Best Animated Short - 1935

We are coming ever so close to the end of the line. Thankfully there's still the 2013 Oscar race to start preparing for, but the question now is what to do with this blog once I get through these last four reviews. Do I just sit around for a year and then spring into action every November when the next year's Oscar race comes into being? Do I make random posts about some other animation topics once in a while? Do I go ahead and review the Best Animated Feature nominees? That actually doesn't sound like a bad idea, but it'll take much longer than these reviews of short films whose films are short, but it still takes me hours to write them. I was toying around with posting these reviews on tumblr, but it hasn't amounted to much. We shall see.

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Best Animated Short - 1936

Hooray! My COMLEX 3 is over and I can finally relax and enjoy myself at Nightmare Nights Dallas this weekend! How did it go, you ask? Well how should I know? I'm writing this three weeks early so I won't have to waste much more time studying. Oh the joys of getting a nice long queue.

Anyways, now that we're in the 1930s it's kind of weird to go back and see just how different things were, especially in the game of baseball. In 1936 there were only 11 300-game winners. 30-win seasons and .400 seasons were uncommon but not impossible. The first Hall of Fame voting was held as the BBWAA elected Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner, Babe Ruth (just one year removed from his last game), the late Christy Mathewson, and Walter Johnson. And a 17-year-old high school kid named Bob Feller is able to make it to the big leagues and strike out his age, even if it was against the hapless Philadelphia Athletics. Yes, things sure were different back in 1936. And yet the animated short films remain as timeless now as they were back in 1936. Some of them were, at least.

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Best Animated Short - 1939

Ah, 1939, the last year of the Depressing '30s. It is the year that Germany invaded Poland, thereby turning what had previously been a messy conflict going on in China into a true World War. It was the year a young kid named Ted Williams burst onto the scene fresh from the beaches of San Diego and led the league in RBIs while blasting 31 home runs, but not even he can help the Red Sox topple the Yankees, who went on to win their fourth straight pennant en route to their fourth straight World Series title over Willard Hershberger's Reds.

But for most people, 1939 is the pinnacle of Hollywood moviemaking. Oh, there have been several other great years. 1994 was a particularly good year (Pulp Fiction, Forrest Gump, The Shawshank Redemption), and so were 1951 (A Streetcar Named Desire, The African Queen), 1959 (Ben-Hur, North By Northwest, Some Like It Hot), 1969 (Midnight Cowboy, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid), 1974 (Chinatown, The Godfather Part II), 1976 (Rocky, Network, Taxi Driver), but for most film fanatics 1939 was tops.

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Best Animated Short - 1940

Well, we're in the year of 1940. It's not quite as memorable as 1941, but it's got its moments. One significant moment was the suicide of Willard Hershberger. Hershberger was a catcher with the Cincinnati Reds. You'd think that somebody that's played baseball at the major leagues would be set for life, but you'd be dead wrong. There is nothing more mentally stressful than a career in professional sports. Think about it, you spend essentially your whole life dedicating yourself to a sport, where you dominated at virtually every level. Then you get thrust into a work environment where all of a sudden your best may not be good enough, and even if it is and you do get to the majors, you'd have to maintain your level of performance lest somebody else takes your job. And you don't have anything to fall back on. Those that are not on solid ground mentally usually do something drastic once their careers end.

History is littered with players that decided to end their lives: Catcher Marty Bergen killed himself and his family in 1900. Popular young star Win Mercer drank gas to end his life. A pitcher named Pea Ridge Day slit his throat after an unsuccessful operation on his pitching arm. And Christy Mathewson's brother Nicholas shot himself in the head from the stresses of trying to maintain his studies while playing professional ball. It's a brutal track record.

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Best Animated Short - 1941

1941, what a memorable year. It was the year Ted Williams hit a walk-off home run in the All Star game, and went on to hit .406 to become the last hitter to bat .400 in a year they qualified for the batting title. Yet his accomplishment went mostly unnoticed as fellow outfielder Joe DiMaggio stole most of the thunder with his legendary 56-game hitting streak. He later played a role in the Yankees' Game 4 comeback in the World Series that started after Mickey Owen couldn't get his hands on Hugh Casey's spitball. It was the year that Lou Gehrig lost his battle against what may or may not be the disease that bears hi name today. And of course the "date which will live in infamy" happened in 1941.


