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T. J. Dobbin

@tjamesdobbin.bsky.social

670 followers 290 following 1.7K posts

I write about Bugs Bunny cartoons.

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T. J. Dobbin @tjamesdobbin.bsky.social · 18d

My new essay is up. It's on Bugs Bunny's most infamous short, the Censored Eleven, and Warner Bros' inconsistency with regards to allowing its racially problematic animation be seen by modern audiences. It's the longest and nerdiest Bugs essay to date (I talk A LOT about Blu-rays).

All This and Rabbit Stew (1941)

I normally include a handful of screenshots in my Bugs Bunny essays, but virtually every frame in All This and Rabbit Stew (1941) features a racist caricature that I don’t feel comfortable sh…

strawberrypenguin.ca

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Reposted by T. J. Dobbin

T. J. Dobbin @tjamesdobbin.bsky.social · 17h

In the mood for some weird horror-y cartoon viewings for Halloween? Check out my new post highlighting 20 animated shorts from Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks.

Halloween Animation: Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks

Greetings, all. It’s that season again. It’s funny, as someone who regularly spends time watching horror movies, and reading horror books and comics year-round just as one of my default…

strawberrypenguin.ca

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T. J. Dobbin @tjamesdobbin.bsky.social · 12h

Just watched Sunset Boulevard in the cinema with @jacobeantragedy.bsky.social and @willowcatelyn.bsky.social. incredible movie. Stunning. I wish I could watch all the Billy Wilders on the big screen.

Mike @jacobeantragedy.bsky.social · 15h

SEATED

Screen shot of 75th anniversary screening of sunset boulevard

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T. J. Dobbin @tjamesdobbin.bsky.social · 17h

In the mood for some weird horror-y cartoon viewings for Halloween? Check out my new post highlighting 20 animated shorts from Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks.

Halloween Animation: Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks

Greetings, all. It’s that season again. It’s funny, as someone who regularly spends time watching horror movies, and reading horror books and comics year-round just as one of my default…

strawberrypenguin.ca

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Reposted by T. J. Dobbin

T. J. Dobbin @tjamesdobbin.bsky.social · 1d

new Strawberry Penguin post incoming

Lonesome Ghosts, the Disney cartoon. a frame mid dissolve, a super imposed Mickey in the middle of the frame, as Donald is looking around the corner in a haunted house.

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T. J. Dobbin @tjamesdobbin.bsky.social · 1d

new Strawberry Penguin post incoming

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Willow Catelyn Maclay @willowcatelyn.bsky.social · 1d

My friend's cat is really sick. Moose is literally an angel, and if you could spare anything or share this around that would be wonderful. Thank you. 💙

www.gofundme.com/f/bn2nc-help...

Donate to Help Moose Get Better, organized by Emily Dyer

Hi, I’m creating this today for my beautiful precious angel cat, Moose. She started presenting se… Emily Dyer needs your support for Help Moose Get Better

www.gofundme.com

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Reposted by T. J. Dobbin

Willow Catelyn Maclay @willowcatelyn.bsky.social · 2d

I wrote about MAY for my horror column. This movie was a favorite of mine when I was a teenager, and I wrote about why and how it spoke to me then, and how my relationship to the film has evolved in the time since.

www.patreon.com/posts/monste...

a still image from Lucky McKee's "May" of Angela Bettis in a near close-up as the titular character. She has her thumb in her mouth. She is in a veterinary clinic and the details of the room are out of focus.

