Posts Tagged ‘disney’

Belle, the Beast and the teapots are back as Disney’s Beauty and the Beast debuts on Blu-Ray on Tuesday, October 5, bringing with it not only the classic movie but loads of magical special features. A fitting set for any movie fan’s collection (especially one catering to children, of course), Beauty and the Beast: Diamond Edition is definitely worth buying.

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The wizards at Pixar have done it again. Up, their 2009 entry for Best Animated Film of the Year, is, undoubtedly, going to be the Best Animated Film of the Year. Funny, emotional, exciting and intelligent, this one will once again leave the teams at DreamWorks Animation and Fox Studios drinking away their nights in disgust at the prospect that once again their work will be overshadowed by a superior product.

Up, from the director of Monsters, Inc. and the writers of Wall-E and Ratatouille, two of the best animated films ever, is about an old man named Carl Fredricksen, who, facing eviction from his quaint little home that is the last barrier to a major construction project, decides to set out on the adventure he always dreamed of: to go see Paradise Falls (a la Angel Falls) in South America. Of course, unwilling to let people tear down his house, he does this via an unconventional way by attaching thousands of helium balloons, uprooting his foundation and floating away, with the creature comforts of his own living room intact. Too bad the chubby, annoying Boy Scout is stuck on his deck.

Read the rest of our Up movie review.

Following the so-so box office results for The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, Walt Disney had decided to pull out of distributing for the upcoming The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

The Hollywood Reporter says, “Disney and Walden Media confirmed Tuesday that for budgetary and logistical reasons the Burbank-based studio is not exercising its option to co-produce and co-finance the next Narnia movie with Walden.”

I’m a bit surprised by this. Sure, Prince Caspian didn’t do as well as The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but let’s consider this:

• The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is the face of the Narnia series. When you think of Narnia, you think of this book specifically.
• The decision to release Prince Caspian in May was a bad one, as admitted by the studio. It’s a crowded month designed for the biggest and best blockbusters, and there was no Christian holiday to build a marketing campaign around.
• Prince Caspian still made $141 million in the U.S. and an additional $278 million worldwide. That’s nearly half a billion dollars.

The fear may be that Voyage of the Dawn Treader will have even less brand awareness than Prince Caspian did – I’ve read the books, but don’t remember a damn thing about it. Still, the movie is going to make several hundred million dollars – and presumably will be released in December 2010, where it will thrive off churchgoers and holiday shoppers.

This was a stupid move on Disney’s part, at least with the details provided.

Further proof that traditional animation is by no means dead, Walt Disney recently released its acclaimed classic Sleeping Beauty to DVD and Blu-Ray in an all-new Platinum Edition… and it ended up topping the DVD sales charts for the week. Not only that, but it beat out previous #1 earner Iron Man for such a spot.

It never ceases to amaze me how much demand there is for Disney’s old cartoons; beyond the fact that this implies traditional animation is not dead as long as the story and production values are good, this sales success story also implies that even with all the big kid’s movies that come out each year, parents still scramble for anything that would be good and entertaining for their children to watch. Hollywood, pay attention.

I actually have a copy of Sleeping Beauty: Platinum Edition, and while laying on my death bed last week, I managed to watch most of the movie (I fell asleep near the end due to drugs and the magic potion the DVD releases into the air to make the viewer feel more involved inthe picture. Personally, I think sleep-inducing drugs is going a bit far, especially for a children’s DVD, but I guess I trust the Disney marketing executives to do what’s best for their audiences). Having not seen the movie since my childhood, I was once again pleasantly surprised at the quality of the picture. The animation, acting and music is great, the story mesmerizing.

Still, a few pieces of the production show their age; when the fairies grant Sleeping Beauty their gifts, the movie sidetracks into a rather cheesy array of special effects that really add no value and will be a bit off-putting to modern audiences. The effects look like they were added because they could be added, nothing more.

Nevertheless, these moments are rather brief and not all too distracting. All in all, Sleeping Beauty is still an effective classic; it has its outdated moments, but its rich animation and artwork make up for those shortcomings.

The DVD includes several special features I didn’t bother exploring, including a virtual tour of the castle, a dance game, an alternate opening, deleted songs, a making-of featurette and a few other thngs.

I watched The Aristocats a couple days ago, and I encountered a very annoying feature that Disney apparently thinks is a device that helps the viewer. It’s called FastPlay, and I’ve run into this piece-of-crap feature on a few DVDs now.

