1932-33 nominees for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Subject.





Three Little Pigs (1932), Walt Disney Studios. Director: Burt Gillett. Producer: Walt Disney.

Believe it or not, this was the apex of popularity for one-reel cartoons.  I honestly had no idea how popular this cartoon was at the time.  People actually went to the movies just to see this short.  The film grossed $250,000 (about $5 million in todays money) on a $22,000 budget.  Beyond its popularity it is held in wide regarded as a landmark cartoon.  It was added to the National Film Registry, was voted #11 in 50 Greatest Cartoons of all time as voted by cartoonists and Chuck Jones hailed it as "the first time that anybody ever brought characters to life [in an animated cartoon]. They were three characters who looked alike and acted differently".

And really it's the simple story of the Three Little Pigs.  But the pigs are different and distinct.  And the Wolf is a fairly realized villain.  The song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf" resonated in the Great Depression and was a hit of its own as well as entering the cultural consciousness (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolfe).  In a different world, had Disney been able to follow up with more powerful cartoons of the Three Pigs we may have seen them be as popular as Mickey and Donald.  But it was not to be.  







Building a Building: Walt Disney Pictures. Director: David Hand. Producer: Walt Disney.

Mickey is working at a construction site running a steam shovel.  Minnie is on site selling sandwiches to the workers.  And Peg-Leg Pete is the foreman.  Of course trouble starts as Mickey causes problems on the site, Pete tries to make time with Minnie (which makes Mickey angry) and is spurned by her and the typical construction site shenanigans ensue (they were probably less hackneyed 85 years ago).  Ultimately Mickey is fired and goes into business with Minnie selling box lunches.  

I'm at a loss as to the nomination for this one.  Not only is this not the best (it didn't win, but still) cartoon of the year...it's not even the best or even second-best Mickey cartoon.  The Mad Doctor is a far better and more interesting Mickey film.  And Mickey's Gala Premiere, while not a patch on The Mad Doctor, is at least interesting to old film buffs for the number of shout-outs.  


www.youtube.com/results?sp=mAEB&search_query=building+a+building+mickey+mouse



The Merry Old Soul:  Walter Lantz Productions.  Directed by Walter Lantz and Bill Nolan.  Produced by Walter Lantz.  

Oswald the Rabbit has a bad toothache and goes to the dentist to have it pulled.  As the dentist is trying to pull the tooth (and uses some rough anesthetic) the radio reports that Old King Cole has the blues.  Oswald jumps up and goes to cheer up the monarch, gathering the likes of Charlie Chaplin, The Marx Brothers, Jimmy Durante and others to help out.  In the end it was all a dream.  

There's really not a lot to recommend this one other than the shout-outs that are kind of fun for old movie buffs.  There are a few cute visual gags here and there...Oswald's teeth have an actual bridge between two of them and one has a monarch "crown" on it.  But overall it's a cute piece of fluff rather than a stand-out film.  




So did they get it right?  Well they did with the winner.  The Three Little Pigs really was a landmark film.  And Disney was simply making the best cartoons at the time and their best output was a few steps beyond the competition.  The more compelling question is...were there better choices than the other two nominees.  And I'd say yes.  As mentioned The Mad Doctor is a far better Mickey film than Building a Building and it also better than The Merry Old Soul.  I wish I could find a re-mastered copy of  Alexander Alexeieff & Claire Parker's Night on Bald Mountain because from what I can see it might give the Pigs a run for their money.  But the copies I've been able to find are incredibly dark and muddy, so it's hard to get a good feel for the film. 

Slam_Bradley, I didn't realize there was a cartoon of "Night on Bald Mountain" before the segment in Fantasia.

I'll look for it despite the quality problem you mention.

