What with Vu hauling Aeon Flux* out of his collection, I got to thinking about some of the other fantastic shorts from Liquid Television, back in the day when MTV still didn't play music videos but still seemed to have its head out of its ass somehow. To tell you the truth, it's something I do a lot. Still, there is one morsel that I haven't quite gotten around to putting out on the table: Running Man.
Fully half the length of an entire episode of Liquid Television, Yoshiaki Kawajiri's "Running Man" told the story of an obviously disturbed competitor in a high stakes, far future version of NASCAR that, truth be told, even I could be conned into going to see. It was a shoo-in for fans of Aeon-- inexplicable future, inexplicable characters, totally gorgeous and incredibly bizarre animation style.
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Our musical selection, however, comes from another piece of animation entirely: Ralph Bakshi's Cool World. Honestly, I've tried to love Ralph Bakshi, I really have. Comic book and film enthusiasts far more discriminating than I rave about him as though he's a god. But, let's face it. In spite of Gabriel Byrne, Kim Bassinger (remember when she was t3h h0tn3ss? *choke* *splutter*), and Brad Pitt, Cool World had the artistic vision of a dirty limerick.
It is, however, the song that was used in the MTV commercial for that season of Liquid Television. How's that for useless application of memory.
*Special characters omitted out of laziness
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