Thursday, December 30, 2004

Gifted Animation

I had nothing to do with it...but I laughed out loud at The Twelve Days of Christmas, Garfield style.

• Posted at 8:10 PM · LINK

More Abner Stuff

Dave Mackey, who knows this kind of stuff better than I do, says that when the Columbia Li'l Abner cartoons were released on VHS a few years ago, they were not what one would expect. Instead of transferring color prints of these cartoons (which were originally made in color), someone did a tracing job on black-and-white prints. I don't have time to explain the technical end of this process so just trust me: It ruins the cartoon. Instead of seeing the work of talented animators, you're seeing what happens when minimum-wage employees trace their work, and not even every frame of it. In this case, says Dave, they were tracing material that wasn't so wonderful in the first place. So avoid those tapes, too.

• Posted at 7:47 PM · LINK

Quick Response

Here's the great thing about having this weblog: Yesterday, we discussed what was up with the announced "new" episodes of Whose Line Is It Anyway? that ABC Family has announced they will begin showing on 1/17/05. Today, I hear from Jim Ellwanger who says...well, here. Read him for yourself...

I've been closed-captioning the new Whose Line Is It Anyway? episodes over the past month or so. As far as I can tell, so far it's all leftover material from tapings for the later seasons (all with a 2000 or 2001 copyright date)...in fact, one of the episodes I captioned was material from the one taping I went to, in late 2000 or early 2001, from which I think they had already gotten two or three episodes.

They're edited as regular episodes, not as "best-of" compilations or anything like that. Last I heard, there are supposed to be somewhere between 22 and 29 new episodes, but don't hold me to that number, since I don't directly deal with anyone at the production company or ABC Family.

These are not episodes that were ever slated to run on ABC; we captioned the last batch of episodes for ABC in the first half of 2003, and I think all the episodes from that batch have already aired, either on ABC or ABC Family.

I don't know anything about the "lost" episode. It would have already been captioned in advance of its originally scheduled air date, so I'll be very surprised if it shows up now for me to work on.

Thanks, Jim. I've set my TiVo to grab these, and I'll try watching them with the captions on.

• Posted at 6:14 PM · LINK

Dogpatch Deception

This item a week or so ago sent several readers of this site to their local discount DVD racks to see what kind of Li'l Abner movie was there. Several reported finding what appeared to be several different Li'l Abner movies on sale for one or two bucks a copy. Jim Bahler, for instance, wrote...

Wal-Mart's Li'l Abner says, "Al Capp's 'Lil (their spelling) Abner" cartoon has been delighting funnies readers since 1934. In this, the first of Lil (again) Abner's filmed adventures, Al Capp's characters come vividly to life, with all of the strip's most notable personalities on board, including Lil (again) Abner (Jeff York, billed as Granville Owen), Daisy Mae (Martha O'Driscoll), Manny and Pappy Yokum, and the rest of the quirky gang. It's Sadie Hawkins day, and a prime opportunity for the women of Dogpatch to snare a husband. With not one, or two — but three ladies in pursuit, it's all Lil (must be a dame) Abner can do to avoid getting ensnared. Lil (yes) Abner stands as a fitting celluloid tribute to the work of Al Capp." The front (color) cover lists Peter Palmer and Leslie Parrish as being the stars of the film...and they're from the 1959 version! It's from Digiview Productions, Standard Full Frame, 114 minutes. B/W, Stereo Sound with Interactive Menus.

Target's L'il Abner (yes, a third spelling variant!) is quite different. For starters, the black and white cover has Buster Keaton's name larger than the movie title, so it's "L'il Abner starring Buster Keaton" according to the front and back. The copy reads: 1940, 73 minutes. Also starring Jeff York, Mona Ray. America's favorite comic strip comes to life! The gang from Dogpatch is all here: Abner, Daisy Mae, Mammy Yokum, Earthquake McGoon and Lonesome Polecat. What'll happen when the Sadie Hawkins dance turns things upside down? Surely it'll be stupefying!" It's from Genius Entertainment, under their "Golden Movie Classics" series.

Guess I'll have to put them both in the player and see what I've got...

Okay: they're the same movie — apparently, the 1940 version, although it's difficult to read the copyright, and no actors are listed at the beginning. However, Milton Berle is listed as one of the three writers of the "Li'l Abner" theme song. They're both black and white, of course. I put the Digiview copy in first, but didn't watch much of it. However, it had chapter selections, a "play movie" option, and a "previews" option. The Genius version just played, with no extras, chapters, etc. On the other hand, while I only watched a half minute or so of the Digiview version, I wasn't too impressed with the quality of the reproduction, whereas the Genius edition looks pretty clean. Not great, but it does appear to be pretty clean and "non-jerky" without much drop-out. I do think it's been remastered.

Hope this helps. Beware of the Wal-Mart version if you're familiar with the 1959 actors. It ain't them!

Yeah...I've posted what I think is the cover of the Digiview version. It identifies Peter Palmer and Leslie Parrish as the stars and this is an outright lie. The version they were in — the 1959 color musical — has not been released on DVD. So any DVD you find, especially in the dollar bins, is almost certainly going to be the 1940 black-and-white version starring Granville Owen (aka Jeff York) and Buster Keaton. It's a pretty unwatchable movie, even if it does have Buster and a whole bunch of silent comedians, like Chester Conklin and Hank Mann, who hadn't worked since Mack Sennett closed down. Milton Berle used to claim he was one of the producers of the film but he seems to be credited only for co-writing a song.

There were actually several other times Li'l Abner was put on film. In 1944, the Columbia cartoon studio made five shorts that they apparently thought would be popular the same way the cartoon adaptations of Popeye were successful. They were wrong. There have also been at least three separate live-action Li'l Abner TV pilots, two of which have received some limited distribution on VHS in the collectors' market.

So I guess it's possible, if you buy a DVD that says Li'l Abner on the outside (or even L'il Abner), it contains one of those pilots. But the odds are pretty overwhelming it'll just be another copy of the 1940 version. The cartoons had a brief VHS release but are not presently out on DVD and neither is the 1959 movie. I hear from several sources, however, that the '59 version will be...probably before '05 is half over.

• Posted at 2:25 AM · LINK