Dumbo at 70: Have large ears, will fly -- forever!
It’s hard to believe, but good old Dumbo is 70 this week!
The adorable baby elephant (whose real name is Jumbo, Jr.) has been flapping his extra-large ears and flying into our hearts for seven full decades. Read more at IMDB
Released theatrically on 23 October 1941, Dumbo was Walt Disney’s fourth animated film. And at just 64 minutes, the movie was also the shortest and least expensive produced by the Studio.
Dumbo is the only Disney animated feature film that has a title character who doesn’t speak — he really is a creature of few words, or none!
Dumbo not only turned a profit, but charmed critics as well. The movie won the 1941 Academy Award® for Original Musical Score, was nominated for another the Academy Award for Best Song for “Baby Mine”, and took the Best Animation Design award at the 1947 Cannes Film Festival.
Since its release, Dumbo has stolen the hearts of generation after generation, and can today be found on countless consumer products and the ever-popular Dumbo the Flying Elephant attraction at Disney parks around the world. And in celebration of the beloved classic’s 70th anniversary, Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment has released Dumbo for the first time on Blu-ray.
Here’s the most famous song from Dumbo, Baby Mine, which Dumbo’s mommy sings to him. This is one of the all time favourite Disney movie moments that has made millions cry for 70 years. It is sung by actor and singer Elizabeth “Betty” Noyes.
Titus Thotawatte: The Magician
Emmanuel Titus de Silva, who was better known as Titus Thotawatte, was the finest editor in the six decades of the Lankan cinema. He was also a great assimilator and remixer – a ‘builder of bridges’ across cultures, media genres and generations.
Titus straddled the distinctive spheres of cinema and television with a technical dexterity and creativity rarely seen in either one. Both spheres involve playing with sound and pictures, but at different levels of scale, texture and ambition. Having excelled in the craft of making movies in the 1960s and 1970s, Titus successfully switched to television in the 1980s and 1990s. There, he again blaze his own innovative trail in Sri Lanka’s nascent television industry. As a result, my generation remembers him for his television legacy whereas my patents’ generation recall more of his cinematic accomplishments.
Titus left an indelible mark in the history of moving images. The unifying thread that continued from 16mm and 35mm formats in the cine world to U-matic and Betacam of the TV world was his formidable genius for story telling.
Titus de Silva, as he was then known, was a member of the ‘three musketeers’ who left the Government Film Unit (GFU) in the mid 1950s to take their chances in making their own films. The other two were director Lester James Peries and cinematographer Willie Blake. Lester recalls Titus as “an extraordinarily talented but refreshingly undisciplined character” who had been shunned from department to department at GFU “as he was by nature a somewhat disruptive force”!
The trio would go on to make Rekava (Line of Destiny, 1956) – and make history. In his biography by A J Gunawardana, Lester recalls how they were full of self-confidence, “cocky as hell” and determined to overcome the artificiality of studio sets. “We were revolutionaries, shooting our enemies with the camera, and set on changing the course of Sinhala film. In our ignorance, we were blissfully unaware of the hazards ahead – seemingly insurmountable problems we had to face, problems that no book on film-making can ever tell you about!”
In the star-obsessed world of cinema, the technical craftsmen who do the real magic behind the cameras rarely get the credit or recognition they deserve. Editors, in particular, must perform a very difficult balancing task – between the director, with his own vision of how a story should be told, and the audience that fully expects to be lulled into suspending their disbelief. Good editors distinguish themselves as much for what they include (and how) as for what they leave on the ‘cutting room floor’.
The tango between Lester and Titus worked well, both in the documentaries they made while at GFU, and the two feature films they did afterward: Rekava was followed by Sandeshaya (The Message, 1960).
They also became close friends. At his own expense, Titus also accompanied Lester to London where they re-edited and sub-titled Rekava (into French) for screening at the Cannes festival of 1957. As Lester recalls, “Titus was a great source of moral and technical strength to me; his presence was invaluable during sub-titling of the film”.
Titus Thotawatte - photo courtesy biography by Nuwan Nayanajith Kumara
In all, Titus edited a total of 25 Lankan feature films, nine of which he also directed. The cinematic trail that started with Rekava in 1956 continued till Handaya in 1979. While most were in black and white, typical of the era, Titus also edited the first full length colour feature film made in Sri Lanka: Ran Muthu Duwa (1962).
His dexterity and versatility in editing and making films were such that his creations are incomparable among themselves. In the popular consciousness, perhaps, Titus will be remembered the most for his last feature film Handaya – which he both directed and edited. Ostensibly labelled as a children’s film, it reached out and touched the child in all of us (from 8 to 80, as the film’s promotional line said). It was an upbeat story of a group of children and a pony – powerful visual metaphors for the human spirit triumphing in a harsh urban reality that has been exacerbated in the three decades since the film’s creation.
Handaya swept the local film awards at the Saravaviya, OCIC and Presidential film awards for 1979/1980. It also won the Grand Prix at the International Children and Youth Film Festival in Giffoni, Italy, in 1980. That a black and white, low-budget film outcompeted colour films from around the world was impressive enough, but the festival jury watched the film without any English subtitles was testimony to Titus’s ability to create cine-magic that transcended language.
