Great lines...

Saw some ancient animated movies at UCLA last night. Trying to keep myself busy while Sarah does the Oscars thing. The Krazy Kat films were spectacular. So much story from so few lines and so little, well, story. It's the same gag over and over and over and it never gets old. Interesting how Krazy Kat, a gender-ambiguous, cross-species mouse lover gradually became what we know as Felix the Cat, a tough, sadistic little feline brute with magical abilities. But it should be no surprise that the best of the best were the Winsor McCay shorts. In my humble opinion, I would have to say he has the greatest lines of any illustrator living or dead. In many of the films we get to see him draw freehand, with a quill no less. No pre-drawn pencil lines, just pen to paper and boom, the most incredible drawings you've ever seen effortlessly rendered in seconds. For one film McCay drew 4000 cells in one months time (ostensibly to win a gentleman's drinking bet if you believe the set up). Then he went back and hand painted each frame of film (18 frames per second back then). Spectacular. Wish he was alive today. Wonder what he would make of this Nemo?

Oh, and speaking of (supposed) great lines, I thought The Aristocrats was astoundingly stupid. A potentially fascinating and hilarious subject matter (the funniest and dirtiest joke ever as interpreted by a string of evidently disfunctional comedians) that could have put stand up comics in a whole new light, instead gets hammered into a sad rapid fire chorus of increasingly numbing permutations of piss,shit and sex talk. It's like watching someone dig themselves into a hole they will never be able to get out of. Actually that's a lot more funny than anything in this film.