What is FastPlay? FastPlay is a feature on the DVD that allows you to skip the DVD menu and jump directly to the film. Or one would think. Upon plugging in your DVD, a screen appears on the television asking you whether you want to go to the Menu or do FastPlay. Naturally, I want to skip over all the junk and go right to the movie, so I click on FastPlay.

The movie starts, right? Nope! It goes to a movie preview. I normally like movie previews, but not Disney previews. I click the Skip button to jump to the movie. It goes to another preview! Crap, I chose poorly. I hit the Menu button – it takes me to the standard DVD menu. I click on the “Play” button. It takes me back to the first preview again, one for 101 Dalmatians. I skip to the next preview, and the next, and the next.

Five or six previews later, several remote clicks and multiple minutes wasted, I finally reach the movie. How the f**k is that FastPlay?

Here are my issues with FastPlay:

• It isn’t faster.
• It doesn’t skip right to the movie.
• If it’s made to be easier for little children, that doesn’t make sense. I bet two-year olds these days know how to use DVD players.
• It doesn’t save any clicks. Most DVDs go right to a menu, where you can hit “Select” to trigger the Play feature. FastPlay is just a simplified version of the DVD menu.
• There’s narration to explain what FastPlay does. If you need to explain it, then it isn’t very usable, is it?

Why did Disney develop this? Why defy standard DVD usability and actually add a new layer? Why label something “FastPlay” and not bypass all the stuff people who just want to watch the movie don’t want to watch? It doesn’t make any sense.

Um… Where do I start? High School Musical 2 is coming out on DVD this Tuesday in an Extended Edition, which includes a new music scene, sing-along features, a rehearsal cam (where you can watch dance rehearsal footage while watching the movie), karaoke features and music videos. First, though, you have to see the movie, and if you’re not in the Disney demographic, you probably won’t like it.

“Probably won’t like it” – is that true? High School Musical 2 was one of the biggest hits of the year, and that must mean that more than pre-teen kids are watching it. It received pretty good reviews, so that must mean that some adult critics liked it, too.

But honestly, I do not see what the appeal is, though I’ll admit that I am way out of the target demographic. I like musicals, but I like realistic musicals with engaging music with excellent musical sequences. High School Musical 2 does not offer this. I liked one song out of the entire movie, and had to fast forward through several of the other musical sequences as they were just so utterly unbearable. The songs are so chipper (yes, so Disney) and cheesy, but what really kills them is the poor audio matching to the actors – I’m pretty sure they sing the songs, but the audio track is so obviously separate from the actual filmed scenes that it pretty much looks like they’re lip syncing the entire time. Oh, and the dance moves are just dreadful. I felt like I was watching an N’Sync or Backstreet Boys music video from ten years ago, as the dance moves are so goofy and un-trendy you just have to see them to believe them.

When the actors aren’t singing, High School Musical 2 is pretty bearable and somewhat entertaining. The development of Zac Efron’s character is decent enough (the story is about him forced to decide between a bunch of easy choices to get into college and allegiance to his friends and girlfriend), and I also liked the nasty performance by Ashley Tisdale. Having known nothing about the High School Musical franchise before tonight other than Vanessa Hudgens’ nude photos, I was a bit surprised to see that Hudgens has such a small role in the movie (maybe because her acting, singing and character aren’t very inspiring). In reality, the writers’ decision to keep the movie away from a typical teen romance story (though it does have a lot of those elements) and do something different (no, I’m not saying it’s original by any stretch) was a smart one, though.

The only other thing that bugged me about the movie was just how G-rated it was. I should have seen it coming – it’s from the Disney channel after all – but for some reason I had expectations that it was going to be something more. Since it has been so successful, I figured that the movie would branch away from Disney just a little bit, but nope. Why does G-rated stuff bother me? The movie is about 17-year olds, yet Efron and Hudgens only kiss at the very end, there’s almost no cleavage (hair is strategically placed at times to hide Tisdale’s) and the girls don’t wear bikinis. It’s not that I needed these things, but the absence of them are so blatant and forced that the whole movie feels unrealistic as a result. It’s hard to get into characters when everything about them is unbelievable.

High School Musical 2 is probably popular because it is safe and G-rated while never boring, which is perfect for families with younger children or people with certain religious values who don’t believe that men and women should touch each other before marriage. I understand this, and for the right age, I can see how the movie could be quite entertaining.

Still, I am just shocked at how low quality the music and the dance numbers are; they are so bad I couldn’t even watch them. That’s not a good sign for a musical.