This months viewings has gone sour for me due to work. As of last Wednesday I was assigned a new hire to orient in my position for another department. No prior experience so complete and total 1:1 training for 3-4 weeks which takes me up to Thanksgiving. After talking 8hrs a day through my entire shift and constant reviewing and discussion of the role I get home extremely exhausted. So for last week I sat down each night after work with dinner watching a few cartoons from the Warner Bros Home Entertainment Academy Awards Animation Collection each night. Since it is a 3 DVD set, I will include this baby as ONE viewing on the list if that is allowable? Hopefully the next few weeks I will find time for a return to actual movies if my duty as preceptor smooths out.

It includes 15 winners of Oscars and 26 nominees: 1. The Milky Way, 2. Yankee Doodle Mouse, 3. Mouse Trouble, 4. Quiet Please, 5. The Cat Concerto, 6. Tweetie Pie, 7. The Little Orphan, 8. For Scent-Imental Reasons, 9. So Much for So Little, 10. Two Mouseketeers, 11. Johann Mouse, 12. Speedy Gonzales, 13. Birds Anonymous, 14. Knighty-Knight Bugs, 15. The Dot and the Line, 16. Popeye the Sailor Meets Sinbad the Sailor, 17. Peace on Earth, 18. A Wild Hare, 19. Puss Gets the Boot, 20. Superman, 21. Hiawatha's Rabbit Hunt, 22. Rhapsody In Rivets, 23. The Night Before Christmas, 24. Blitz Wolf, 25. Pigs in a Polka, 26. Swooner Crooner, 27. Walky Talky Hawky, 28. Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Mouse, 29. Mouse Wreckers, 30. Hatch Up Your Troubles, 31. Jerry's Cousin, 32. Little Johnny Jet, 33. Touché, Pussy Cat! 34. From A to Z-Z-Z-Z, 35. Sandy Claws, 36. Good Will To Men, 37. Tabasco Road, 38. One Droopy Knight, 39. High Note, 40. Nelly's Folly, 41. Now Hear This, 42. "Drawn for Glory: Animation's Triumph At The Oscars®," 43. What's Cookin' Doc?

What a wonderful collection and variety of great cartoons from the era of cinema. Some Tom and Jerry antics, Popeye fisticuffs, Superman by Fleischer, Bugs Bunny classics, Droopy Dog, Sylvester being beaten upon by Tweety and other shenanigans guaranteed to put a smile upon your face with fond memories of growing up watching these either at the movies or on television. 

1935 nominees for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Subject.



The Three Orphan Kittens (1935), Walt Disney Studios. Director: David Hand. Producer: Walt Disney.

Three (it has to be three) little kittens are dropped off in a sack in the snow and find their way into a warm house.  Hijinks ensue.  And that's pretty much the plot.  And honestly, it doesn't matter.  Because this is such a beautifully animated film that absolutely brings to life three barely anthropomorphized kittens that you simply don't care that there is no plot at all.  The kittens are adorable, their antics are cute and the animation is lush and gorgeous.  This is the Facebook kitten video of 1935.  

At this point Disney was using the Silly Symphony cartoons as exercises to work out animation techniques in preparation for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.  This cartoon is pure cuteness and lushness of animation.  The scene with the kittens under the stove shows the kittens reflection in the flooring in an animation coup that probably wasn't topped until Beauty and the Beast (starting at the 1:53 mark of the video).  There is some unfortunate racist stereotyping.  But it's still a masterful piece of animation. 






The Calico Dragon (1935).  Harman-Ising Productions.  Directed By Rudolf Ising.  Produced By Hugh Harman, Rudolf Ising.

A little girl is reading a bedtime story to her toys.  As she dozes off the toys come to life and start off on a quest (precipitated by the story) to fight a dragon and rescue the damsel.  This is a cute cartoon and is a reasonably good exercise in cartoon world-building.  It just isn't really anything super special and the two-strip color makes it literally pale in comparison to what Disney was producing at the time.  Since it's trying to fill the same niche as the Silly Symphonies (as opposed to, for example, Popeye which was going a different direction) its failures are that much more noticeable.  






Who Killed Cock Robin? (1935), Walt Disney Studios. Director: David Hand. Producer: Walt Disney.

