I find it fascinating that there’s this video game property, Halo, that I’ve never seen and don’t know anything about. Yet it has all kinds of spinoffs, including books and comics. (Maybe I should check out the Halo Encyclopedia to learn more.) The latest tie-in comes from Warner Home Video, which is releasing the animation compilation Halo Legends on February 9.
Like The Animatrix and Batman: Gotham Knight, Halo Legends is an anthology, containing cartoons done in both CG and anime styles. Like most Warner original-to-DVD animation releases, there will be a two-disc Special Edition ($29.98), a single-disc version ($19.98), and Blu-Ray ($34.99). Here’s the description from the press release:
Halo Legends is a seven-story anthology –- told across eight spectacular episodes -– that explores the origin and historical events of the Halo universe and its intriguing characters. … each individual episode imagined by a cutting-edge, renowned Japanese anime director/animator, including Shinji Aramaki, Mamoru Oshii, Hideki Futamura, Tomoki Kyoda and Yasushi Muraki…. The individual episodes fall within Halo’s 26th Century mythology as the battle between humanity and aliens rages on in an attempt to protect Earth and mankind’s expansive number of space colonies. The dramatic, action-packed stories feature characters and locales familiar to Halo fans, and episodes range in length between 10 and 17 minutes -– resulting in nearly two hours of animated adventures.
Bonus Features include:
The Blu-Ray version has, in addition, “Halo: The Story so Far”, a Halo universe overview.
Review by KC Carlson
Joe McDoakes was the lead character in an almost forgotten series of comedy shorts produced and directed by Richard Bare and distributed by Warner Bros. from 1942 through 1956. Though the series is named after its lead character, it’s also known as the Behind the Eight Ball series, since Joe always appeared behind a giant eight ball in the opening credits of each film. It’s also occasionally known as the So You Want… series, as most of the series titles begin with this phrase (as in So You Want to Be a Cowboy). The series starred George O’Hanlon as McDoakes in all 63 installments.
There are a number of odd animation and comic book connections to the McDoakes series. These days, O’Hanlon is much better known as the voice of George Jetson in both the cartoon and Jetsons: The Movie (which was the last time he portrayed Jetson, as O’Hanlon passed away before the film was released). Another famous cartoon voice actor — Arthur Q. Bryan, the voice of Elmer Fudd — appears in So You Want to Build a Model Railroad and guest narrates So You Want to Be a Policeman. The series’ musical composer and arranger, William Lava, later went on to do the same job for most of the final theatrical Warner Bros. cartoons (for which he is usually not held in high regard) and for many of the made-for-television Pink Panther cartoons (based on Henry Mancini’s famous original theme). Lava also composed most of the incidental music (as well as the memorable theme song) for the 1960s TV series F Troop — a show that was about as close to a live-action cartoon as you can get.
Phyllis Coates, who portrayed Lois Lane in the first season of TV’s Adventures of Superman, got her start in film playing Joe McDoakes’ long-suffering wife Alice (one of three in the long-running series). She played the character in many of the episodes from 1948-1956.
Each of the shorts were co-written by Bare and O’Hanlon (although usually just credited to Bare), and all of them followed the same format, with McDoakes humorously attempting to accomplish the goal or role stated in each episode title — and usually failing spectacularly. In So You Want to Be a Baby Sitter, Joe is mercilessly tortured by a neighborhood kid that Alice has volunteered Joe to babysit — on poker night, no less. In So You Want to Be Popular, Joe realized that he has a bad personality and tries to get personality lessons from a professional but instead gets “fixed” by his obnoxious neighbor, ending up as obnoxious as he is.
Richard Bare, creator of the character, here talks about how O’Hanlon was selected and the series started:
Most of the episodes are narrated by Art Gilmore, a famous voice actor that you’ve probably heard hundreds of times but never known his name. Besides being on many radio and television shows, Gilmore’s dramatic voice was heard on film trailers throughout the 1950s and 60s. If you watch a lot of TCM, you’ve heard his voice whenever they show old trailers between movies.