Despite the accolades from near and far, a sequel to Handaya was scripted but never made: the award-winning director just couldn’t raise the money! This and other might-have-beens are revealed in the insightful Thotawatte biography written by journalist Nuwan Nayanajith Kumara. Had he been born in a country with a more advanced film industry with greater access to capital, the biographer speculates, Titus could have been another Steven Spielberg or Walt Disney.
Titus Thotawatte was indeed the closest we had to a Disney. As the pioneer in language versioning at Rupavahini from its early days in 1982, he not only voice dubbed some of the world’s most popular cartoons and classical dramas, but localised them so cleverly that some stories felt better than the originals! Working long hours with basic facilities but abundant talent, Titus once again sprinkled his ‘pixie dust’ in the formative years of national television.
In May 2002, when veteran broadcaster (and good friend) H M Gunasekera passed away, I called him the personification of the famous cartoon character Tintin. I never associated Titus personally, but having grown up in the indigenised cartoon universe that he created on our television, I feel as if I have known him for long. Therefore, Therefore, I hope Titus won’t mind my looking for a cartoon analogy for himself.
I don’t have to look very far. According to his loyal colleagues (and his biographer), Titus was a good-hearted and jovial man with a quick temper and scathing vocabulary. It wasn’t easy working with him. That sounds a bit like the inimitable Captain Haddock, the retired merchant sailor who was Tintin’s most dependable human companion. Haddock had a unique collection of expletives and insults, providing some counterbalance to the exceedingly polite Tintin. Yet beneath the veneer of gruffness, Haddock was a kind and generous man. It was their complementarity that livened up the globally popular stories, now a Hollywood movie by Steven Spielberg awaiting December release.
Perhaps that’s too simplistic an analogy for Titus. From all accounts, he was a brilliantly creative and multi-layered personality who embodied parts of Dr Dolittle (Dosthara Honda Hitha), Top Cat (Pissu Poosa), Bugs Bunny (Haa Haa Hari Haawa) and a myriad other characters that he rendered so well into Sinhala that some of my peers in Sri Lanka’s first television generation had no idea of their ‘foreign’ origins…
Titus was also a true ‘Gulliver’ whose restlessly imaginative mind traversed space and time — even after he was confined to one place during the last dozen years of his life.
Cartoon by Geneva-based Patrick Chappatte, who works for International Herald and Le Temps
Since Friday March 11 afternoon, I’ve been watching the unfolding humanitarian tragedy in Japan caused by multiple disasters — 8.9 earthquake, tsunami, dam burst, fires, and now the meltdown of three nuclear reactors.
Our heart-felt sympathy goes out to all Japanese people, among whom I count many friends. No nation deserves to be battered simultaneously like this by natural and (partly) man-made calamities.
Yet, few nations are better prepared and equipped to deal with such crises. Japan may be reeling right now, but things could have been far worse if not for their readiness to face emergencies both at individual and institutional levels.
Amidst scenes of utter destruction and dislocation, the Japanese people were reacting with the stoic calm for which Japan is famous. “What’s amazing is that everyone I saw — cops on their white bicycles, boys reading comics in alleys, kids walking home with their parents — appeared graceful under this unexpected disaster,” Tokyo resident Irie Otoko wrote to The New York Times.
But make no mistake: this is a big one as disasters come. The death toll is feared to exceed 10,000, and the property damage alone is likely to be tens of billions of dollars. The societal, economic and emotional costs are hard to quantify at this early stage.
It was only a couple of weeks ago that I was walking the streets of Tokyo, enjoying the calm and orderly life in the modern Roppongi and the old world charm of Kagurazaka. But once again, Planet Earth has reminded us who is in charge.
And cartoonists are capturing the planetary sentiment with their usual economy of words.
Cartoon by Terry Mosher, The Star, Toronoto, CanadaCartoon by Gary Markstein, Copyright 2011 Creators SyndicateCourtesy: Cartoon Movement
Toy Story 3: Reaching out to the child in all of us? Photo courtesy - Pixar Animation Studios/Walt Disney PicturesWhy did a 3D CGI comedy-adventure film on the abandoned toys of a upper teenager become the highest grossing feature film in the US, and also worldwide, during 2010? What does it say about our common psyche when Toy Story 3, a variation on an already twice-tested theme, earned more than a billion dollars — making it one of the top five money earners of all time?
Psycho-analysts can debate that for years to come. Toy Story series must tug on some deep emotions in many of us, for the third film was not only highly popular, but also received near universal critical acclaim.
Writing in The New York Times, movie critic A. O. Scott noted: “This film—this whole three-part, 15-year epic—about the adventures of a bunch of silly plastic junk turns out also to be a long, melancholy meditation on loss, impermanence and that noble, stubborn, foolish thing called love.”
Wiz Quiz this week, appearing just two days after the Oscar Awards ceremony, started off with a few questions based on some films that received nominations for the best film of 2010 (officially called the Best Picture Award). At the time we compiled the quiz, the winners were not yet announced. But we probed the 10-movie nominations list deeper to see connections not immediately apparent.
