Insomnia, insomnia...
Oh what with me is wrong-nia?
For four nights now I nearly weep
and beg of thee to let me sleep!
I thought Wednesday was thy inception,
with migraine naps that day's direction,
but I barely doze four days and nights,
sleep meds and all - now that ain't right.
So now I sit and type away
and wait for night to turn to day.
You know it's bad when neither couch
nor space heater can knock me out.
I guess my mind has up and seized
some vague ignored anxieties,
since day by day I'm inching near
to bigger things in my career.
I try to write about my nerves,
but find they won't submit to words.
This last resort is truly worst -
who writes a blog post all in verse?!?
Reckon I'll stay here a while
and surf for things that make me smile,
then crawl in bed around, say, three
and hope tomorrow's good to me.
Monday, July 25, 2011
Sunday, July 17, 2011
The Fight that Illuminated Our Childhoods: Bluth Vs. The Mouseketeers
Yes it IS another movie post! No I do not have any film history credentials, but I can access Wikipedia and IMDB! Trivia fun for all!
Normally, I wouldn't make myself the spokesperson for a large group of people, but I've decided that animated films of the 80s and 90s can be considered my specialty because (a) my exhaustive and totally scientific research involving asking several friends and students whether they've seen this or that tends to produce affirmative responses and (b) when I consulted Professor Wikipedia for the major children's film releases from this era, I discovered that I own or have seen the vast majority of them. Yes. I am the Gen Y Cartoon Movie Whisperer. Children growing up in a certain period of time, which I'm going to assume ranges from a bit older than me to several years younger than me, have vivid memories of a set of popular animated features, some of which represented the pinnacle of the art for that period of time and some of which were, frankly, mediocre. For one studio in particular, the late 80s was an endless stream of stupid fluff films based on characters that originated in other media, i.e. Television Show: The Movie and Popular Toy: The Movie. But there were two others whose contributions tended to outweigh the other studios - one giant with decades of business behind it, and one maverick studio whose run was brief, but memorable. And if it weren't for a falling-out between the Big Corporation and the Man With A Dream, some of the best animated features from that era might never have happened.
Don Bluth is a native Texan with a certain flair for the creative. After high school, he took his artistic talent to That Giant Studio With The Rodent and got an on-again, off-again gig. He did other projects, including some live theatre, before choosing to commit to the animation game for good. He took up residence at the House of Mouse in 1971 and contributed to such works as Robin Hood and The Rescuers, but found that this work didn't completely satisfy his artistic leanings. So he started moonlighting with two other animators in El Raton's employ, working on this and that little project of their own.
The record gets a little fuzzy here...one source skips this next part entirely, but all the others agree that it occurred. Apparently, Bluth was becoming disenchanted with the Enchanters-In-Chief and thought that the quality of their work was not up to par with their past efforts. There were even rumors that the unit was going to be discontinued altogether. And a cursory glance at the animation division's output over the early 80s - chiefly the fact that there practically was none - seems to confirm that at very least, they had lost steam. So Bluth and his buddies cut ties and started doing their own movies, starting in 1982 with an adaptation of the novel Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of N.I.M.H. called The Secret of NIMH. It was produced on a tiny budget, but was also modestly successful and critically acclaimed. They then set their sights on video games for a few years, which I imagine set the Happiest Company on Earth at ease. After all, why should a huge production company with so many successes worry about one little rogue studio? But then, Bluth got himself a little collaboration which probably made them nervous, and with good reason...
Bluth had teamed up with Steven Spielberg.
Their first joint venture was a little piece called An American Tail (1986). And its box office numbers edged into Mr. Mouse's territory. And their second work, The Land Before Time (1988) did even better. Suddenly, the company that practically invented the feature-length animated piece had some competition. Although none of my sources say this overtly, I think it's a pretty telling that up until then, House of Mouse's 80s offerings had been lesser fare, such as The Fox and The Hound (1981) and The Great Mouse Detective (1986). By the time 1988 rolled around, you could tell they were starting to up their game with the release of Oliver and Company. Perhaps unfortunately, Bluth broke his collaboration with Spielberg and in 1989, it became pretty clear who was going to win this little Battle of the Cartoons. In this year, Bluth released All Dogs Go To Heaven. Not a bad film, certainly had a unique story and artistic merit of its own, but The Rodent's release from that year...
...was The Little Mermaid. Game over.
Small aside regarding House of Mouse's 80s output - Check out The Brave Little Toaster (1987) and note the clever and unusual use of anthropomorphic objects, particularly where they situate faces on different appliances. Turns out that several of the folks who worked on this one later co-founded Pixar. So we likely have this little gem to thank for some of the later Mouse-Pixar anthropomorphic gems like Toy Story and Cars!
