"Really? That's badass!"

Was that Emmett, or Matilda?

That was Emmett. "Badass" has replaced "Tight" as the descriptor of cool things.

So, a remembrance of seeing Pippi Longstocking movies in the early seventies made me think of semi-lost early 70s kids entertainment. Like...The Point! And, The Phantom Tollboth (by Chuck Jones) and the Rankin Bass version of The Last Unicorn (okay, 1982).

Now, Matilda is into unicorns with the fervor of a true Rainbow Unicorn Princess Warrior.

But I wasn't sure whether she'd want to see the movie so I showed her some clips on YouTube. She was entranced.

She described what she saw to her mother thus (fyi, "bully" = The Red Bull): "Did you know about the bully and the unicorn? He pushed them all into the water, but then they escaped away! I think if we push the bully into the water, and poke a hole in him, and take out all his blood, and then cut off his horn, and then cut off the horns on his head, and then cut his head off, then we could EAT HIM."

So I looked up a review on a blog and found this interesting tidbit.

People with a sharp eye often compare the art of The Last Unicorn with that of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984) -- especially their use of deep blue backgrounds -- and rightly so: they were animated by the same people! You see, the last project Topcraft worked on was Nausicaä, under Hayao Miyazaki. After the success of their first solo film, Topcraft became Studio Ghibli.

Whoa! I didn't know that!

Here's the blog entry with lots of fascinating screenshots of the backgrounds.

Note: I read The Last Unicorn many times in my youth and it conveyed a bittersweet and melancholy that I had not been acquainted with up to that point in my life. I saw the movie once in the theater and once on VHS.

But I'll still get the movie version for Matilda.

Because she's Running With the Rainbow Unicorns.

She's not much of a vegetarian, is she?

You know who also runs with the Rainbow Unicorns? Azula, Mai and Ty Li

She's not much of a vegetarian, is she?

Actual Matilda Quote Tonight: "I want meat!"

Though when she says, "I want meat!" what she generally means is "I want exactly three bites of meat and no more!" So she's not much of a vegetarian, but she's also not exactly covering herself in carnivorous glory.

she's also not exactly covering herself in carnivorous glory.

But clearly when she's older she wants to hunt the wild cow....

So, a remembrance of seeing Pippi Longstocking movies in the early seventies made me think of semi-lost early 70s kids entertainment. Like...The Point! And, The Phantom Tollboth (by Chuck Jones) and the Rankin Bass version of The Last Unicorn (okay, 1982).

That's my time period, but I don't remember seeing any of those except for Pippi in the theater. The other example of "semi-lost early 70s kids entertainment" that I remember is Benji.

I saw Benji in the movie theaters. The Point was on TV (I think. Jilli's a big fan). The Phantom Tollbooth was barely in theaters and I don't remember ever seeing it on TV.

I remember seeing Benji at the Rialto Theatre in downtown Joliet. The place was packed with tons of us rugrats all cheering on this little mutt against the bad guys.

What's sad is that I remember so few other childrens films from that time period that weren't Disney live-action movies.