Videorgy

You don’t always need $45 million worth of inspired “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” animation to achieve cartoon nirvana. In fact, New Order’s “Blue Monday ‘88” clip neatly blends live action and animation antics, while giving a playful spin to the dour British popsters’ cult single. It’s hard not to like a video that stars a dog named Fay, who opens the clip balancing its paws on a tennis ball and returns for more scene-stealing footage, posing for glamour shots perched precariously on stacks of chairs or antique furniture. When Fay sends a tennis ball flying into space, animator Robert Breer uses the motion as a motif for his delightfully low-tech, watercolor-style cartoon romps. The best thing about the clip is that it mercifully frees New Order from the tyranny of lip syncing. When the band members do pop up, they spend most of their time getting bopped on the head by that ubiquitous tennis ball. . . . Schooly D also uses animation--to excess--in his new “Mr. Big . . . “ clip, which easily qualifies as rap’s first X-rated video. Many rappers’ rhyming couplets are sly celebrations of sexual prowess. But Schooly D’s video takes this to new extremes, using soft-clay animation to illustrate just how potent his arsenal of erotic weaponry has become. . . . And speaking of showing all you’ve got: Romina Danielson (the Passion Flower of Peter Holms vs. Joan Collins fame) makes her singing debut with a new video called “Passion.” The tale apparently has some vague tie-in with Romina’s love troubles. But the video really seems geared at establishing Romina as disco-pop’s answer to Angelyne--she wears at least 15 different Trashy Lingerie-style outfits, if you count the ones she took off as well as the ones she put on. (Her co-star in the clip is Johnny Buss--son of Lakers owner Jerry Buss--who displays the emotional range of--ahem--Moses Malone.)