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13 internautes sur 13 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile :
5.0étoiles sur 5
The return of Popeye, Aoû 8 2007
This is such a find, one of the most enjoyable sets I've ever owned. Back in the late '80s, Popeye cartoons from the mid-30s used to be broadcast very early in the morning on local TV. I used to get up at 5 a.m. to tape them by hand, so there would not be any duplicates. I ended up with a 6-hour tape full of my favorite animation. Then I did something really stupid - I found an outfit that put VHS tapes onto DVD. I was to find out later that this is a real racket. People want this, for their grad tapes, weddings, etc. But this place turned out to be bogus. I never saw my tape again. I was so disappointed, as Popeye was my favorite from childhood and wasn't on the air any more.
So, all these years later, I was in a local department store and saw one copy of this set on a shelf, with space all around it. It had only been out for about 3 days. It seemed to be calling to me! I bought it immediately and began to enjoy an experience beyond my old tape.
For one thing, the tape had been "colorized", so it was very hard to see the backgrounds. The black and white was like pencil drawings by a brilliant artist, effective (often providing a 3-D effect) and quirky. I remembered most of the cartoons, but also appreciated the short documentaries dealing with various aspects of the series.
What surprised me most is how often I laughed out loud, at cartoons I had seen when I was 5 years old. Olive Oyl in particular made me laugh, with her noodle-like, elastic arms and legs. Popeye himself was such an unlikely hero - ugly and gruff, with one eye, no teeth (you can clearly see his gums in these early ones), and grotesque forearms.
There was a strange charm to these early efforts, in which the animators hadn't quite gotten a fix on the characters -they were still experimenting. Popeye's laugh was almost menacing, and Olive's voice was deep, below alto (before Mae Questel got on board - also did Betty Boop).
Weirdest of all, the very early Fleischer cartoons had the characters constantly bouncing up and down in unison. In the first few, all the characters other than Popeye, Olive and Bluto were animals walking upright.
When I saw these on TV, at the very end of some of them there was a split-second showing a black dot which got smaller, then a nanosecond of an inkwell. In these, we get to see the whole shot with the ink bottle, drawing pens and a calendar. It turns out they were not able to show the Paramount logo at the end, so had to "chop" that lovely ending. How wonderful and magical to see it restored.
Popeye gave Disney a run for his money (imagine comparing an ugly old sailor to sweet little Mickey Mouse!), and often came out on top. I can't wait for Vol. 2 of this set: it's beautifully set up, easy to find all the material, and a sort of time machine to the Depression era, when entertainment was so crucial to keeping up the public morale.
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