For the next 8 years, Bluth's film offerings were unsuccessful, although I personally liked some of them. Rock-a-Doodle (1991), Thumbelina (1994), A Troll in Central Park (1994) and The Pebble and The Penguin (1995) suffered from a 1990 downsizing of the studio and from lack of funding and marketing in general. Especially in the case of Penguin, it's obvious they had to cut corners. El Raton's Company, on the other hand, spent much of this decade producing major blockbusters such as Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King, The Hunchback of Notre Dame... In 1997, Bluth had one more hit with Anastasia, but since then has pretty much been doing small animation work and video games.
Even though his run was short, I think Wikipedia is probably not lying to me when it says that we can all thank Don Bluth for lighting a fire under the Little Black Rat's hiney and inspiring them to make some of the best films in their collection. If nothing else, he helped produce a catalogue of films that broadened our aesthetic experience at the movies. There were two big elements of the Bluth films that really set them apart from the other studios: the specific style and look of the animation and the generally darker, more mature content.
First to The Look! The characters and other moving parts of the foreground are solidly outlined and solidly colored in, as though you were watching a moving coloring book. The backgrounds, on the other hand, are gorgeous - they are often highly detailed in the active parts of the scene, with rich colors and subtle gradations in the shading, but murky and ethereal around the edges. One downside to this method occurs when a background element becomes part of the action within a scene, meaning that this one element of the background sticks out like a sore thumb because it's drawn in the same outlines-and-solids style of the characters, yet it's nestled among all of these beautiful and subtly painted background objects. For example, have a look at the climactic fight from The Pebble and the Penguin (you'll need to jump to about 7:35 to see what I'm talking about):
When it cuts to the top of the staircase, can you tell which stair is going to be broken? Of COURSE you can.
This look, love it or hate it, is vintage Bluth. By the time Anastasia was born, he had learned some lessons, most especially the one that says it's generally good for your background paintings and your foreground characters and props to resemble each other, rather than looking as though the characters are borrowing the set from their rich friends. Fortunately, when you're a child, you don't care.
Quick aside for the saddest trivia of all time. There's a darling little actress who appeared as Ducky in The Land Before Time and as Anne-Marie in All Dogs. Go read her Wikipedia article and then have a look at the next paragraph and marvel at the possibility that life imitates art.
And Then There's Content. Don Bluth had a certain philosophy about animated films: kids can handle just about any sort of turmoil for the protagonist, as long as there's a happy ending. As a result, the Bluth films tend to be emotionally dark and gritty when compared to FairyTales-R-Us. And in looking back, it's astounding how much of the darkness either didn't really bug me or bypassed me entirely. For example, as a little child watching An American Tail, did you catch the parallels between the Mousekewitz family being beseiged and Russian Anti-Semitic pogroms of the same time period? Because I sure didn't. Did it bother you to watch Anne-Marie get exploited and Charlie have a nightmare about Hell in between dying twice in All Dogs Go To Heaven? Because I don't remember it bothering me. Did seeing Littlefoot's parents die in The Land Before Time traumatize you for life? I don't think it even traumatized me for the length of the good-bye scene. But within those three movies alone, there's a laundry list of events that a lot of parents would blanch at: Anti-Semitism, imminent physical danger from vicious predators, multiple deaths (one of which issues from murder), illicit gambling, exploitation of a child/orphan, vivid depictions of Heaven, Hell and the afterlife. Taking Rock-a-Doodle, Thumbelina, A Troll in Central Park and Anastasia into account adds natural disaster, binge drinking, suggestive apparel, kidnapping, imprisonment, massacre and occultic magic. Most children's films carry some form of the Great Moral Of Life: Sometimes Things Will Suck, But You Can Overcome Them. It just so happened that in the Bluth catalogue, things tended to suck a little worse.
One of my earliest memories of life altogether comes from when I was perhaps 3 or 4 years old, living in a tiny house with my mom and then-stepfather. I hadn't quite gotten the hang of reading yet, so Mom was reading aloud the opening credits of The Land Before Time for me. (I guess I got curious!) I distinctly remember her saying the name "Don Bluth" and seeing those particular letters on the screen and making the connection that these here funny shapes represent that funny name. I remember making the connection when watching An American Tail and All Dogs, seeing the commonality of animation style and recognizing the name "Don Bluth" in their credits. But I don't remember thinking his films were bummers in particular. They were just movies I loved and watched constantly alongside House of Mouse's more popular counterparts. As the length of this post demonstrates, I really enjoy going back as an adult and looking at the story behind the story. It's really cool to me that the movies I loved to watch between birth and age 12 or so had so much to do with spurring each other along. My memory contains a whole fun repertoire of songs, lines and stories, all because one animator became unhappy with his job.