We then roam the world of ancient and modern cultures, hopping from Hindu mythology to modern day Japanese cartoons. In between, we take a look at the Suez Canal that was recently in the news, and salute Ronald Reagan.
18 Days that changed Egypt: 25 Jan to 11 Feb 2011The geeky Davids bring down the mighty Goliath of Mubarak: Bravo!!!Don't meddle with a proud nation that's 5,000 years old!Mubarak unplugged Egypt from the Internet; Angry Egyptians unplugged him!
Skip Williamson's Facebook profile photoWow, isn’t the Facebook a great place to connect people, ideas and creativity? I never thought much about it, but maybe I ought to spend more time there…
Yesterday, I published a semi-serious essay called WikiLeaks, Swiss Banks and Alien invasions, which was about an obscure short story by Arthur C Clarke describing an unlikely alien invasion of the Earth. For once, the invaders used brain and cunning rather than fire power, and against this onslaught, our planet’s rulers had no defence…
I mentioned how PLAYBOY Magazine had used that story as the basis for a psychedelic comic strip illustrated by the American underground cartoonist Skip Williamson. At the time of writing, I had not been able to locate the comic strip that was published in their issue of May 1972. I wondered: “…it’s either behind a pay-wall, or lies somewhere with little or no indexing by search engines.”
Turns out to be the latter. In less than 24 hours, there was a response from Skip Williamson himself saying the artwork is on his Facebook page, http://www.facebook.com/skip.williamson.
Many thanks to Skip Williamson for posting the link…and while at it, for all his brilliantly cheeky and subversive creations over the years! I hope he doesn’t mind my reproducing the comic strip (all of 2 pages) below:
When the Twerms Came - Comic Strip - Page 1 of 2When the Twerms Came - Comic Strip page 2 of 2
2011 is here! We’re not ones to be easily affected by a mere landmark in our particular system of chronology, but as watchers of popular culture, we go along with the mood of the moment — if only to blend in with the planet’s natives…
As for our own mind (which is large and contains multitudes), Bill Watterson – the inimitable creator of Calvin and Hobbes – has once again captured my thoughts so well…and so colourfully.
The future isn't what it used to be!
As for resolutions, the only one I have is that I get to write more, and get read more widely. What more can a wordsmith ask for?
Besides, I tend to agree with Calvin when he says here…
Paper paper shining bright...but for how long? Cartoon by Mike Luckovich
My regular readers know my deep interest in political satire, and fascination with cartoons of all kinds including those political. On this blog, we’ve also discussed the worldwide decline in mainstream journalism.
“Political satire is nothing new: it has been around for as long as organised government, trying to keep the wielders of power in check. Over the centuries, it has manifested in many oral, literary or theatrical traditions, some of it more enduring — such as Gulliver’s Travels and Animal Farm. And for over a century, political cartoonists have also been doing it with such brilliant economy of words. Together, these two groups probably inspire more nightmares in tyrants than anyone or anything else.
“Today, political satire has also emerged as a genre on the airwaves and in cyberspace, and partly compensates for the worldwide decline in serious and investigative journalism. Many mainstream media outlets have become too submissive and subservient to political and corporate powers. Those who still have the guts often lack the resources and staff to pursue good journalism.
“If Nature abhors a vacuum, so does human society — and both conjure ways of quickly filling it up. Into this ‘journalism void’ have stepped two very different groups of people: citizen journalists, who take advantage of the new information and communications technologies (ICTs), and political satirists who revive the ancient arts of caricaturisation and ego-blasting…”
We’re all familiar with the request at cinemas, theatres and concert halls for everyone to turn off their cell phones (a.k.a. mobiles) before the show starts. Not that everyone complies — there are enough deviants among us who just can’t disengage themselves from their electronic leashes even for a couple of hours.
But here’s a new twist to that common (and much needed) request: I came across this in the Bizarro cartoon, which offers some fascinating insights into our topsy turvy times. There are times when I feel that every TV set should come with this line printed on top!
Everyone has a story about cell phones going off at the wrong time in the wrong place. Here’s my favourite.
Together with my TVEAP team, I was running the 2004 AIDS Film Festival in Bangkok, Thailand, during the 15th International AIDS Conference, in July 2004. The festival was held across three venues, and showcased over 50 film titles from around the world — we had nearly half the film makers turning up in person to be introduce their films.
One such film maker, an academic turned film maker, was eagerly talking about his film (an excellent one, unusual for academics) when somebody’s cell phone went off.
The film maker wasn’t amused. He told the full house: “Unless you’re a person with nuclear trigger responsibility, can everyone PLEASE turn off their cell phones?”
But the cell phone ring continued, getting louder.
It took a full minute for its owner to be found — who turned out to be our speaker himself! His own cell phone had been ringing in his trouser pocket all this time, disrupting his own talk.
Moral of the story: Turn off your cell phone at a public performance, especially if it’s your own performance!
Open Minds! (formerly: Moving Images blog) 