Comments on: Sailor Man

By: poissonrouge

poissonrouge — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 11:35:02 +0000

FYI folks: its a theatre piece NOT a video and its horrifying and hilarious at the same time. Like: the fact that Olive Oyl doesnt really understand what popeye is saying most of the time, or that P & B really like beating each other up more than anything…and the magic restorative powers of spinach…

Too bad y’all can’t see it, you may possibly enjoy it…

By: Russell H

Russell H — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 14:51:36 +0000

“I wonder why the filmmakers decided to use cartoons as their target? If they wanted to contrast unrealistic slapstick with realistically performed violence, they could’ve chosen any live action comedy short from the 30’s. They could parody the Three Stooges or Laurel and Hardy. Imagine the amount of blood when that saw scrapes against Curly’s head, for example.

Wouldn’t the results be the same, using the Three Stooges, once “divorced from their harmless context and performed naturalistically,” as with the Popeye example?”

A few years ago one of the featured productions at the NY Fringe Festival was PUNCH! a staging of a 19th century Punch-and-Judy puppet-show scrip using actors, rather than puppets. If you’re familiar with “traditional” P&J shows, they involve “comic” wife-beating (Punch smacking Judy with slap-stick), child-abuse (throwing baby from window), Punch “killing” policemen, etc. The point was supposed to be to highlight how certain kinds of “comic violence” are acceptable with non-human surrogates (in this case, puppets) but when performed by “real” humans are not so amusing. I don’t recall the producers announcing some kind of moral point, but that they were just exploring the nature of comedy, and why and how we laugh at some things and not others.

By: Jordan S.

Jordan S. — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 14:39:29 +0000

“In cartoons, when a man gets punched in the face, his neck transforms into a spring; in Sailor Man, his nose breaks and he coughs up blood and teeth and bile.”
I’m not one to critique something based on its press release rather than the artwork itself, but the latter of those is exactly what happens in Porco Rosso.

By: Gummo

Gummo — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 12:05:31 +0000

What a stupid, ugly, pointless idea.

I suppose next they’re going to redo a Three Stooges short to “teach” us all what REALLY happens when you poke someone’s eyes out and run a large saw across their bare scalp?

Or maybe they can show us a follow-up to Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown – Charlie in traction with a broken back, Charlie in rehab, painfully learning to walk again, Charlie becoming a crippled, bitter old man whose hatred of women leads him to unspeakable acts…..

Ugh. At least some of us know the difference between fantasy and reality.

By: J. J. Hunsecker

J. J. Hunsecker — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 09:09:08 +0000

I wonder why the filmmakers decided to use cartoons as their target? If they wanted to contrast unrealistic slapstick with realistically performed violence, they could’ve chosen any live action comedy short from the 30’s. They could parody the Three Stooges or Laurel and Hardy. Imagine the amount of blood when that saw scrapes against Curly’s head, for example.

Wouldn’t the results be the same, using the Three Stooges, once “divorced from their harmless context and performed naturalistically,” as with the Popeye example?

By: Micah Brooks

Micah Brooks — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 03:40:32 +0000

Good to see Fidel Castro has a new job.
The perfect part for him, I think.
Bluto has always been a bit of a dictator.

By: Oinks

Oinks — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 23:37:35 +0000

Umm….Why make funny things angry and scary? Doesn’t anyone want to laugh anymore? Is laughter forbidden now? Why can’t they let cartoons be cartoons? Is it forbidden to make funny and happy things that poke fun of human nature?

Sorry I’ve been hiding under a rock lately. So I’m clueless….

By: Kirk Craig

Kirk Craig — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 19:38:18 +0000

Bakshi did it in “Fritz the Cat”, 36 years ago, in the sequence where the bartender turns violent with a broken beer bottle and moments later, with the onscreen death of the sympathetic Duke. Audiences were astonished how a crude cartoon swiftly made the leap to dramatic film. Those who condemn “Fritz” fail to grasp that it was, in many respects, groundbreaking. Is it surprising that these filmmakers doing a live action, realistic take on “Popeye” want respect for being original? No. Every generation seeks to remake the past in its own image.