Posts Tagged ‘Chuck Jones’
Eh… What’s up, Doc?…
The inimitable Chuck Jones— animator, and director of well over 200 Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts (plus TV specials and feature films) starring Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote, Sylvester, Pepé Le Pew and others from the Warner Bros. menagerie– on “how to draw Bugs Bunny”:
From the terrific film Chuck Amuck.
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As we keep an eye out for Elmer, we might send rhyming birthday wishes to Ben Jonson; he was born on this date in 1572. While Jonson is probably best remembered these days as the author of hysterically-funny satirical plays like Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair, he was also an accomplished poet, whose work (especially his lyric poetry) was tremendously influential and his Jacobean contemporaries and on the Carolines.
Jonson was a contemporary of Shakespeare, and is often remembered as a rival– probably, given the competitive atmosphere of the theater in those days, accurately. But it was Jonson who provided the prefatory verse that opens Shakespeare’s First Folio (which Jonson may, some scholars believe, have helped to edit). Indeed, it was Jonson who animated the view of Shakespeare as a “natural,” an author who, despite “small Latine, and lesse Greeke,” wrote works of genius. But lest one take that as back-handed praise (Jonson was himself classically educated), Jonson concludes:
Yet must I not give Nature all: Thy Art,
My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part.
From the Department of Superfluous Redundancy…
From Damn Cool Pictures, “50 Completely Useless Signs“…
More at Damn Cool Pictures.
As we await further instructions, we might recall that it was on this date in 1940 that the Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies animated short “A Wild Hare”– the first “official” Bugs Bunny cartoon– premiered (though readers will recall that Bugs [or at least, his prototype] made his inaugural screen appearance two years earlier). Directed by Tex Avery, “A Wild Hare” was nominated for an Academy Award.
There’s a throat in my frog…
Stephen Spielberg has called it “the Citizen Kane of animated films.” It has landed squarely in the Top Ten lists of both professional animators and (IMDB) fans. It has been selected for preservation by the Library of Congress… Written by Michael Maltese, directed by Chuck Jones, starring Michigan J. Frog, it’s One Froggy Evening:
As we marvel at the glorious madness of it all, we might recall that it was on this date in 1977 that Captain Stubing and his crew first sailed on ABC’s The Love Boat. A hit for 9 seasons, the series helped popularize the “multiple parallel storyline” format, via which three separate stories set on the cruise ship ran intertwined through the hour. (An unintended by-product: notorious continuity errors, most notably in social director Julie’s outfits during boarding and debarkation, which were often inconsistent between storylines.)
Owning a piece of the past: an investment option for our times?…
source: Bonhams
As one passes the first anniversary of the failure of Lehman Brothers, one might be wondering where (beyond one’s mattress) one should be parking what’s left of one’s resources.
As Wired.com reports, the auctioneers Bonhams have an idea: natural history artifacts. The 42 items to be gaveled in a sale to held in Las Vegas on October 3 range from a fossilized fish, estimated to go for about $1,000, to a 66 million-year-old T-Rex skeleton (above), one of the best ever found– and estimated to fetch as much as $8 million. Other highlights include the largest shark jaw ever found, a giant pig skull, and the skeleton of a duck-billed dinosaur.
Collectables, of course, have an uneven history as investments… but then, how’s that stock portfolio doing this last year or so?
As we rethink our portfolios (and the arrangement of our living rooms), we might recall that it was on this date in 1949 that Warner. Bros. introduced the Road Runner in the cartoon short “Fast and Furry-ous.” Created by Michael Maltese and the incomparable Chuck Jones, The Road Runner’s “beep, beep” (like the sounds of most other Warner Bros. cartoon characters) was voiced by Mel Blanc.
The Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote make their debut
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