Louise Ambrosio: January 2012

The Aristocats is a 1970 animated feature produced and released by Walt Disney Productions. It is the twentieth animated feature in the Disney animated features canon. Based on a story by Tom McGowan and Tom Rowe, the story revolves around a family of aristocratic cats, and how an alley cat acquaintance helps them after a butler has kidnapped them to gain his mistress' fortune which was meant to go to them. The Aristocats uses the funny animals convention of talking animals who are understood by all other species except humans. Species featured include Cat, Dog, Mouse, Frog, Horse, Goose, and Rooster. Specific characters are as follows:

Felix the Cat is a cartoon character created in the silent-film era. His black body, white eyes, and giant grin, coupled with the surrealism of the situations in which his cartoons place him, combined to make Felix one of the most recognizable cartoon characters in the world. On 9 November 1919, Master Tom, a character resembling Felix, debuted in a Paramount Pictures short entitled Feline Follies. Produced by the New York City-based animation studio owned by Pat Sullivan, the cartoon was directed by cartoonist and animator Otto Messmer. It was a success, and the Sullivan studio quickly set to work on producing another film featuring Master Tom, The Musical Mews (released 16 November 1919). It too proved to be successful with audiences. Otto Messmer gave two different versions of how Felix got his name, the one on his official site ”Rejoining Sullivan with a great idea for a new character named Felix the CAT Nevertheless, Felix's success was fading by the late 1920s with the arrival of sound cartoons. These new shorts, particularly those of Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse, had made the silent offerings of Sullivan and Messmer, who were then unwilling to move to sound production, seem outdated. In 1929, Sullivan decided to finally make the transition and began distributing Felix sound cartoons through Copley Pictures. The sound Felix shorts proved to be a failure and the operation ended in 1930 with Sullivan himself passing away in 1933. Felix saw a brief three cartoon resurrection in 1936 by the Van Beuren Studios.

Tom and Jerry is a successful and long-running series of theatrical short subjects created by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer that centered on a never-ending rivalry between a housecat (Tom) and a brown mouse (Jerry) whose chases and battles often involved comic violence. Hanna and Barbera ultimately wrote and directed one hundred and fourteen Tom and Jerry cartoons Tom is a Russian Blue cat, who lives a pampered life, while Jerry is a small brown house mouse who always lives in close proximity to him. "Tom" is a generic name for a male cat or tomcat (the Warner Bros. cartoon character Sylvester was originally called "Thomas"). Tom was originally called "Jasper" in the very first short, Puss Gets the Boot. Tom is very quick-tempered and thin-skinned, while Jerry is independent and opportunistic. Jerry also possesses surprising strength for his size, lifting items such as anvils with relative ease and withstanding considerable impacts with them. Despite being very energetic and determined, Tom is no match for Jerry's brains and wits.

Garfield is a daily-syndicated comic strip created by Jim Davis. Published since June 19, 1978, it chronicles the life of the title character, the cat Garfield (named for Davis's grandfather); his owner, Jon Arbuckle; and the dog, Odie. As of 2007, it is syndicated in roughly 2,580 newspapers and journals and currently holds the Guinness World Record for being the world's most widely syndicated comic strip. Garfield quickly became a commercial success. In 1981, less than three years after its release, the strip appeared in 850 newspapers and accumulated over $15 million in merchandise. To manage the merchandise, Davis founded Paws, Inc. 2002, Garfield became the world's most syndicated strip, appearing in 2570 newspapers with 263 million readers worldwide by 2004, Garfield appeared in nearly 2600 newspapers and sold from $750 million to $1 billion worth of merchandise in 111 countriesAs it progressed, the strip underwent stylistic changes. The appearance of Garfield was probably the most notable; he underwent a "Darwinian evolution" in which he began walking on his hind legs, "slimmed down", and "stopped looking [...] through squinty little eyes". His evolution, according to Davis, was to make it easier to "push Odie off the table" or "reach for a piece of pi

Sylvester J. Pussycat, Sr., or simply, Sylvester the Cat, or Sylvester is a fictional character, a three-time Academy Award-winning anthropomorphic cat who appears in more than 90 Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons made from 1945 to 1966, often chasing Tweety Bird, Speedy Gonzales, or Hippety Hopper. The name "Sylvester" is a play on silvestris, the scientific name for the domestic cat species. Sylvester's trademark was his sloppy, stridulating lisp.In his autobiography, That's Not All Folks!, voice actor Mel Blanc stated that Sylvester's voice is based on that of Daffy Duck, plus the even-more-slobbery lisp, and minus the post-production speed-up that was done with Daffy's. Conventional wisdom is that Daffy's lisp, and hence also Sylvester's, were based on producer Leon Schlesinger's. However, Blanc made no such claim. He said that Daffy's lisp was based on him having a long beak, and that he borrowed the voice for Sylvester.Sylvester is a tuxedo cat who shows much pride in himself, and never gives up. Despite (or perhaps because of) his pride and persistence, Sylvester was, with rare exceptions, placed squarely on the "loser" side of the Looney Tunes winner/loser hierarchy. His character was basically that of Wile E. Coyote while he was chasing mice or birds. (One cartoon episode The Wild Chase paired Sylvester and Wile E. Coyote against the Road Runner and Speedy Gonzales. In the end both Sylvester and Wile E. fail as usual.) He shows a different character when paired with Porky Pig in explorations of spooky places, in which he doesn't speak as a scaredy cat. (In these cartoons, he basically plays the terrified Costello to Porky's oblivious Abbott.)

1. Homer J. Simpson (The Simpsons)

Created: 1987
Creator: Matt Groening
Voice: Dan Castellaneta
The first two seasons of The Simpsons were focused on Bart, but as it became Homer centric, the show became something truly special. He’s the everyman at our laziest, hungriest, dumbest and drunkest. Yet thanks to good heart buried under all those doughnuts, he’s also the hero that repeatedly saves the day or at least restores everything to a status quo which has endured for two decades and more than 450 episodes.

2. Bugs Bunny (Looney Tunes)

Created: 1938
Creator: Tex Avery
Voice: Mel Blanc
The coolest cat in cartoon history is a rabbit or a hare. That slight taxonomic difference was never addressed during his many antics, but he held an enviable insouciance through them all, whether being hunted with Elmer Fudd’s shotgun, Yosemite Sam’s pistols or Marvin Martian’s ACME Disintegration Pistol. His only flaw: a poor sense of direction (especially when tunneling through New Mexico).

3. Tom and Jerry
Created: 1940
Creators: William Hanna and Joseph Barbera
Silent film mostly went away with the advent of the talkies, but Hanna and Barbera’s Tom and Jerry didn’t need dialogue to enrapture generations of children. The 114 shorts were created between 1940 and 1958, but they feel like they belonged to my childhood in the late ‘70s, just like they’ll feel like a part of my kids’ childhood when they grow up.

4. Mickey Mouse
Created: 1928
Creator: Walt Disney
Voice: Walt Disney
It’s easy to lose sight of the cartoon character Mickey in the shadow of the mascot for the Disney Empire. There might not be a Disney empire but for the charms of an enthusiastic adventurous mouse.

5. Wile E. Coyote (Looney Tunes)
Created: 1948
Creator: Chuck Jones
Voice: Mel Blanc
Charlie Brown will never kick his football, and Wile E. will never catch the Roadrunner. These are among the first truths learned by any kid in America, even as they’re exposed the beauties of the Western desert. His clever plans and box of oft-malfunctioning ACME tricks resulted in our favorite coyote falling off cliffs, getting crushed by stones, and at the center of crater-inducing explosions; no cartoon character suffered more for our entertainment.