Had it not been for your recomendation I'd have never listened to, or known about, the "Moose" commentary on "Brother Bear" as I rarely waste time listening to commentary tracks plus it's only on the non-OAR disk. What a suprise! A movies' worth of Bob & Doug! Takes me back to the old SCTV "Great White North" days, eh?

OK... so... the worst part is you have to watch the "Family Friendly" version of the film (1.66/1 - the new version of the "I don't like them black bar" FS for idiots transfers). And... you must also go into the special features menu to turn this on or off... can't be done with the audio button on the remote even though it's track 4 on the audio... how lame.

Anyway... Thanks! *That* was a commentary worth the time!

Watched the entire run of Home Movies yesterday/today for the first time. Got the complete series set on sale from Shout! Factory not too long ago as a blind buy (since I enjoyed Dr. Katz so much). I can't believe I didn't watch this show back when it first aired. It is absolutely hysterical. Glad I got the chance to watch it and I can definitely see this being one of those shows I revisit often in the future.

And I'm now officially done with the checklist!

Nausicaa, My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, and Kiki's Delivery Service, hoping to get to Castle in the Sky tomorrow. I liked Nausicaa and get that its a good movie, just not my genre for live action or animation. Loved the other 3, I think Spirited Away is the best, but think I could re watch Kiki over and over again.

Yeah, Kiki's Delivery Service is just an all-around great and fun movie. Definitely check out Castle In The Sky, it's probably in my Top 3 of his films. I really like Nausicaa, but I can understand what you mean. Spirited Away is probably his most masterful film and is a nice interpretation of the Alice In Wonderland type story.

Final day of the challenge. I've still got a few items left on my checklist; I won't get to all of them, I don't believe, though I've done far better than I expected. I should have watched more of the animated features in my unwatched pile, but I was just in the mood to re-visit some things I hadn't seen in quite a while. For instance, tonight I just watched Star Wars: Clone Wars - Volume One for the first time since I bought it five years ago. I really enjoyed it, and it was a reminder how fun Star Wars can be when you're not hung up on debates about retroactive edits.

I expect to watch Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs sometime today as my entry for the 1930s, and I'm leaning toward making that my final viewing of the challenge, in recognition of its place in the history of animation and film in general.

I finished the checklist last night (except for the optional ratings category which I really didn't care about) although I'm kind of behind on updating that and my list. I may try to tweak it a bit to get rid of some duplicates although I won't be able to eliminate all of them. I started a Willis O'Brien marathon with "The Lost World", "Son of Kong", and "Mighty Joe Young" and plan to finish that up today with "The Black Scorpion". The stop motion work in "Mighty Joe Young" is amazing although I don't care for the movie that much. Then to wrap up the challenge I'll probably go with the three part closer for season 1 of "Justice League" which just kept getting better and better as the season went on. I've had soooo much fun this month!

I finished the checklist outside the optional stuff this weekend. I had hoped to accomplish a few more things but its been a long month for reasons outside the challenge so just meeting the challenge was something that felt good to have a sense of completion. If I have the chance I'll hit up Disney's Robin Hood tonight, but I suspect I won't. Been fun. Thanks for running it Mister Peepers.

Challenge ends tomorrow at dawn, so there's still time to make yourself exhausted for work/school by staying up for one last night. It's only once a year, go ahead and do it.

Oh so the challenge doesn't end at midnight, but dawn? Nice! Looks like I might be able to save Trevor from "winning" as right now he's ahead of me by 4 entries, lol.

By the way, thanks for running this Mister Peepers. It's been a lot of fun and I've had the chance to discover a lot of old animation I forgot about.

This was a fun challenge. I really enjoyed having a good reason to finally watch a lot of my animated shows. I rarely ever pick out these old shows to watch that I think I bought for nostalgic reasons. It was exciting to revisit them. I felt a bit overwhelmed because of the sheer quantity of animation I have and not knowing what to start and how far to spread it out. Next year I'm going to watch a few more than (3) animated movies. I only have a handful, but I'm hoping for the ~10 range next year.

I ended just a bit short of my goal of 50 (46.25), but I did watch 295 individual animated titles!

Thanks to Mister Peepers and also the participants. I put a few titles that were talked about on my wish list... that is probably one of the more fun aspects of these challenges - discovering new films or shows.