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Ranking the Oscar Nominated Shorts: 1942-1951

Well, it's that time again: Time to hunker down, look at the films from the past ten reviews and rank them subjectively by how much I liked them. It's the seventh time that I'll do one of these, and it's also the second to the last, as there are only ten reviews left to go. Unfortunately, there's no telling how long it'll take me to get those ten reviews out. I've made my list two weeks ago when I still had a sizable queue, but I've just gotten so busy and tired that I just haven't felt like writing. So now I've got like no queue. I'm hoping that I can get back on track after this week but considering the next review is the epic 1941 where ten films were nominated, I can't make any guarantees.

But enough talk, let's get to the rankings. There are 51 films from these past ten years, thanks to all the years with six or seven nominations.

NULL: Rippling Romance (1945)
This Columbia cartoon is now considered lost. That may not be the case based on what Thad (Komorowski?) has said, but he's also the one that says the film isn't worth getting declared not-lost.

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Best Animated Short - 1943

It's August 7. On this day nine years ago Greg Maddux of the Chicago Cubs worked through a gritty start just long enough to go five innings and have his team take the lead against the San Francisco Giants. The Cubs would score a few more insurance runs and the Cubs ended up with an 8-4 win, the 300th victory of his career. Of course Maddux wasn't the only pitcher to record his 300th win in the week between August 4-11. On August 11, 1961, Warren Spahn wound up on top in a gritty 2-1 battle against the Cubs thanks to an 8th-inning home run by Gino Cimoli. On August 4, 1985, Tom Seaver won his 300th game in New York, but wearing the uniform of the Chicago White Sox when he defeated the Yankees 4-1 on Phil Rizzuto Day. And on August 5, 2007, Tom Glavine became the second Tom to win 300 when he topped the Cubs 8-3. A grand total of four pitchers can celebrate the anniversaries of their milestone win on the week of August 4-11. No other week-long period can boast that many.

And what does that have to do with the Academy Awards? Nothing whatsoever!

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Best Animated Short - 1945

Well, we're into 1945, and that means we're into the years that I've been dreading. Now there are rules in place limiting the maximum number of nominees in the Best Animated Short category to five. There were no such rules in place in the early 1940s, so there were more than five nominees every year from 1941-1945, with as many as ten in one year. Considering it's been taking me upwards of eight hours to write a review for a five-nominee year (although most of the time is spent distracting myself on sites like Facebook and Equestria Daily), I can't fathom how long it'll take me to write these reviews. Especially since I have the equivalent of a full time job now. But we'll try to power our way through.


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Best Animated Short - 1947

Sometimes I've been thinking, why do I even bother? I've been putting hours upon hours into this blog, and the posts with the most views have had nothing to do with Oscar nominated shorts. Granted I've done more advertising with those posts, but that may be because I don't feel like the actual reviews are good enough to warrant advertising. If I post it on reddit like I did with the Rainbow Dash film I'm sure it'll get a negative score so fast it'll make my head spin. So yeah, with my work ramping up exponentially I'm thinking I may have to go into another hiatus. But if a blog that nobody reads go into hiatus, does it matter?

Whatever.

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Best Animated Short - 1948

Aah! Residency has begun! I'm now experiencing the joys of working a full time job for the first time in my life! Now I'm not sure if I'll ever have time to finish up these last 17 reviews! And whatever you do don't go to a teaching hospital for the next few months. In reality I'm writing this a week before orientation starts, so I've got a little bit more time to churn out some more  reviews, but I'm not looking forward to losing all my free time...for the rest of my life. But hey, that's what I was getting myself into when I chose this profession so might as well suck it up and go in there with drive and ambition! It's what Rainbow Dash would do!