Kinda cool, huh?
Normally, I wouldn't make myself the spokesperson for a large group of people, but I've decided that animated films of the 80s and 90s can be considered my specialty because (a) my exhaustive and totally scientific research involving asking several friends and students whether they've seen this or that tends to produce affirmative responses and (b) when I consulted Professor Wikipedia for the major children's film releases from this era, I discovered that I own or have seen the vast majority of them. Yes. I am the Gen Y Cartoon Movie Whisperer. Children growing up in a certain period of time, which I'm going to assume ranges from a bit older than me to several years younger than me, have vivid memories of a set of popular animated features, some of which represented the pinnacle of the art for that period of time and some of which were, frankly, mediocre. For one studio in particular, the late 80s was an endless stream of stupid fluff films based on characters that originated in other media, i.e. Television Show: The Movie and Popular Toy: The Movie. But there were two others whose contributions tended to outweigh the other studios - one giant with decades of business behind it, and one maverick studio whose run was brief, but memorable. And if it weren't for a falling-out between the Big Corporation and the Man With A Dream, some of the best animated features from that era might never have happened.
Don Bluth is a native Texan with a certain flair for the creative. After high school, he took his artistic talent to That Giant Studio With The Rodent and got an on-again, off-again gig. He did other projects, including some live theatre, before choosing to commit to the animation game for good. He took up residence at the House of Mouse in 1971 and contributed to such works as Robin Hood and The Rescuers, but found that this work didn't completely satisfy his artistic leanings. So he started moonlighting with two other animators in El Raton's employ, working on this and that little project of their own.
The record gets a little fuzzy here...one source skips this next part entirely, but all the others agree that it occurred. Apparently, Bluth was becoming disenchanted with the Enchanters-In-Chief and thought that the quality of their work was not up to par with their past efforts. There were even rumors that the unit was going to be discontinued altogether. And a cursory glance at the animation division's output over the early 80s - chiefly the fact that there practically was none - seems to confirm that at very least, they had lost steam. So Bluth and his buddies cut ties and started doing their own movies, starting in 1982 with an adaptation of the novel Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of N.I.M.H. called The Secret of NIMH. It was produced on a tiny budget, but was also modestly successful and critically acclaimed. They then set their sights on video games for a few years, which I imagine set the Happiest Company on Earth at ease. After all, why should a huge production company with so many successes worry about one little rogue studio? But then, Bluth got himself a little collaboration which probably made them nervous, and with good reason...
Bluth had teamed up with Steven Spielberg.
Their first joint venture was a little piece called An American Tail (1986). And its box office numbers edged into Mr. Mouse's territory. And their second work, The Land Before Time (1988) did even better. Suddenly, the company that practically invented the feature-length animated piece had some competition. Although none of my sources say this overtly, I think it's a pretty telling that up until then, House of Mouse's 80s offerings had been lesser fare, such as The Fox and The Hound (1981) and The Great Mouse Detective (1986). By the time 1988 rolled around, you could tell they were starting to up their game with the release of Oliver and Company. Perhaps unfortunately, Bluth broke his collaboration with Spielberg and in 1989, it became pretty clear who was going to win this little Battle of the Cartoons. In this year, Bluth released All Dogs Go To Heaven. Not a bad film, certainly had a unique story and artistic merit of its own, but The Rodent's release from that year...
...was The Little Mermaid. Game over.
Small aside regarding House of Mouse's 80s output - Check out The Brave Little Toaster (1987) and note the clever and unusual use of anthropomorphic objects, particularly where they situate faces on different appliances. Turns out that several of the folks who worked on this one later co-founded Pixar. So we likely have this little gem to thank for some of the later Mouse-Pixar anthropomorphic gems like Toy Story and Cars!
For the next 8 years, Bluth's film offerings were unsuccessful, although I personally liked some of them. Rock-a-Doodle (1991), Thumbelina (1994), A Troll in Central Park (1994) and The Pebble and The Penguin (1995) suffered from a 1990 downsizing of the studio and from lack of funding and marketing in general. Especially in the case of Penguin, it's obvious they had to cut corners. El Raton's Company, on the other hand, spent much of this decade producing major blockbusters such as Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King, The Hunchback of Notre Dame... In 1997, Bluth had one more hit with Anastasia, but since then has pretty much been doing small animation work and video games.
Even though his run was short, I think Wikipedia is probably not lying to me when it says that we can all thank Don Bluth for lighting a fire under the Little Black Rat's hiney and inspiring them to make some of the best films in their collection. If nothing else, he helped produce a catalogue of films that broadened our aesthetic experience at the movies. There were two big elements of the Bluth films that really set them apart from the other studios: the specific style and look of the animation and the generally darker, more mature content.
