Shorts! Looney Tunes: Rover's Rival

With Ub Iwerks gone, Bob Clampett was left to take over the cartooning unit, and his own sensibilities started to quickly become apparent, even if they weren't allowed completely free reign with Chuck Jones still there. In this short, we see some Clampett start to stretch his wings with evil cute characters while Jones has fun giving detailed animation to an ancient dog. Is the cartoon any good? Listen to find out!

(Spoiler Section Length - 6min 39sec)This podcast has made no secret of the fact that it's not exactly on board with the Disney remake trend, and perhaps no remake has been more dreaded by at least one of these co-hosts than The Lion King. Though it's often referred to as live action, this movie is basically entirely animated just like the original, just in a hyper-realistic style whose purpose seems to be giving the story more gravitas. It doesn't. But just how bad (or maybe good?) is the remake? And more interestingly, how is the sequel, that evolves the art style and tells a brand-new story with new songs? Listen to find out!

Many Popeye cartoons return to the well of Popeye vs Bluto, and that well typically involves trying to best one another at something until it comes to fisticuffs. But what if the thing they were trying to best each other at was... getting injured??

(Spoiler Section Length - 6min 41sec)The reputation of Disney sequels is generally not great, but among them the Lion King sequel and... interquel(?) tend to be favored. They're pretty wildly different in tone, with Simba's Pride maintaining a similar tone to the first movie, going for a Romeo and Juliet thing rather than Macbeth. Lion King 1½, meanwhile, is a purposeful farce, with a MST3K style 4th-wall-breaking setup and a story that takes place in the margins of the original film. Are these two films really the best that the direct-to-DVD era of Disney sequels has to offer, and more than that, are they still worth watching today? Listen to find out!

Tex Avery was the Warner Bros director that really shook up what it meant to be a WB cartoon short, and one of the ways in which he did that was an increasing focus on subverting expectations and breaking the 4th wall. He also introduced several characters to the Looney Tunes lineup, such as Egghead and Elmer Fudd. These two characters in particular have a strange history, one that's become so intertwined that modern depictions of Egghead reference Elmer Fudd's original design rather than his own. All that is fascinating, but the question remains... do the debut cartoons for these two characters still hold up so many decades later? Listen to find out!

(Spoiler Section Length - 8min 58sec)Generally speaking, people consider the Disney Renaissance of the (mostly) 90s to be the height of the studio's output, thanks in no small part to critical and commercial titans like The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin. But there is one film above all others that gripped the cultural zeitgeist and never fully let go, one film that could be considered the champion of the era, its unofficial ruler. Its... king. Today we discuss that film, and whether its quality warrants that majestic reputation.

There are only a handful of shorts whose fame at least partially comes from their technical achievements. Steamboat Willie and its sychronized sound is one, while The Old Mill's claim to fame is the multiplane camera. While we take what it does for granted now in the digital age, back then it was a big step-up in cinematography for animated shorts. But does it really add that much to this short? Listen to find out!

(Spoiler Section Length - 14min 41sec)From the creator of The Triplets of Bellville comes a film about an old magician living in a time where his talents are valued less and less by the day. While Triplets had sparse dialogue, this film goes even further than that while maintaining a less exaggerated style, both visually and in what few vocalizations do occur. This lends it even more of an 'artsy' flair, making it unsurprising that it was nominated for an academy award but also equally unsurprising that it never truly had a chance. A decade and a half later, does it still retain the flair that got it nominated? Listen to find out!

While Warner Bros' output has been increasing in quality in the late 30s, largely thanks to new blood like Tex Avery and newly-impowered blood like Bob Clampett, one member of the old guard in particular is still around and has been a lot slower to change: Fritz Freleng. Much of his output has largely been echoing the stylings of the Harman-Ising era, a style that's more and more at odds with the rest of the studio. But Freleng DOES change, even if slowly, so how does this cartoon of his hold up? Listen to find out!

(Spoiler Section Length - 6min 20sec)It's time to go back to the past of Makoto Shinkai - the creator of Your Name - to see the man's directorial debut. Except... we're actually checking out two films, one a short film and the other a full-length one. What similarites lie between these two works, and how do they relate to his later films? And more importantly... how do they hold up? Listen to find out!The Curtain Rises Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/Kool Kats Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/