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Best Animated Short - 1949

I love my grandma. At 91 she has been through so much, from the Sino-Japanese War to the Chinese Civil War and eventual exile to Taiwan, but she is still sharp and optimistic. I enjoy listening to her stories about growing up in China in the 1920s and 1930s, about her mischievous adventures with her older brother*, and the embarrassing story involving my dad and aunts. Of course, she also had some difficult stories, such as stories involving Japanese brutality or the difficult times in the post-war Shanghai. One of the most haunting stories was how she was at the bedside of my great-grandmother when she passed away. In my sheltered existence it's hard to imagine how difficult it must have been. My grandma was only 27. She had just fled to Taiwan, and now she was watching her mother-in-law-to-be die in front of her eyes. The moment is still sharp in her memory, especially since she recently observed that two of her children had lived to be 60, which was how old my great-grandmother was at her passing.

*Most of her tales were involved middle brother, four years her senior. She also had an eldest brother that was nine years older. She usually held him in higher regard because he was so much older and more mature than her. I am nine years older than my youngest sister. I wonder what sort of stories she will tell her grandchildren when she is 91. How I am obsessed with a cartoon pony? How much of a baseball fan I was? Gosh, what would people think about animation like My Little Pony in 2085? And how many 300 game winners would there be by then? Sometimes I wish to have a time machine like in Doraemon to figure out the answers to these questions.

Gee...that's some heavy stuff. Why am I telling you all this? Because that happened in 1949. Yeah...let's move on to the Oscars.

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Best Animated Short - 1950

And we are now ready to bid good-bye to the 1950s. It was a good decade, with tons of classic films and several years with only three Best Animated Short nominees and the golden age of baseball when the Yankees ruled the sport. But most of all it was the decade where almost but one of my aunts and uncle was born*. My oldest aunt was born in the year 1950, and so she is now closing in on her 63rd birthday in August, which makes her approximately the same age my grandma when I was born. Which means I'm now the same age that my grandmother was when she had my oldest aunt. My reaction to that is the same as Ludwig von Drake after his horrible pun in A Symposium on Popular Songs. But such is the effects of time. We're all getting older, and some day in the distant future we'll be as relevant as the people from the 1860s that went about their daily life.

*My mom's youngest brother was born in 1961.

Well, that's enough depressing stuff. Let's move onto the Oscars.

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Best Animated Short - 1951

So sad that my post earlier this week about Rainbow Dash being awesome got more than four times the views than any of my other posts. That's what I get for posting it on Reddit. Maybe I should do it for my reviews. Hmm...

Anyways, here we are now at the year 1951. That year is significant because it featured the debuts of two of baseball's biggest and brightest stars: Willie Mays, and my favorite player growing up Mickey Mantle. Both of them were highly touted rookies, although they both struggled a little bit out of the gate. Mays famously went hitless in his first three games before blasting a home run off of Warren Spahn. He recovered to hit .274/.356/.472 and won the Rookie of the Year award. Mantle's story is even more famous. He was completely lost at the plate (although still hitting .260/.341/.423 but with 52 strikeouts in an era where strikeouts were shameful) so he was sent down to AAA Kansas City, where he continued to stink it up and threatened to quit. Then his father, dying of cancer, drove up from Oklahoma to bring his disgraceful son back home where he can hide in shame in the mines for the rest of his life. The incident was a slap in the face for Mantle, and he strove to continue on. He made it back to the majors and put up respectable numbers, although the Rookie of the Year award went to his teammate Gil McDougald. Then the two spent the next 15 years terrorizing pitchers, putting up legendary feats that would solidify their places in baseball history.

This sort of dual debuts of players that would become superstars are quite rare. There's been a couple of cases where both winners of the Rookie of the Year ended up in the Hall of Fame*, but except for Tom Seaver none of those Hall of Famers really feel like they're in the upper echelons of baseball history. It wasn't until 50 years later that baseball finally had two big stars burst onto the scene at the same time. Albert Pujols overcame his status as a 13th-round draft pick to blast 37 home runs and 130 RBIs, while Ichiro Suzuki came over from Japan to lead the American League in hits and stolen bases while helping his team win a record-tying 116 games. Those two continued to become the biggest stars in baseball until they started breaking down around two years ago. And last year had two very intriguing Rookie of the Year winners: Mike Trout and Bryce Harper. We'll see how they'll be remembered 62 years from now. But for now Mantle and Mays are the standard bearers.