First to The Look! The characters and other moving parts of the foreground are solidly outlined and solidly colored in, as though you were watching a moving coloring book. The backgrounds, on the other hand, are gorgeous - they are often highly detailed in the active parts of the scene, with rich colors and subtle gradations in the shading, but murky and ethereal around the edges. One downside to this method occurs when a background element becomes part of the action within a scene, meaning that this one element of the background sticks out like a sore thumb because it's drawn in the same outlines-and-solids style of the characters, yet it's nestled among all of these beautiful and subtly painted background objects. For example, have a look at the climactic fight from The Pebble and the Penguin (you'll need to jump to about 7:35 to see what I'm talking about):
When it cuts to the top of the staircase, can you tell which stair is going to be broken? Of COURSE you can.
This look, love it or hate it, is vintage Bluth. By the time Anastasia was born, he had learned some lessons, most especially the one that says it's generally good for your background paintings and your foreground characters and props to resemble each other, rather than looking as though the characters are borrowing the set from their rich friends. Fortunately, when you're a child, you don't care.
Quick aside for the saddest trivia of all time. There's a darling little actress who appeared as Ducky in The Land Before Time and as Anne-Marie in All Dogs. Go read her Wikipedia article and then have a look at the next paragraph and marvel at the possibility that life imitates art.
And Then There's Content. Don Bluth had a certain philosophy about animated films: kids can handle just about any sort of turmoil for the protagonist, as long as there's a happy ending. As a result, the Bluth films tend to be emotionally dark and gritty when compared to FairyTales-R-Us. And in looking back, it's astounding how much of the darkness either didn't really bug me or bypassed me entirely. For example, as a little child watching An American Tail, did you catch the parallels between the Mousekewitz family being beseiged and Russian Anti-Semitic pogroms of the same time period? Because I sure didn't. Did it bother you to watch Anne-Marie get exploited and Charlie have a nightmare about Hell in between dying twice in All Dogs Go To Heaven? Because I don't remember it bothering me. Did seeing Littlefoot's parents die in The Land Before Time traumatize you for life? I don't think it even traumatized me for the length of the good-bye scene. But within those three movies alone, there's a laundry list of events that a lot of parents would blanch at: Anti-Semitism, imminent physical danger from vicious predators, multiple deaths (one of which issues from murder), illicit gambling, exploitation of a child/orphan, vivid depictions of Heaven, Hell and the afterlife. Taking Rock-a-Doodle, Thumbelina, A Troll in Central Park and Anastasia into account adds natural disaster, binge drinking, suggestive apparel, kidnapping, imprisonment, massacre and occultic magic. Most children's films carry some form of the Great Moral Of Life: Sometimes Things Will Suck, But You Can Overcome Them. It just so happened that in the Bluth catalogue, things tended to suck a little worse.
One of my earliest memories of life altogether comes from when I was perhaps 3 or 4 years old, living in a tiny house with my mom and then-stepfather. I hadn't quite gotten the hang of reading yet, so Mom was reading aloud the opening credits of The Land Before Time for me. (I guess I got curious!) I distinctly remember her saying the name "Don Bluth" and seeing those particular letters on the screen and making the connection that these here funny shapes represent that funny name. I remember making the connection when watching An American Tail and All Dogs, seeing the commonality of animation style and recognizing the name "Don Bluth" in their credits. But I don't remember thinking his films were bummers in particular. They were just movies I loved and watched constantly alongside House of Mouse's more popular counterparts. As the length of this post demonstrates, I really enjoy going back as an adult and looking at the story behind the story. It's really cool to me that the movies I loved to watch between birth and age 12 or so had so much to do with spurring each other along. My memory contains a whole fun repertoire of songs, lines and stories, all because one animator became unhappy with his job.
Kinda cool, huh?
Saturday, July 16, 2011
My Essential Soundtrack: Movie Musicals Edition
After long and careful thought (almost 15 whole minutes' worth), I have decided that it's time to share my essential soundtrack as it relates to movie musicals. As you'll see, I'm pretty partial to animation, especially from That Mouse Company Whose Name I Daren't Speak and Don Bluth, and also to full-fledged film musicals, rather than film adaptations of stage musicals. Here are the tracks that I love, including YouTube links that will probably be inactive in a week (one movie studio in particular is pretty vigilant about its copyrights) and a brief explanation of why these are the finest songs-from-movies ever. At least as far as I am concerned.
1. "Somewhere Out There" from An American Tale
Besides just being a sweet song in general, the young actors' performance is so completely innocent and pure, botched notes and all. Much more genuine than the Auto-Tuned performances you tend to hear today.
2. "I'll Make A Man Out of You" from Mulan.