Ginger Snaps and May were two of my favorite movies when I was fourteen years old. They helped me deal with with the two dominant feelings of my adolescence: gender dysphoria and loneliness. Those two feelings tend to intertwine for young trans people. In my own experience, they did so ruthlessly. My dysphoria negatively impacted my life to such a degree that I was home-schooled from the age of fifteen or sixteen (I genuinely can’t remember), put on a heavy anti-depressant and had to routinely see a childhood psychologist to figure out what was wrong with me (it was dysphoria, but I wasn’t in a safe situation to bring it up). Being taken out of the public school system made it much more difficult to create lasting friendships, which exacerbated my loneliness and inability to relate to others. Homeschooling me was a decision that was made without my consent, and it hampered my skills of socialization, and the friends that I did have in middle school eventually stopped seeing me. I’ve gotten better at being a person, and forging relationships with people since transitioning, but I have still retained some of those bad habits and coping mechanisms that I instinctively learned when I was a teenager. One of those coping mechanisms was cinephilia. I felt like I didn’t have anyone to talk to, but I had movies. It worked for me then, but now I can look back on it and realize that it was a pretty sad state of affairs. I’m still trying to find the balance between living my life, and watching movies. Lucky McKee’s May was one of those films that I luxuriated in. Angela Bettis’s strange, anti-social veterinarian technician, who wanted nothing more than to have a boyfriend, and friends to call her own, was disarmingly familiar. I treated watching it like soaking in a warm bath. Revisiting it this week, felt odd, like coming back to an old habit better left in the rear-view, but I still liked the taste.

May begins with a brief prologue that shows the start of her difficulty socializing with her peers. The film takes viewers all the way back to elementary school, and May, with very long blonde hair, is wearing an eye-patch to obscure her lazy eye. Her mother—a cosmopolitan type—implores her to cover the eyepatch with her hair so her classmates will treat her equally. She ignores this advice until a young boy approaches her and innocently asks if she is a pirate. She shakes her head no. The bell rings. And she drapes her hair over her eyepatch. May’s mother keeps a prized doll locked in a glass case, and the doll itself is exquisitely Gothic, with a red gown, raven’s hair, and pale features. May fixated on this lovely creature, and substituted her need for friends with a budding relationship to this plastic creation. We never see May converse with her mother, but she gravitates to the doll in her worst moments. The film never shows the doll speaking, but May can hear her, nagging her insecurities, bringing her inner turmoil to her teeming, embodied psychosis. This is ostensibly a slasher film wearing the skin of a Frankenstein-riff, as May kills acquaintances of hers, severing her favorite body parts, and building a best friend of her own. But because the film is so careful, and precise about showing viewers the integrity of May’s inner-life, it is in actuality the rare horror film to genuinely grapple with the horrible shape of catastrophic loneliness.

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T. J. Dobbin @tjamesdobbin.bsky.social · 2d

Hell yeah. Great job Blue Jays. My late grandmother loved watching the Jays. She'd be so thrilled right now.

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T. J. Dobbin @tjamesdobbin.bsky.social · 2d

Saoirse Ronan is apparently playing Linda in the Beatles biopic thing. I have no interest in "Beatles biopics", but an early 70s based movie about the Wings period of Paul's life would have a lot more juice as a self contained movie (and it would give Saoirse a lot to work with).

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T. J. Dobbin @tjamesdobbin.bsky.social · 2d

This is cinema.

Godzilla on the left, Jet Jaguar on the right. Both are looking in the same direction. The sky behind them is grey because the film print is terrible.

T. J. Dobbin @tjamesdobbin.bsky.social · 2d

Bring back Disco Godzilla.

The scene from Godzilla vs Megalon where the sparkly dressed-in-white space women are doing a ritual dance on a dance floor

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Willow Catelyn Maclay @willowcatelyn.bsky.social · 3d

I'm revisiting an old favorite tomorrow for my horror column with a lightly personal essay on MAY, which is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel

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T. J. Dobbin @tjamesdobbin.bsky.social · 3d

"I love the Peanuts." -Willow

Reposted by T. J. Dobbin

Willow Catelyn Maclay @willowcatelyn.bsky.social · 4d

I'm too fucking tired to debunk every stupid thing that Ryan Murphy said about Christine Jorgensen or how the public response to Ed Gein was catastrophic to the the perception of trans people so I'll just point to my book. We covered all of it.

bookshop.org/p/books/corp...

Corpses, Fools and Monsters: The History and Future of Transness in Cinema

The History and Future of Transness in Cinema

bookshop.org

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Will Sloan @willsloanesq.bsky.social · 4d

I wrote about Ed Wood's finest literary works for the Metrograph Journal
metrograph.com/ridiculists-...

