Hola, Sneakers! Welcome to Episode 508 of the newly FDA approved podcast Sneaky Dragon!
This week: we’ve lost track; a bit more Snake Eyes; lost in film; clever exposition; make it like reading the book; a whole lotta LOTR; Hey, Ralph Bakshi; the ol’Mines of Moria bit; shock and awwwwww; slapstick police brutality; slowest show; unlevel superhero playing field; who’s Johnny Spilts; we don’t recommend Reminiscing; you can’t escape your film past; don’t get clever; hypocritic; look-a-like; the problem with narration; the first booty call; the Sherlock Holmes exception; costume films; laughing in spite of oneself; comedy-horror is tricky; best family; back brothers; Dork Shadows- A Night in the Mausoleum; Question of the Week- Sneakers respond; and much, much more!
Question of the Week: What’s your favourite animated film that’s not a Disney film?
Sub-question of the Week: What’s your favourite (fictional) mystery?
Thanks for listening.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Animation: Spirited Away, Coraline.
Mysteries: Iron Man 3, Halloween III: Season of the Witch.
I highly recommend Bad Education if anyone wants to see a good Hugh Jackman movie!
Animation: when I was little, I loved a film called Gay Purr-ee, which had as its main character a beautiful cat call Mewsette; I loved her so much I named my first cat after her. For the last twenty years or so, I would have had to say Kiki’s Delivery Service – I love the painterly style, I love the independence of the main character, and the growth she goes through on her journey. More recently I have really liked a film we saw called My High School is Sinking into the Sea which was weird and funny and for some reason it really captured my imagination.
My favourite fictional mystery… hmmm. Whiphand by Dick Francis.
I remember Gay Purr-ee!! One of our stations in Dallas would play movies from 4:00 in the afternoon up until the news came on at 6:00. They’d pick a week and show five animated films for that week and one of them was always Gay Purr-ee.
Well, I have that on DVD, you know.
I’m going to assume you mean The Cotton Club, and not Millennium Actress!
Sorry, I can’t narrow it down to just one non-Disney movie. Aardman: Chicken Run, The Pirates! Band of Misfits, and the Wallace and Grommet and Shaun the Sheep movies. Laika: ParaNorman, Kubo and the Two Strings and The Boxtrolls. Coraline is good too, but soooo dark and creepy. Dreamworks: Shrek, Kung Fu Panda and How to Train Your Dragon.
I also have a hard time doing anything creative in the morning. It may have to do with cortisol levels which are normally highest in the morning to give your body a jump-start of stress. It usually takes until noon for me to relax enough to get to work so I give myself permission to putter around till then.
My favourite mystery is the 1939 Agatha Christie classic, And Then There Were None also published under the less politically-correct title, Ten Little Indians. I just found out that the original UK title is even more racist, but appallingly it was still used in editions up to 1977! According to Wikipedia, it is the best-selling mystery and one of the best-selling books of all time. As a teen reader, I could not figure out whodunit. Since then, other novelists and screenwriters have used similar plot devices and maybe if I had read it for the first time now, I might’ve been able solve the mystery…but I’ll never know.
Okay, you got to Shrek before me, but yeah…that one was a game changer and still a family favorite.
I think my trigger phrase is “maybe you dreamt it,” because that’s what a family member would say when they didn’t remember something that happened that I was trying to explain. It was so dismissive and condescending (I know when something happened in a dream and something happened in reality), and I’m aware people aren’t serious when they say it to me today, but it still irks me.
David: those long ropes you whip in the gym are called “battle ropes” and they’re VERY heavy. It takes a lot of upper body strength and stamina to keep the momentum when whipping them, and they quickly tire out your arms. They’re a lot harder to use than they look, and definitely NOT good for rope-skipping. Great workout for your arms, though.
My favourite animated film has never been by Disney or Ghibli because I’m not a huge fan of those studios. My favourite since its release 2001 has been “Millennium Actress” by Satoshi Kon. I lent David my DVD last year and–hey, David, have you watched it yet??
*its release in 2001
My Mom pulls the “Maybe you dreamt it” card on me to this very day, putting the onus on me instead of her. You’re right, it is annoying as hell.
