Cartoon a Day: Hockey Homicide

Hockey Homicide
1945
Directed by Jack Kinney
Available on: Walt Disney Treasures - The Complete Goofy

Well folks, life got crazy, so "Cartoon a Day" didn't happen for quite a while. But with the Winter Olympics going on, I just couldn't resist doing a review of a great cartoon that celebrates a great winter sport...the Goofy short, "Hockey Homicide." In my opinion, this may be the best of Goofy's staring vehicles.

Like many of the other Goofy sports cartoons, every character in this short is a variation on Goofy. This time it's presented as coverage of a hockey match with Doodles Weaver (of Spike Jones' City Slickers) as the voice of the play by play announcer. His fast-paced commentary alone makes this funnier than your average Disney short, but there's so much more to love here.

As usual, the animation is masterfully done. The artistry is really where the Disney animation studio set itself apart from the others, but here you also have a level of comedy not often seen from the mouse house. The comic pacing is more like a Warner Brothers short.

Through it all you can see that while the makers of this short poked fun at some of the odd aspects of the sport (the fights and such), that they also had a true appreciation for the sport. That kind of appreciation is often what makes for the best kind of comedy. So during a break in the games from Vancouver, be sure to check out this animated winter sports classic!

Our Olympics - Snowboard Cross

The next round of our Mario & Sonic Winter Olympics continued tonight with our chosen sport matching up with what was on TV...Snowboard Cross.

In this event, the players shake the Wii-mote to begin and then turn it move their snowboarder around the curves. On the jumps, you need to move the Wii-mote up and then try to do tricks while in the air. This gives and extra speed burst when landing.

Once again we each raced twice. This time around the gold went to...Luigi with a time of 1:11.740. Mom's Mii grabbed the silver with a time of 1:16.444. Shadow got the Bronze with a score of 1:17.062.

So far on the medal count...Shadow (Timothy) has one of each. Daisy (Samantha) has three bronze medals. Mom's Mii (Mom) has two silvers. And Luigi (Dad) has two Golds.

Our Olympics with Mario & Sonic

My family has been having a lot of fun with the Olympics. One thing that really helped my kids to be excited about the games was the fact that we got the video game "Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games" for Christmas. This is an "official" video game for the Vancouver games, so it uses the official logos and the actual names of the venues for the events. So going into the games, my kids already new about Cypress Mountain and such. Not to mention the fact that they have more of a knowledge of the events. So bravo to the Olympic committee and Nintendo for working together on this! If they goal was to raise the level of excitement about the games...it certainly worked in my household.

We decided that our family would have our own games by way of the Wii. Each member of the family has chosen a character and we will be competing in the various events. We are going to try and update the world through the blog and by the end will see who the Olympic champ of this house is. Timothy is playing as Shadow, Samantha is playing as Daisy, Mom is playing as her Mii character, and Dad (me) is playing as Luigi. Yesterday we began by competing in two events. First was the Skeleton.

The players shake the Wii-mote to start, push a button to hop onto the sled and then turn the Wii-mote side to side, trying to stay in the center yellow arrows to get the best speed. We did two runs each and used each persons best score to determine the rankings. In the end, Luigi had the best time, 1:10.287, to get the Gold. Shadow nabbed the Silver with a time of 1:13.557, and Daisy grabbed the Bronze with a time of 1:15.792.

Event 2 was figure skating. This is the part of this game that amazes me. I mean when I was a kid we were playing Space Invaders, now we actually have video game figure skating! We all did our routines to "Swan Lake" for this round (we may do more figure skating to other songs later). For figure skating you need to watch the prompts on the screen and move the Wii-mote up, down or spin it at just the right moment. Additional points are awarded for extra turns that you do throughout the routine. Sounds weird? Just check out Timothy's technique...he's a bit extreme but you get the idea.

The results were very different this time around. The top score was an amazing 98.900, giving the Gold to...Shadow! After a rough first round score, Mom's Mii came in a close second with a score of 98.200. Daisy grabbed the Bronze with a score of 89.400.

So after the first two events: Shadow has 1 Gold, 1 silver...Daisy has 2 Bronze...Mom's Mii has 1 Silver...and Luigi has 1 Gold. Stay tuned for more...not on the networks of NBC.

Costumes by Austin Powers

My family enjoyed watching the opening ceremony for the Olympics last night. My wife made a unique observation as the athletes marched in. Maybe she's the only one, but she thought the ladies carrying the country signs (in English and French, yay Canada) looked like they had gotten their outfits from the set of an Austin Powers movie. Groovy!

Olympics Mania!

I'm sitting here watching the Olympics as I mess around on the computer and you can officially count me in the ranks of those really having a hard time believing these Chinese girls in the gymnastics competition are 16. My kids go to school with girls that look older than these tumblers!

I don't usually get into the Olympics that much, but I am enjoying watching some of the competitions this year. However, catching this video today has me itching for the Winter Olympics. Just two years to go!

A Long Time Ago at an Olympics Far Far Away

This evening I've been watching the opening ceremonies for the Beijing Olympics. First a side note, there is something seriously wrong with the world when BMX biking is an Olympic event but not baseball. OK, off the soap box.

I always find the creativity of the opening presentation to be interesting, if not a little weird, and this year was no exception. But as I was watching tonight I started to feel like something looked familiar. I saw this giant glowing ball with people floating and swirling around it and suddenly I'm picturing Star Wars Episode III. Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Pagueis the Wise?

I suppose my Star Wars geek brain has cooked in the Tatooine suns too much, but this year's opening ceremonies had me picturing Episode III's "opera." That scene had me scratching my head a bit. I mean it looked a bit like they were watching some sort of soap bubble performance artist being accompanied by the chants of Tibetan monks. Turns out it may have been the opening ceremonies of the Coruscant Olympics.