Energizing, fun, and dangit Donny Osmond can sing!
3. "Hellfire" from The Hunchback of Notre Dame
On the soundtrack, this appears as the second half of "Heaven's Light/Hellfire." This piece has all the trappings of top-notch film music: thick and brooding orchestral accompaniment, notes of judgment and condemnation with the choir's Latin lyrics (most especially the repetition of "mea culpa" in the middle), and restatements of the film's central motive in the middle and at the end. Do-mi-re, ti-re-do, do-mi-re-sol-mi-laaaaaaaa!
4. "Don't Make Me Laugh" from The Pebble and the Penguin
This poor little movie. It had great ideas, great music, great cast (the voice you're hearing here is Tim Curry!) but no money. And you can tell in the animation - they had to borrow from themselves, so that you see the same piece of animation happen in more than one place. Maybe the spent the entire budget on Manilow!
5. "Stand Out" from A Goofy Movie
Don't know about you, but I SO wanted to try this stunt as a kid!
6. "Be Our Guest" from Beauty and the Beast
I maintain that this is the best movie this company ever made. They had hit the perfect intersection of traditional and computer-generated animation, so that it looks beautiful without looking too digital. And you can't lose with Alan Menken and Howard Ashman. (Menken was also the composer for Hunchback and several other movies in House of Mouse's catalogue)
7. "The World's Greatest Criminal Mind" from The Great Mouse Detective
This one comes to you from Henry Mancini, composer of a certain little ditty called "The Pink Panther." No big deal. And Vincent Price as your villain! He could sing about dirty socks and I would be scared.
8. "It's Like a B Movie" from The Brave Little Toaster
This, aside from being a pretty fun song in its own right, is a great study in the convergence of pop and film music. I don't typically like for pieces to switch media, but this is one exception; I would LOVE to stage this song live for a Halloween show or something!
9. "Ev'rybody Wants to Be a Cat" from The Aristocats
Another example of the folding of vernacular styles into film. (Musician friends - it is REALLY bugging me that most of these songs have had their keys manipulated for posting on YouTube. I realize it's probably a way to evade detection from Teh Copyrightz Poleez, but still. Annoying!)
10. "Chim Chim Che-ree" from Mary Poppins
Dick van Dyke - insuring that generations of American children will never have a proper model for a Cockney accent!
11. "Baby Mine" from Dumbo
Full Disclosure: my mom used to sing this to me when I was an infant. It was my lullaby. For kicks, whenever she had some friends around, she'd say "Y'all watch this!" and start singing it to me. Thinking it was bedtime, I'd start to cry. 25 years later, still has that effect on me, although for much different reasons.
12. "Love" from Robin Hood
That bassist is awfully busy for a ballad. I think one of the reasons I like this song so much is because it's one of the few I can actually sing in its original key. No one loves altos!
13. "Once Upon a December" from Anastasia
The piece that launched a thousand chorus concerts. The score to this film was written to mimic the great Russian composers and you can hear the homage in the lilt and longing of this particular song. It's almost sad that the source mythology for this film no longer applies.
14. "Mother Nature's Song" from Happily Ever After
Three words: Phyllis. Diller. Singing.
15. "Streets of Gold" from Oliver and Company
When I was a kid, this song was one of my favorite parts of the movie and I wanted so badly to find it on tape or CD, but by the time I had been exposed to this movie, the soundtrack had long been out of print. Thankfully, the internets came to the rescue and I was pleasantly surprised to find out that this song was longer than the one-verse-one-chorus version that appears in the film.
16. "Snowmiser/Heatmiser" from The Year Without A Santa Claus
God bless Arthur Rankin and Jules Bass for their excellent Christmas movies!
17. ...wait for it...
wait for it...
wait for it...
keep waiting for it...
ok here it comes...
"When You Wish Upon A Star" from Pinocchio
The House of Mouse made this their theme song for several reasons. Pinocchio is the second-oldest film in their feature-length animation canon (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was first) and is recognized by audiences and insiders alike as one of the most significant films of all time. It won Oscars and it has charted on more than one of the American Film Institute's best-of lists. It was released in 1940 - I imagine that this song felt particularly meaningful to an America that had just seen one nasty war go down and was getting pretty distressed at the realization that a second was getting under way overseas. This song captivated a collective psyche that wanted hope and has resonated down through the decades, echoing in the heart whenever you look at a clear night sky...
Like a bolt out of the blue,
Fate steps in and sees you through.
When you wish upon a star,
your dreams come true.
1. "Somewhere Out There" from An American Tale
Besides just being a sweet song in general, the young actors' performance is so completely innocent and pure, botched notes and all. Much more genuine than the Auto-Tuned performances you tend to hear today.
