Brave

In the years after Pixar's 2006 weak link, Cars, and before last year's unnecessary sequel, Cars 2, Pixar had been on a role with a stretch of what I consider the four most daring and moving films of their nearly spotless track record: Ratatouille, Wall-E, Up, and Toy Story 3. I think Toy Story 3 may have marked the end of an era for Pixar, thought it's probably a little early to say what the next phase will be.

Their latest offering, Brave, directed by Mark Andrews and Brenda Chapman, plays it safer than, say, Up, but is still a very good movie. It's a thrilling and imaginative Careful-What-You-Wish-For fairy tale, with kind of the anti-Disney Princess as the heroine. It's the story of Merida (Kelly MacDonald), a fiery young Scottish princess whose interests lie in adventure and archery. Her mother (Emma Thompson) doesn't believe her lifestyle is behavior becoming of a princess. When Merida is promised, against her will, to marry one of the princes from the neighboring clan, she rebels, and goes off on a search for her true destiny.

One thing I like about Brave was that the emotional center of the story is a Mother-Daughter relationship. Something I'm sure I've seen in a movie, but for the life of me, I can't think of one, they're so uncommon. Merida stumbles across a witch's shop, and makes a wish that ultimately forces her to work with her mother to undo the consequences.

Merida was a refreshing Princess character. Truly a free spirit, with a gorgeously rendered, tangled mess of orange hair as untamed and fiery as her personality. She's not interested in finding her prince, at least not right now, and she's certainly not interested in these dudes. I liked that they made her strong and independent without resorting to making it a gag. Admittedly, I didn't see Disney's Tangled, but the previews made it look like they were going, "look, she's a princess and she needs rescuing!... but wait! She knows kung fu! That's not like a princess! HAHAHAHA!" Like it's shocking and crazy that a girl is into that stuff. I'm a huge fan of Disney's Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, but Merida is the first Disney Princess that I'd actually want my daughter (if I had one) to look up to. Ok, maybe Mulan would be fine, but I really don't want to have to listen to that Eddie Murphy dragon character, alright? Plus, she still had to dress as a boy to be awesome, right? Merida doesn't.

The animation is, of course, beautiful and innovative. I doubt that's even worth mentioning, since it's expected of Pixar at this point. Even Cars 2 had innovations. There's so much to look at on the screen besides the story, everything from the grass and foliage of the Scottish Highlands, to the light reflecting off a bear's wet fur.

Brave is a good movie, and I think up to Pixar's standards. The problem is, they set the bar for themselves insanely high with those 4 bold movies. I thought it was certainly as good as some of the early ones, such as Monsters, Inc. We might have to accept that they can't all be Ratatouille and just appreciate that they're still better than most other stuff. Next year's Pixar film is yet another sequel, Monsters University. I'm sure it will be good, but we'll only know what the next phase of the life of Pixar will be when we see what originals they have up their sleeves in the coming years. I still have faith in them.

The Sweatbox

Disney's 2000 animated feature, The Emperor's New Groove, while by no means a classic, was an enjoyable movie, refreshing and different at a time when Disney was stuck in a holding pattern. It turns out, though, that it could have been a very different movie, and that it came out the way that it did is quite surprising.

The Sweatbox is a fascinating documentary by Trudie Styler, chronicling the troubled production of The Emperor's New Groove, and the frustration, disappointment, and heartbreak that such a troubled production can cause. Styler is the wife of the musician Sting, who was brought on to compose six new songs for the film. She was granted permission to make an all access documentary on the making of the movie as part of the deal.

Disney certainly didn't have a clue that the production was going to be such a mess. The Emperor's New Groove was a completely different movie at that time, an animated epic called Kingdom of the Sun, to be co-directed by Roger Allers, one of the directors of The Lion King. David Spade still voiced a bratty emperor-turned-llama and Eartha Kitt was still the villain but those are just about the only similarities.

The early scenes of the film are interviews with Sting, animators, and Roger Allers, and there is an enthusiasm there. Allers has been guiding this production, the story was his baby. As months pass, though, the story never seems to crystallize, it sounds like it's kind of all over the place. Then comes the fateful day when an extremely rough cut of the film is to be shown to the head honchos. They tear it apart, saying they can't tell if it's a comedy or a drama, don't know what exactly it's about, and the only things they like are two of the songs.

