Showing posts with label Cartoons. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cartoons. Show all posts

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Veggie Tales - An Easter Carol (2004)



Veggie Tales goes Dickensian for this sprightly and inventive take on the Christian significance of Easter. Greedy Ebenezer Nezzer, a Scrooge equivalent and manufacturer of such Easter kitsch as plastic eggs and mechanical chickens, mounts a huge commercial campaign to reap further profits from a day that should be about remembering the resurrection of Jesus. With series regulars Bob the Tomato (cast, fittingly, as a Bob Cratchit type) and Larry the Cucumber on board, An Easter Carol finds Ebenezer led by a music-box angel named Hope (voiced by Rebecca St. James) through a spectral journey to discover the real meaning of Christ's death and return. As usual, the animation is lively but the script is less heavy-handed than some other Biblically inspired Veggie Tales. Production art includes some wonderful stained glass backgrounds. The overall effect is clever and pleasing. --Tom Keogh

Easter Carol Song (Rebecca St. James):

Saturday, April 2, 2011

Walter Lantz - Scrub Me Mama With A Boogie Beat (1941 Banned)



"Scrub Me Mama with a Boogie Beat" is a 1940 hit boogie-woogie song written by Don Raye. A bawdy, jazzy tune, the song describes a laundry woman from Harlem, New York whose technique is so unusual that people come from all around just to watch her scrub. The Andrews Sisters and Will Bradley & His Orchestra recorded the most successful pop versions of the song, but it is today best recognized as the centerpiece of an eponymous Walter Lantz Studio cartoon from 1941.

The short, released on March 28, 1941 by Universal Pictures features no director credit (Walter Lantz claims to have directed the cartoon himself), with a story by Ben Hardaway, animation by Alex Lovy and Frank Tipper, and voice work by Mel Blanc. The short is awash with blackface stereotypes of African American people and culture, and of life in the rural Southern United States.

The Scrub Me Mama short is today in the public domain.