(Spoiler Section Length - 20min 24sec)
Last year for Spookaboo we watched The Nightmare Before Christmas film, often hailed as a Tim Burton-directed film, despite him being a producer. Corpse Bride shows us what an actual Burton-directed feature film looks like, for better and worse. It's got a fun supernatural world too, but also a significant portion of the film features a drab 'real' world, and towards the end the two worlds collide. It's also got a stronger focus on romance, with a love triangle formed between Victor, his arranged marriage partner Victoria, and his accidental fiancée Emily. These elements sound promising, but do they come together in the end? Listen to find out!
By the late 30s, Warner Bros finally managed to develop some cartoon stars that would end up standing the test of time, like Porky Pig and Daffy Duck. But their biggest star still hadn't arrived, until this short! Sort of! Tho the rabbit in this short is a far cry from Bugs Bunny as we know him today, it's still an important stepping stone on the way to Bugs' eventual actual debut in 1940. But historical importance aside, is the cartoon any good, so many years later? Listen to find out!
(Spoiler Section Length - 7min 5sec)
Anime movies attached to shows can be a mixed bag, often struggling to stretch characters and concepts out into a feature-length format, and struggling even further to work as stand-alone films. While many anime movies struggle because the anime they're spun off from are adaptations of manga, and thus they cannot contradict canon, the Cowboy Bebop movie doesn't have that particular problem. All it has to do is slot into its parent series, which was already very episodic in nature. The result is a movie that, to fans of the series, just feels like an extra-long episode (complimentary), but with a much higher budget. Does it still hold up today, if your memories of the original series are hazy at best? Listen to find out!
It's well known that Fantasia could only happen because of the success of Walt Disney's first big feature-length gamble, Snow White. What's less well known are these two shorts that preceeded Fantasia's release, one featuring an important Fantasia collaborator and the other being a bit of a test for a more 'Symphonic' take on a cartoon than the Silly Symphonies often actually exhibited. Are either of these cartoons worth watching on their own merits, though? Listen to find out!
(Spoiler Section Length - 6min 49sec)
You don't need us to tell you that the Pokemon franchise is a phenomenon. And while the games are the biggest, most important part of that phenomenon, the anime was no slouch either, especially back in the late 90s. So when they made the very first Pokemon MOVIE? Kids went wild! Two of the three of us were kids back then, and you better believe we went wild too! But all these years later, does the English dub of the original Pokemon movie still hold water? Listen to find out!
Are you a groovy kat? Have you got rhythm? Can you move to the beat? What if your answers to all those questions were 'no', but everyone else at your kollege said 'yes' and they're judging you for it? That's more or less the plot of this weird little kartoon. But is it worth watching? Listen to find out!
(Spoiler Section Length - 8min 20sec)
We reach the end of our Looney Tunes movie marathon with the film that inspired the marathon in the first place! This movie came out very recently, but you'd be forgiven for not knowing about it, given how little it was advertised. It's a cartoon 50's sci-fi B-movie starring Porky, Daffy and Petunia, involving a space invader and a copious amount of bubblegum. It's also a premiere example of how little Warner Bros-Discovery values animation in this day and age. But company mismanagement aside, is the film actually... good? Listen to find out!
By the late 30s, Disney had accrued multiple big cartoon stars, but Warner Bros still really just had the one: Porky Pig. Then Porky went on a duck hunt and the studio started to think... maybe we've got the makings for a second star. 1938 is the year they would try to make Daffy Duck a star, and what better way to start than by having him co-star with Porky? In these two shorts we explore Daffy's earliest cartoons where he's a headliner star, and ask ourselves... do these still hold up?
(Spoiler Section Length - 2min 8sec)
Looney Tunes Back in Action started life as a Space Jam sequel, but ultimately evolved into its own thing. The true sequel wouldn't come for another decade or two, and rather than switching genres, it shows the Looney Tunes playing basketball yet again, just with a different star athlete this time around: LeBron James. But the Looney Tunes aren't the only Warner Bros properties appearing this time around... no, this time there's a few more. Do they improve the movie? Worsen it? And how's the whole thing hold up, only a few years later? Listen to find out!
