Tunes For Toons

In the first in-depth examination of music written for Hollywood animated cartoons of the 1930s through the 1950s, Daniel Goldmark provides a brilliant account of the enormous creative effort that went into setting cartoons to music and shows how this effort shaped the characters and stories that have become embedded in American culture. Focusing on classical music, opera, and jazz, Goldmark considers the genre and compositional style of cartoons produced by major Hollywood animation studios, including Warner Bros., MGM, Lantz, and the Fleischers. Tunes for 'Toons discusses several well-known cartoons in detail, including What's Opera, Doc?, the 1957 Warner Bros. parody of Wagner and opera that is one of the most popular cartoons ever created. Goldmark pays particular attention to the work of Carl Stalling and Scott Bradley, arguably the two most influential composers of music for theatrical cartoons. Though their musical backgrounds and approaches to scoring differed greatly, Stalling and Bradley together established a unique sound for animated comedies that has not changed in more than seventy years. Using a rich range of sources including cue sheets, scores, informal interviews, and articles from hard-to-find journals, the author evaluates how music works in an animated universe. Reminding readers of the larger context in which films are produced and viewed, this book looks at how studios employed culturally charged music to inspire their stories and explores the degree to which composers integrated stylistic elements of jazz and the classics into their scores.

The popularity of cartoon music, from Carl Stalling's work for Warner Bros. to Disney sound tracks and "The Simpsons"' song parodies, has never been greater. This lively and fascinating look at cartoon music's past and present collects contributions from well-known music critics and cartoonists, and interviews with the principal cartoon composers. Here Mark Mothersbaugh talks about his music for "Rugrats," Alf Clausen about composing for "The Simpsons," Carl Stalling about his work for Walt Disney and Warner Bros., Irwin Chusid about Raymond Scott's work, Will Friedwald about "Casper the Friendly Ghost," Richard Stone about his music for "Animaniacs," Joseph Lanza about "Ren and Stimpy," and much, much more.

Here is the first comprehensive record of the classic Warner Bros. cartoon studio, wonderfully and richly illustrated in full color. "This comic valentine offers impeccable research, interviews wiuth the animated geniuses who breathed life and laughter into their Looney Tunes, and hundreds of rare illustrations".--Time. 225 full-color illustrations. 100 line drawings.

A collection of provocative Colages that Illuinates an aspect of each weekly Torah portion from a modern perspective

Cartoons deal with computer hackers, personal ads, political campaigns, rock musicians, and toxic waste

New essays by prominent film scholars address recent developments in American genre filmmaking.

Warner Bros. and Chronicle Books proudly present Draw the Looney Tunes. For years, this was the textbook used by in-house artists to learn the ropes at Warner Bros. This exclusive edition brings the book to the general public for the very first time. But in no way have we stripped it down. We're not kwazy. We've left all the bells and whistles in place: vellum overlays, landscape four-color foldouts, vintage cartoons, step-by-step instruction, and how-to textquite the package! With good humor and wise counsel the artists reveal their secrets of success and outline everything necessary to master the basic principles. It's written for every level of expertise, so budding cartoonists and those well into their craft will learn how to bring characters to life, train the eye to really "see," create rhythm and movement, show perspective, and perfect the finer points of drawing Bugs himself. Chockful of all this and more, Draw the Looney Tunes is a veritable open vault of information and inspiration from those in the knowand th-th-th-th-that's a lot, folks!