Showing posts with label cartoons. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cartoons. Show all posts
Friday, November 14, 2008
Thoughts For Today
Thoughts For Today
I have a bit of a cold, so I relexed a bit today. I also spent some time looking at websites for dvds. Kung Fu Cinema http://www.kungfucinema.com/ reviews some 500 different martial arts films. Also, the selection of Midtown Comics for dvds is rather interesting for cartoons. I spent some time looking at the dvds from them as well as Forbidden Planet.
There is some money in the budget still for purchasing films for the library. I am looking out for myself and suggesting some cartoons, animation, and martial arts films because I like to watch this kind of thing. I am not in charge of ordering films, so I have to be selective and not suggest too many.
I am going to try and get some Max Fleischer cartoons. He is famous for his Betty Boop, Popeye, and Superman cartoons. Max Fleischer also did a number of cartoons featuring Cab Calloway and other famous jazz musicians which are currently out of copyright.
I also read a little bit from a collected work by Image Comics, The Savage Dragon. It is light entertainment, but not something which I really want to review.
Friday, December 7, 2007
Superman - 1941 - Max Fleischer's First Superman Cartoon
The Fleischer Studio superman cartoons are in the public domain which is quite interesting. They are a lot of fun to watch.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Schulz and Peanuts, Counting Heads
Charles Schulz Museum
Good morning,
I am still reading Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography by David Michaelis. I have spent over a week reading it. The text is very dense and gives a lot of details about Schulz's life. It seems that Schulz's cartoons changed with how his life was happening. I've gotten to one of the more juicy parts as they say, Schulz is divorcing his wife at fifty and marrying a younger woman to make himself happy. The book depicts Schulz as a straight arrow, a teetotaler, a religious man with a weakness for strong women. Joyce, his first wife, seems to be his model for Lucy who always pushes around Charlie Brown. There are two sets of black and white photographs of Schulz's life. The photographs look like an idealized all American family like the Waltons which is kind of disconcerting. They seem to fit an every man image. Every other page seems to have a strip of Peanuts in it once you get past the first third of the book. The strips often match word for word what is happening in Schulz's life at some point. I am really enjoying this book. It is extremely well written, with very thick prose. The biography feels a lot closer to the truth than most biographies that I have read. It even has 59 pages of source notes to document the authors research, and a very extensive index. If you like biographies, this is something well worth reading.
Another book which I chose to pass up putting in this blog initially which I read several weeks ago is Counting Heads by David Marusek. It is his first novel. The science fiction reads like a novel of contemporary life even though it is set in the future. The descriptions are so well written that they come to life and make the setting very believable. It is almost too believable, sometimes the writing loses the sense of wonder ordinarily occurring in science fiction. It follows the life of Samsamson Harger, a man who lives in the future. He starts off as an artist producing packaging design. Then it describes his marriage, life, and death. The book is broken into stages. There are a lot of plot devices. Halfway through the book, SamSamson gets seared so he cannot have his age rejuvenated and stinks terribly. This ensures no sequels. The future being described has a lot of ideas. There is a spaceship being built to colonize the stars, but the backers keep on fighting on whether to colonize the far stars or just the inner solar system. This book has a lot more depth than most science fiction I have read recently. If you want to read a very literary work of science fiction, this book is for you. If you'd rather read space opera, or fast paced military science fiction don't read this book.
I am thinking about what to say next. I'll probably go back through this site and recheck the keywords. I got maybe three or four people coming in from the newsgroups which I posted to. I am going to do the next stetp today. I am going to go through Yahoo Groups and see which groups I can post a link to to get this going some more.
I am still reading Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography by David Michaelis. I have spent over a week reading it. The text is very dense and gives a lot of details about Schulz's life. It seems that Schulz's cartoons changed with how his life was happening. I've gotten to one of the more juicy parts as they say, Schulz is divorcing his wife at fifty and marrying a younger woman to make himself happy. The book depicts Schulz as a straight arrow, a teetotaler, a religious man with a weakness for strong women. Joyce, his first wife, seems to be his model for Lucy who always pushes around Charlie Brown. There are two sets of black and white photographs of Schulz's life. The photographs look like an idealized all American family like the Waltons which is kind of disconcerting. They seem to fit an every man image. Every other page seems to have a strip of Peanuts in it once you get past the first third of the book. The strips often match word for word what is happening in Schulz's life at some point. I am really enjoying this book. It is extremely well written, with very thick prose. The biography feels a lot closer to the truth than most biographies that I have read. It even has 59 pages of source notes to document the authors research, and a very extensive index. If you like biographies, this is something well worth reading.
Another book which I chose to pass up putting in this blog initially which I read several weeks ago is Counting Heads by David Marusek. It is his first novel. The science fiction reads like a novel of contemporary life even though it is set in the future. The descriptions are so well written that they come to life and make the setting very believable. It is almost too believable, sometimes the writing loses the sense of wonder ordinarily occurring in science fiction. It follows the life of Samsamson Harger, a man who lives in the future. He starts off as an artist producing packaging design. Then it describes his marriage, life, and death. The book is broken into stages. There are a lot of plot devices. Halfway through the book, SamSamson gets seared so he cannot have his age rejuvenated and stinks terribly. This ensures no sequels. The future being described has a lot of ideas. There is a spaceship being built to colonize the stars, but the backers keep on fighting on whether to colonize the far stars or just the inner solar system. This book has a lot more depth than most science fiction I have read recently. If you want to read a very literary work of science fiction, this book is for you. If you'd rather read space opera, or fast paced military science fiction don't read this book.
I am thinking about what to say next. I'll probably go back through this site and recheck the keywords. I got maybe three or four people coming in from the newsgroups which I posted to. I am going to do the next stetp today. I am going to go through Yahoo Groups and see which groups I can post a link to to get this going some more.
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