>>127702342About Paramount Restoring cartoons:
https://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/bringing-fleischers-somewhere-in-dreamland-to-metv/They said it couldn’t be done. In fact, after three decades of personal effort, I was convinced it would never happen.
But Monday December 13th, in prime time, the first salvo of a new initiative to restore and preserve the classic Max Fleischer cartoons – locked for decades in the vaults at Paramount – will be available for the world to see. On that Monday’s special nighttime telecast of MeTV’s Super Colossal Cartoon Christmas (8pm EST/PST), a newly restored version of Fleischer’s Somewhere In Dreamland will make it’s debut.
The cartoon, the ninth of the “Color Classics” series, the first one photographed in 3-strip Technicolor, is a showcase for Fleischer’s incredible “Stereo-Optical” 3-Dimensional setbacks. The process, which involved building miniatures sets, filmed frame-by-frame on a revolving platform, with a special camera rig that shot the animation cels hung in front of a window, is still inspiring animators today (Cuphead, anyone?).
Because it was the first Fleischer short ever to be filmed in full (3-strip) Technicolor, the sets in the Dreamland sequence are especially colorful – an effort to somewhat blow the minds of Depression-era audiences, and perhaps their rivals at Disney. The cartoon has heart, visual splendor and a classic sense of wonder.
Credit for getting this film on the air, on MeTV, should go completely to
MaxFleischerCartoons.com. They accomplished something I certainly couldn’t do – and I’m grateful to see some movement in restoring classic cartoons in the Paramount Vault.