Ultimately, the series proves why O’Hanlon is best known as a a great voice actor. Put through the paces in these shorts, O’Hanlon runs through endless emotional changes from extreme frustration to extreme rage and exasperation, but he spends most of his screen time mugging for the camera. His frustrations were much better used to their fullest extent with an animated character like George Jetson, where O’Hanlon can rage to his heart’s content off camera.
Much of the fun in watching these old shorts is in spotting old character actors popping up from time to time. The series is filled with familiar faces from Laurel and Hardy and Three Stooges shorts, as well as lots of actors you might recognize from early television comedies and dramas. I don’t even know half of their names, but I spent a lot of time going “Hey! I know that guy!” while watching these shorts — and then scrambling to IMDB to find out more info. Much fun! A number of more notable actors appear occasionally, like Ronald Reagan and Janis Paige in So You Want to Be in Pictures or Doris Day and Gordon McRae in So You Want a Television Set.
Here’s a clip from So You Want to Be in Pictures to give the flavor of the shorts:
All 63 11-minute Joe McDoakes shorts are included on this six-disc set. It’s part of the new Warner Archive on-demand program of bare-bones DVD sets (no special features or other bells and whistles) featuring lesser-known works. But it may be your only chance to see this wonderful lost chapter of Hollywood comedy shorts. (The studio provided a review copy.)
Review by Ed Sizemore
Imagine being immersed in a long, meandering conversation with someone that speaks their mind openly on any and everything. Further imagine that you look at your watch and discovered you’ve been captivated by this person for several hours, and it’s only been the two of you the whole time. That’s what it’s like to read Hayao Miyazaki’s Starting Point: 1979-1996. It’s one of most delightful, enlightening, and at times surprisingly confessional books I’ve read in a great while.
Starting Point is a collection of Miyazaki’s writings and interviews. There is a nice bonus in the center of the book, an eight-page, full-color manga on the history of in-flight dining done for Winds, Japan Airlines’ magazine. This is followed by nine black-and-white pages from Miyazaki’s notebooks. (The last three are untranslated so you can see the quality of Miyazaki’s penmanship.) The foreword is by John Lasseter, one of the founders of Pixar and friend of Miyazaki. The afterword is by Isao Takahata, long-time collaborator of Miyazaki and co-founder of Studio Ghibli.
Over the course of the book, the reader is able to develop a well-rounded picture of Miyazaki, both the man and the animator. In high school, Miyazaki originally wanted to be a gekiga manga artist (49). (Gekiga is a style of realistically drawn manga. The stories are often gritty, dark portrayals of modern life.) However, the Japanese animated movie Hakujaden (The Tale of the White Serpent) literally changed his life.
It made me realize that, behind a facade of cynical pronouncements, in actuality I really was in love with the pure, earnest world of film, even if it were only another cheap melodrama. I was no longer able to deny the fact that there was another me — a me that yearned desperately to affirm the world rather than negate it. (70)
Miyazaki went off to college where, surprisingly, he majored in political economics. While in college he was also part of the Children Literature Study Group (311).
In 1963, he was hired by Toei Animation as an in-between animator (the entry-level job for animation companies). He found the daily grind of television animation becoming unbearable. He was ready to return to his former dream of becoming a manga artist, when a Russian animated film reignited his passion. “Had I not one day seen Snedronnigen (The Snow Queen) during a film screening hosted by the company labor union, I honestly doubt that I would have continued working as an animator.” (71)
In 1978, Miyazaki would make his directorial debut with the television series Future Boy Conan (yet to be released in the US). In 1979, Miyazaki directed his first feature film, Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro. In 1985, Studio Ghibli was founded. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Miyazaki has a great deal of faith in the unlimited potential of animation as a storytelling medium. In this sense he reminds me of Tezuka, who believed that manga had unlimited potential and was an art form on par with novels, short stories, and theater. I find Miyazaki’s passion for cartoons compelling and share his belief that the only limits to cartoons are the imaginations of animators.
In other words, I am talking about doing something with animation that can’t be done with manga magazines, children’s literature, or even live-action films. I’m talking about building a truly unique imaginary world, tossing in characters I like, and then creating a complete drama using them. Simply put, this is what animation is to me. (17)
He has equally high hopes for what his films will accomplish.
