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I have finally made it in my Disney watchthrough past the package films, and that was a pretty rough run. I criticized Dumbo in my review, but in retrospect I was a bit harsh. Dumbo is disappointing next to the masterpieces around it, but it's still fun enough. The package films are just mostly a slog as a whole. After WWII Disney didn't have the budget or resources to immediately get going on making full length features again, so for the next four postwar films they stuck together a bunch of shorter bits. These took the form of two films that are basically popular music versions of Fantasia, with a bunch of assorted musical shorts about 5-10 minutes each, and two films that are each just two shorter movies that Disney couldn't quite stretch to feature length mashed together with a very loose framing device. Like a lot of "throw together whatever we have" projects, it's wildly inconsistent, with a mix of bright spots and some incredibly dull nonsense. Make Mine Music The first of the lesser Fantasias, and for some reason the only WDAS movie not on Disney Plus. No one seems to be quite sure why; theories include the gun violence in The Martins and the Coys, which was censored in international home video releases (but I'm in the US), or copyright issues surrounding Peter and the Wolf. This one is just all over the place. There's a lot of "comedy" numbers that just didn't work for me, with lots of mugging and belaboring of jokes. My biggest offender here is Casey at the Bat, a poem I quite like on its own, but here the charm of the original is just drowned out by a lot of unfunny excess. There's a lot of dull romantic numbers here too, probably the best of which is Blue Bayou because it uses some gorgeous animation originally made for a cut Clair de Lune sequence from Fantasia. Highlights include Peter and the Wolf, The Whale Who Wanted to Sing at the Met, and my personal favorite, All the Cats Join In, a fun jazzy number where dancing teens are animated by a giant disembodied pencil a la Duck Amuck, which has to keep up and draw in the scenery as they go along. Real highs and lows here. Fun and Fancy Free  This is the first of the two-parters, connected by a thin framing device of Jiminy Cricket listening to other people tell stories. The first is Bongo, about a bear who flees the circus. Originally intended as a follow-up to Dumbo, this is a cute five-minute short that somehow lasts half a goddamn hour. Boy is this thing padded, with most of it filled up with long, redundant musical sequences. Faring much better is Mickey and the Beanstalk. The framing device for this one is odd, with Jiminy listening in on a nine year old Luana Patten having a birthday party that consists entirely of her, Edgar Bergen, and two of his dummies. It's a strange set-up, but I actually like what they do with it, with Bergen narrating the story as himself and Charlie McCarthy occasionally jumping in with snarky jokes and encouraging Donald Duck to commit murder. And the actual cartoon is a lot of fun, with Mickey, Donald, and Goofy all getting a chance to display their personalities and a lot of good gags. Melody Time Another poor man's Fantasia, and consensus seems to be that this is the lesser of the two, but I think I enjoyed it better. There's nothing that hits the highs of Make Mine Music, but none of the lows either, so it's just mid and watchable throughout. Highlights include a surreally animated jazz rendition of Flight of the Bumblebee, a bit of a follow up to the Latin American films with Jose Carioca and Donald, and two American folklore sequences with Johnny Appleseed and Pecos Bill. Did you know Pecos Bill isn't even real folklore? He was invented by a writer in the 1910s who claimed that he was telling old cowboy tales. The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad The last and probably best of these mashes up short adaptations of two classic stories with a thinnest of framing devices as Basil Rathbone and Bing Crosby disagree on the greatest characters of literature. Sure, fine. I had actually never read The Wind in the Willows before a week ago, so I get to have that fresh in my mind as I see how they adapted it. Apparently Disney originally wanted to do a full length feature, but it never came together and they ended up with this short version that's essentially a remix of the Toad chapters, with little assorted bits pulled from all of them. So there's none of the beautiful meditations on nature and the joys of home, just Toad getting into wild adventures. But it's fun nonetheless. The adaptations of the characters are a bit odd; Rat has pretty much nothing in common with his book counterpart and Badger (who's now Scottish and named "Angus MacBadger") isn't much closer, but Mole is pretty close and Toad, most importantly, is spot on, if somewhat less conceited than his book version. I liked this one. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, meanwhile, is pretty much a one to one adaptation, given the shortness of its source material. There's some musical numbers and slapstick bits that I'm not sure add a lot (although the Headless Horseman song is great), but the final chase with the Horseman is excellent, he's genuinely spooky, and it leaves in the ambiguity of Ichabod's fate in the ending (although it does cut out the all-but-stated implication from the story that Brom was the Horseman). Good stuff, and I'm glad this era at least ends on a high note. Lord Hydronium fucked around with this message at 19:28 on Mar 25, 2024 |
