TVSquad

You'll note that I didn't call it a "Muppet short film," because there are no Muppets to be found in the eight-minute short below. It does, however, feature a young Jim Henson. The short, called Time Piece, was nominated for an Oscar in 1966.

Something tells me I would have appreciated this short more when I was in college. Back then I lived for surreal, nonsensical stuff like this: tearing it apart, trying to figure out what it all means. I'd borrow films like this and Un Chien Andalou from the college media center and revel in how different it all was.

Since I dwell at the butt-end of Generation X, the 1962 animated holiday special Mister Magoo's Christmas Carol was never on my holiday TV plate. Perhaps it aired when I was youngster, but damned if I ever saw it. However, I always hear fond memories about the special from folks older than myself, so out of the goodness of my awesome heart I thought I'd let everyone know that the special will air on December 24 at 6:30am on Cartoon Network. That's early, I know, but what can you do? Fly around the Earth and reverse time like Superman? The show would still air at 6:30am even if you did do that, which is why he's Superman and you're not. Superman thinks these things through before he does them.

Speed Racer only lasted one year? That's what IMDb seems to indicate. The Japanese import is so much a part of popular culture I assumed it had lasted longer than that. Regardless, the popular cartoon was around before my time, so I know very little about it, save for little bits of information I've picked up here and there. If you're older than myself, however, or you fell in love with the show while watching it in reruns, you may have already heard that a live-action film versions of the cartoon is in the works. Larry and Andy Wachowski, the brothers behind the Matrix movies, will write and direct the project, which is slated for a 2008 release. The brothers apparently have big plans for the racing sequences, and given the ever-duplicated special effects of the Matrix trilogy, I'm more than a little curious to see what they have up their sleeves. I'm a little bummed out that it's live-action rather than animation, but The Matrix was essentially a live-action cartoon in many ways, so maybe this could work.

[via Toon Zone]

Roger Ramjet, a very funny cartoon that originally aired in 1965, could be mistaken for a Jay Ward creation, as its aesthetic, pop cultural references, and "too smart for the little kids watching it" sense of humor bear a striking resemblance to Ward's Rocky and Bullwinkle. While I was born about eleven years too late to catch Roger Ramjet when it first aired, I did catch occasional episodes on Cartoon Network while I was in college, and actually found it much funnier than Rocky and Bullwinkle (again, a show it had no connection with). Luckily, you can catch a bunch of episodes on YouTube, and I highly recommend that you do. The series featured Gary Owens (Laugh-In announcer and original voice of Space Ghost) as Roger Ramjet, the leader of a group of spunky cadets known as the American Eagles. Ramjet would often try to save the day, but ultimately he was more interested in saving his own skin. The show, as I said, sampled from the same well of humor as Rocky and Bullwinkle, but was much tighter, and much more rapid fire with its gags. Rocky and Bullwinkle's gags were constructed in such a way that one could clearly see the set up, and the punchline that followed. As funny as that show was, its pacing was actually very methodical. Roger Ramjet, by contrast, would overload every line with several gags, sometimes eschewing its limited animation and instead simply having the characters' words flash onto the screen. There was never any lesson learned in any of the episodes, at least none parent's would want kids to remember. It was, essentially, a satire of so-called heroism, the story of a man who wants to save the day, but is really only interested in looking out for his best interests.

And what the heck, because I like you all so much I stuck a three-minute episode in after the jump. Happy viewing.