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Director: Nedeljko Dragić
Release date: 1974
Rating: ★★★★★
Review:
This animated short is very akin to the later ‘Satiemania’ by Zdenko Gašparović. The film features drawings and paintings on a white canvas, which change and morph in a stream-of-consciousness-like fashion.
The short starts with rather Saul Steinberg-like images of a man walking, while changing into all kinds of forms, figurative and abstract. The man then changes into a driver, while all the metamorphosis continues. This part contains some spectacular perspective and moving background animation.
The films then shifts to a party scene, in which a very cartoony mouse and cat form a running gag. From this point the film seems to say something about modern life and modern Western commercialism. As the film progresses, the images get more and more agitated, as if depicting the stressful life in the modern city. The film ends with another walking figure, showing a lonely man on an island inside.
‘Diary’ is a tour de force of imagination, and the images never cease to amaze. Nevertheless, the film’s purpose remains puzzling and leaves the viewer with more questions than answers.
Watch ‘Diary’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Diary’ is available on the DVD ‘The Best of Zagreb Film: Be Careful What You Wish For and The Classic Collection’
Director: Walter Lantz
Release Date: August 11, 1941
Stars: Woody Woodpecker
Rating: ★★★★½
Review:
‘The Screwdriver’ forms an important step in the evolution of Woody Woodpecker.
Woody had been a clear woodpecker in his first cartoon, ‘Knock Knock‘ (1940), and he remained a forest animal in ‘Woody Woodpecker‘. Now he had become more or less an American citizen, capable of driving a car. In fact, the cartoon opens with Woody driving his rather silly vehicle, singing his theme song from ‘Woody Woodpecker’.
The bird soon turns out to be a road maniac, but the gags really start rolling in when he’s confronted by a police man. The woodpecker gives the officer a hard time, driving him nuts, in a string of fast and funny gags, greatly helped by an inspired score by Darrell Calker.
Watch ‘The Screwdriver’ yourself and tell me what you think:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxIsPxRD_bc
This is Woody Woodpecker cartoon No. 2
To the first Woody Woodpecker cartoon: Woody Woodpecker
To the next Woody Woodpecker cartoon: What’s Cookin’?
‘The Screwdriver’ is available on the DVD-set ‘The Woody Woodpecker and Friends Classic Cartoon Collection’
Director: Jack Kinney
Release Date: June 30, 1950
Stars: Goofy
Rating: ★★★★★ ♕
Review:
In this cartoon a particularly civilized type of Goofy, an “average man” called Mr. Walker, changes into a Mr. Hyde-like wildman called Mr. Wheeler, once he sits behind the wheel of his car.
‘Motor mania’ is a quite disturbing film about road manners, it even becomes nightmarish when we watch cars bark at a helpless pedestrian. It is as moralistic as it is funny. And it remains somehow strikingly relevant today, making it an original classic within the Goofy series.
‘Motor Mania’ is the only Goofy cartoon in which our hero is depicted as an unsympathetic and even evil character. But by now Goofy had lost all his former persona. He had changed into a random citizen, so it works very well.
‘Motor Mania’ forms another step in the evolution of Goofy into the American everyman. By now Goofy had replaced Donald Duck as a representative of the American citizen. Donald Duck had been the average citizen in the 1940s, but at the end of the decade his role had been diminished, evolving into a straight man for the antics of Chip ‘n Dale, the little bee and such. Jack Kinney’s Goofy took over, cumulating in the typical 1950s everyman, George Geef, in ‘Cold War‘ from the next year.
Watch ‘Motor Mania’ yourself and tell me what you think:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZAZ_xu0DCg
This is Goofy cartoon No. 25
To the previous Goofy cartoon: Goofy Gymnastics
To the next Goofy cartoon: Hold That Pose
Dr. Grob's Animation Review 