Well, I’m calling it a night. I’ve got 57 items completed. And I think I got everything checked off on the checklist. I might have made it to 100 items except I got hit with a family tragedy this month and I had to go out to Colorado for four days to attend a funeral. I took my portable DVD player and plenty of DVDs, but it was hard, under the circumstances, to do a lot of watching. I tried watching stuff on the plane ride there and back, but two of the anime series I picked turned out to be NSFA (Not Safe for Airplanes). “Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi,” which I watched on the way there, had a lot of raunchy humor. I can only imagine what the young guy sitting next to me must have thought. It didn’t help when I started singing along with the Japanese end song by the fourth episode. (Hey, it’s a catchy song—and I thought both of the guys in my row had earphones in!) On the return trip, I stuck with Looney Tunes.

I wonder if anyone else participating viewed animation from as many different countries as I did. I saw animation from eight countries: the U.S., Japan, Korea, Mainland China, France, England, Czechoslovakia, Russia. I have at least three other countries in my collection that I didn’t get to (Yugoslavia, Hong Kong, Taiwan).

I tried counting the number of individual pieces I watched, but I’m too tired right now to keep count.

I had a bunch of anime series I need to watch that I hoped to get to, but I didn’t. I found it was more satisfying pulling stuff off the shelves and deciding based on what I wanted to see. So I saw a number of things it would have taken me much longer to get to.

I've been pretty consistent with my habit of going along pretty good in these challenges til fading at the end. Month-end job responsibilities kicked my tail. I did enjoy the opportunity to involve my kids in the challenge.

I'm glad I was able to fit in Moral Orel: The Complete Series before the Challenge was over. I love this show and highly recommend it to anyone that hasn't seen it before or is on the fence about watching it. It's funny, disturbing, cute, emotional, depressing, inspiring, and thoughtful. It serves as a great commentary on religion, family, and society and does so in a unique way. It's a shame the show got canceled when it did, but for its brief run I think it is a pretty impacting program.

Or once a month for each challenge

Well, I managed to fit a decent amount more in before dawn. Luckily I don't have class until this evening, so staying up this ridiculously late isn't going to really make a difference. I actually used this time to watch some of the DC Universe Animated Movies, which I had wanted to re-watch ever since watching Batman: Under The Red Hood earlier in the challenge. I ended the challenge with one of my favourite animated movies of all time, The Brave Little Toaster, so I thought that was fitting conclusion.

This was actually the first challenge I've taken part in and I enjoyed it a lot. It was a great way to watch a lot of recently acquired animated titles and revisit things I hadn't seen in a while. I really liked watching some of the old shorts by Disney, Ub Iwerks, and the Fleischer Brothers. This challenge actually inspired me, as I previously said, to start picking up the Walt Disney Treasures line and so far I've got all of the Mickey Mouse releases and one of the Pluto releases. Looking forward to checking those out as well, after I've taken a little break from animation of course.

It was great seeing everyone share their thoughts about what they've watched and recommendations of what to check out. I've always been a fan of animation; I was never in the camp that viewed animation as "inferior" to live-action, but this challenge gave me an even greater appreciation for animation in its many forms.

Out of everything that I watched for the first time or for the first time in a long, long while (e.g. Flintstones, Darkwing Duck), I think I enjoyed Samurai 7, Persepolis, and Home Movies the most. Obviously stuff that I've seen before and was re-watching is stuff I knew I already liked. I do wish I had made it to Cowboy Bebop this time, but I watched plenty to not really bother me about it. If anything, I'll just make that the first animated thing I watch after I take a break and catch up on some of my live-action backlog (DVDs, Blu-rays, Television).

I think the next time the Animation Challenge rolls around I'll probably start with The Simpsons: Season One and work my way through all of what's been released up to that point. Or maybe instead I'll try and watch all of my Disney movies. Whatever I decide, I'm sure I'll have plenty of things to watch for the first time or revisit next year.

Thanks again to everyone that participated and made this a great challenge and to Mister Peepers for running it!

These Challenges give me that extra little push I need to watch some of my unwatched DVDs instead of being lazy and just watching whatever movie is on TCM, or re-watching King of the Hill, Robot Chicken, or The Venture Bros. episodes on Cartoon Network late at night (okay, I did still do that, but, hey, it counted for the Challenge).

I really liked this Challenge. I didn't watch a lot, but I was able to watch a decent sized stack of my old unwatched DVDs, remembered to start watching Batman: The Brave and the Bold again, and started watching the new Scooby-Doo reboot (had never heard of it, but happened upon it a few weeks ago and liked it enough to keep watching).
[shameless plug]If you don't want to wait until next August, you can always do a Simpsons Challenge or a Disney Challenge during the Second Annual May Make-Your-Own-Challenge Challenge. [/shameless plug]

I finished this challenge by watching one of my favorite animated films, The Castle of Cagliostro. I was introduced to the film through scenes in the laser disc video game Cliff Hanger. It's a lot of fun with some great action scenes. If you're a Hayao Miyazaki fan then definitely check it out!

