Over at Wonders in the Dark today, I’ve posted another entry in the sci-fi countdown, and this one was a particular joy to revisit. At #47, it’s Daffy Duck’s bravura turn as the daring do-er of the future skies in that masterful Chuck Jones joint, Duck Dodgers of the 24 1/2th Century (1953): 1953 also saw Daffy, along…
It’s a lovely moonlight night, and everyone who’s anyone is making the scene at the Coo-Coo Nut Grove, the hottest nightspot in town. Ben Birdie is leading the band, the rat fink gossip columnist Walter Windpipe is looking for a scoop, and the mood is just right for stargazing. Or, at the very least, for enjoying a…
Connie Fuller (Ann Sheridan) has a fondness for antiques that her husband, Bill (Jack Benny), begrudgingly accepts (albeit with an air of exasperation). Connie longs to get out of the city and away from apartment living, so without telling Bill—a dedicated New Yorker if there ever was one—she purchases a dilapidated old farmhouse in the…
In 1931, William Powell accepted a contract from Warner Bros. and entered a new phase in his burgeoning career. It was, at least at first, a solid move for the star. He had made his film debut almost a decade earlier at Samuel Goldwyn’s eponymous studio, in a small supporting role in 1922’s Sherlock Holmes, and toiled…
Ralph Phillips is bored, bored, bored. While his schoolmates mindlessly chant their math lesson (“Two and two is four. Four and four is eight …”), Ralph stares dreamily out the classroom window, imagining himself as a bird, flipping and flying freely through the sky–until his reverie is rudely interrupted by his teacher. She, for some…
“Oh, I dream about being Bugs Bunny, but when I wake up, I’m Daffy Duck.” –Chuck Jones In Chuck Jones’ hands, the Daffy Duck of the 1930s and 40s–loopy, zany, whooping loudly, flipping out–went through a bit of a personality overhaul in the 50s. The zaniness was still there, to be sure, but this Daffy…
Seven years before Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd dueled their way through a hilarious take on the music of Wagner in What’s Opera, Doc?, the duo tackled Italian composer Rossini in 1950’s Rabbit of Seville. Rabbit of Seville is the brainchild of director Chuck Jones, writer Michael Maltese, and frequent Warner Bros. composer Carl Stalling. Stalling was,…
The ongoing Comedy Countdown at Wonders in the Dark is in full swing, and my second contribution to the event is now up on the site! By sheer coincidence, number 69 on the countdown is the 1955 animated short One Froggy Evening, directed by none other than the subject of our week-long animation celebration, Chuck Jones!…
True Classics 