RidicuLists: The Top Five Literary Works by Ed Wood - Journal - Metrograph

Film history is a house with many rooms. In Ridiculists, Will Sloan explore some of its nooks and crannies. For the latest entry, a look at five of the cult independent filmmaker Ed Wood’s finest book...

metrograph.com

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T. J. Dobbin @tjamesdobbin.bsky.social · 4d

Real George Carlin energy (complimentary)

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T. J. Dobbin @tjamesdobbin.bsky.social · 6d

A consistent heartbreak I'm experiencing from reading the early chapters in Behind the Pink Curtain: The Complete History of Japanese Sex Cinema is how frequently I read a film description, think "ooooo this seems cool" and then immediately after discovering it's a lost film.

T. J. Dobbin @tjamesdobbin.bsky.social · 6d

Sadly, it doesn't seem to be available. The majority of pink films from the 1960s are lost.

T. J. Dobbin @tjamesdobbin.bsky.social · 6d

Long before the popularization of "porn parodies", in the early days of Japan's pink cinema, there was once a Zatoichi pink parody! It starred someone who was famous at the time for being a Shintaro Katsu (Zatoichi) impersonator. Daiei even sued this film on the basis of it "tricking" audiences.

Lewd Priest: Forty-Eight Positions Cutting (1969)

Zatoichi pink film parody from 1969

letterboxd.com

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Looney Melodies @looneymelodies.bsky.social · 9d

Minnie the Moocher (1932, Directed and Animated by Dave Fleischer, Willard Bowsky, Ralph Somerville)

Betty Boop and Bimbo are in a dark scary cave, both are looking off towards something off-screen.

Betty Boop and Bimbo are looking ahead at three skeletons drinking mugs of beer in unison.

Close-up of the three skeletons drinking from their mugs, their white bones are turning black.

The three skeletons are white again, and they've fallen to the floor, drunk, a smile on their faces.

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Looney Melodies @looneymelodies.bsky.social · 8d

Minnie the Moocher (1932, Directed and Animated by Dave Fleischer, Willard Bowsky, Ralph Somerville)

Betty Boop and Bimbo holding each other in fright.

Betty Boop and Bimbo holding each other in fright, same image, but with the black and whites of the image reversed.

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Reposted by T. J. Dobbin

Looney Melodies @looneymelodies.bsky.social · 8d

Is My Palm Read (1933, Directed and Animated by Dave Fleischer, David Tendlar, William Henning)

A circle peephole view of Betty Boop in a white dress, gloves and hat.

Betty applying her lipstick: a tiny creature lives inside her lipstick, and has paints and is painting her lips for her.

Betty lifting up the ends of her dress before she walks through a mysterious entrance which magically manifested.

Betty is in the middle of the room which has gone dark, but a spotlight peers over her, showing off the shape of her legs from under her dress. Bimbo and Koko look on.

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T. J. Dobbin @tjamesdobbin.bsky.social · 7d

I was trying to place the Looney Tunes that's playing on the TV in One Battle After Another when Bob is walking through Sergio's home. The shot of church bells was distinct. I remember it because it was a recent viewing. It's the final seconds of "Of Rice and Hen", it's on a Collector's Choice blu.

Four screenshots of a Foghorn Leghorn cartoon. In the top left corner is the name of the animator who worked on each individual sequence - this isn't my video, it was posted on the Cartoon Research blog years back.

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Reposted by T. J. Dobbin

Looney Melodies @looneymelodies.bsky.social · 8d

Minnie the Moocher (1932, Directed and Animated by Dave Fleischer, Willard Bowsky, Ralph Somerville)

Betty Boop and Bimbo are running away in the night as an assortment of witches and ghouls chase after them.

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T. J. Dobbin @tjamesdobbin.bsky.social · 8d

A second short Karloff/Lugosi chiller before bed. It rules when a double feature is 130 minutes.