*1956: Luis Aparicio and Frank Robinson
1967: Tom Seaver and Rod Carew
1977: Eddie Murray and Andre Dawson

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Best Animated Short - 1952

Ah, we have arrived at 1952. Apologies to everybody that was born in 1952 (including my aunt who would probably never read this blog entry), but 1952 just feels like an undistinguished year to me. Other than the birth year of my aunt I really can't think of anything significant from this year. Yeah, 1951 has the dual debuts of Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle, the Shot Heard Around the World, and an epic lineup of Best Picture nominees. 1953 saw the birth of George Brett, Mickey Mantle's legendary 565-foot home run (that probably didn't go 565 feet), and the fifth consecutive World Series win by the Yankees. And what did 1952 have? The birth of my aunt, which is much more of a personal thing.

Perhaps it's due to the fact that the films of 1952 were rather undistinguished. There is only one film that really stands out today, and that was the delightful Gene Kelly musical Singin' in the Rain. But Singin' in the Rain was only a modest hit at the box office, and scored only two Oscar nominations. The Gary Cooper Western melodrama High Noon is also highly regarded today, but it did even worse at the box office and was highly criticized for its supposed allegory on the Hollywood blacklisting.

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Best Animated Short - 1954

So today is George Brett's 60th birthday, and it is also one of the saddest days of my trip. Yes, as this post is going up I will be returning from Taiwan to prepare to return to my normal life, which includes graduating from med school, either moving or getting my unexpected roommate to move out after seven long months, and onto residency and beyond. Considering I'm only in my first week at Taiwan, it's a bit sad to think that in a few short days I'll be leaving, but that's just a consequence of the inevitability of the passage of time. That's something that has been bothering me for ages and is now still haunting me.

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A "Tom and Jerry" Update

Warner Bros. might be listening to us animation fans after all...

Of course, as many of you may know, Tom and Jerry Golden Collection Volume Two was to arrive to stores this summer but without two controversial cartoons: Mouse Cleaning and Casanova Cat. This was, of course, contradictory to the fact that the series was aimed at the adult collector and not for children, and that the series would contain all of the short subjects uncut. A representative for WB went as far as justifying the removal of the two cartoons on WB Classic Animation's Facebook page, saying that they were "inappropriate" for the "intended audience" - the adult collector. We sure got angry. Blog posts, forum posts and even close to 100 one-star reviews of the forthcoming set on Amazon.com ensued... Us animation fans weren't going to be robbed like this, especially after what we got with the excellent first volume.

What we know so far is that a higher up in Warner Bros.' legal department doesn't want these two shorts released in any form, not even through the WB Archive! Apparently this person has been there for a while and has something against these cartoons, I mean... Why else would Warner Bros. release equally controversial and potentially offensive cartoons in the Tom and Jerry, Looney Tunes, Merrie Melodies and Popeye series on home media formats whilst keeping these two and the Censored 11 locked up?

All hope seemed lost. It looked like we were not going to get these two uncensored cartoons on Blu-ray and DVD in the United States, but... TV Shows On DVD has confirmed that Warner Bros. has postponed the second volume of this series! This makes sense, because Home Theater Forum owner Ronald Epstein collected questions from animation aficionados and sent them to Warner Bros. Apparently they had a meeting about these cartoons, so maybe the postponement of this set may bring good things. However, we can't get our hopes up too high... Yet.

Anything can happen now...

Here's my theory: Warner Bros. (or more specifically, that person in their legal department) will drop all of this opposition to Mouse Cleaning and Casanova Cat. Thus, those two cartoons will be added to the line-up and the packaging will be altered. It'll say 44 shorts instead of 42, or the last 2 cartoons on the set (chronologically) - Puppy Tale and Posse Cat - will be left off for time constraints and will be the opening shorts on the third Golden Collection volume. The liner notes will mention both formerly missing cartoons. This is of course the win-win situation, the one everyone hopes will happen. Well, it better happen!

