarface as one user commented) is the ultimate fight for a competition. (and on nick's message boards at one point, people wanted a CN/Nick crossover).
The secret to Lionsgate restoring Betty Boop (other than the convincing part)? 9.5 mm home movie prints!
Here we find some transfers of some original-titled Betty Boop cartoons, pre-dating the UM&M negative cutting. If the original titles on the head of all the Bettys in the UCLA archive deteroiated, then for Jerry Beck this would be PURE GOLD. Nobody's seen the real original titles to these, including the most common on all PD Betty sets. Oh, execpt for those who saw it in the movies in the 1930's. They probably 99% didn't pay attention to the credits, so to keep it fresh in your minds
My only three complaints were that there were too many dancing objects, too much talking, and no Paramount logo parody (or a UM&M or NTA logo parody due to negative cutting's inacessiblity to see the original openings).
This a great restored version. But, it's missing the Paramount logo, extra time for the main title card and the sing-along.
Of course this is coming from Lobster Films in France.
I wish Paramount would put this on DVD or Blu-ray, period just so I can see the complete opening with the Paramount logo. No sub-licensing to Lionsgate, but a DVD or Blu-ray. It could be a general collector's item with a few bonus kiddie 'Famous toons. Jerry Beck, if you're listening, get this in the most marketable way you can get the screwy executives from Paramount, even if you have to compete with YouTube and public domain DVD's.
It's just one day until the Oscars, so I decided to post this contest that has an awards-show theme. GAC (not referring to the country channel, but Golden Age Cartoons, an animation fan and history website) has this annual contest to see if they can be a "legally-able" graphic designer for a public domain video company, or some studio release that had not passed on too well to Jerry Beck to even like the cover work. Depending on the user's mood, some just want to take advantage of the contest to just make an unoriginal joke so they can get their cover noticed (not me), or some have the same idea, but make a funnier version of it. Some are downright creepy, and some are laugh-out-loud. This pokes fun at: A) Unwary buyers B) The content shown in our favorite classic cartoons C) The imposiblity to have every classic cartoon ever made have the perfect official release that everyone can afford or have access to, never buying those knockoff tapes ever again (ya hear that DVNR inventors and Brad Grey!(and especially studios who did even the slightest whiff of badly on the sets- even with one minor error that got big complaints)
Of course, rather than get a job to PD video companies, they simply get videos and DVD's, both PD and official.
This contest is probably what I would call "postmodern" art whatever that means (correct me if I'm wrong), this is a good example:
All he could think about was "Golden Farmer Porky", so he decided to put in "a movie" with some "cartoons" and modified some swiped designs of popular-sample covers from contests' past.
I think the funniest covers that I could renember
Of course, Paramount Pictures (the studio that this blogs' cartoons are devoted to), gets a pat on the back for their backlog of cartoons' winning twice in a row as a theme.
I closed my YouTube account (from my Butterscotch and Soda post Youtube post, sorry it wasn't covered in this blog.) because someone offered me a gift (Paramount cartoon-related). I am no way comfortable accepting gifts even though I feel really both good and more extremely unwantingly (and perhaps undneedingly) guilty of this situation because it was too good of an offer to refuse. I made someone feel bad (and if he is obessed with things made him truamatized) because I did the right thing, and it just is really depressing. This is coming from a man who liked someone but she wasn't comfortable to talk to me which truamatized me and worsened my fantasies.
Now the good news....the site I left has some great B&W (and one orginally in color) prints of Inkwell Imps and Talkatoons/Betty Boop. A few have some recrations, but are mostly from the original negatives and are not as fake as the slightly faded 1947-1949 Technicolor mountain openings with the end title opening the cartoon on Archive.org Paramount color cartoons masking the NTA and a.a.p. logos that were on the TV prints (not sure what the deal with that "Old MacDonald" print with the fake mountain but original titles that turns up on YouTube on ocassion).
Anyways, these are left over from the UM&M negative cutting that irrates me. Why did all of the B&W cartoons have those UM&M titles than the color ones do?
Well, here they are.
And a bonus time-compressed print of a Screen Song by Fleischer
Only someone with a skill in Flash could animate this opening title sequence to look exactly like a Famous Studios cartoon from the 40's and 50's. I just couldn't imagine someone else obessing over the original Paramount titles of a Famous Studios cartoon to the degree that they wanted to make their own opening. It's been done to death in Looney Tunes, but to use an opening that would broaden the library of the Famous Studios cartoon is just something. I swore on this one UPN news program that they used some sort of Paramount Famous Studios-era mountain look for the backdrop framed on the back of the extreme shot of the anchors. Guess that memory and the Paramount Teleplex helped with the branding of a United Paramount Network. But that's about it- nobody's done a cartoony mountain in the spirit of whatever Famous Studios animator painted those logos. (Of course, Harvey's mascot is another reminder of Paramount openings). Without further ado.....
I get giddy over low-budget student films sometimes when I see them in a festival.
While the "Best Of Show" winners have not been announced on the internet, here are some pre-thoughts on this year's "Detroit School Oscars".
This festival was a obession of mine before I rediscovered Paramount's cartoons again- or around that time.
In fact the production of my first entry was only a couple of years after the tape of "you-know-what" broke, less Popeye and I forgot all about those cartoons.
The state with the high unemployment rate has a tax incentive for Hollywood, Fleischer fan/friend Ray Pointer, some other Golden Age Cartoons forum members, and every year in the so-called Motor City- the winners are picked. The grand prize is given to multiple films known as the "Best of Show"- and those Best Of Show winners are shown up at the movie theater in Detroit's art museum.
Nobody knew the truth about what the prizes is, allthough I have fun watching the winners.
In fact since everybody gets a classified award who enters, techincally I'm not a winner. There's Honor, Merit, and these are more in retrospect either losers or nominations. The award system isn't as well-known as how those big award shows work, among them the Oscars and Emmys, because it's very confusing for a proud family (no pun intended about that Disney Channel cartoon done by one of my favorite Disney villian animaton directors).
Now, because of the Oscar win for the Detroit-area's "The Crunch Bird" and the recent death of the filmmaker (Ted Petok), I think he needs to be reconized with some sort of tribute, wheteher there be an age-apporiate clip of "The Crunch Bird" and some of his Sesame Street/Electric Company skits
Here are some fun past winners (one that I do remember)
I've spoken with the people who seemingly own the cartoons:
-Paramount -Lionsgate -Viacom
and I've also spoken with the UCLA Film Archive.
Who owns them?
They all didn't know.
As I quote in an old e-mail to Jerry Beck:
"Oh, the rights are so confusing."
If the owner is just public domain, then we need to remaster the cartoons OURSELVES along with Harvey and Paramount(just license to use their logo). I'm speaking to you animation experts.
If the owner is a "somebody", then people have got to shape up. It seems as if nobody cares, and brings a sniff to my eye.
If the executives at Viacom and Lionsgate don't think Betty Boop is hot, here is a situtation that is going to get hotter.
Aesop's "The Mouse Who Belled the Cat" and Ray Pointer's relation to writing a bunch of letters and such has finally...come true.
While we're waiting for 1980's revivals of The Alvin Show and Mighty Mouse to be out on DVD, people want the original Paramount cartoons and Terrytoons to be on DVD.
Yes, it's madness. Sheer madness.
No matter how much of the Viacom/Lionsgate executives don't give us the response we want- it still gives us more to ask for.
The Shout Factory and GAC Forums are having their forums devoted to getting these classics on DVD. The rights are seemingly confusing. Does Paramount own Betty Boop or does Lionsgate own Betty Boop?