I felt really bad for Roger Allers, who guided the project from its conception, for three years, only to be told to change everything into something completely unrecognizable. He can't be blamed for leaving the project, to be taken over by his co-director Mark Dindal, who reworked it into a lighter, goofier story.

Of course, the problem with that is, there's not really any place for Sting's songs now. Sting had never written songs for a movie like this, obviously, and his growing frustration with the studio is beginning to show. He didn't expect to be called back for new compositions time and time again over a period of years, interrupting his touring schedule and other projects. All this resulted in was a song in the end credits and a soundtrack CD full of songs that don't really resemble the movie.

There are several documentaries out there about troubled movie productions, and I always find them heartbreaking, but impossible to turn away from. Perhaps the most difficult to watch is Lost in La Mancha, the documentary about the aborted production of Terry Gilliam's Don Quixote movie, in which everything that could possible go wrong does. The Sweatbox is a little different, in that the filmmakers actually pulled through and made a decent movie.

The Sweatbox was never released by Disney, who retained the rights to it, but it did play at a film festival or two. I was surprised to find it had leaked onto Youtube. I'm honestly not sure if it's still up or if Disney has found out and pulled it down, but I bet if you look, it's out there somewhere. If you're in any way interested in seeing what goes into the making of a Disney film, and how much of their lives the people involved put into making just one, I recommend you hunt it down.

Bambi

Bambi is another one of those Disney movies that I can't accurately remember if I've ever seen all the way through or not. We had Bambi on VHS when I was a kid, but as hard as I tried, I just couldn't recall any scenes that weren't about Bambi as a fawn. I had the vague memory that he grew up at some point, and of course, I know what happened to his mother. I think a lot of kids might only remember the first portion of the movie, and like I did as a child, lose interest once the young animals grow up.

Bambi is Disney's ode to the circle of life (before The Lion King, I suppose). At the opening of the movie, all the woodland critters are abuzz with the news that the new Prince has been born. They gather around the mother deer and we meet Bambi. We then follow Bambi and his best friend and guide, the rabbit Thumper, as he learns to walk and talk, experiences his first rainstorm, learns the boundaries between nature and Man's World, struggles with mortality, falls in love, and ultimately, has a family of his own.

As a child, I didn't really appreciate Bambi on the level it deserved. It's not really anything like any other Disney film. The closest comparison would probably be Fantasia, Disney's other symphonic ode to nature. I am continually in awe of the way Disney's animators brought life to animals, humanizing them while keeping their behavior recognizable as their species. There are multiple different animation styles utilized throughout Bambi, ranging from the cute, big eyed designs we all know and recognize, to the amazing impressionistic style employed later, during the forest fire. The backgrounds are ridiculously lush. One of the best sequences in the movie is a musical diversion from the main story, the ridiculously earwormy April Showers song, a vignette showing all the wildlife reacting to a rainstorm.

I can see why kids latch onto the early part of the film, and not so much onto the later. It's beautifully done, and I appreciate it now, but there's little to no dialogue at the end, and the characters are no longer relatable to a child. Still, the level of quality maintained by these early Disney features is pretty unbelievable.

For my other reviews of classic Disney movies, follow these links:

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Pinocchio
Fantasia
Sleeping Beauty

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

The last time I watched Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was when I was 19, a freshman in college, in an Intro to Film class. It did not end well. I was having difficulty staying awake and would have fallen asleep if it weren't for Snow White's shrill, high pitched singing voice. When it was over and the class discussion began, I tore into it like a dumb teenager with something to prove.

Of course, I was wrong. Revisiting it now at the age of 30, I see now that it really is a landmark cinematic achievement. Every scene is animated with such care and craftsmanship. The amount of detail and humanity expressed in the characters is staggering. It's easy for us to take animated features for granted, but at the time Disney and Co. made Snow White, this was a huge gamble. It was unknown if audiences would be willing or able to emotionally invest in a cartoon. Nowadays, you are chided as inhuman if Up or Toy Story 3 didn't make you cry. This is all because of Snow White.

There were several sequences that struck me. Snow White fleeing into the harsh unfamiliarity of the forest, hysterically visualizing monsters in the trees where there are only gnarled branches and birds. The deep anguish of the scene of the dwarfs mourning her after being poisoned by the apple. The evil queen fleeing the dwarfs' vengeance and ultimately meeting her demise. I mean, holy crap, if falling off a cliff wasn't final enough, they really bring it home by dropping a boulder on top of her and sending a couple of vultures down to eat her remains! Disney uses the heightened world of animation to pull the audience in one direction or another, laughing one moment, crying the next, action and excitement after that.