2. "I'll Make A Man Out of You" from Mulan.
Energizing, fun, and dangit Donny Osmond can sing!
3. "Hellfire" from The Hunchback of Notre Dame
On the soundtrack, this appears as the second half of "Heaven's Light/Hellfire." This piece has all the trappings of top-notch film music: thick and brooding orchestral accompaniment, notes of judgment and condemnation with the choir's Latin lyrics (most especially the repetition of "mea culpa" in the middle), and restatements of the film's central motive in the middle and at the end. Do-mi-re, ti-re-do, do-mi-re-sol-mi-laaaaaaaa!
4. "Don't Make Me Laugh" from The Pebble and the Penguin
This poor little movie. It had great ideas, great music, great cast (the voice you're hearing here is Tim Curry!) but no money. And you can tell in the animation - they had to borrow from themselves, so that you see the same piece of animation happen in more than one place. Maybe the spent the entire budget on Manilow!
5. "Stand Out" from A Goofy Movie
6. "Be Our Guest" from Beauty and the Beast
I maintain that this is the best movie this company ever made. They had hit the perfect intersection of traditional and computer-generated animation, so that it looks beautiful without looking too digital. And you can't lose with Alan Menken and Howard Ashman. (Menken was also the composer for Hunchback and several other movies in House of Mouse's catalogue)
7. "The World's Greatest Criminal Mind" from The Great Mouse Detective
This one comes to you from Henry Mancini, composer of a certain little ditty called "The Pink Panther." No big deal. And Vincent Price as your villain! He could sing about dirty socks and I would be scared.
8. "It's Like a B Movie" from The Brave Little Toaster
This, aside from being a pretty fun song in its own right, is a great study in the convergence of pop and film music. I don't typically like for pieces to switch media, but this is one exception; I would LOVE to stage this song live for a Halloween show or something!
9. "Ev'rybody Wants to Be a Cat" from The Aristocats
Another example of the folding of vernacular styles into film. (Musician friends - it is REALLY bugging me that most of these songs have had their keys manipulated for posting on YouTube. I realize it's probably a way to evade detection from Teh Copyrightz Poleez, but still. Annoying!)
10. "Chim Chim Che-ree" from Mary Poppins
Dick van Dyke - insuring that generations of American children will never have a proper model for a Cockney accent!
11. "Baby Mine" from Dumbo
Full Disclosure: my mom used to sing this to me when I was an infant. It was my lullaby. For kicks, whenever she had some friends around, she'd say "Y'all watch this!" and start singing it to me. Thinking it was bedtime, I'd start to cry. 25 years later, still has that effect on me, although for much different reasons.
12. "Love" from Robin Hood
That bassist is awfully busy for a ballad. I think one of the reasons I like this song so much is because it's one of the few I can actually sing in its original key. No one loves altos!
13. "Once Upon a December" from Anastasia
The piece that launched a thousand chorus concerts. The score to this film was written to mimic the great Russian composers and you can hear the homage in the lilt and longing of this particular song. It's almost sad that the source mythology for this film no longer applies.
14. "Mother Nature's Song" from Happily Ever After
Three words: Phyllis. Diller. Singing.
15. "Streets of Gold" from Oliver and Company
When I was a kid, this song was one of my favorite parts of the movie and I wanted so badly to find it on tape or CD, but by the time I had been exposed to this movie, the soundtrack had long been out of print. Thankfully, the internets came to the rescue and I was pleasantly surprised to find out that this song was longer than the one-verse-one-chorus version that appears in the film.
16. "Snowmiser/Heatmiser" from The Year Without A Santa Claus
God bless Arthur Rankin and Jules Bass for their excellent Christmas movies!
17. ...wait for it...
wait for it...
wait for it...
keep waiting for it...
ok here it comes...
"When You Wish Upon A Star" from Pinocchio
The House of Mouse made this their theme song for several reasons. Pinocchio is the second-oldest film in their feature-length animation canon (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was first) and is recognized by audiences and insiders alike as one of the most significant films of all time. It won Oscars and it has charted on more than one of the American Film Institute's best-of lists. It was released in 1940 - I imagine that this song felt particularly meaningful to an America that had just seen one nasty war go down and was getting pretty distressed at the realization that a second was getting under way overseas. This song captivated a collective psyche that wanted hope and has resonated down through the decades, echoing in the heart whenever you look at a clear night sky...
Like a bolt out of the blue,
Fate steps in and sees you through.
When you wish upon a star,
your dreams come true.
Friday, July 8, 2011
Ashley's Cookbook: Cheesy Garlic Biscuits
I made some cheesy garlic biscuits today.
Without the use of a recipe.
