Old MacDonald, by Popular Demand

Brooklyn, NY: Cartoon Carnival #5 Rescheduled

Cinebeasts and Vaudeville Park are quaking with excitement to present The Tom Stathes Cartoon Carnival for your viewing pleasure!

On Saturday, March 20th, the Cartoon Carnival will overrun Vaudeville Park for its fifth installment: a two-part program of hand-selected 16mm treasures abandoned by history and reactivated by whiz kid curator Stathes. Luddites, romantics, nostalgists, pop culture theorists, enemies of censorship, lovers, archivists, nerds, kids-at-heart, actual kids and armchair film historians are all welcome!

The lineup promises a mix of the bizarre, raunchy, and beloved: packed both with favorites and super-obscure characters and gags. The shorts range in vintage from the 1910s to the 60s, each one on the best possible print available. All cartoons fall within the public domain, but will be screened in stunning contrast to the pathetic discount DVDs and VHS tapes you see at garage sales and drugstores!

The evening also promises an OPEN BAR with custom cocktails, free popcorn, a bake sale to benefit Cinebeasts, and some classic 78rpms jazz records following the cartoons.

$6 at the door / OPEN BAR (with ID) / 7:30PM DOORS
RAFFLE! SNACKS!

Vaudeville Park (26 Bushwick Ave at Devoe, Williamsburg): L train to Graham / G to Lorimer

Please RSVP at our Facebook event page if you are registered on the site :-)

Cartoon Carnival 5- cancelled and postponed

Unfortunately we've had to cancel-- for now. The update as emailed to guests of the event on FaceBook:

Dear Guests,

I'm sorry to report that for reasons outside of my control, this show will have to be cancelled. It seems as if it will be postponed until late March and you will all receive an invite to the new event. Again, with deepest regrets, we are

Tom Stathes and members of the Cartoon Carnival and Cinebeasts.

Tom Stathes Cartoon Carnival 5: Feb. 27th, 2010

THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED- PLEASE SEE ABOVE POST.


You're invited to the 5th installment of the Tom Stathes Cartoon Carnival presented by Cinebeasts~ Come and see some classic cartoon characters you know and some ancient ones you've never heard of! This screening of rare 1910s-1930s animation is presented in 16mm with a projector--no digital aspect whatsoever enabling you to enjoy film as it was originally intended to be seen.

Also hear Charlie Judkins playing ragtime piano during intermission!

$6 at the door-
**OPEN BAR**(with ID)
DOORS AT 7:30

@Vaudeville Park, 26 Bushwick Ave at Devoe in Williamsburg. "L train to Graham / G to Lorimer"
***
As usual, I'll be showing some old time favorites as well as hard-to-find silent animation.

You may RSVP on Facebook

And also join the Carnival's group on Facebook as well!

How NOT to write about film history...

...that is, consulting NO reference materials or expertise for accurate information! Read on for a good laugh at

Aviva Directory

Tom Stathes Interviewed

That's right, I've been interviewed. Check out the third issue of Stop Motion Magazine, a new and delightful online publication dedicated to all things Stop Motion Animation.

Stop Motion Matinee

I'm proud to announce Cartoons On Film's STOP MOTION MATINEE, a new release produced in conjunction with Inkwell Images, Inc. This DVD collection is an exploration of early stop-motion animated films, and should serve as a great introduction to a most interesting aspect of animation history. It demonstrates the level of talent possessed by several filmmakers of the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s who were able to produce visually stunning films using three-dimensional objects without the aid of computers. It can be argued that these works, in turn, are true film feats compared to the commonplace animation of today.

First in the show is THE AUTOMATIC MOVING COMPANY (1912), a film by Romeo Bossetti. Wrongly attributed to Emile Cohl since the 1970s, this film was in fact produced by Bossetti for the Pathe company two months after Cohl left the studio. Bossetti worked at the Gaumont Studios during an earlier period in which Cohl produced a film with the same theme, Le Mobilier fidele (1910); now only viewable at the Cinematheque Gaumont-Actualites.
Animation historian and author Donald Crafton makes the important distinction between the two films in his book Emile Cohl, Caricature, and Film (Princeton Press, 1992) and suggests that Bossetti must have had the pleasure of watching Cohl at work during the Gaumont period and experimented with furniture in an earlier 1911 film as well.
THE AUTOMATIC MOVING COMPANY is a short yet charming film depicting actual furniture unloading from a moving truck and arranging itself in a second-floor apartment without the aid of a human moving crew.