So, I get it now. Snow White is truly a great film. It's still not my favorite Disney film. I'm still not a fan of that shrill singing voice, but I'm willing to overlook it as an artifact of the 1930's. Of the four classics I've revisited (or visited for the first time) in the last year or so, my favorite is still Sleeping Beauty. Fantasia is pretty incredible too. I plan on getting Bambi before it goes "back in the vault". It was another one I didn't much care for in my stupid days, so I'm curious to see where I stand on it.

Well, I've once again revealed myself as a complete dummy in my youth. If any of you readers have a time machine, could you travel back to that day in Film 101 and give me a swat in the back of the head, courtesy of my future self? Thanks.

Winnie the Pooh

Oh, man, why can't more of the new Disney movies be like Winnie the Pooh? This movie really got it. It nailed the feel and tone of the original Winnie the Pooh shorts, but with just a little bit of a modern sensibility thrown in. We all should have gone and saw this the weekend it came out, but we were all busy seeing the final adventure of Harry Potter and friends. Okay, can you blame us? It was Harry Potter.

Winnie the Pooh is just like its predecessors. Gentle, full of wit and whimsy, and set in the rich little universe of the Hundred Acre Wood, which is apparently both inside Christopher Robin's head, and also located on the page of a storybook. That sounds inconsistent, but you never really question it.

The storybook is narrated by John Cleese, and the characters interact with the words on the page like it's nothing out of the ordinary. The story follows Pooh on a single-minded search for hunny, which leads to him helping Eeyore find his tail, which leads to Owl driving them all into a panic over a nonexistent monster. Every character gets a good chunk of movie, except maybe Kanga and Roo, who mostly sit this story out. The story has pretty much the attention span of a little boy playing with his toys, bouncing from one vignette to another at a moment's notice, taking the time to go on diversions and distractions, but it all comes together in the end.

The voice acting is mostly dead-on. The voice of Pooh sounds pretty much just like the original guy who did it. The rest of the characters aren't exact matches, but they match the originals in spirit and intent. I especially liked Craig Ferguson's take on the know-it-all Owl, who got many of the movie's biggest laughs. I was surprised about Tigger, certainly the favorite of every kid. He was definitely mine, but now, not so much. It must be a sign of aging, but now he just tires me out.

There are also some really great original songs in Winnie the Pooh, as well as reprises of the famous ones. Sometimes the songs are sung by the characters, and other times they're sung by Zooey Deschanel, who has a pretty perfect voice for this (we're all agreed that she's pretty perfect in general, right?).

It's too bad Disney chose to release Winnie the Pooh on the same day as Harry Potter, but then again, I can't imagine it would have broke the box office these days, anyway. I'm glad I got to see it on the big screen when I had a chance, though. Surely it will become a favorite of millions of little kids, and something at least tolerable for their parents, if not downright joyful, around Christmastime.

I don't believe I've seen the original Winnie the Pooh shorts since I was a kid, but I feel like I remember them pretty well. This made me really want to see them again. I hope Disney has Blu Ray plans for them, as I would love to add them to my collection.

Pinocchio

Hey, isn't that poster awesome? Don't you wish movie posters were a little more like that now? I'd love to see a Pixar poster with hand-drawn, more cartoony versions of the characters. In fact, has Pixar done this? Am I forgetting something? It seems like something they would do.

As some of you followers of this blog might know, I'm on a quest to revisit, or visit for the first time (I don't even know which ones I've seen) all of the classic Walt Disney animated films. I started with Fantasia and continued with Sleeping Beauty. And now comes Pinocchio, only the second animated feature ever made. Once again, I'm not sure if I had ever seen it all the way through.

When I was a kid, I remember really not liking this movie, or maybe just the story, or the clips I saw. I think it was the stuff about all the bad boys. Even at a young age, I was a pretty righteous little turd, and couldn't really relate to these rebellious little boys. I didn't really see where the appeal was or where the temptation could be found in what was, in the '30's, "boys will be boys" behavior (obviously to an excess). In fact, looking back, I was much more Jiminy Cricket than I was Pinocchio.

