The Great Oscar Baiter

We’ve covered films featuring plenty of the classic Disney characters in our Year in Shorts. We’ve looked at films with Mickey, films with Pluto, films with Chip and Dale and plenty of films with Donald Duck. (We haven’t covered any films with Winnie-the-Pooh as of yet; we’ll be getting to those whenever ANOTHER Year of Shorts rolls around.) But we’ve only looked at one film featuring Goofy. That changes today as we talk about Goofy’s other Oscar-nominated short, the 1944 comedy classic, How to Play Football. (via Wikipedia) As you can guess from the title, Jack Kinney's How to Play Football takes the form of a faux instructional video, which already puts it in my good graces. How to Play Football is actually an entry in a long series of "How To" shorts starring Goofy. While these films seem to be the most beloved of Goofy's films, they were originally born out of necessity more than anything else. In 1938, Pinto Colvig (Goofy's regular voice actor) quite Di...

While Goofy may not be as undeniably great as Donald Duck or as simply iconic as Mickey Mouse, he has still more than earned his status as a Disney legend. And while unfortunately A Goofy Movie was not nominated for any Oscars (despite the fact that “I2I” and “Stand Out” were far more deserving of a Best Song nomination than that year’s winner, “Colors of the Wind”), he still managed to have two shorts nominated for Oscar gold. And while today’s film, 1961’s Aquamania , may not be the best of Disney shorts, it’s still pretty entertaining in its own right. (via Pinterest) Directed by Wolfgang Reitherman, who would go on to direct several Disney films such as The Sword in the Stone, The Jungle Book and Robin Hood, Aquamania more or less perfectly encapsulates the 60s Disney aesthetic. After the 1950s produced a series of artistically beautiful but not remotely cost effective films and shorts, efforts were made in the 1960s to keep costs down. Most notably was the use of "xerograp...