While both Disney and Warner Bros created duck characters who would go on to be popular to this day, they weren't the only studios trying to use waterfowl to create memorable characters. Enter Terrytoons, covered on this podcast for the first time! Their creation, Gandy the Goose, isn't exactly a household name these days, but is that because his cartoons are bad? Let's watch and find out!
(Spoiler Section Length - 13min 6sec)
After Space Jam's success, attempts were immediately made to create a sequel. None of that really panned out until close to 30 years later, but back in the early 2000s a new Looney Tunes live-action hybrid film WAS made... to much less success than Space Jam. But success, critical or financial, does not actually tell one whether a movie is good or not, and the extra screen time for the toons, casting of Brendan Fraser and world-tour vibe of the film certainly all seem promising, so... does this film hold up?
It's time for ducks! And maybe some other forms of foul. But today specifically, it's a lot of ducks, with Disney's very own Donald and his three new co-stars: Huey, Dewey & Louie! These two shorts, the first two released starring the trio, show two very different ways of incorporating them into a Donald Duck short. I think it's ultimately a mix of the two styles that ends up sticking, but listen to find out if either of the two are still worth watching!
(Spoiler Section Length - 6min 14sec)
Come on and slam, if you want to jam. And Jam we must, because we're warping back to the 90s when Looney Tunes and Michael Jordan were at peak cultural relevance. Space Jam is a movie that was hugely popular at the time, but in more modern evaluations has often been found lacking. Given how cynically corporate the film's origins are, one would hardly be surprised if it fell short. But... does it? Is this film best left in the 90s, or does it still hold merit so many years later? Listen to find out!
Frank Tashlin is a fascinating character, in and out of the Warner Bros animation studio multiple times throughout its lifetime. On the podcast, we've only watched his Porky shorts thus far, and so, when given free range to make a color short, with original characters, one of the last shorts he worked on before another exodus and eventual return, is the product still worthwhile? Listen to find out!
(Spoiler Section Length - 7min 37sec)
Though Rankin/Bass was well-known for their holiday specials featuring the likes of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman, the amount of specials that the company actually produced might be surprising to many casual viewers. But the fact of the matter is, they made enough holiday specials with enough of a shared universe that they were eventually able to make a feature-length film using characters from at least six other specials. But then, why have most people not actually heard of this film? Is it because it doesn't hold up? Listen to find out!
This holiday cartoon, released at the beginning of 1938, turns many Popeye conventions on their ear: Popeye and Bluto are pals and don't fight each other. Popeye is more focused on Olive Oyl's grandmother than Olive Oyl herself. And no real violence of any sort actually occurs! This might make it sound like a boring Popeye cartoon, but is that truly the case? Listen to find out!
(Spoiler Section Length - 10min 48sec)
When you're passionate about animation, you end up knowing about a lot of movies by proxy, without having actually seen them. The French film with the giant blue people is one such film for Danika, and now it's finally time to watch the thing! It is significantly weirder than any of this podcast's cohosts could have imagined. But does it hold up? Listen to find out!
Though traditional, 2D animation was the norm for animated shorts in the 1930s, they weren't the ONLY things being made. George Pal was also out there, creating shorts using a fascinating form of stop-motion which involved a great many carved wooden figures. His 1930s work was primarily comprised of advertisments, but they're fascinating nonetheless. Do these old works still hold up, even if the things they advertise are no longer relevant? Listen to find out!
Like Akira, Ghost in the Shell is one of those anime movies that is often brought up to represent the value and 'adult' appeal that anime has, as compared to western animated movies which are often following in Disney's footsteps. Like Akira, it's also very influential, both in its home country and overseas. But is it worthy of this reputation? Does a 1995 film focused on the idea of near-future technology still hold up so many decades later? Listen to find out!
Ending our look at 1937, we come to Lonesome Ghosts, a short where Mickey, Donald and Goofy are ghostbusters, decades before the 80s film. But the twist is that they ones asking for their help are... the ghosts themselves!! Since the ghosts are so lonesome they want to terrorize our main trio, and they do so in many weird and wacky ways. Is it a good cartoon? Listen to find out!