Last year sometime, I caught the second half of Pinocchio on TV and realized, hey, this is pretty awesome. Now that I've finally seen it from beginning to end, I can now confirm that notion. It's a pretty dark and weird film, and the animation is more daring and ambitious than their previous precedent set by Snow White. The story moves forward quickly from one imaginative adventure to the next, balancing the darkness with plenty of well-timed comedy.

I'm sure I don't need to go into the story, but in short: Eccentric toymaker Gepetto wishes upon a star that his puppet boy becomes his son, it comes true, but the blue fairy gives Pinocchio the task of earning his humanity. With Jiminy Cricket as his conscience, Pinocchio gets lost in the huge world outside, and must overcome the temptations and corruption found there.

I Honest John the fox, who acts as Pinocchio's first temptation. He sings the "Hey Diddle Dee Dee" song. Anyway, he's a conniving, greedy, rat of a fox, but as far as that stuff goes, he's pretty low on the totem pole, so he's a little more likeable than say, the fat guy who keeps Pinocchio in a cage, or the coachman who sells him to a child-to-donkey slavery ring.

Speaking of which, there's some pretty disturbing imagery in the Pleasure Island sequence. Those kids transforming into donkeys is pretty intense. And there's that shot of them all huddled together and crying for their moms while the slavedriver looms over them with a whip.

Hey, you know what else surprised me? The nose growing scene. It only happens once! Don't get me wrong, the scene is brilliant. I guess I just thought it was sort of a motif of Pinocchio. It's the part we all know best. If this movie were made now, it would have happened 12 times, including a climactic scene where he uses lying to make his nose grow to save the day.

My favorite sequence in the whole movie is at the end, when Gepetto is eaten by Monstro the whale. Monstro is such a cool design, and probably my favorite animation in the movie is after he sneezes them out and he's chasing them. The look of the torrential rain and the waves splashing off of him is striking. The rain is all done with white lines over the action.

So hey, Pinocchio is another winner. I don't think I was into it as much as Fantasia or Sleeping Beauty, but still very much a masterpiece. The next Disney classic I plan on buying on Blu Ray is Bambi. So little was my childhood interest in Bambi, I don't think I've ever seen it all the way through, and we even had it on VHS. It might be a couple months before I get to it, but I'm looking forward to giving it another shot.

Hey, thanks for reading, everyone! Feel free to leave comments and let me know what you think. I hope you're not getting too bored of this recent string of Japanese movies, kids movies, and Japanese kids movies. It just worked out that way. I'll try to throw in a crappy 80's action movie or something in the near future to mix things up.

Sleeping Beauty

As I said when I reviewed Fantasia back in January, I'm often not sure which of the classic Disney movies I've actually seen in there entirety in my childhood, and which ones I only saw clips, or read the storybook-on-tape for it. Sleeping Beauty is another one of those. In fact, just about all I remember is the Once Upon a Dream musical number.

I was pleased upon watching it on Friday that Sleeping Beauty was one of, if not the very best, of all the Disney classics. It's rich, layered, and magical, and visually stunning.

We're introduced to Sleeping Beauty, alias Princess Aurora, alias Briar Rose, as an infant, being introduced to her betrothed, a boy prince, who seems a little bit weirded out that someday he's going to have to marry that baby. On this day of celebration, the three good fairies come to give the Princess gifts. Before they can finish, the horrible witch Maleficent appears, angry that she wasn't invited, and curses Aurora so that she will fall asleep on her 16th birthday. When Maleficent leaves, the third fairy can't undo the curse, but she can alter it by saying it will be lifted by true love's kiss.

We all know the story, even those of us who haven't seen the movie. She falls asleep, the prince has to fight his way to her. It's great stuff!

The good fairies, Flora, Fauna, and Merriweather, are excellent comedic characters, each with her own distinct and loveable personality. They're featured through the majority of the movie, and watching them bounce off of each other is one of the reasons it's so fun to watch. Imagine being raised in a cabin in the woods by three Angela Lansbury clones who don't know how to not use magic. My wife pointed out that they appear to have been some of Craig McCracken's basis for Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup, the Powerpuff Girls. I thought that was interesting. There are similarities with the colors they each wear, and even aspects of their personalities. Can anyone confirm this?