Cock Robin (a shout-out to Bing Crosby) is serenading Jenny Wren (Mae West) when he's struck by an arrow and falls from the limb.  The police round up the usual suspects and a trial commences to find out who killed cock robin.  The suspects are shout-outs to Edward G. Robinson, Harpo Marx (a cuckoo) and a very racist black-bird.  The police are brutal, the judge ultimately wants to hang them all and the whole thing is pretty pointless.  In the end Cock Robin was shot by Cupid, but by that time we don't care.



So did they get it right?  Three Orphan Kittens is definitely the best of the three.  And I don't have too much of an issue with it winning the statue.  It's a beautiful film with lush animation and just freakin' adorable kittens.  But there were certainly other contenders and they would have been better nominees that two of the three we got.  Disney was absolutely on fire in 1935.  Worth (and worthier) choices would have been Music Land, a Romeo and Juliet tales set in a land of music with Land of Symphony and the Land of Jazz separated by the Sea of Discord.  It's all musical with no speaking and is a fabulous use of music.  The Band Concert is the first Mickey Mouse film in color and is a certified classic.  Again it has a fabulous use of music and is just a super fun film.  Not from Disney, The Colour Box directed by Len Lye is an interesting exercise in abstract animation where the animation is created directly on the film stock.  Probably not important enough for the win, but definitely interesting. 

The Dark Knight (2008): Nominated for Academy Award for Sound Mixing

I put this one on tonight for sheer entertainment value, not really planning to count it for this event. Then the darndest thing happened. The film started, and the audio track was a total mess -- too much ambient noise, and nearly impossible to make out what was being said. I felt like I was on the bottom of a swimming pool. I turned on my sound bar and subwoofer, and suddenly it all cleared up...brilliantly.

That's when I became interested in the sound mixing of this film. It's an Academy Award category I actually joked about when I introduced the assignment for the month, as it's something I've never paid attention to, and I couldn't imagine anyone else did either. But I did this time. I did remember that, while this film wasn't nominated for Best Picture (I'm betting some of this had to do with it being a "superhero film"), it did get nominated for a slew of awards, and while we tend to pay the most attention to Heath Ledger's posthumous Best Supporting Actor win, a nomination for sound mixing was in there somewhere too.

So yeah. I'm going to talk about that.

I mean, it's brilliant. I never paid attention to this kind of thing before, but the sound mixing does so much to sustain the energy of the film. It quantifies a theme running throughout the film about people reaching their breaking points, creating a sustained tension in the background sound that increases in intensity from moment to moment until there is finally a release, it swiftly exchanges ambient background noises that maintain a momentum across shots, from the ambient sounds of the Batmobile, to a helicopter, to even the sound of a gunshot.

I pulled up any random scene I could find on Youtube to use as an illustration of this.



Note the very first sound of the scene. That wasn't the Joker's gun going off -- it was the background music -- but the two work interchangeably. Once The Joker begins telling the story of how he got his scars, we hear that sound we initially mistook for ambient background noise building in intensity. And then the minor things -- the tinking of a flower vase as The Joker grabs a bite of a flower, the over-emphasis on the smacking noises his lips make that emphasize Ledger's nuanced performance, the fact that the only scenes in the film that aren't flooded with ambient noise always occur in large rooms with cold floor tiles, suggesting a hollow, empty feeling as a background cough is emphasized to exaggerate the empty space, there's just so much careful decision-making going into all of this.

I think I understand this enough to call it sound mixing and not sound editing. If I understand correctly, sound editing is the adding of these sounds post production, whereas sound mixing is getting the levels right, and that's what's working most prominently here -- blending ambient and sometimes primary sounds together fluidly at times, while raising levels at others in order to create dramatic effect and enhance theme. The film won for sound editing but lost for sound mixing. I can't speak to the quality of the sound mixing in the other films that were in the running, but it sure seems like a shame this one didn't win.

It won Best Director and Best Color Cinematography.  Was nominated for Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor, Best Screenplay, Art Direction and Sound. 

I've always avoided that film. American John Wayne going to Ireland to show those backward louts how to be a real man? No thanks.