As if cable television didn’t already provide a bewildering array of programming (where you still can’t find anything to watch), now multiple streaming services are coming online to dazzle your eyes and empty your wallet.
Most of them offer stuff you can see already on various cable channels (at least until those shows’ cable contracts run out), but each also offers their own original programming.
The oddest original (but nonetheless familiar) streaming series features a cast of performers all in their 80s but still capable of the most extreme physical stunts — “Looney Tunes Cartoons” on HBO Max.
Animator Peter Browngardt, who developed it for Warner Bros. Animation, attempted to capture the manic energy and humor of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig and all the rest of the Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies cartoon crew from the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s.
Various television series have already reinvented those same characters several times, but Browngardt & Co. made a deliberate effort to take them back to their original forms.
The first season has 10 episodes, each running about 12 minutes in length comprising two five-minute stories and one or two shorter gag reels (that is, a sequence of sight gag without a plot).
They’re all hilarious (almost up to the level of the originals), but in crafting them for modern viewers, the animators made some debatable choices.
For instance, these cartoons rely more on close-ups than the originals. That means less full-figure drawing and background detail and thus, in pragmatic terms, less expense. But that also fosters two aesthetic distractions.
First, it becomes more obvious that characters’ hands have only four fingers and, consequently, mildly disturbing with human characters.
Second, the animators, clearly influenced by the gross-out aesthetic of John Kricfalusi, creator of “Ren and Stimpy,” often toss in an extreme facial close-up replete with stray warts, moles and hairs in vivid contrast with a character’s normally smooth appearance.
They’ve also eliminated a sight gag that animation legend Chuck Jones had established as a recurring joke in his Roadrunner cartoons. Jones would freeze early action for a few seconds to label Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner with different fake scientific names (“Eatibus Almost Anythingus” and “Velocitus Delectibus,” for instance).
But perhaps these modern animators’ oddest choice was to eliminate guns from the cartoons — representing, presumably, a welling-up of sensitivity.
Let’s face it, though: The old Warner Bros. cartoon characters frequently sought to kill one another, and some of the funniest of those classic cartoons saw Elmer Fudd and Yosemite Sam, guns blazing, being bested by Bugs Bunny with words and sly tricks.
It would not be a problem, I suppose, if they credibly wrote around that absence. But they continue to show Elmer dressed as a hunter pursuing Bugs (in the shorter gag reels at least) — most often, bare-handed.
Does he plan to strangle the rabbit if he catches him?
That’s somewhat unsettling to ponder. Even worse, though, happens in “Dynamite Dance” where Elmer, again in hunter regalia, pursues Bugs with a scythe!
You couldn’t use a scythe to hunt anything that moves faster than wheat in the first place, and in the second if you could, the result would be truly gross. I’d wager more than 99 percent of moviegoers have never seen anyone use a scythe apart from homicidal maniacs in horror films with an agrarian setting.
And the Warner Bros. Animation politically correct decision not to show guns apparently doesn’t extend to cannons — at least not when Bugs uses one. Nor does it exclude dynamite. “Dynamite Dance” can boast (even revel in) the most detonations per minute in this series, but explosions punctuate a large percentage of the cartoons.
But at least blasts here only partially smudge characters’ faces rather than leaving them in the full blackface common in the 1930s and 1940s cartoons.
Warner Bros. Animation press releases claim they will be bringing back all the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies characters — including overly romantic skunk Pepe LePew. It will be interesting to see how they handle his amorous aggressions and whether that will involve explosives.
"original" - Google News
July 05, 2020 at 09:00PM
https://ift.tt/31OcbaK
Richard J. Leskosky | Looney Tunes, Merrie Melodies crew return in HBO Max original - Champaign/Urbana News-Gazette
"original" - Google News
https://ift.tt/32ik0C4
https://ift.tt/35ryK4M
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Richard J. Leskosky | Looney Tunes, Merrie Melodies crew return in HBO Max original - Champaign/Urbana News-Gazette"
Post a Comment