I've played around sans recipes before, but it's been with easy stuff that doesn't depend on ingredient ratios being a certain way, like pasta-casserole type junk, or on single dishes that don't require a lot of thought, like sauteed chicken or scrambled eggs. So my achievement today is a pretty special one. The ability to make biscuits is like some kind of Adulthood Merit Badge in our southern subculture. Recipes for them can be unreliable because different variables, like temperature, humidity, and perhaps planet alignment, can cause the necessary ratios to change. It's one of those skills you can only really acquire through repeated trial and error rather than through study and then execution. Which, as you know, makes it pretty irksome to me. Therefore, when a person acquires this skill, it's a mark of self-discipline and hard work because those are really the only ways to learn it.
Full disclosure: I sidestepped the trial-and-error thing a little...a few months ago, I felt like making pizza because I was pretty sure I had everything I needed. So, because it was all I had in the house at the time, I looked up a recipe for pizza dough that used self-rising flour. I followed the directions and baked it up and such. It wasn't a bad pizza, certainly better than the frozen stuff, but I noticed that the crust acted more like biscuit than crust. I had basically made a giant pizza biscuit. So my biscuit knowledge didn't come from intentionally making biscuits, but rather from stumbling upon biscuits during the creation of something else altogether. All's well that ends well, I suppose.
For The Curious: A Description of How I Did It
Because I used no recipe, I have no clue about measurements here, so good luck trying to imitate me!
1. Preheat your oven to about 350 or so and gather from around the kitchen some butter, self-rising flour, milk, cheddar cheese, garlic salt,a big bowl, a glass baking dish, a fork, an ice-cream scoop, and the components of your favorite little food processor.
2. Slice off a chunk of cheese and cut it into pieces small enough to fit into your food processor (we have a very small red one that is just perfect for things like this.) If you wanna make lots of biscuits, use lots of cheese. Food-process the cheese into little cheese crumbles, so they look like little yellow swole-up grits. If you've got shredded cheese, this step is unnecessary, obvy.
3. Scoop some flour into your bowl, until the flour pile looks about half the size of the eventual dough pile you see in your imagination.
4. Using your ice-cream scoop (mine's the narrow bladey kind, not the built-in-scraper kind), plop some butter on your flour pile so that it looks like you've got one part butter to seven parts flour. Err on the side of underestimation because you can always add more. And you probably will.
5. Take your fork and start smushing the butter and flour around. You want to eventually end up with little butter-flour balls about pea size or smaller. Not all the flour has to be taken up with the butter - it's cool if there's some loose flour chilling on the sides of the bowl. If only about half your flour is taken up with the butter, add a little more butter and see if you can't get a little more in there and keep smushing.
6. Here's the part that's REALLY hard to explain - the addition of the milk. Add a little less milk than you think it will take to just barely moisten everything and stir it up with your fork. If you've still got a good bit of dry flour hanging out, add just a smidge more milk. If you see a puddle or if the dough looks really wet, there's too much milk. You can add a little flour to get it back to that just-barely-wet stage, but only a little - if you add too much, your butter ratio will get thrown off. And at this point, butter is pretty much impossible to add.
7. Once the dough is just moistened and sticking together pretty good, add your cheese and a few shakes of garlic salt (Or several. I'm not prejudiced.) Stir it all up until you've got a pretty even distribution of cheese.
8. Use some of your butter to grease your glass baking dish. I like to use a paper towel and write silly things on the dish and then pretend I'm erasing them.
9. Set aside a scoop of your flour for flouring your hands while you form the biscuits (you might want to do this on a towel or cutting board, 'cause it's messy) Flour up your hands so the dough won't stick to them, grab some handfuls of dough and pat them into little saucers. Place them about an inch or so away from each other on the baking dish - they'll grow up more than they'll grow out.
10. Put them in the oven and bake. I have no clue how long I baked them - I just kept checking them. The nice thing about the glass bakeware is that when you check the biscuits, you can crouch down, lift the dish and see whether the bottoms are toasted yet. Because for me, an undertoasted or overdone biscuit bottom is a deal-breaker.
These were pretty good - not as salty and greasy as those offered at Brightly Colored Crustacean restaurants, which for me is a plus. They were pretty big and puffy, and had some crispness about the outside and bottom and fluffy insides. Which is how I like biscuits. The kind of unique part to my method as opposed to other methods I've watched is the fork-smushing of the butter and flour, which I stole from the pizza crust recipe. My husband uses electric beaters when he makes them, which probably has to do with why his biscuits tend to look kinda swirly like meringues. Lots of people like to mix and mush with their hands - I am weirded out by this.
Emboldened by my success, I think I might try Jill Conner Browne's Chocolate Stuff recipe!
Without the use of a recipe.