In that same year, famed animator Ladislaw Starewicz produced our second film, THE REVENGE OF THE KINEMATOGRAPH CAMERAMAN (1912). This dramatic telling of a lecherous couple, the Beetles, has a humorous edge in that a grasshopper cameraman provides the climax by showing his secretly-captured, incriminating film at a cinema where the Beetles are in attendance. Husband and wife betray each other and yet they remain together at the end of the film with a bottle of wine to bind them!
Starewicz uses actual preserved insects as subjects in this film. And to think I throw them away after I swat them...

Our third feature is THE DINOSAUR AND THE MISSING LINK (1917), a Conquest Pictures production distributed by Thomas Edison. Willis O'Brien animates superb, lifelike figures in this film which is part of a prehistoric-themed series he produced in the mid-to-late 1910s. Miss Araminta Rockface, the protagonist, is called on by local cavemen The Duke and Stonejaw Steve. These two cavemen are rivals, and Steve throws The Duke into a pot of boiling water! Theophilus Ivoryhead, the "unassuming hero" as an intertitle introduces him, eventually wins the love of Araminta - but I'd better not spoil the rest of the plot for potential viewers! The film features an almost stunningly similar precursor to KING KONG, "Wild Willie," who serves as the antagonist and is also the 'Missing Link' of the film's title. O'Brien's work is revisited later in this program.

Jumping ahead to the eve of the Great Depression, we find ourselves in the fantastic world of Chip the Wooden Man. Kinex Studio's CHIP IN THE LAND OF WHIZ (1929) is one of various toyland-like adventures. Kinex's series such as Chip, Snap the Gingerbread Man and Doodlebugville all feature characters crafted out of wood and other materials in a much more "cartoon"-like style, whereas realistic bugs and human-like dolls were predominant characters in earlier stop-motion films. While not much is known of the Kinex Studios, historians believe their films were produced in approximately 1928 to 1930 as silent films for non-theatrical 8mm and 16mm distribution by Kodak's Cinegraph branch. Ex-Kinex staff went on to produce a small number of sound films such as Hector the Pup (1935).

As promised earlier, the work of Willis O'Brien is revisited. This time we're showcasing a rare reel that saw no general release until its discovery in recent decades. O'Brien designed sets and dinosaur figures which were built by Marcel Delgado for a short-lived project dubbed CREATION (1931). The plot was to have featured a submarine discovering a lost island where dinosaurs still roam. David O. Selznick scrapped this project when he became head of production at RKO in 1932; however, work already completed on it convinced Selznick's assistant Merian C. Cooper that this technique of filmmaking was feasible. This rare fragment represents what eventually bore fruit as the famous King Kong (1933).

Our program concludes by revisiting the work of Ladislaw Starewicz. By 1933, Starewicz fine-tuned his skills in the medium and moved on to using some cartoonish characters alongside anthropomorphized objects such as wine glasses. A true surrealist work with a Depression-era European edge, THE MASCOT concerns Duffy, a cute stuffed-animal dog, facing some strange adventures before returning to his human masters' home. This film is the only in our program to have been produced with a soundtrack.

This collection represents a turning point for me as an early animation collector and historian. I've been interested in early animation history since the mid-1990s, when I was a young child. Out of sheer frustration caused by the general unavailability of these films, I began collecting them around a decade ago and started my home-based operation of selling DVD collections under the Tom's Vintage Film moniker in the Summer of 2005.
This year, 2009, has been an important period as colleague David Gerstein helped with the formation of my new Cartoons on Film website. Also, fellow animation historian Ray Pointer of Inkwell Images, Inc. sought to help upgrade my product to something that has a better focus and a much more professional presentation. I'm grateful to both for their collaboration in producing STOP MOTION MATINEE, with Ray serving as fellow director and David as package designer, respectively.



Needless to say, we all look forward to working on future releases of historic animation. For the moment, though, let's enjoy STOP MOTION MATINEE! Visit cartoonsonfilm.com for ordering information.

Halloween DVD

Making it's re-debut for a second holiday season is the Tom Stathes Halloween Cartoon Reel! I've kept the same films as last year but have added very nice packaging for this fun collection. If you didn't pick this up last year, now's a good time.
See Krazy Kat, Ko-Ko the Clown, Tom & Jerry (the humans) and more in some of their scarier adventures.
For you comedy fans, also included is the Jimmie Adams film GOOFY GHOSTS (1928).