Why do I think it might happen? Well, WB announced that the set was postponed after those questions were sent... Plus it came off of a slew of negative reactions. I haven't seen such reaction to a home media release in a long while. Tom and Jerry Golden Collection Volume One has less than 40 reviews in total on Amazon.com, Tom and Jerry Golden Collection Volume Two has nearly 100 one-star reviews warning consumers to stay away from the butchered set whilst also calling WB out for their unnecessary censoring of a set that's meant for adults.

Also, WB can't just re-insert the shorts between now and June 11th, or make liner notes mentioning them. It's also possible that Mouse Cleaning and/or Casanova Cat had audio commentaries, so it'll take some time to put those back in as well. So maybe the delay does mean that WB gets it.

Now it's also possible that we will end up getting the butchered set later this year, which would only anger fans more resulting in a bigger backlash. The fans are now willing to give WB a chance to correct the mistakes they have made, and to not omit Mouse Cleaning and Casanova Cat from this set. If a new announcement for the set shows that the two cartoons won't be in the line-up... Well then, expect more heat, WB! And weaker sales, too!

Right now, we have no clear idea why the set was postponed. All we can do is speculate right now, but personally, I'm going to try to be optimistic here and believe that WB delayed the set to do the right thing: Include Mouse Cleaning and Casanova Cat, and never attempt to censor this set or any forthcoming adult collector set (whether it's Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies or Popeye) ever again.

Hopefully everything will turn out alright. If Tom and Jerry Golden Collection Volume Two arrives to stores complete and uncensored with Mouse Cleaning and Casanova Cat, then... Immediate sale!

Don't Censor Me!

Back in 2011, Warner Bros. released what I would call a definitive set for the legendary Tom and Jerry series. Called the "Golden Collection", the first volume presented the first 37 theatrical shorts, beautifully restored and all uncensored in their original format. All the questionable humor and gags were present. To top it off, there was a warning that you couldn't skip that wonderfully explained why the cartoons have that potentially offensive material and why it's absolutely wrong to censor them.

This was a great set for us animation aficionados. It wasn't aimed at young audiences or the whole family, it was aimed at us. The adult collector, as the back of the case says. You can only imagine how pumped I was for the next couple of volumes, because they were going to include everything uncensored. Then they were going to include all of the post-1958 shorts as well! The complete Tom and Jerry series on Blu-ray!

Volume Two has been on and off for years. A few times, Warner Bros. announced release dates for it, but it never happened. Now it's on track for a June 11th release, but the shorts line-up that was released a while back was curiously missing two short subjects: Mouse Cleaning and Casanova Cat. Both films contain blackface gags, Mouse Cleaning's gag is especially notorious. However, the blackface gags on these two short subjects are no more offensive than similar gags that we saw in the shorts that are on the first volume. For a while, it seemed like this list was not official and was just a mistake... After all, the original nitrate elements of Mouse Cleaning had been found and lots of work had been done to restore it, but... Warner Bros. recently put this on their Classic WB Animation Facebook page as a reply to fans who were questioning whether the next volume would in fact be sanitized or not.

Condescending and just plain wrong...

This contradicts the whole idea of the Golden Collection. Why go through all the trouble of restoring all the offensive content and making an impassable warning for the beginning of the disc for the first volume, only to omit two entire shorts from the second volume because of the content? It's not just edited versions of those cartoons we are getting, we're not getting them at all. If that's so, will the other shorts on the set be the television edits where Mammy Two-Shoes' voice is re-dubbed? This is a total atrocity and Warner Bros. Home Entertainment ought to be ashamed.

Inappropriate for the intended audience? Warner Bros., who are you to deem this content inappropriate for us? The very audience that understands that these cartoons were made during a different time... Again, you went through all the trouble of restoring these "offensive" shorts and putting a big warning at the beginning of disc... Now you sanitize Volume Two, remove two shorts entirely and say that they might be "inappropriate" for us?! Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, you have made a massive mistake and you have also insulted us animation aficionados who admire this series and are mature enough to understand what was going on during the 1940s and why this racial humor was in some the cartoons.

