A Tale of Two Kitties
November. 21,1942 NRTwo alley cats, Babbitt and Catsello, decide to make a meal out of Orson as he sleeps in his nest atop a telephone pole. The gullible (and loud) Catsello is repeatedly gulled into trying to "get the bird," earning a variety of thrashings from the casually murderous little canary. Catsello finally resorts to an air strike (with a pair of wooden boards for wings), but it's wartime, and Orson has the cat blasted out of the sky by anti-aircraft guns.
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This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.
The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful
It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.
A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.
"A Tale of Two Kitties" is another Warner Bros cartoon from the days of World War II. It runs for 6.5 minutes and features the usual suspects who worked on this film (Clampett, Foster, Blanc, Pierce). The most interesting thing is that we have cat versions of Abbott and Costello here and I really wish the focus could have been more on them. Instead, it is all about the gadgets and of course about Tweety (not yet yellow) prevailing. Shame. This was definitely a missed opportunity. There are a couple solid moments, but in the end it is just another fairly mediocre cartoon that could have been a lot more interesting. a missed opportunity. Thumbs down.
This is one of the better Warner Bros. cartoons of the era ('42), with two cats patterned after Abbott and Costello (Babbitt and Catstello), with Abbott trying to get Costello to pry a teeny bird (who turns out to be Tweety Bird), out of his nest.The gimmicks Abbott uses to get Costello launched into space are hilarious, each one more clever than the one before. This leaves little time to devote to Tweety Bird, but this is Tweety's first film and he doesn't look quite like the finished product that he became several cartoons later.The usual high standard of animation is present, along with the character voices supplied by Mel Blanc (Catstello and Tweety) and Tedd Pierce (Babbit).
A takeoff on Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, famous comedians of the classic era, we have two cats: "Babbit" and "Catstello" just trying to survive and find food, like climbing a very tall tree for a bird snack, if they can get it. That little bird turns out to be "Tweety," the little yellow (later on) canary making his Looney Tunes debut.Actually, more than half of this cartoon features Tedd Pierce and Mel Blanc imitating the two comedians. They are far more scenes than the little bird but the best scenes are the ones with the little bird high up in his nest. Tweety is naked - no feathers. It's kind of weird, being skin color all over. It's like he's just a tiny baby that has been recently hatched. Anyway, he won't put up with a cat trying to get him - this is one strong little "boid.""Catstello" can get a little too loud and abrasive (Blan was never subtle with his voices!) but otherwise this was a fun cartoon and interesting Tweety's start in animated films.I thought the best thing about the cartoon was the direction by Bob Clampett. There are some great "camera" angles in here and it's drawn cleverly in many spots.
This is the cartoon where Clampett first introduced Tweety. He is a funnier and much more aggressive character here. His design is slightly different from the later Tweety everyone remembers. He looks more like a bird that has just been hatched; tiny, featherless and colored a pinkish hue. The actually stars of the cartoon, though, are a couple of cat caricatures of Abbot and Costello. "Babbit" tries to use "Catstello" to catch Tweety for himself. The cats are very appealing as characters, the timing of the gags is crisp and the dialogue is very clever. This cartoon also marks the beginning of Clampett's breaking away from a more literal style of animation to a more expressive, cartoonier one.