Read more at http://cartoonsonfilm.com

On Kevin's Blog

Folks, Kevin Gannon has been kind enough to write about me and my new website on his blog. Go check it out here!

New Website!

Five years in the making and I'm very happy and proud to announce my first website...first .com to be exact! My DVD listings, show information and all things related to silent animation will now be featured here:

Visit CartoonsOnFilm.com
Bloggers and Site Owners: Contact me through the website for trading links and banner ads.

Cartoon Carnival 4...and Burlesque!

Get ready for the 4th screening of the Tom Stathes Cartoon Carnival. This unique installment not only features an array of early, obscure, raunchy & risque cartoons; the show will be followed by excellent live performances at NYC's top Burlesque house: The Slipper Room! As always, the Cartoon Carnival presents cartoons from the 1910s to 1930s on genuine 16mm film, the way film was meant to be enjoyed. Bring a friend, watch some cartoons and enjoy the exotic dancers.

Thursday, August 13th
The Slipper Room
167 Orchard St., NY NY

Doors at 8pm
$5 entry for the whole evening.

Slipper Room

New "Wanted List" Website

I've started a new simple and free web page called Silent Cartoons Wanted. It's basically my want list of 16mm silent-era cartoons that will be updated in real time as I acquire prints. From now on the "Buying 16mm Cartoons" at the top of this blog will be linked to said page.

Cartoon Carnival on July 8th, 2009

You're invited to the next installment of the Tom Stathes Cartoon Carnival presented by The Kings County Cinema Society! Come and see some classic cartoon characters you know and some ancient ones you've never heard of! The show is presented in 16mm with a projector--no digital aspect whatsoever enabling you to enjoy film as it was originally intended.

$5. Donation at the rear of Freddy's Bar

Date:
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Time:
8:00pm - 10:00pm
Location:
Freddy's Bar and Backroom
Street:
485 Dean St.
City/Town:
Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, NY

By Subway take the 2, 3 trains to Bergen Street; Freddy's is right around the corner. Or take practically any train in the city to Atlantic Avenue/Pacific Street Stations; Walk East on Flatbush and take a left on Dean.

**Please join our group at
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=205685270704

All the Aesop's Fables cartoons should be out there...

The Aesop's Fables cartoons produced in 1921 to 1929 are an interesting topic of discussion among animation fans and historians. "Historians", if you will, tend to dismiss them for their lack of originality, inconsistent and occasional poor animation.
It can be said, though, that so-called historians are really just educated critics in their own right. Ask almost any baby boomer, especially from the Northeast of America, what cartoons they watched on television as a kid and many will cite Farmer Gray. Gray was the nickname given to Farmer Alfalfa by one of the New York kiddie TV show hosts while in competition with a rival host. The animated product was the same on both shows but apparently it's all in the naming of the character...and in both cases, these baby boomers speak of the Aesop's Fables cartoons lovingly, perhaps even if out of pure nostalgia for a time so recent yet so completely lost in today's American culture.
As I've probably mentioned on this blog before, at least three firms were responsible for bringing the 1920s Fables to television. Stuart Productions, also known as Guaranteed Pictures and later known as FilmVideo released 44; Saul Turrell of Sterling Television under the "Snappy Cartoons" moniker and most certainly Commonwealth Pictures which had the biggest stake of the cartoons. Those of you who have been watching public domain tapes for a long time probably recall seeing "Commonwealth" main titles on some of the color Van Beuren cartoons. Below we see a nice ad for Commonwealth's film package, found in a 1950's television trade paper. Mark Kausler tells me Commonwealth had at least 304 of the 430+ Fables. Considering the ad states 400 cartoons, it makes sense if they carried other Van Beuren product. David Gerstein agrees that it's nice to see Ub Iwerks' name proudly displayed on a 1950s advertisement.

What does this all mean? Television prints are not impossible to find, making the Aesop's Fables not only the largest silent cartoon series but also one that has the best odds of being completely archived and accessible. The TV prints don't account for all the original nitrates held in archives, either. For as long as I'm breathing it will be a quest to find more of these titles.
And now, a sound version Commonwealth fable cartoon for you.

Tom on the Fanboy blog, etc...

Check it out folks, my first Cartoon Carnival was written up by Joe Strike and appears over at the Fanboy blog.

Remember folks, join the Carnival group over on Facebook for updates on new screenings- at this rate, there definitely will be several in the near future!