Best part of Waking Sleeping Beauty, or: Who's that mopey guy?

Waking Sleeping Beauty is a documentary about the "Disney Renaissance," where starting with The Little Mermaid, the animation studio had a great comeback in artistic, critical, and boxoffice responses. Well, being a documentary on animation, especially hitting with the nostalgic stuff from my childhood, this is basically a movie made specifically for me. It's very well made and while it stops in 1995 and doesn't explore the post-Lion King studio closings and all the flops and CGI misfires, it delves deeply into the tense rivalry between Michael Eisner, Roy E. Disney (Walt's nephew), and Jeffery Katzenberg (who would go on to co-found Dreamworks). Pretty surprising since it was produced by Disney and released by them.

It's also very revealing about lyricist Howard Ashman's contributions to the movies he worked on. It may just be the directors and interviewees fondness for him affecting their memories, but it really seems as though he was the key auteur behind Little Mermaid and Beauty & the Beast. The segment of the documentary focusing on his death from AIDS before the release of Beauty & the Beast is incredibly moving.

However, the greatest part of the film features archived video of somebody going around the studios and taping the animators goofing about (the guy behind the camera turns out to be John Lasseter). Then they come across this one guy all alone in his office working at his desk. He looks at the camera unamused, like he's spent the last two night in his office, hasn't had his coffee yet, and really wants the camera out of his face. Like that creepy, unsociable kid at college who's spent the last twelve hours on World of Warcraft and really just wants you to leave him alone.

It's Tim Burton.

P.S. If you watch the trailer in the link, you might think that Beauty & the Beast won Best Film at the Oscars. While it was nominated and won in several other categories, it lost... to The Silence of the Lambs.

Mwahahahaha.

Toy Story and the Wonder of Pathetic Fallacies

It's kind of sad yet kind of appropriate that as I get older the only films that I really anticipate the release of are animated. While we are getting too much Disney and Shrek derivative crap, we are also seeing a lot of highly innovative films being made that are taking chances with the medium. Youtube is giving a lot of exposure (although often in violation of copyright) to animated shorts, a form once restricted to film festivals. Miyazaki and Brad Bird are respected as auteurs. Now, Toy Story 3 is one of the best movies I've seen in years.

Pixar is truly bizarre--no studio should hit all the right notes all the time. When their "worst" films are the charming and enjoyable Cars and A Bug's Life, it's almost like waiting for the other shoe to drop--what if their next film is a disappointment? 

The very first Toy Story came out when I was only 10, and it struck with me as one of these works that molded my developing imagination and tastes. (Don't worry, I would eventually discover that Randy Newman sang the same song over and over.)

Contrary to what most kid franchises would do, the children's ages have not remained static, and Andy is moving out and leaving for college. What is he to do with his secretly-alive toys? Keep them close at hand? Put away his childish things and enter adulthood unburdened? Give them away and cherish the memories? Hmm... maybe this is why I hoard things.

One thing that I had trouble with initially while revisiting the world of Toy Story was trying to figure what the toys' relationship with Andy was supposed to be analogous to in real life. Was it meant to represent childhood friends who grow apart? Parents who most say goodbye to child? Children who must leave home? The faithful to their deity? Then I had to stop myself, realizing that I had to stop over-thinking it in this one instance. In the verisimilitude of this universe, the toys' love for their owner represents just that. It made sense to me as a child, and there's no reason why it shouldn't now.

