Currently On Sale
On Sale: 2008 Archive
On Sale: 2007 Archive
On Sale: 2006 Archive
On Sale: 2005 Archive
American West
Spanish Cinema Now
YFF: Kicking
David Cronenberg
Les Paroisses...
Independents Night
The Wobblies
Leo Awards
Norwegian Cinema
David Cronenberg
Bruno Dumont
Ubisoft
Chinese Cinema
Golden Silents
Independents Night
YFF: Ariel
Protocols of Zion
Avant-Garde
Shochiku
Scanners
Rendez-Vous
Remembering Susan
FCS: Rip Torn
FCS: Director's Label
Tim Burton
Tom Schiller
Technicolor Dreaming
I Love to Singa
Cartoon Musicals II
Amos Gitai
Latinbeat 05
Nicholas Roeg
Archive 2005 - To April
Archive 2004 - WRT
Archive 2003 - WRT
Archive 2002 - WRT
Archive 2001 - WRT
Archive 2000 - WRT
Archive 1999 - WRT
Archive 1998 - WRT
Archive 1997 - WRT
Archive 1996 - WRT
|
|
In 1982, right after I arrived in New York,
I was directed by a friend to not walk but run to the Whitney
Museum for a Walt Disney show. For me and thousands of others
raised on computers who wore tennis shoes and shaggy D.A.s,
the show was a revelation. It was curated by a guy named Greg
Ford, programmer/critic/filmmaker extraordinaire, and one of
the five or six people on the planet who knows animation and
its history inside out. We’ve turned
to Greg many times in the past for curating duties, and we’re
doing so once again. Greg is a true scholar and a gentleman,
not to mention a hero, and we all owe him a debt. When I proposed the idea of a mammoth animation
show to Greg, he gently discouraged me. “That’s like doing a mammoth
live-action show,” he said. I suggested that we do a series
of shows and Greg counter-suggested that we begin with music.
Why music? For the simple reason that it’s as intimately
tied with the development of animation, and the idea of character
development and action in animation, as Rodgers was to Hart,
as Lucy was to Ricky, as Tom Cruise is to Katie Holmes. Starting
in 1928 with Steamboat Willie, the first appearance of Mickey
Mouse, music has inspired animators to move (literally) in fresh,
surprising new directions.Twist, turn, skid, stumble and soar with
these rhapsodies, grand operas, band concerts, follies, and
concertos! And thrill to the excitement of moving pictures,
conceived and drawn by some of the greatest visionaries in
the history of cinema. – Kent
Jones
|
|
| |
A compilation of cartoons by Disney pioneer Ub Iwerks: Skeleton Dance (1928), Karnival
Kid (1929), Mickey’s Follies (1929), where Mickey croons
his trademark barnyard love-ballad “Minnie’s Yoo Hoo,” penned
by Carl Stalling; Fiddlesticks! (1930) with Flip the Frog, Jack
and the Beanstalk (1933) scored by Stalling, Merry Mannequins (1937),
with Cupid-struck male and female department-store dummies doing “Fred
and Ginger” shtick, and Skeleton Frolic (1937), Iwerks’s
unofficial color remake of his 1928 classic.
|
FRI AUG 19: 1:00 PM
SUN AUG 21: 8:30 PM
SUN AUG 28: 8:30 PM
WED AUG 31: 6:00 PM
|
The "Silly Symphonies," became known as the more "experimental"
Disney works: Cookie
Carnival, Woodland Cafe, Who Killed Cock Robin?, Musicland, and Cock
O' the Walk. The studio also mixed music and action in omnibus pics
like Make
Mine Music (1946) and Melody Time (1948). Excerpted segments
include "Bumble Boogie,""All the Cats Join In" (a Benny Goodman-inspired
paean to 40s bobby-soxers and hotrods), Ward Kimball's 1945 rendering of
the title song from Three
Caballeros, and Eric Goldberg's Fantasia 2000 spin on Gershwinís
"Rhapsody in Blue."