Fleischer Studios were a serious rival to Disney in the early years and might have gone on to greater things if the two brothers who ran the studio hadn’t fallen out big time in the 1930s. Some of their output hasn’t stood the test of time well – looking at you, Bimbo and Betty Boop – but others, like the early Popeye and Superman series retain a lot of charm. As I child, I loved their 1939 feature ‘Gulliver’s Travels’, which used a combination of beautiful hand drawn animation and rotoscope, which I believe Max Fleischer invented.
I agree with the sneakers who’ve already praised Aardman and Ghibli. I’m a big fan of Isao Takahata, who was amazingly versatile and never seemed to use the same style twice. ‘My Neighbours the Yamadas’ is a family favourite here. More recently, I loved the Ghibli co-production, ‘The Red Turtle’.
As for mysteries, I’ve recently read a couple of novels by Dorothy B Hughes – ‘In a Lonely Place’, which is probably her best known work thanks to the Bogart movie, and ‘The Expendable Man’, which is even better, though very hard to describe without spoilers. Her writing doesn’t snap and fizz like Chandler or Hammett, but she’s wonderful at evoking character and place, and building suspense.
The Fleischer animation was beautiful, I actually preferred seeing Superman animated over the George Reeves 1950’s live action version. I can only imagine how wonderful it would have been to see that for the first time in the 40’s being a Superman fan.
I’m going to go with Touchstone’s “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” and it’s all-star cast of toons. When that film was released I saw it maybe six times the summer of 1988, I was mesmerized by the fact that such care was taken to bring together all these characters in one movie…and I know it wasn’t an easy task. That being said, I fell in love with Roger himself and was an instant fan. We had the book by Gary Wolf at Lone Star Comics that the film was adapted from except it was about comic strip characters and titled, “Who Censored Roger Rabbit.” Roger is still in my top ten of all time.
Another animated film that came to mind was “Twice Upon a Time” from Lucasfilm in 1983, I’d never seen anything like it. The film uses a form of cutout animation which the filmmakers called “Lumage”, involving prefabricated cut-out plastic pieces that the animators moved on a light table. The backdrops were old black and white photos that gave the film an Avant Garde feel, something I had never seen before. The story if I remember correctly was about the characters trying to save the world from a villain who is trying to stop time, I haven’t seen it in years but it was visually spectacular and the dialogue was a comical non-stop witty banter. Here’s the trailer if none of this rings a bell..
https://youtu.be/pqCRgiHHvB4
David, you and I experienced The Lord of the Rings around the same time, I also remember being totally absorbed by the Bakshi and Rankin Bass animated features. As much as I found Bakshi’s animation unsettling, I was still drawn to it since I’d read Tolkien’s books around the same time. Up until Jackson’s films, my most visual brand of The Lord of the Rings were the paintings by The Hildebrandt Brothers. I had the opportunity to see the originals at a gallery in 1985 not far from where I live now. The paintings were huge and the lighting was so well rendered by the brothers, they almost seemed to be lit from within. They were insanely skilled painters and storytellers.
I’ll confess I’m not an avid reader as much as you guys are but I used to read on the train when I worked in downtown Dallas. I read Dan Brown’s “The DaVinci Code” a few years after it had been published and before I saw the film. I couldn’t put it down, I actually couldn’t wait to get on that train and start reading. It may not be my favorite book but it’ll have to qualify enough as an answer since I enjoyed the mystery so much. When I do read, I’m usually a reader of biographies, which I picked up from my Dad.
Do any of my fellow Sneakers have a favorite biography they’ve read?
As much as I *should* say Yellow Submarine or Rupert and the Frog Song are my favorite non-Disney animated film because of their Beatles connections (Beatles fans have to support their band), the truth is the animated film series that I’ve watched more than any others is the Despicable Me series. I get a kick out of Gru’s minions.
I’m more into historical fiction than mysteries. I started the Cat Who series by Lillian Jackson Braun once but didn’t get past book five or six. I read and enjoyed Critique of Criminal Reason by Michael Gregorio. It was set in 1804 during the Napoleonic Wars and the author did an excellent job of staying historically accurate to the time period. A magistrate is sent to Konisberg to investigate a string of murders and Immanuel Kant is featured throughout the plot. I liked it. My patrons thought it was too philosophical and academically over their heads. They prefer what are known as Cozy mysteries. I think my staff weeded it out of the collection (due to lack of circulation) a couple of months ago.
Take Care.