DVD REVIEW: Popeye the Sailor (Vol. 3) – 1941-1943

All that he is, is awesome. The Popeye cartoons have always made for great fun since their days in the dawn of animation. Most stories are heroic narratives- personally, I know many a screenwriting professors who have been known to show their students a Popeye cartoon as an example of an excellent narrative.

This is a nostalgia DVD collection, and great fun for those of us who grew up with Popeye. It features 32 memorable cartoons.

And if you want to introduce the children in your life to ol’ Popeye, I think this DVD would do the trick, hands down. Despite the fact that these early features are in black and white, they are packed with so much action and adventure that kids will see past it.

So get ready to set sail with the world’s most famous sailor who isn’t a duck, and check out Popeye today.

I give this dvd set five out of five Cans of Vegetables.

It’s Time to Get Looney with Bugs Bunny and the Gang!

The Looney Tunes Spotlight Collection
Warner Bros.
Starring the Voice Talents of Mel Blanc
Not Rated (so the kids can watch this set)
Running Time = 203 minutes (a little over 3 hours of cartoons on two DVDs)

Okay, if you don’t like Looney Tunes, raise your hand? Is your hand up? Is it? Then take your hand and Continue reading “It’s Time to Get Looney with Bugs Bunny and the Gang!”

Silverhawks vol. 1 DVD REVIEW

Hello out there in tvland, or rather cartoon land, and welcome to my review of Silverhawks volume one on DVD! To those of you who are unfamiliar with this show, it is the cousin of one of the most popular cartoons of the eighties, Thundercats….HO! After kids in the mid-eighties went ga-ga over the pack of ferociously fun and morally upstanding humanoid felines, the same creative team of Arthur Rankin and Jules Bass quickly assembled another animal/human/hero concept for the kiddies 1986 after school line-up.

Continue reading “Silverhawks vol. 1 DVD REVIEW”

Watership Down: Politics Through Animation

Watership Down (1978)
Warner Bros./Nepenthe Productions
Starring the voice talents of John Hurt, Richard Briers, Zero Mostel
Not Rated
Running Time = 92 minutes
Available Now

Allegory – a story in which people, things, and happenings have a hidden or symbolic meaning: allegories are used for teaching or explaining ideas, moral principles, etc.

And again, another vocab lesson has passed. Read on.

Remember 2-D animation? Yes, there was a time when animated movies were drawn and painted by hand, without the assistance of computers. It’s a complex process that employs hundreds of hours of work and detail. The end result is a series of moving drawings on the screen. Continue reading “Watership Down: Politics Through Animation”

REVIEW: The Smurfs Season 1 Volume 2

My biggest complaint about this dvd is that Papa Smurf isn’t as featured on the cover as he should be.

What can I say? If you were raised on the classics then you want the Smurfs- not for the same purposes as Gargamel, but you still have a hunger for them. They’re happy, little tales of happy, little people leading happy, big lives. . . . . . see what I did there? Continue reading “REVIEW: The Smurfs Season 1 Volume 2”