PRANUM (Animation Reviews)

From: "Rev. Ivan Stang" <stang@subgeniusNOSPUM.com>
Date: Mon, Mar 22, 2004

PRAISE NU-MONET CLONE 6!!

Pater Nostril was here this weekend and I was forced to stop working
and to Slack Off in the way of The Others. Probably a good thing. We
went to the Cleveland art museum but we spent the bulk of the weekend
watching stuff posted by Nu-Monet on alt.bimnaries.slack and
alt.binaries.monter-movies. I would burn a Part 1 to a CD of something,
start the download of CD 2, watch CD 1, and by then, CD 2 would be
ready to play.

But for me the best of all was the Popeye cartoon GOONLAND.

Nu-Monet, I kowtow to you, mouth blowjob-ready, anus proffered in
supplication and gratitude, for that post.

It WAS everything I have dreamed it would be since I last saw it around
AGE 6.

I have probably seen every other Popeye cartoon a dozen times at the
very least. From the Fleischer to the bad '60s. But for some reason,
KTVT in Ft. Worth did not show that "Goonland" one more than once or
twice when I was around to see it. BUT IT STUCK IN MY HEAD.

I knew it was stuck there but I didn't know HOW stuck nor WHY until I
saw it again (thrice) Saturday night. MY GOD MAN. You can't imagine. I
knew SOME images from that had been indelibly etched into my little
head, but no, it was ALL of them. EVERY SHOT brought back an entire
WEEK of elementary school memories. And... watching that cartoon, it
was like, "NO WONDER I did or sought out (this), (that) and (the
other)."

First it was the song about his Pappy. Funny thing, I was raised
calling my mom and dad Mammy and Pappy. Then the crooked telescope. "So
THAT'S why I think of crooked telescopes!") Then the half-glimpsed
mysterious view of the goon island as seen through the telescope.
LOVECRAFTIAN!! TOTALLY! (Though also echoed in Harryhausen.) ("That
must be where me Pappy is, I can see his pipe smokin' from here" -- the
volcano on the island is belching black smoke.) The impossible physics
of blowing his sailboat's sail to make the boat speed to the island.
The foreboding landing on a shore littered with shipwrecks --
near-surrealist.

The GIANT SKULL ROCK... and what's engraved on its forehead? WHAT
PHRASE IS ENGRAVED ON ITS FOREHEAD?!?!?

"HUMANS KEEP OFF."

Whoa dude. Putting ideas into my little Bobby Hill-like poebucker
noggin.

The design of the Goons is just plain nightmarish. And yet they're
really just chinless, extreme versions of Popeye himself. Bald
Morlocks.

The long tracking shot of Popeye following the Goon up the mountain
trail and mimicking its walk presages modern overhead-view computer
games, although that's a coincidence.

The first view of Goon Town might as well be a cartoon view of the
Roundhouse at Brushwood any Saturday afternoon in the summer. It also
harkens to a jillion Monster Town sets, most directly the Morlocks
caverns in Pal's "The Time Machine." Just cool as hell. I built clay
towns based on this design without knowing quite where that great alien
fort-like stone town layout was coming from.

"I can see twice as much with a periscope." SubLogic seed.

The way Popeye changes himself into a Goon in order to sneak in and
free his Pappy is just plain traumatizing. Utterly nightmarish. The
fear in the child viewer's head is, "But what if Popeye's face gets
STUCK that way?!?"

Popeye's rejection by his Nenslo-like Pappy, well, let's not go there.

Bruce Lee owes Popeye for certain fighting techniques for disabling
many attackers who are charging in a straight line from one direction.

When Popeye is rendered helpless by the Goons, about to be crushed by a
giant rock, which I suspect is the scene that kept this episode off
local TV, and his Pappy decides to try to help, THE SPINACH IS JUST OUT
OF PAPPY'S REACH. But Pappy remembers a TOOL which will allow him to
reach and consume the life-giving Spinach -- HIS PIPE.

This is not the only time in a Popeye cartoon when the Pipe was the one
indispensable tool that allowed the hero to get to the Spinach
(metaphorical "frop," DUH).

When Pappy eats the spinach, the picto-muscle that always forms on a
spinach-eater's arm is in this case a Mothersbaugh-like morph between a
DEVO staircased flower-pot hat and a TIT.

Right when Pappy and Popeye are getting clobbered by the Agent
Smith-like army of cloned Goons...