Maleficent, the vindictive witch, is probably Disney's coolest villain. Her design is amazing, she's compelling to watch. I like that domination of the kingdom isn't really her goal. She has her own castle and minions. She just wants to punish those who slighted her, at any cost. Her demon lackeys are wicked cool, too.

I was surprised by how little of the movie Sleeping Beauty actually slept for. It was only maybe 15 or 20 minutes of the total running time. I guess I assumed the plot was much thinner than it actually was.

I enjoyed the music a great deal. One of my problems with the early Disney flicks like Snow White and Alice in Wonderland, is they have this choir singing in the backgrounds sometimes, but you can't understand a word the choir is saying. I assume whatever recording equipment they had in those days had been improved upon by 1959, because that choir is still featured in Sleeping Beauty, but this time you can actually make out the lyrics.

I'm glad I've been picking up these Disney Blu Rays. They're wonderful films, true works of art, and if you don't have kids to make you sick of them, they're insanely rewatchable. I recommend that people buy them while they can. Disney takes them out of print after a while. Sleeping Beauty just got pulled from circulation, so you will have to find it used. Blu Ray is likely the last physical format. After this, it will all be digital, so if you want a hard copy, these are the very best ones you will ever get.

Sleeping Beauty is a timeless classic. A+

Fantasia 2000

Well, it had to happen. A movie I didn't probably like. I'm glad this happened sooner rather than later. I know I give a lot of positive marks, so I guess this one shows I'm capable of disliking something.

Well, I didn't hate Fantasia 2000. It's kind of a non-entity, really.

It wasn't a bad idea. As they say in the weird celebrity introductions, Fantasia was originally intended to be an ongoing affair, with new segments being phased in and out as years progressed. I wish they had done that, but the original was not as well received as was hoped at the time. Striking while the iron is 60 years cold was probably not the best move.

The first thing that stood out to me is that Fantasia 2000 uses a fair share of computer assistance. Of course it does, that's just the way these things are done now. There's some nice imagery in it, but it lacks the care and beauty of hand drawn/painted pictures. Sometimes it feels labored, like the animators listened to the songs a few seconds at a time and went "ok, what happens here?", "how about here?" and so on.

Then, towards the end, they really show us the contrast between the perfection of the original and the flatness of the new by reprising The Sorcerer's Apprentice.

Anyway, there's some pretty stuff, and I'm sure the movie plays fine if you just want to put something on in the background. Disney wisely packages this as a second disc with the original. I honestly don't think it would sell on it's own. I suppose it works fine as a curiosity or a special feature.

Fantasia 2000: C-

Fantasia

I've recently realized that it's very hard for me to remember which classic Disney movies I've seen all the way through, and which ones I've only seen sequences from on the Disney Channel and read the storybooks for in pre-school. I can't say for sure, but I don't believe I've ever seen Sleeping Beauty, for example, but I remember things from it.

With this in mind, I am now watching Fantasia, and I know for a fact that I've never seen all of this. They only ever showed choice bits of it on the Disney Channel. The Sorcerer's Apprentice, of course. As a kid, I feel like they tried to fool you into thinking there was a whole Mickey Mouse movie where he's a wizard, only to find out it's a bunch of orchestras and faeries and stuff, with a brief Mickey Mouse interlude. And I certainly wouldn't have appreciated the classical music at that point. I doubt Fantasia would have held my attention at all back then.

Now that I've grown up, I'm obviously no longer an easily distracted, non-art-appreciating little shit. Fantasia is widely considered Disney's masterpiece. I'm inclined to agree. It's a perfect marriage of image and sound, and to this day, is the pinnacle of what can be achieved by animation. I doubt I need to go into any details. We all know about Mickey the wizard, the little racist Chinese mushrooms, the awesome dinosaurs, the ballerina hippos, etc. Even if we haven't seen the whole movie put together, I'm sure we've all seen much of it in parts. I never even knew about the interstitial segments where the guy introduces the pieces and gives us a little background.

Anyway, I could surely go into detail about each wonderful segment, but I like to keep these short, so I'll wrap it up with these words: Soooooooooooo good!

Fantasia: Come on, man. A+

The Blu Ray was packaged with Fantasia 2000 as well, so expect a surely less enthusiastic review for that soon. Also packaged as a special feature is Destino, an aborted short film collaboration by Walt Disney and Salvador Dali, recently completed. It's beautiful and worth checking out.

Leave a comment if you feel so inclined.