To my way of thinking, creating animation means creating a fictional world. That world soothes the spirit of those who are disheartened and exhausted from dealing with the sharp edges of reality, or suffering from a nearsighted distortion of their emotions. When the audience is watching animation, they are apt to feel light and cheerful or purified and refreshed. (25) But if we can free ourselves from the various complexes we have and the tangled relationships we are in to live a freer, more open world, we might be able to become strong and heroic. I think everyone entertains thoughts of becoming more beautiful, or more gentle, or of having a more meaningful existence. (306)
To my way of thinking, creating animation means creating a fictional world. That world soothes the spirit of those who are disheartened and exhausted from dealing with the sharp edges of reality, or suffering from a nearsighted distortion of their emotions. When the audience is watching animation, they are apt to feel light and cheerful or purified and refreshed. (25)
But if we can free ourselves from the various complexes we have and the tangled relationships we are in to live a freer, more open world, we might be able to become strong and heroic. I think everyone entertains thoughts of becoming more beautiful, or more gentle, or of having a more meaningful existence. (306)
His high ambitions for animation have made him a harsh critic of much of the animation he sees. “I frankly despise the truncated word ‘anime’ because it only symbolizes the current desolation of our industry.” (72)
But I’d like to see effort put into filmmaking sufficient to withstand the bare-knuckled criticism that I’m providing here. Cartoons have certain weaknesses that we normally don’t notice, and a type of laxity arises precisely because the films are treated as mere cartoons. (118)
His most vehement criticism is leveled at television animation.
“Producing an animation series merely to fill time slots in the broadcast schedule is like generating cultural pollution.” (186) TV cartoon shows were all just a bunch of slapdash, amateurish, uninspired, derivative creations. We used to say among ourselves that making them was like working with still-open wounds. (279)
“Producing an animation series merely to fill time slots in the broadcast schedule is like generating cultural pollution.” (186)
TV cartoon shows were all just a bunch of slapdash, amateurish, uninspired, derivative creations. We used to say among ourselves that making them was like working with still-open wounds. (279)
Is it any wonder that one he was given the freedom to make animated films, he never returned to television again?
I was also amazed some of the personal confessions that show up in this book. A touching reflection on his relationship with his father and his perceived failings as a parent, “I tried to be a good father, but in the end I wasn’t a very good parent.” (204) His flaws as a first-time director, “The schedule slipped and I caused a lot of trouble for the staff and the production company. This was entirely due to my failing, as I can only work following my intuition and feelings.” (66) Even his personal shortcomings, “I’m a careless sort of person, so I am often quick to say bad things about people.” (211)
My favorite sections of the book are where he discusses Future Boy Conan and each of his films in detail. We learn Miyazaki didn’t intend for the ending of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind to have the religious overtones that it did. But once the film headed in that direction he couldn’t steer it otherwise. (393) Further, we find out Kiki’s Delivery Service was actually made for young women heading to Tokyo to find their first job and make a place for themselves in this world. (262, 378) Porco Rosso was made, “…for tired, middle-aged men whose brain cells have turned to tofu.” (267) There are so many more interesting facts about the production and themes in each of his major works.
So many great quotes can be pulled from this book. There are tons of fascinating ideas that could fuel extended discussions among its readers. Not to mention, lots of behind-the-scenes glimpses of the reality of making animated TV shows and feature films. There is such a wealth of information, no review can truly hope to touch on everything contained within the pages of this book.
I honestly believe that every anime fan needs to read Miyazaki’s Starting Point: 1979-1996. It’s a chance to see deeply inside the anime industry, as well as an opportunity to intimately know one of anime’s greatest directors. I highly recommend Takahata’s afterward as a loving, but brutally honest, portrayal that only a real friend could write. This is also a must-read for American animation fans. It offers a different perspective on cartoons, and how they should be made, than we generally hear in the US. Simply put, this is too significant a book to let simply pass you by. (The publisher provided a review copy.)
