The Great Oscar Baiter

By 1952, the Tom and Jerry formula was pretty well established. And after a decade of hijinks (dare I say Tomfoolery?), it ran the risk of growing stale. Perhaps that explains why William Hanna and Joseph Barbera (not to mention producer Fred Quimby, who was the one actually winning the Oscars for these things) decided to shake things up for the duo. Their solution? Planting Tom and Jerry into the Ancien Regime of France by parodying Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers. I’ve certainly heard crazier ideas. But did this one pay off? Let’s find out! (via Wikipedia) Some people say that the more things change, the more they stay the same. That's not always true, but it's certainly the case with Tom and Jerry. At its heart, The Two Mouseketeers isn't that much different from The Little Orphan - Jerry and Nibbles (the titular Mouseketeers) try to steal a table full of food, Tom tries to stop them, chaos ensues. The differences between the two shorts is all in the details, an...

When I think of the heyday of experimental animated shorts, I think of the 1960s. That’s hardly a surprise. What with the drugs and the sexual revolution and the crazy hairstyles, the 1960s were ripe with experimentation. But the 1950s had their fair share of experimental animation too, and the UPA played a big part in that. In one of the very first posts in our Year in Shorts, we discussed 1950’s Gerald McBoing-Boing , which pioneered the use of limited animation in film. Rooty Toot Toot, released a year later and directed by John Hubley, was made in a similar vein, with interesting results, to say the least! (via TV Tropes) A retelling of the popular song "Frankie and Johnny", Rooty Toot Toot earns points from me right away by being a courtroom story. I love those. It's also a musical dark comedy starring Thurl Ravenscroft of "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" fame, so they've got a lot of goodwill coming their way. An in addition to all that, it...

Emperor Hirohito remains a highly controversial figure in world history, with his level of involvement in World War II still being debated to this day. Such things are far beyond the purview of The Great Oscar Baiter, and yet for the second time in a month it seems necessary to discuss the late Emperor of Japan. First we discussed his brief and fairly problematic depiction in Der Fuehrer’s Face. And now we have to mention him again as we discuss 1952’s Lambert the Sheepish Lion. Why? Well, let’s find out! (via Wikipedia) Directed by Jack Hannah, whose name certainly gets a lot of play in our Year in Shorts, Lambert the Sheepish Lion is at heart a "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" type story. A misfit animal is shunned by his peers for his differences until there comes a day when said difference proves to be useful for them, in which case they all celebrate him. It's actually an incredibly dark kind of story for kids, but I suppose it does a better job for preparing the...