Hello!

Two links purloined from Joe Dante today. This first is an animation comparison piece just long enough to make its point — it’s called Disney déjà view.

It’s a Twitter post by Marshall Julius, about recycled animation in Disney animated features. Much like a studio accessing stock shots to cut costs, conventional cel animators weren’t above re-referencing older animation work to shorten the long development process.

The minute or so of comparisons jumps between Winnie the Pooh, The Jungle Book and a couple of others. At first glance one thinks, ‘how can this save time if the actual ink and paint animation is all new?’ but that’s not how it works.

I don’t think I would notice any of this borrowing on my own. The only re-used Disney animation I’ve spied is in Winnie the Pooh — as I remember, they reworked imagery from the Pink Elephants on Parade sequence in Dumbo.

Trailers from Hell chieftain Joe Dante also steers us to a podcast site that honors composer Jerry Goldsmith, The Goldsmith Odyssey. The subject for this new (February 14) production is Dante’s The ‘Burbs, and the lengthy track is loaded with rich soundtrack cues, from multiple Goldsmith scores. If you wish to turn yourself into a devotee of great film music, this is a good place to start.

Guests for the podcast are professionals involved with the record album, editor Marshall Harvey, recording engineer Bruce Botnick, album co-producer Neil S. Bulk, and album art designer Dan Goldwasser. Joe Dante is there as well. Some of the story of the making of The ‘Burbs is told as well.

Their main index has a lot of cool Goldsmith soundtracks under discussion — but I didn’t see Our Man Flint among them. The Twilight Time disc for that movie has an isolated music score — just look what it’s selling for on Amazon.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson