Review of Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession (2004) by Joe B — 12 Aug 2006

[size=3]I was watching part of the Walt Disney Treasures set, [u]On The Front Lines[/u] and it occured to me that the Disney cartoons have gottten a bum rap over the years. A lot of that is the company's fault. Walt Disney stopped making cartoon shorts in 1952 and never showed those pieces outside of the various Disney TV shows. Meanwhile the competition, especially Warner Brothers sell syndicated packages of their cartoons all over the country and generations of kids get to know and love that work. [/size].

[size=3] [/size][size=3] Make no mistake a lot of the other stuff is funnier particularly most of the Bugs, Daffy, Elmer, Road Runner magic at Warners and Tex Avery's insane masterpieces for MGM. But dammit! A lot of Disney cartoons had merit. A lot of Donald Duck stuff is good and the Goofy cartoons from the 40's and 50's are inspired. Some of those Goofy sports cartoons compare favorably to anything Chuck Jones was doing at the time.[/size].

[size=3] Watching the best Disneys, you appreciate the craft of the work and realize that the company was great at using cartoons for other purposes than belly laughs. The set I saw included a lot of World War II propaganda cartoons. "Der Fuhrer's Face" may be the best WWII cartoon of all and the wartime "Chicken Little" turned the idea of the usual jolly little movie cartoon on its head.[/size].

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[size=3] I also saw an interesting documentary called "Z Channel: A Magnificent Obssession". It was about a Los Angeles cable channel from the 70's and 80's that specialized in showing art minded American and foreign films, more specifically about the main programmer, Jerry Harvey, who was obssessed with movies but ultimately killed his wife and himself.[/size].

[size=3] The curious part was hearing all these critics and directors talk about the rare films that only Harvey had the vision to show. I was seeing most of those films when they first came out. Hell, "Berlin Alexanderplatz" played on PBS. Maybe he was the only guy in Los Angeles showing this stuff but the East Coast wasn't exactly Podunk U.S.A. Altman, Visconti, Peckinpah, Herzog, Laura Antonelli's stuff, it all played here.[/size].

[size=3] I will admit that the movie mentioned a few films even I hadn't heard of, a WWII story called "Overlord", a French comedy called "Le Magnifique" and a Klaus Kinski film, "The Most Important Thing Is To Love". Those never got over here.[/size].