Did Johnny Carson know what he was getting into when his producers asked Jim Henson to perform without Muppets on his show in February 1974?
By the time of the clip below, Henson and his Muppets Inc. crew were five years into what was becoming a hugely successful partnership with the Children’s Television Workshop on the show that would raise Generation X, Sesame Street.
What better time to do something like, say, adapt electronic music pioneer Raymond Scott’s highly trippy piece, “The Organized Mind” as a short live multimedia stage performance? (By the way, the film playing in the background is apparently Henson’s film adaptation of the same piece of music.)
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Cookie Monster helps train IBM sales staff (1967)
Jim Henson’s “Time Piece”
Bonus clip after the jump: “The Paperwork Explosion” another 1967 Henson/Scott collaborative film for IBM…
Groovie Goolies cartoon show aired on American television from 1970 to 1972. A mashup of Laugh In , The Adams Family and Looney Tunes, Goolies was filled with goofy hippie dippy skits, bad puns and tons of pop culture references. Every episode had a couple of musical numbers featuring groups like The Mummies And The Puppies, The Rolling Headstones and The Bare Boned Band.
The Groovie Goolies actually toured as a band (a bunch of guys dressed up in costumes) and released an LP on RCA records
In this video, the Goolies perform the very cool tune “When I Grow Up” followed by the totally surreal live-action Daffy Duck and Porky Pig Meet the Groovie Goolies. After all these years, this stuff still seems pretty groovy.
Alice Cooper talks about his favorite cartoon characters, the Groovie Goolies, after the jump…
This year I’ll be attending Fantastic Fest in Austin as a reviewer/reporter/spy for Dangerous Minds. The festival which runs from September 23 thru the 30th is the largest genre film festival in the US. I plan to keep DM readers up-to-date on the latest in sci-fi, fantasy and horror films, including interviews with filmmakers and cast members.
Gallants is one of the films getting alot of pre-fest buzz. It looks like crazy fun.
Loser office boy, Cheung (Wong Yue-nam), is banished to one of Hong Kong’s rural backwaters to help greedy property developers kick a bunch of old timers out of a run down tea house. But this teahouse used to be a martial arts studio and its owners, Dragon (Chen Kuan-tai) and Tiger (Bruce Leung), are trying to keep the lights on until Master Law (Teddy Robin), wakes up from his 30-year coma and tells them what to do again.
Chen Kuan-tai was Shaw Brother’s most iconic leading man in the 70’s and Bruce Leung started his career as a Bruce Lee imitator before becoming a celebrated martial artist (he played “The Beast” in Stephen Chow’s KUNG FU HUSTLE). Teddy Robin is only four feet tall, but he’s a producer, an actor and the man who invented Chinese rock n’roll, even writing and performing the music for this film. Real-life gangster-turned-actor, Chan Wai-man plays the evil Master Poon; Lo Meng (aka Turbo Law) was one of the Five Deadly Venoms; and Susan Shaw, playing Dr. Fun, was a softcore sexpot back in the day. And with decades of experience behind them, these old pros own the screen.
Marius Rossillon who went by the pen name of O’Galop was a French cartoonist and early film animator. He’s best known for creating Bibendum, the Michelin man. In these short public service announcements made in 1912 and 1918, O’Galop warns of the hazards of alcohol and tuberculosis. The film on tuberculosis was commissioned by the Rockefeller Foundation to inform the people of France on the spread and treatment of the disease. In both films, O’Galop uses some pretty bizarre imagery to get the point across.
I particularly dig the degenerate spawn of the alcoholic and the drunk clinging to the psychedelically swaying streetlights. His depiction of TB as a malicious skeleton makes for some amusing imagery.
Music by Blind Lemon Jefferson and Link Wray.
Chuck Close’s anamorphic portrait of Philip Glass.
Tara has some pretty hard and fast rules for this blog. Decrees like “IT’S GOTTA BE DANGEROUS”; “THIS IS ON EVERY OTHER BLOG, I’M PULLING THIS POST” and of course, her classic commandment: “NO LEGO” are now legendary… around my house at least…
I’d argue that this piece is a (perhaps admittedly rare) exception on the Lego front. It’s a animated Lego version of Philip Glass’s minimalist opera, Einstein on the Beach. I think even my Lego-hating editrix wife might like this one. Plus it’s “dangerous” (Philip Glass is no MC Hammer!) and I haven’t found it on a ton of other blogs. She’s still sleeping, so if this post vanishes soon, you’ll know what happened!
Incidentally, the person who made this, did it to help a friend pass a high school art class! As one of the commenters on YouTube asked “What’s next a Lego Koyaanisqatsi?” Fingers crossed.
Via Planet Paul
Danny & Annie is a sweet animated love story courtesy of NPR’s StoryCorps project. It beautifully tells the tale of Danny and Annie Perasa, a couple from Brooklyn who speak of their 27 years together. What a wonderful piece this is! It should be nominated for an Academy award (and win). Be warned, you ARE going to cry watching this.
Directed by the Rauch Brothers.
Via Videogum
Missouri-based design group MK12 have replicated the look and sound of educational/industrial films of the 1960’s in the beautifully constructed Telephoneme. MK12 was partly inspired by the Bell Science Laboratory series of short films we used to have to watch in elementary school. They’ve just added some LSD to the mix.
Telephoneme takes visual cues from The Alphabet Conspiracy as well as other educational films of days past, inspired by the awkward editing & absurd premises that so often defined the genre. The color palette is simple and deliberate, and we also developed a technique in which all the elements were split out into their respective red, green, and and blue channels(similar to how a printer makes several passes of pure color to construct a realistic image). These channels mostly remain superimposed throughout the film, but they sometimes move independently of one another, creating interesting transitional & graphic effects.
After the jump, you can watch a short clip from The Alphabet Conspiracy and see where MK12 got some of their inspiration for Telephoneme.
Watch The Alphabet Conspiracy…
This is indescribably surreal. Just watch.
Film footage from 1970 Czech film Na Komete (On The Comet). Moog music by Jean Pierre Decerf and Marc Saclays from the album Pulsations (1980).
Wow ! I had never seen this animated/live action film for the mini-song Sleeping In A Jar from the epic 1969 double LP Uncle Meat
Thanks Tony Coulter !