Bonus Feature: I showed Johanna what my copy of Starting Point looked like when I was reading it and she thought it would be fun to take a picture of it share with you. So here are my photos. I annotated each photo in an attempt to justify/explain my process.
Plastic Man was one of the greatest conceptual characters ever created in comic books, especially during his Golden Age career where his adventures were chronicled by his creator, the amazing Jack Cole. Primarily a humorist, Cole’s Plastic Man adventures (beginning in the pages of Police Comics in 1941) were wildly funny and amazingly innovative, with Cole’s often surreal artwork and outrageous slapstick humor.
But Plastic Man wasn’t just a great humor strip — there were darker elements as well, especially in the character’s origins as former criminal Eel O’Brian, abandoned by his gang and left for dead when a heist goes bad. Saved by a monk and taken to recover at his monastery, O’Brian discovers that exposure to a mysterious acid during the failed crime has changed him physically — his body is pliable like rubber! With the revelation of this remarkable power, and with the monk’s belief that he had the capacity for greater good, O’Brian decides to change his life completely. Disguising himself by remolding his face and donning cool goggles and a patently ridiculous stretchable leotard (with a distinctive black and yellow striped belt), he becomes the crime fighter Plastic Man!
Eventually joining the police department and then the FBI, Plastic Man becomes an incredibly successfully hero, mostly because he still maintains his Eel O’Brian identity as a criminal in order to keep tabs on the criminal underworld. Thus, with one foot in each “world”, Plas’ adventures are filled with wild comedy as well as crime elements, as he’s pitted against any number of bizarre crooks and femme fatales. Cole capitalized on the character’s unique costume and abilities by either making Plas a master of disguise or by having him “blend into the background” by taking the shape of normal everyday objects, like mailboxes and lamp poles — all with tell-tale black and yellow stripes or stylized goggles. Thus, he became his generation’s “Where’s Waldo?” long before Waldo was born, and readers delighted in ferreting out where Plas was hiding in Cole’s often bizarre artwork!
Plastic Man had a long and successful Golden Age career in both Police Comics and his own title until his publisher, Quality Comics, folded in 1956. DC Comics (then National Periodical Publications) acquired the publishing rights to three Quality properties — Blackhawk, G.I. Combat, and Plastic Man. They almost immediately began publishing the first two but completely forgot about Plastic Man until 1966, where he finally popped up in the Dial H For Hero feature in House of Mystery. That was probably just a way to promote his upcoming (but short-lived) ten-issue series, the first issue memorably illustrated by Gil Kane. But the character wasn’t the same.
Since then, Plastic Man has had a very long, very intermittent, and mostly confusing history/continuity at DC. Every few years the character would be revived, either with a new series or as a member of the All-Star Squadron or eventually, the Justice League. But the exact combination of key elements of each appearance were never quite satisfactory. Almost no one could replicate Cole’s magic touch with the character. (Although Kyle Baker’s series came close. At least it looked great!) A lot of his later writers could just not capture his humor properly, especially in his JLA appearances, where it seemed like he was an obnoxious jerk who wouldn’t shut up. Or they made the character too serious, with family problems or really wrong feelings of insecurity. In the modern DC world, he’s still a good character, but he has lost many of the elements that originally made him great.
Unfortunately, such is the same with Plas’ animation career. It’s not that The Plastic Man Comedy/ Adventure Show (running 1979-1981, from which this four-DVD set is compiled) is actually a bad show — it’s not! It’s got a great pedigree, and some great folks working on it. Plus, Plas is a character who is destined to be animated — stretching and morphing into other shapes is only really cool when you can see it in action! It’s just that it is obviously a product of its time, subject to the whims of the great Saturday Morning Television Network gods, their P.C. desires and fears of complaints from parental groups. It probably didn’t help that the show was co-produced by Hanna Barbera (long past their prime, pre-Cartoon Network) and Ruby-Spears (did they have a prime?).