THE FILM BREAKS.

Animated-style. The Goons FALL OFF THE BROKEN END OF THE FILM. ("That
wuz a lucky break!" sez Pappy.)

AND HUMAN HANDS ENTER THE CARTOON FRAME, TAKE THE TWO BROKEN ENDS OF
FILM, AND SPLICE THEM TOGETHER. (With a safety pin for comedic effect.)

OH it's probably just a COINCIDENCE that I subsequently spent 20 years
of my life making my living by splicing pieces of movie film together.
And every time I made one of those million splices, what I was seeing
was just what this "deus ex machina" image showed -- two human hands
attaching two pieces of movie film. (I used a hot splicer instead of a
safety pin, but same dif.)

The film editor, as so often happens in real life, saved the day when
it seemed all was lost.

I guess my point is, you Moms and Dads out there, THINK about what you
let your children watch, and what kind of impact a show can have on
them -- even if, maybe ESPECIALLY if, they are only allowed to see it
ONCE.

********

Nu-Monet also posted an Animation Festival reel from the early 90s that
was a joy to behold -- so good to see old school hand drawn animation
by people who are doing it mainly because they REALLY REALLY WANT TO.
There's a Japanese-looking, though not Japanese, stop motion short that
starts the collection, which BLEW MY MIND UTTERLY both technically and
artistically. And there's a Plimpton-like morpho-toon about the Bulldog
of Britannia which is just hilariously scathing and well done.

"SO YOU WANT TO BE A DETECTIVE" is so deliberately bad that it's
actually funny as hell, which is very unusual for things that are
DELIBERATELY bad. It features the most awkward use of "P.O.V." or
point-of-view camera that I've ever seen, including a seriously
telegraphed punch to the camera's nose.

Even the Titan II museum home movie is swollen with weird black
Dobbsian touches -- grinning Pipe Guy etc. The old dude that gives the
missile silo tour seems like a cool old weapons engineer fart.

A BOY AND HIS DOG is now playing. We started it last night but the 2
rape-murders in the first 10 minutes threw the Princess, so I'll relive
that myself later. Can't wait to get to the "drive-in" scene which
comes next. I saw that when I was 19 or so and thought, "That's what
I'll be doing after the War." Showing old fucked up 16mm porno loops on
a gas powered projector to cannibals.

NeuroManson's anime music video was lots of fun too, speaking of
uploaders. Great animated explosions, those Japanese do. Was this by
any chance related to the LENSMAN Japanese feature? (I have a cherry
all-Japanese copy of that, bought in Tokyo, VHS, incidentally). Similar
highway overpass chase scenes.

And one more thing. We and I had been waiting for that Rammstein
"Sonne" video to resurface since I saw it over and over again in
Amsterdam in the middle of the night.

Anyway, thanks, Nu-Monet. "SEX WARS" tonight.

--
4th Stangian Orthodox MegaFisTemple Lodge of the Wrath of Dobbs Yeti,
Resurrected (Rev. Ivan Stang, prop.)
PRABOB

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: "nu-monet v6.0" <nothing@succeeds.com>

Rev. Ivan Stang wrote:
> And one more thing. We and I had been waiting
> for that Rammstein "Sonne" video to resurface
> since I saw it over and over again in Amsterdam
> in the middle of the night.

Oh, I looked around long and hard to find a copy
of Sonne and found one. I am posting it to
monter RIGHT NOW!

I wish I had a good copy of the leapfrogging
sheep, though.

--
"Do not EVER watch a Rammstein video when
you are fried on Hawaiian mushrooms."
--take my word for it

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: "Rev. Ivan Stang" <stang@subgeniusNOSPUM.com>

nu-monet v6.0 <nothing@succeeds.com> wrote:
> Oh, I looked around long and hard to find a copy
> of Sonne and found one. I am posting it to
> monter RIGHT NOW!

I have the video they had on their website right AFTER Sonne, with
stop-motion ants doing battle.

>
> I wish I had a good copy of the leapfrogging
> sheep, though.

I shot that off a TV screen, but it was one of those situations where I
kept looking away from the camera to reach for something, and it's all
shakey. Isn't there like a shitty GIF-movie loop of that on the olde
A-dam report on SubSITE? Yeah... that was THE mindfuck loop.

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Original file name: PRANUM (Animation Reviews).txt - converted on Saturday, 25 September 2004, 02:05