11: Xanadu, Don't Walk Away

Don't walk away, from the movie Xanadu
Don Bluth, 1980.

Before you start whining about "Oh god, not another Bluth post" don't start getting complacent- I'm NOT that much of a fan of his. I have serious issues with his animating style (it makes me a little uneasy...queasy even).

But I watched this movie for the first time the other day, and I was struck by how much a decent piece of animation can have no effect on how terrible the rest of your movies is.

So to save you the pain of actually watching that god-awful piece of retro camp trash, just watch this one snippet. You don't even need to know the context, and believe me, you don't- I wish I could have that 93 minitues back.

And also keep in mind the human portions were proberbly rotoscoped- that is to say, traced frame for frame. Or "Photo Referenced" as Disney used to call it.

Just watch it anyway- turn the sound off if you hate early 80's sap-pop as much as I do.

This post is more of a reference post to link back to this earlier one about the music video Mary. According to sources (wiki of course, I don't follow Scissor Sister gossip, what am, 40?), the band contacted Bluth to do Mary after remembering this scene in Xanadu (which is like a 93 minitue length Scissor Sister video).

Which is fair enough I guess. It is nice to see how much better Bluth became between the passing 24 years, and these two pieces of animation are nicely enough around the same length, and are both about frolicking humans for the most part.

But you can be the judge on that.

08: Family Dog

Family Dog Part 1
Family Dog Part 2
Family Dog Part 3
Brad Bird, 1987

Its amazing how motivated you get to watching something when you can just feel it about to get ripped into.

It's also no suprise how I know about this when in retrospect it seems pretty obscure- but I've never been very motivated to watch it because...well, I guess I'm lazy. Theres a quote floating around that Family Dog was done around the same time The Simpsons came out, and the reason it flopped was because of the gaining popularity of everyones favourite long running family.

The original short however came out as apart of a series called "Amazing Stories" in 1987, and thats what I'm going to talk about.

With it's quirky design and lovely character animation, not to mention very interesting voice direction, Family Dog would proberbly be just as big a cult hit even if it wasn't attatched to Tim Burton's name (Who apparently produced and helped design the characters- which I believe. If you watch Vincent, the dog looks just the same- in fact he draws all his dogs like that. And the Mother has lips like all his female characters- in his drawings at least).

And, because I can do what I please- I very much enjoy the quaint little soundtrack as well, done by a very young (at the time)and talented man by the name of Danny Elfman.

Oh yes.

I went there.