Maybe I shouldn't be surprised, but after all the effort that was put into the first volume, you wouldn't think that Warner Bros. would just all of sudden go against their plans and also talk down the collectors who buy these sets...

I just hope Warner Bros. didn't get cold feet over the first volume and are now making Volume Two suitable for the PC crowd. Again, the first volume was strictly intended for adult collectors. The packaging itself says so, there's a warning at the beginning of the disc... Why follow that up with a sanitized set? It makes no sense on any level.

Now if this was a kid-oriented set with the edited versions, that would be one thing, but again; this is a follow-up to an adult-oriented set. It's not only a slap in the face to the audience it's intended for, but it's just censorship ruling the day once again.

Warner Bros., if you were smart, you wouldn't go through with a censored set that's a follow-up to an uncensored adult's set. It's a rip-off and an insult to us, the buyers. It only pushes the belief that these cartoons are nothing more than children's films, when that's definitely not true. It feeds into a greater evil. Censorship is so selective. Certain things can't be shown, but it's totally alright if something else that's equally offensive is shown. Need I bring up Disney's reluctance to release Song of the South, yet they happily release Peter Pan complete with the controversial depictions of Native Americans?

Unfortunately, we live in a world where cartoons and animated works are immediately labelled "kid's stuff". Disney and Pixar are already victims of this, and everyone else. Classic Warner Bros., Fleischer and MGM shorts? All perceived as kid's stuff. It's easier to release older live action films with potentially offensive material, or films that are unabashedly offensive (Birth of a Nation, anyone?), but since animation is viewed as a babysitter, it's not okay. Far too often, home media releases of animation caters to parents who are looking for something to keep their children busy for an hour or two. The belief is what's at the core of this problem. Warner Bros. probably wants to sell units, rather than putting a lot of money into a set that only collectors are going to buy. But hey, Disney did it with the Walt Disney Treasures sets and they continued to make many.

There's still the fact that the first collection and the recent Looney Tunes sets have the offensive material on them. It just further proves that it makes no logical sense to omit two full shorts from a set all because of a single gag in each. It's like releasing a controversial film on home media uncut, and releasing its equally controversial sequel in censored form. Makes... No... Sense...

Now there's also a possibility that the two shorts will show up on a third volume, but if they show up uncensored, then it wouldn't make sense to leave them off of this upcoming set. It leads me to believe that whenever they will show up, they'll be sanitized. It also leads me to believe that all the shorts on this collection will be sanitized as well.

Luckily, animation fanatics are raising hell about this. Go to the set's Amazon page and see all the one-star reviews convincing consumers not to buy it. Fans have also raised hell on other forums and they have responded to the terribly condescending reply from WB Classic Animation on their Facebook page. Let your voice be heard!

Once again, censorship and ignorance towards the animated medium is going to rule the day here. The existence of an adults-only "Golden Collection" of one of the greatest cartoon series in cinema history was fun while it lasted...

Note: This article originally went up on February 13, 2013. It was taken down since the press release with the list of shorts seemed like a mistake... Now it's official, those two shorts will be omitted from the set...

Module 6: Toons Go to War

America's entry into World War II was a seminal moment in the country's history. It not only lifted the nation out of the depths of the Great Depression, but it also drastically changed the dynamics of the animation industry. Animation studios began dedicating their time and energy in making propaganda films to promote the support for war efforts and poke fun at America's enemies. Of course, the latter also became a controversial issue in today's politically correct society. Stereotypical caricatures are no longer seen as amusing but offensive, whether it's our wartime enemies or minority populations within our country's borders.

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Module 5: MGM

MGM may not have the prestige of Disney or Warner Bros., but when all is said and done they probably had just as much success as the other studios in both Oscar success and critical prestige. Like Warner Bros., MGM's animation division had humble beginnings, and didn't start to pick up until they hired Rudolf Ising and Hugh Harman from Disney. The duo made some successful films for the studio, but the output really became fantastic after they hired a trio of animators in William Hanna, Joe Barbera, and Tex Avery. Hanna-Barbera won over a half dozen Oscars for Fred Quimby mostly on the strength of their Tom and Jerry films, while Tex Avery made the films that rank near the top of the best animated short films.

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