|
FRI
AUG 19: 3:30 PM
SAT AUG 20: 5:30 PM
SUN
AUG 21: 3:30 PM
WED
AUG 31: 3:30 PM |
A compiliation of shorts including Mickey
Mouse in Steamboat
Willie (1928), Whoopee Party (1932), and Blue
Rhythm (1931). Hear Minnie belt out a Bessie Smith-inspired
"St. Louis Blues" in Blue
Rhythm or accompany herself on piano while launching into
an impromptu, man-hating tirade in Puppy
Love (1933). Priceless is the one-Goof-band of Mickey's
Amateurs (1937) and the Donald Duck/Clara Cluck duet in Mickey's
Grand Opera (1936). A sophisticated, toe-tapping "miniature
Mickey" dances in Thru
the Mirror (1936), and swells as maestro of a stormy orchestra
in Band
Concert (1935).
|
FRI
AUG 19: 6:00 PM
SAT
AUG 20: 3:00 PM
SAT AUG 20: 8:00 PM
WED
AUG 31: 1:00 PM |
For generations now, kids and adults have plunked down their hard-earned dollars
to see Fantasia, and emerged a little over two hours later with their
minds blown. With music by Bach, Dukas, Tchaikovsky, Ponichelli, Stravinsky,
Beethoven, Mussorgsky, and Schubert, and some of the most iconic images in film
history.
|
FRI
AUG 19: 8:15 PM
SUN AUG 21: 1:00 PM
SUN AUG 28: 6:00 PM
|
Italian animator Bruno Bozzetto’s
hilariously irreverent homage to Fantasia. Debussy’s
"Afternoon of a Faun" (featuring a genuinely lecherous
satyr in glasses), Dvorak’s "Slavonic Dance No. 7,"
Ravel’s
immortal make-out classic "Bolero" (the most hilarious
of the twisted Fantasia homages, in which the residue
at the bottom of a discarded Coke bottle develops into evolving
life forms, the dinosaurs slogging along to Ravel’s
stately march), Sibelius’s "Valse Triste" (the
most poignant sequence, featuring an abandoned cat scrounging
for food), Vivaldi’s "Concerto
in C minor" and
Stravinsky’s "The Firebird."
|
SAT
AUG 20: 1:00 PM
WED
AUG 24: 3:00 PM
THU
AUG 25: 4:30 PM
THU
AUG 25: 8:30 PM
TUE AUG 30: 1:00 PM |
A rundown kingdom is rescued from extinction by a fairy-tale farm collective
in Hey! Hey! Fever (1934) or as the mighty Blue Danube rolls along
in the most “Fantasia”-like Blue Danube (1939).
Music operates more functionally in Hanna-Barbera’s Tom and Jerry cat-and-mouse
slapstick duels, Saturday Evening Puss (1950), Solid Serenade (1946), Zoot
Cat (1944). Even more frantic are Tex Avery’s Red Hot Riding
Hood (1943), Swingshift Cinderella (1945) and Shooting of
Dan Magoo (1945), Flea Circus (1954), and Magical Maestro (1952).
|
MON AUG 22: 1:00 PM
TUE AUG 23: 1:00 PM
WED AUG 24: 7:00 PM
WED AUG 31: 8:30 PM |
| |
This new-fangled old-fashioned and all-but-wordless jazz
musical adventure combines CGI and 3-D technologies with
good old-fashioned hand-drawn animation. A boy named Champion,
raised by his grandmother, trains for the Tour de France
and is subsequently kidnapped by gangsters. With her grandson’s
beloved dog Bruno by her side, his grandmother tracks him
across the ocean to the city of Belleville, where she meets
the eponymous triplets, a dynamic musical team whose taste
for frogs (and frogsicles) knows no bounds.
|
MON AUG 22: 3:30 PM
WED
AUG 24: 1:00 PM
THU
AUG 25: 6:30 PM
TUE
AUG 30: 3:00 PM |
Iconoclast Ralph Bakshi’s tour through 20th-century
urban history, via the lives of several generations of a
family of Russian musicians who arrive on American soil in
1900 in flight from a pogrom. From Gershwin and Porter through
Dylan and the punk era, Bakshi’s crazy-quilt portrait
of America is a mind-blower, a breathtaking cornucopia of
sights, sounds and the most florid melodrama. Vincent Canby
wrote, “How many other films … include World
Wars I and II, the Korean War, Vietnam, the Triangle Shirtwaist
Factory fire, Kent State, Frank Sinatra, Eva Tanguay, the
Sex Pistols, Allen Ginsberg, Benny Goodman and the Prohibition
gang wars (though not necessarily in that order)?”
