An aggressively didactic history of the animated cartoon from the days before Mickey Mouse to the rise (or fall, depending on your feelings about the Flintstones) of Hanna-Barbera's 137 TV programs. Unlike Eric Smoodin's Animating Culture (p. 516), Klein's history insists on maintaining a sharp focus: It's interested almost exclusively in how and why the shape of the seven-minute cartoon short changed from Felix the Cat to Disney and Warners to the UPA cartoons (Gerald McBoing-Boing, Mr. Magoo) of the 50's. What modes of space and entertainment have different cartoons drawn their inspiration from? The earliest cartoons, argues Klein (California Institute of the Arts), were staged in the depthless space of vaudeville gags, their jokes typically depending on spatial transformations between foreground characters and background objects (Felix using his tail as a crank to start a prop car). What Disney brought to the cartoon short was a fascination with the same deep space that marked live-action movies, with a corresponding emphasis on realistic melodrama, full animation, and the artful illusions of the multiplane camera. Even as Disney was turning increasingly to features and merchandising tie-ins (which alone kept the studio solvent in the 30's and 40's), Tex Avery and Chuck Jones at Warners were leading a more formulaic return to the anarchic chases of the earliest animation. Meanwhile, UPA pioneered the stripped-down style of ``consumer cubism,'' inspired not by painting but by advertisements, architecture, and consumer spaces like shopping malls and amusement parks. Klein's often schoolmarmish tone gets in the way of his ambitious secondary goal—to provide a history of the American audience's perception. As a brief history of the evolution of Hollywood cartoons, though, this could hardly be improved. (B&w illustrations)
Pub Date: Dec. 17, 1993
ISBN: 0-86091-396-1
Page Count: 273
Publisher: Verso
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1993
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
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