Animation &Frame Grabs 17 Oct 2008 07:59 am
Corny’s Mouse & Child
- Thanks to Nancy Beiman who left this Paypal link in the comments section of yesterday’s post. It’s a place where you can donate some money to a fund being raised for Corny Cole after his house fire.
- After thinking about Corny Cole yesterday, I couldn’t help but think about The Mouse and His Child, a feature he worked on immediately following his work on Raggedy Ann.
The Mouse and His Child was directed by Fred Wolf and Chuck Swenson and has some real charm. However, it created a small problem for me.
When I’d begun work on The Marzipan Pig, I had to guarantee the brilliant writer, Russell Hoban, who authored both books – The Marzipan Pig and The Mouse and His Child – that no spoken dialogue would be created by me or Maxine Fisher, who was writing the script. Hoban was annoyed by the script for The Mouse and His Child. He felt they had butchered his story.
In fact, the film ends 3/4 of the way into the story. Elements of the last quarter of the book are rushed through the film in one last scene before the end titles. (I have to admit it’s a bit confusing.) This is a scene Corny animated. It’s all one scene; no cuts; an animated BG.
(Click any image to enlarge.)
The Jack In The Box looks very different from the guy in Raggedy Ann.
You can watch this film on YouTube.
on 12 Jun 2011 at 12:27 am 1.Chris Sobieniak said …
Just thought about this movie right now and see you posted about this very scene! Nice to know who was behind it now, since I thought it was a pretty cool moment, though I never read the book at all and I’m sure it would be one of those deals where I can see what they left in or out in the process.
Years back I ordered a legit DVD copy of this that’s only sold in Japan under it’s Japanese title, ” Oyaro nezumi no fushingina tabi”. It’s an OK release (appears to be taken from an analog master from the looks of it, but a nice upgrade from the VHS release we all saw back in the 80′s, the only downside is the lack of an English audio track that I felt was sorely needed (they left the opening in credits in English anyway so, who knows), but I guess Sanrio doesn’t care much for integrity or completeness (or the thought foreigners like me would bother buying R2 DVD’s of films that will never see the light of day stateside for plenty of reasons). The disc was pretty cheap though at the time I bought it (around $12-15) so I couldn’t complain too much for something that could’ve costed far more like so many things out of Japan the anime crowd would go for.