South Park Kicks Disney’s Ass

Dan and Jess mentioned a few South Park songs and rewatching them, I eerily realized they were parodies of some Disney songs from nearly 20 years ago. I looked it up online to match the songs, and here you can compare the parody to the original, and frankly, the riotous parodies trump the pabulum originals:









As I said, South Park is definitively better.

Daffy Duck

Resolved: Daffy Duck is a greater cartoon character than either his more lauded Warner Bros. co-star, Bugs Bunny, or his avian rival from Disney, Donald Duck.

Why he is greater than Bugs Bunny:
1) he is funnier.
2) he is more self-deprecating.
3) he almost always loses but perseveres.
4) Bugs almost always wins and never suffers consequences.
5) that uncanny ability to survive explosions and disasters, which is rivaled only by Wile E. Coyote.
6) Daffy's penchant for disaster survival is incurred by a far more devious rival- Bugs. Wile only has the goddamned Roadrunner to contend with.
7) Unlike Wile, Daffy often invents his contraptions; he need not order them from the Acme Co. Bugs has this ability, too, but does not have himself as an adversary.
8) Duck Dodgers In The 24 1/2 Century is possibly the greatest cartoon short ever made. Its star? Daffy Duck.
9) No Bugs Bunny short compares to the aforementioned classic.
10) Lisping is cooler than a Brooklyn accent.

Why he is greater than Donald Duck:
1) Warner Bros. kicks Disney's ass.
2) Black feathers are cooler than white feathers.
3) While lisping is cooler than a Brooklyn accent, it is more discernible than Donald's cackle.
4) Donald has Huey, Dewy, and Louie as nephews. Daffy is a duck alone against the cosmos.
5) Scrooge McDuck paid for Donald's success. Daffy is a self-made waterfowl. Nepotism is bad.
6) Donald wears that infantile sailor suit.
7) Daffy is a nudist, with a great physique.
8) The best Donald Duck cartoon is not as good as the worst Daffy Duck cartoon.
9) Donald has the insipid Daisy Duck as a girlfriend.
10) Daffy is a rogue bachelor.

There is no need to even argue my points, as they are brilliant.

The only real question is: Is there ANY cartoon character greater than Daffy Duck? And characters that started out in comic books do not count- they are comic book characters.

Disney's UP

This is the first time I'm posting a movie that is currently screened on the big screen. They did it again, Pixar's people made a terrific addition to their great latest Wall-E and Ratatouille. It seems Disney's cartoons are one of the very rare reasons to attend a movie in a theater amidst the endless garbage of Hollywood blockbuster releases.

A grumpy old man refuses to surrender his old house to the new urban wave of construction, overwhelmed by the loss of his wife, he decided to pursue the trip they always wanted to make but had constantly to give it up due to life's demands. UP fuses an imagination as wild as H. Myazaki's finest moments, a comedy that works for adults even more than kids, and a solid narrative. But above all, it has those great cinematic moments, some sequences without dialogue, where every shot is an irreplaceable piece of narrative.

Currently in theaters, I didn't catch the 3-D version but read good feedback about it (The New Yorker, June 8/15 issue: The Current Cinema). The movie is preceded by a funny Pixar short (one of the funniest I've seen lately): Partly Cloudy , (I hope it finds its way to the upcoming DVD), here's a short sequence.

This is Up's trailer, also excerpts from the soundtrack that accompanied some dialog-free sequences(here: married life). Overall Disney is creating a new standard for "classic", a quality that should be regarded like their Pinocchio, Bambi, Snow white... but with more grasp on real life and less (or no) references to fairy tales.

Wassim