I've played around sans recipes before, but it's been with easy stuff that doesn't depend on ingredient ratios being a certain way, like pasta-casserole type junk, or on single dishes that don't require a lot of thought, like sauteed chicken or scrambled eggs. So my achievement today is a pretty special one. The ability to make biscuits is like some kind of Adulthood Merit Badge in our southern subculture. Recipes for them can be unreliable because different variables, like temperature, humidity, and perhaps planet alignment, can cause the necessary ratios to change. It's one of those skills you can only really acquire through repeated trial and error rather than through study and then execution. Which, as you know, makes it pretty irksome to me. Therefore, when a person acquires this skill, it's a mark of self-discipline and hard work because those are really the only ways to learn it.
Full disclosure: I sidestepped the trial-and-error thing a little...a few months ago, I felt like making pizza because I was pretty sure I had everything I needed. So, because it was all I had in the house at the time, I looked up a recipe for pizza dough that used self-rising flour. I followed the directions and baked it up and such. It wasn't a bad pizza, certainly better than the frozen stuff, but I noticed that the crust acted more like biscuit than crust. I had basically made a giant pizza biscuit. So my biscuit knowledge didn't come from intentionally making biscuits, but rather from stumbling upon biscuits during the creation of something else altogether. All's well that ends well, I suppose.
For The Curious: A Description of How I Did It
Because I used no recipe, I have no clue about measurements here, so good luck trying to imitate me!
1. Preheat your oven to about 350 or so and gather from around the kitchen some butter, self-rising flour, milk, cheddar cheese, garlic salt,a big bowl, a glass baking dish, a fork, an ice-cream scoop, and the components of your favorite little food processor.
2. Slice off a chunk of cheese and cut it into pieces small enough to fit into your food processor (we have a very small red one that is just perfect for things like this.) If you wanna make lots of biscuits, use lots of cheese. Food-process the cheese into little cheese crumbles, so they look like little yellow swole-up grits. If you've got shredded cheese, this step is unnecessary, obvy.
3. Scoop some flour into your bowl, until the flour pile looks about half the size of the eventual dough pile you see in your imagination.
4. Using your ice-cream scoop (mine's the narrow bladey kind, not the built-in-scraper kind), plop some butter on your flour pile so that it looks like you've got one part butter to seven parts flour. Err on the side of underestimation because you can always add more. And you probably will.
5. Take your fork and start smushing the butter and flour around. You want to eventually end up with little butter-flour balls about pea size or smaller. Not all the flour has to be taken up with the butter - it's cool if there's some loose flour chilling on the sides of the bowl. If only about half your flour is taken up with the butter, add a little more butter and see if you can't get a little more in there and keep smushing.
6. Here's the part that's REALLY hard to explain - the addition of the milk. Add a little less milk than you think it will take to just barely moisten everything and stir it up with your fork. If you've still got a good bit of dry flour hanging out, add just a smidge more milk. If you see a puddle or if the dough looks really wet, there's too much milk. You can add a little flour to get it back to that just-barely-wet stage, but only a little - if you add too much, your butter ratio will get thrown off. And at this point, butter is pretty much impossible to add.
7. Once the dough is just moistened and sticking together pretty good, add your cheese and a few shakes of garlic salt (Or several. I'm not prejudiced.) Stir it all up until you've got a pretty even distribution of cheese.
8. Use some of your butter to grease your glass baking dish. I like to use a paper towel and write silly things on the dish and then pretend I'm erasing them.
9. Set aside a scoop of your flour for flouring your hands while you form the biscuits (you might want to do this on a towel or cutting board, 'cause it's messy) Flour up your hands so the dough won't stick to them, grab some handfuls of dough and pat them into little saucers. Place them about an inch or so away from each other on the baking dish - they'll grow up more than they'll grow out.
10. Put them in the oven and bake. I have no clue how long I baked them - I just kept checking them. The nice thing about the glass bakeware is that when you check the biscuits, you can crouch down, lift the dish and see whether the bottoms are toasted yet. Because for me, an undertoasted or overdone biscuit bottom is a deal-breaker.
These were pretty good - not as salty and greasy as those offered at Brightly Colored Crustacean restaurants, which for me is a plus. They were pretty big and puffy, and had some crispness about the outside and bottom and fluffy insides. Which is how I like biscuits. The kind of unique part to my method as opposed to other methods I've watched is the fork-smushing of the butter and flour, which I stole from the pizza crust recipe. My husband uses electric beaters when he makes them, which probably has to do with why his biscuits tend to look kinda swirly like meringues. Lots of people like to mix and mush with their hands - I am weirded out by this.
Emboldened by my success, I think I might try Jill Conner Browne's Chocolate Stuff recipe!
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