Here’s some of the good stuff: Plas himself, who does some cool stunts throughout the series and throws out some occasionally great one-liners while under pressure. He’s ably voiced by Michael Bell, although his voice tends to occasionally get a bit whiny when agitated (or is that just because he’s fighting to be heard against the relentlessly bad generic non-stop soundtrack music in each episode?). The villains are pretty cool. I especially like The Clam, an actual talking clam wearing a little sailor’s cap. Dr. Dome (not Doom) pops up from the 60s DC comic series, and Carrot Man (from the 70s comics) also makes an odd appearance. Plus, there are some great comic book writers on the writing staff including Mark Evanier, Steve Gerber, Roy Thomas, and Buzz Dixon. Unfortunately, there are no individual episode credits, so you’re on your own trying to identify who wrote what. (Sounds like a great drinking game to me!)
And here’s some of the bad stuff: Plas’s blonde bombshell partner Penny, who is voiced with the most annoying Southern accent since Veronica on the Archie cartoons from the 60s. (The voice actress, Melendy Britt, did a much better job voicing Princess Adora/She-Ra.) Penny obviously has a huge crush on Plastic Man, which is mostly unrequited as Plas only has eyes for the female Chief (also voiced by Britt). In the DVD documentary for the series, animation producer James Tucker speculates that Penny might only be there to help make it clear that Plas is actually interested in girls, being, you know, so unusually dressed in a leotard all the time. (Oh dear.) Penny finally succeeds in getting her man, as sometime between the first and second seasons, Plas and Penny not only marry — but actually spawn. There’s a little Baby Plas running around in Season Two, not only in his own cartoon series (called Baby Plas, natch), but in the Plastic Family series of cartoons staring Mom, Pop, and Baby Plas. Sadly (or fortunately — your choice), the Baby Plas and Plastic Family cartoons are not included in this set, making it not quite so Complete after all. (But trust me, I’m not complaining!)
By the way, we don’t actually see any of the wedding, except for being told about it in the opening sequence of the second season, in lieu of actually getting a real theme song. But then again, there’s no theme song for the first season either, just a discussion of how Plas’ powers work, set to more relentless generic soundtrack. Was there so much cost-cutting going on that the producers didn’t want to pay for a theme song, or were there just not that many good rhymes for “plastic”?
But I’m forgetting about one of the worst comic relief sidekicks in all of cartoons. Hula Hula was a Polynesian (you can tell by his Hawaiian shirt) man (or boy? who can tell?), who inexplicably talked like Lou Costello (from Abbott &…) and had horrible bad luck that affected everybody around him. And apparently made him stupid as well. Fortunately, the producers came to their senses and didn’t call him by the horribly racist name “Coconut” like they wanted to. The character was already offensive enough without that added burden. He was no Woozy Winks, I’ll tell you that!
But all is not lost. As if to prove that Plas could be a great animated star, the DVD set also includes an unaired Plastic Man pilot episode that was produced for Cartoon Network in 2006, and it is the best thing on this set. It was developed by Andy Suriano (producer on Batman: The Brave and the Bold) and Tom Kenny (voice of Spongebob Squarepants), who also plays Plastic Man. It’s a great cartoon, full of manic energy (maybe a bit too manic, actually), but there are lots of good gags, and Plas seems more like Plas than he has since the 1940s. Perhaps it’s a little bit too Ren & Stimpy/Kricfalusi influenced, for my taste anyway. There’s enough great stuff in the cartoon to not really need the crutch of the borrowed influence, and that may be why it was not picked up to go to series. I’d love to see Suriano and Kenny try it again — and Plas does occasionally pop up on Batman: The Brave and the Bold (voiced by Kenny), and in a much more appealing style, at least in my opinion.
Also included in the set is a 14-minute documentary, PLAS-tastic: A Brief History of Plastic Man. Featuring comic historians Jerry Beck, Mark Evanier (who also wrote for the show), and Alan Kistler, plus animation veterans Dan Riba, Andy Suriano, James Tucker, Tom Kenny, Andrea Romano, and Jeff Hall, the group discuss the series in-depth, as well as the unaired pilot, Kyle Baker’s take on Plastic Man at DC comics, and Plas’ appearances on Batman: The Brave and the Bold. Notably, no DC staffers appear in the documentary.