|
WED AUG 24: 5:00 PM
WED
AUG 24: 9:30 PM
THU
AUG 25: 1:00 PM
MON AUG 29: 4:00 PM |
Rogue animator Bill Plympton’s hand-drawn and colored
1992 feature debut has become something of a modern classic,
a musical comedy about the anxiety of songwriting, drawn
in Plympton’s inimitable broad sketch style. Del, who
wants to marry Didi, has 47 minutes to write a hit tune and
prove himself to their boss, Mr. Mega. On his way to Mega
Music, he loses his way and winds up in the town of Flooby
Nooby, where he gets an upside-down, inside-out tour of various
styles of modern music via an incredible array of wacked-out
characters, including a jaw-dropping spoof of Elvis.
|
THU AUG 25: 3:00 PM
MON AUG 29: 2:00 PM
MON AUG 29: 8:30 PM
|
From the great WB Cartoon scorers Carl Stalling and Milt
Franklyn, musical medleys of pop tunes accompany caterwauling
cat Sylvester keeping Elmer Fudd awake all night; talent
agent Daffy Duck oversells his client to Porky Pig, and ends
up performing all the kid’s bits himself; baby hooter “Owl
Jolson” grabs his chance to pursue his dream of singing
jazz; and a construction worker finds a fabulous singing
frog encased in the cornerstone of a building. “I’m
Just Wild About Harry,” “La Cucaracha,” “Jeepers
Creepers,” “Ain’t We Got Fun,” “Hello,
My Baby,” and more are slotted on the playlists of
cartoons like Avery’s I Love to Singa (1936),
Bob Clampett’s Eatin’ on the Cuff (1942),
Freleng’s Yankee Doodle Daffy (1943), Three
Little Bops (1957), Show-Biz Bugs (1957) and
What’s Up, Doc? (1950).
|
FRI AUG 26: 1:00 PM
FRI AUG 26: 6:00 PM
SAT AUG 27: 3:30 PM
Tue Aug 30: 6:00 PM
|
What do Felix Mendelssohn, Johann Strauss, Frédéric
Chopin, Alphons Czibulka, Alexander Dargomizhsky, Gaetano
Donizetti, Johannes Brahms, Peter Tchaikovsky, Franz von
Suppe, Gioacchino Rossini and Richard Wagner have in common?
The answer, of course, is that musical selections by all
the above composers, have been wedged into Warner Bros. cartoons
by directors Chuck Jones, Frank Tashlin, Bob Clampett or
Friz Freleng, including a piano-playing Bugs Bunny performing
Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody in concert. Pigs
in a Polka, which restages Disney’s Three Little
Pigs as an obsessively Brahms-bitten ballet, and the renowned
Chuck Jones’s Long-Haired Hare (1949), Rabbit
of Seville (1950) and What’s Opera, Doc? (1957).
|
FRI
AUG 26: 8:00 PM
SAT
AUG 27: 1:00 PM
SAT
AUG 27: 6:00 PM
SUN AUG 28: 3:30 PM
Tue Aug 30: 8:00 PM |
Columbia became a time capsule of pop trends, from the astounding,
Depression-era “Krazy Kat” cartoon Prosperity
Blues (1932), to the celebrity caricature of Scrappy’s
Party (1933), where Einstein, the Marx Brothers, Gandhi
(on roller skates), Greta Garbo, Mussolini, Babe Ruth and
John D. Rockefeller madly shake their stuff to the tune of “Hold
That Tiger.” Also Swing Monkey Swing (1937), Bon
Bon Parade (1935), Little Match Girl (1937),
the Oscar-nominated Magic Fluke (1949), Rooty
Toot Toot (1952), Oompahs (1952), Little
Boy With a Big Horn (1953) and Boing’s Symphony (1953).
|
FRI
AUG 26: 3:30 PM
SAT
AUG 27: 8:30 PM
SUN
AUG 28: 1:00 PM
MON AUG 29: 6:00 PM |
|
|
