Bakshi LORD OF THE RINGS on Blu-ray

Out last week, Ralph Bakshi's 1978 LORD OF THE RINGS adaptation is finally on Blu-ray, though varying reports don't seem to hold the high definition in such high regard. A shame, as this is probably as good as Bakshi's innovative animated adaptation will ever get on home media. Love it or hate it, I think it's worth noting that when Jackson first promoted his own take on the trilogy, he denied any influence from Bakshi, and only after a few people said, "Hey, don't you think a few of these scene looks suspiciously IDENTICAL to the animated version?" did Jackson admit that, oh, ahem, well, yeah, maybe I did watch that a few times when I was younger.

Some obvious fans at Wired drummed up a good little piece about Bakshi to celebrate the release. Some shockingly vivid original cel art over at Bakshi's site gives an idea of what a proper Deluxe Remastered Release might want to aim at looking like.

Ralph Bakshi's Bad-trip SPIDERMAN

WFMU's Beware of the Blog completed some of my favorite detective-work a few years ago regarding Ralph Bakshi's incredible, psychedelic kid's cartoon, SPIDERMAN '67. Granted, from what I understand, Bakshi didn't really take over till second season, '68, but that's when the show really became noteworthy, nightmarish, with the endlessly repetitive re-use of action animations (for a newer generation, think of Prince Adam's overly-regular transformation sequence into He-Man in MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE that saved those animators a ton of time and money every episode)...both economic AND nigh-hypnotic, especially to the impressionable 5-year-old mind. When I caught some in my mid-twenties on a vacation through Europe (over-dubbed in Italian no less), I think my jaw literally dropped in reaction to the surreality of Bakshi's cheap, weird, fantastic vision against a visual backdrop of Brakhage paint washes ("Now for children!") and an aural backdrop of...well, read below.

One of the best aspects of SPIDERMAN was its unbelievably groovy music, and finally a few years ago someone via WFMU has unearthed the source material for what would have otherwise remained essentially lost stock jams...stuff from a commercial-music-library-for-rent utilized by on-the-cheap movie and TV producers. This material brought a whole new dimension to the images cranked out of Bakshi's factory, somehow alchemically transforming what might have otherwise been dingy and tedious into fully realized, bizarre material...it's a great example of music and image butressing each other to sublimate beyond their own respective shortcomings: mediocrity is successfully abandoned, skipping the stage of mere decency to arrive straight to greatness. Good job!