One last thing, the Bonus Features aren’t on Disc 4 where the packaging says they are. The Documentary is actually on Disc 1 and the unaired pilot “Puddle Trouble” is on Disc 2.
All in all, a very nice DVD set, for a series that may or may not really deserve it — but that’s pretty much left up for you to decide. If you grew up watching this series as a kid, and have fond memories of watching it, you will love it. For the rest of us, there’s a lot to love about Plastic Man, and for something you love, a lot can be forgiven.
Classic comic book adventures of Plastic Man by Jack Cole can be found in Volumes 1-8 of the Plastic Man Archives, published by DC Comics, and highly recommended. (The studio provided a DVD review copy.)
Out this week is a new, two-disc 50th Anniversary Edition of North by Northwest, the second best Alfred Hitchcock film. (In my ranking, the first is Notorious, which teams Cary Grant with Ingrid Bergman, because I think she’s the strongest Hitchcock female lead.)
Here, Grant is an ad executive who is mistaken for a spy and accidentally dragged into conspiracy and murder. James Mason, smoothly menacing, is the bad guy, and Eva Marie Saint the cool Hitchcock blonde with uncertain loyalties. (Although she acts a little too reserved for my taste.) Martin Landau is Mason’s henchman; watch his performance considering that he played it with an air of homosexual jealousy over Mason’s attention to Grant.
It’s a gripping romantic thriller with excellent performances. Even knowing how the movie plays out, I still enjoyed watching the twists and turns unfold. (It’s one of the best ads for the adventure and glamor of train travel ever.) I’m assuming you’re already familiar with how excellent the film is, so let’s talk about this upgraded DVD edition.
The first disc has the movie, with a choice of commentary by screenwriter Ernest Lehman. His recollections, while interesting and complimentary, didn’t add very much to my appreciation of the film. You can also watch with a music-only audio track, highlighting Bernard Herrmann’s score. I believe the visuals have also been upgraded — at least, they looked crisp to me, as though this were a much more recent film.
The second disc is where all the goodies come in. There are four documentaries, two new to this set:
Given how much I enjoy finding out more about the context of enjoyable movies, this package was just what I wanted. Also included are a photo gallery, a TV ad for the movie, the theatrical trailer, and a Hitchcock-hosted promo. Just to remind you how good this film is, here’s a clip from the suspenseful ending, as the couple run from the bad guys chasing them (with her in a smart traveling suit) and wind up on the faces of Mount Rushmore.
(The studio provided a review copy.)
I was thrilled to discover that Disney had made available Condorman on DVD. I got mine by cashing in Disney Movie Rewards points, or apparently you can get it through their Disney Movie Club (a subscription service).
I have fond memories of this 1981 goofy superhero/spy spoof. It starts Michael Crawford, who went on to greater fame as the original musical Phantom of the Opera, and Oliver Reed as the Russian baddy. Crawford is Woody Wilkins, a comic artist and writer who insists on trying out the gadgets of his hero, Condorman, before drawing them, so they’ll be realistic. So the film begins with his jumping off the Eiffel Tower wearing hang glider-like wings, for example.
Who is Condorman? Well, uh, Condorman is what we call a comic hero, in a comic book. A comic book? Yeah, you know like Donald Duck, Popeye, Superman.
Who is Condorman?
Well, uh, Condorman is what we call a comic hero, in a comic book.
A comic book?
Yeah, you know like Donald Duck, Popeye, Superman.
Crawford’s character a flake, albeit a talented artist, but thanks to his propensity for dress-up, he still winds up helping a gorgeous Russian spy (Barbara Carrera) defect with the help of his CIA buddy (James Hampton). After they meet, he starts drawing her into his comic book as “Laser Lady”, and the CIA funds building more of his gadgets, including a really cool Condorcar that becomes a hovercraft.
The movie is full of outrageous international events, slapstick, family-friendly romance, and bad special effects, but I liked the concept and still enjoy the film, nostalgically. It’s like James Bond for kids, with comics added. Anyone else remember this?