Fun challenge but like others I did not get to all of the titles I wanted to watch. Maybe next year.

So I ended up with 57 entries, but if I count each short and TV episode separately, I watched a total of 247 items.

Everything I watched came from:
34 VHS tapes
29 DVDs (i.e. 29 separate discs)
9 Beta SP broadcast tapes

(Those Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVDs were gold mines for this challenge. Lots of material on each disc. And I noticed them on other participants' lists also.)

All but the Beta SP tapes (part of the tape library where I work) were from my personal collection. I only bought one item for the challenge and that was to fulfill the "puppet" requirement on the checklist. (It was a used DVD of THE MUPPETS TAKE MANHATTAN.)

I just have to add my thanks to all the participants and especially to Mister Peepers for hosting this challenge. When I started I wasn't sure animation could keep me interested for a whole month. No problem at all! As many have mentioned it was great rediscovering things like Looney Tunes, Popeye, Betty Boop and even Batman The Animated Series and finding out that they hold up very well. I may like some of these even better now than when I first saw them. I also really enjoyed seeing some silent animation for the first time.

At first I was going to focus mainly on my anime backlog but ended up watching way more shorts that I anticipated but I'm not complaining. I still manged to get through four complete anime series and got close to finishing a fifth. One of the best things I watched was the anime series Zipang a very well done time travel story. I also would have to recommend Batman Under the Red Hood and Monster House.

I totally agree and would like to also mention the Popeye sets which include some shorts from the 1910's and 1920's along with lots of background material and commentaries.

Speaking of anime I have noticed that I am picking up some Japanese with recent viewings. Granted it's common or simple words like what (nani), who (doushite), no! (masaka), fool (baka), damn (shimatta), and ryoukai! (roger!) but it's nice being able to comprehend their meaning now. Obviously I am nowhere near being able to watch anime without subtitles.

Macross Plus:  Movie Edition was the first anime that I watched in Japanese because that was the only format available in VHS. I don't recall VHS having a language option other than an English dub for anime titles so it was nice hearing the original language in the '90s. With the advent of DVD the English dub does not need to be the only language option now.

Dammit! I forgot the challenge went till dawn. My wife was adamant about watching White Collar and Covert Affairs, and with only an hour left after those I just gave up. I still needed 25 minutes or so of short films and 15 minutes of TV content for two more full entries. I could have done it, but I was also still a few items shy of completing the checklist and I didn't have material for those items so just called it.

I only knocked off a couple items from my Unwatched Pile, which would disappoint me more if it weren't for the fact that I saw several things I'd not seen in ages (I honestly don't recall seeing The Jungle Book since the Regan administration) and it was fun to re-acquaint myself with a lot of that content. Also, I enjoyed going through the Library of Congress's "Origins of American Animation" digital collection and seeing the roots of the medium; I don't recall ever seeing any of those short films before this month. Next year, I'll concentrate more on things I've never seen.

Anyway, I had a lot of fun with this challenge. It helped offset the disappointment of June, when I went from hosting the Historical Appreciation Challenge to not even participating. I'm certainly looking forward to next August, and I, too, applaud our host Mister Peepers.

Results will be up sometime next week.

I'm ashamed to say I let my list get terribly behind once again. This is at least the third challenge I've let that happen now. Not trying to make excuses here, but I did have quite a busy month. I'll try and get it up-to-date by tomorrow.

But anyway, the challenge itself was a blast. Revisiting those earlier Simpsons seasons was just a reminder how that show was damn near perfect television in its heyday. I never really got around to listening to all the commentaries over the years, so this was the perfect opportunity to start at the very beginning. And I'll most likely continue with subsequent seasons and it'll probably take until 2011 to catch up to whatever the current DVD season is at the time. Of course discovering Ralph Bakshi, sneaking in a couple of anime films and some stop motion/puppetry animation was a great way to top it off.

Thanks again MP!

I think I'm also doing three extra entries for prizes based on the top three lists. As long as you participated in the challenge, PM me your three top lists(not counting your own). I'll take names through the 5th.

I'm glad people had fun. Wasn't sure how this challenge would turn out.

http://forum.dvdtalk.com/dvd-talk/57...challenge.html