Thursday, September 11, 2014

Turner Classic Movies Animation Marathon on October 6th

Great news fellow animation lovers on Monday October 6th Turner Classic Movies is going to give us marathon of classic animation rarely seen on TV today. It begins at 5pm pacific time or 8pm Eastern time.

The marathon will began with some shorts from animation pioneer, and one of the greats in the history of animation Winsor McCay. Then some shorts from animation pioneer John Randolph Bray, who created the character of Colonel Heeza Liar (based off President Theodore Roosevelt). Some of the cartoons from John Randolph Bray feature animation by future Woody Woodpecker co-creator Walter Lantz (the other co-creator was Ben "Bugs" Hardaway (the name sake for Bugs Bunny)). Next up comes some cartoons from the Van Buren studio, who gave us the now forgotten "Rainbow Parade" cartoon series. Coming up next is "The Adventures of Prince Achmed" (1926), the earliest surviving animated feature film ("The Apostle" (1917), and "Without a Trace" (1918) (both directed by Argentine animation pioneer Quirino Cristiani) came before but they are considered lost today). This masterpiece of a film is directed by Lotte Reingner, Queen of Silhouette animation. The animation and story telling of this film still holds up very well today, and not only remains an animated classic, but one of the best German films from the silent era. Next up comes The Fleisher Brothers first feature length film "Gulliver's Travel". I already talked about this great movie in a previous post so I won't go that much into it now. Next up comes the 1960 anime "Magic Boy". Lastly comes "The Phantom Tollbooth" (1969) directed by animation legend (a title he received for good reason) Chuck Jones. This is one of the only two feature films by Chuck Jones (the other being "The Bugs Bunny/ Roadrunner Movie" (1979)), and it is a film worthy of the legend who created it. Hopefully you tune in as well. This promises to be a fun night.

-Michael J. Ruhland

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