Garbage pail trailers

[Jeremy Blackman]

This actually made it onto Netflix. AV Club gave it an F.

[polkablues]

Imagine the pitch process: "It's literally just Archer, but made by complete idiots."

[Jeremy Blackman]

This movie is literally based on an story idea that a studio executive's 4-year-old child came up with. Apparently lost Paramount more than $100 million, after horrendous test screenings and extensive reshoots.

And yes, that's Jane Levy from Don't Breathe.

[Jeremy Blackman]

I mean, this actually does look fun.

[jenkins]

i miss Mel btw

this topic ties into Snafu. except that's exaggerated, because barely. it's easy to find statements saying Munro Leaf contributed to Private Snafu, but his credit list is nonexistent, and the most i could find was this--

Although Munro Leaf cowrote only one or two of the SNAFU cartoons

notice it does't even mention which episodes.

but Munro Leaf definitely wrote this--



here's some background about that--

He is best known for The Story of Ferdinand (1936), a children's classic which he wrote on a yellow legal-length pad in less than an hour,

Leaf is said to have written the story on a whim in an afternoon in 1935, largely to provide his friend, illustrator Robert Lawson (then relatively unknown) a forum in which to showcase his talents.

and i think it's an absolutely wonderful children's book. it celebrates the potential personal paradise of an introvert. which thank god someone does. this book was translated all over the world and became a big hit among adults of its time period--

In 1938, Life magazine called Ferdinand "the greatest juvenile classic since Winnie the Pooh" and suggested that "three out of four grownups buy the book largely for their own pleasure and amusement."

now, this is being posted in garbage pail trailers because of this--



Ferdinand calls himself complex but as a character he's exposing himself much more than he does in the book, which in fact narrows his complexity (by narrowing his mystery). this is some kid shit and those of us without kids have no reason to see this movie. those of us with kids should certainly go, i think.

but anyway here's the 1938 Disney version, it's a short, it does a sublime job of retaining the book's strongest characteristics (and i believe it's the book word-for-word:

[KJ]

but anyway here's the 1938 Disney version, it's a short, it does a sublime job of retaining the book's strongest characteristics (and i believe it's the book word-for-word:

fun (?) fact: probably every swede has seen this short or bits of it. it's broadcasted every christmas eve, together with other shorts in Disneys christmas special From all of us to all of you, and it's a huge tradition to watch it. the record is apparently from 1997 when half of the population watched it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_All_of_Us_to_All_of_You

also, elliott smith had a ferdinand tattoo which itself is is kinda cute.

[Just Withnail]

It's strange and wonderful to have a deep connection to these old cartoons. Like KJ mentioned about Sweden, Ferdinand and others were also shown in Norway every Christmas. I just rewatched it and got that Proustian deep sense of remembering and identification. It felt like I felt a lot like Ferdinand growing up - which might be me projecting, but I do picture myself slumped over a couch at my grandma's place, feeling gently happy that something validates my flower-smelling. Lambert the Sheepish Lion was another cartoon that went deep deep deep (those screams at the end!), but that one ends up telling pretty exactly the opposite story of Ferdinand, and not as comforting.

When I saw these in my childhood, they didn't feel quaint or ancient. They felt part of a continuum, part of the same aesthetic I was fed on through Cartoon Network (Scooby Doo, Flintsones, Jetsons, even though those were made later). I wonder if it's the same now. Thirty years have made them seem very different. Growing up, watching something like Lambert wasn't a choice, it just happened to be on television, which meant that between watching it there could be years (if I ever got to see it again), and the images became ossified in my brain and mingled with my own thoughts and made into something different and big and strange, and eventually blended in with a vague sense of the totality of my childhood. "Grandma + couch + lambert and/or ferdinand" is a pretty good container for what I feel my childhood was. Now I've seen Lambert five times on youtube the last five years and all the mystery has been sapped. So. I don't even know what I'm rambling about here. I didn't mean to go all "IN THE AGE OF GOOGLE", and I'm sure there are plenty of mysteries, but I wonder if...oh my god kill me now.

[KJ]

 

You have to ramble on a lot more to REALLY have that Proustian deep sense!

But yeah, I get where you're coming from. The nostalgia from cartoons/other stuff you watched in your childhood can be wonderful sometimes.

Didn't you make quite a nostalgic short film about childhood, withnail?

[jenkins]

When I saw these in my childhood, they didn't feel quaint or ancient. They felt part of a continuum, part of the same aesthetic I was fed on through Cartoon Network (Scooby Doo, Flintsones, Jetsons, even though those were made later). I wonder if it's the same now.

such a lovely post the whole way through. there's so much i want to say in response to this particular portion, although i consider my thoughts building on this matter, in perhaps the same way yours are.

i read the feeling described like this recently--

I live in this weird culturally timeless collector/nerd sphere where I remember things that occurred before I was born because I saw them on ads in Marvel comics I bought at fleamarkets or my grandfather's Playboy stash. I just asked a person who is five years younger than me if they remember Grit. When the fuck would I have been selling Grit?

in what ways is time real and delineated, in what ways are we mortal, and in what ways is time just a human dreamscape? that's what i wonder these days.

[Jeremy Blackman]

This exists?

[wilder]

Comedian Brent Weinbach mentioned that his father wrote and produced this movie on the latest episode of WTF. Bizarrely, it's directed by the great cinematographer Jack Cardiff (Black Narcissus, The Red Shoes), and is apparently only the second movie after Tod Browning's Freaks (1932) to star actual "freaks":

[WorldForgot]

This exists?

Hmm... Maybe DirectTV would do my texas two-step teen-horror screenplay...

[wilder]