Pixar is pretty brilliant at keeping the story on a level accessible to children without being saccharine or crass, while also being enjoyable for  adults without any audience pandering pop culture references. Also, in many ways they subscribe to the same school of thought as Maurice Sendak in that they aren't going to gloss over the tough parts of life, giving kids enough credit that they can handle it. That said, Toy Story 3 has plenty of kindertrauma nightmare fuel. There's the red-eyed, screaming cymbal monkey straight out of Stephen King, a baby doll reminiscent of Boo Radley, and Mr. Potato Head using a floppy tortilla as a body. Then there's the increasingly hellish trip to the dump. I am normally critical at how Pixar lines up a series of separate obstacles during their finale, each more dangerous than the last (Finding Nemo is the worst culprit of this). However, the dump scene was brilliantly orchestrated. It was chair-squirmingly intense, and when they reach the Mount Doom incinerator is beyond heart-wrenching. The way such love, compassion, fear, bravery, and acceptance is perfectly conveyed with these characters is beautiful, proving that sometimes the great performances don't have to come from a living thing. The whole sequence is already cemented as one of my favorite cinematic moments.

Yeah, I have faith that if they decide to make more sequels, Pixar won't run the series into the ground. While I would get excited, this was a fantastic way to close the series. Like Andy, I've aged since the previous films, but the stories will stick with me.

Because Disney doesn't make movies for girls?

Hoo boy, this trailer is giving me a lot of conflicting emotions.


Who knows what the finished product is going to be like, but Disney's marketing team is trying to downplay this as a movie about a fairytale princess. I've noticed that over the last decade or so, their trend is that after they have a disappointment with a film, they don't try to learn from their mistakes but rather do something completely different. When Treasure Planet, Brother Bear, and Home on the Range didn't do well at the boxoffice, while Pixar and Dreamworks were doing fantastic numbers, they didn't pin the problem on bad scripts or unappealing plots--it was because they were traditionally animated. So then they come out with Chicken Little and Bolt, two computer animated film that are very much in the "animals have wacky hi-jinks" mode of Dreamworks and Fox Animation.

So when The Princess and the Frog doesn't do so well, it's not because they alienated a lot of their potential audience with all the racially insensitive crap during its early development. No, it's because it's a traditionally animated film for girls! Let's make our next one computer animated and make it about a dude! Also, calling it "Rapunzel" or even "Rapunzel Untangled" is going to alienate all the boys who want to see it. Let's give it a stupid, confusing title like Tangled.

Despite my grumblings, I'm hesitantly excited, because this movie does look beautiful. I remember drooling over the early Rococo influenced concept art, and the animator's attempts to replicate classic traditional animation is probably going to make this the prettiest computer animated feature-length film ever made. Flynn, the thief who the trailer tells us is the main character, does have some funny lines and Zachary Levi's bravado is going to be great. Plus, Rapunzel looks adorable and that little chameleon buddy is too cute.

Don't disappoint me, Disney! I've put you on notice

Comic Review: Gargoyles #5

Ooh, I'm a happy fangirl. I was super stoked when I heard that they were resurrecting Gargoyles as a comic book. The coolest series of my childhood which became a new love during my college years didn't get the send off it deserved, and when the writers were replaced, the series immediately degraded to mundane action cartoon.

However, I was a bit disappointed with the first four issues. Granted, the first few were just a retelling of the first episode of the last season, but the writing never really did anything for me. All the fans of Gargoyles are now probably much older (ie more sophisticated... relatively speaking) so it should be writen with them in mind. I'm not sure how many people in the 8-12 demographic have seen Gargoyles, so don't write it for their level. I found myself no longer excited, but rather only buying it out of obligation to a childhood love.

However, this issue changed all that. It's got its own brand of cheeky geek humor, as well as some nice drama and action. If I reread the action sequences, that's a designation that I liked it. Plus, there's blood and cussin', which isn't cool in itself, but does signal that they're not going to be pussyfooting around serious issues in the future. I'm not fond of the art, but considering it must be tough to draw fantasy, it's fine.

There are some sweet moments between Elisa and Goliath, as well as between Hudson and his blind friend. Oh, and it has the cheesy goodness of seeing a masquerade ball with Elisa dressed as Princess Jasmine, Lexington as Cyborg, and Angela and Broadway as Dorothy and Scarcrow (aw, they even got the Oz mythos right!)

Happy they found their niche.