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Mar 25, 2024 18:14
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Lord Hydronium posted:Make Mine Music I think there was also some more suggestive artwork in "All the Cats Join In" that got tempered down in later edits (I vaguely remember seeing it on VHS in some form and it was edited at that point) but that still doesn't really explain why it isn't on D+. Wouldn't be the first time they had to deal with something like that where they already nuked something out of existence way before the streaming era. (i.e. the Jewish costume in 3 Little Pigs or the centaur servant in Fantasia)
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Mar 25, 2024 18:56
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Lord Hydronium posted:
I recall due to the Hayes Code, they had to change Toad willfully stealing the car to being duped because of the 'criminals can't have a happy ending' rule - doesn't explain why Rat ended up as an uptight priss when you already have Badger as the strict one. The song is extremely catchy. Sleepy Hollow is actually probably one of the most faithful adaptations given most versions makes Crane less of an unscrupulous gold-digger and mooch to make him more sympathetic. Robindaybird fucked around with this message at 19:13 on Mar 25, 2024 |
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Mar 25, 2024 19:03
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This is more animation-adjacent than strictly on-topic but I just wanted to say that I saw my niece yesterday in a regional/community theatre production of the Hunchback of Notre Dame musical that was adapted from the Disney movie. Has anyone else seen this thing? It is loving wild It was first produced in Germany by an independent team under license from Disney, and it turned out so jaw-droppingly well that they re-domesticated it and brought Menken/Schwartz back on to further flesh out the script for a fully localized English version. I'm blown away by the impact all the new changes have on the story, and particularly the performance by the guy playing Quasimodo, who (as the script dictates) is interpreted as being deaf or nearly-deaf (due to the bellringing) and with a speech impediment/delivery that just has to be observed to be believed. The actor has to absolutely 1000% sell it or it can completely feel mean-spirited or otherwise extremely uncomfortable at best, but the guy in my niece's troupe (who is a dance teacher and has been doing this role for a couple of years) absolutely has it nailed. The presentation is a lot more abstract and unconventional, with narration being delivered by the characters it describes, as though floating in and out of their selves, and with the POV shifting into and out of Quasimodo's own unreliable-narrator head. It's incredible how well it works. The story is much truer to the source and accordingly ends on more of a downer (while being simultaneously gut-wrenching and transcendent) than the movie does, which I thought was kind of hilarious considering that the movie's ending when it came out was hailed as being incredibly bold and daring and mature for Disney just in that they didn't pull some magic poo poo to make Quasimodo get the girl (as I remember at least one of the instant direct-to-video checkout-lane knockoffs did). This one's story makes the movie seem kind of laughable in retrospect, not just for the gargoyles (which are completely rethought in this, thankfully) but also for having Quasimodo just be Tom Hulce swinging around like Spider-man when doing it the way this did is so powerful in its own right. Disney never put this show on Broadway but I felt like it might not survive the transition away from the small, intimate kind of staging I saw it in, not with the choices they made
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Mar 25, 2024 19:29
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Oh yeah, the Hunchback musical is pretty widely acclaimed as being the best of the Disney stage musicals by a significant margin, and people in the Broadway community are constantly champing at the bit for a transfer.
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Mar 25, 2024 19:36
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Does the Hunchback musical ditch the gargoyles or at the very least trim down their role?
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Mar 25, 2024 21:19
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Short answer: yes. Long answer: the "gargoyles" are portrayed as ensemble players in monk robes who peer out of crevices and around columns like statues and serve as aspects of Quasimodo's inner voices. They also do things like move pieces of masonry around to depict the scene changing to different parts of the cathedral. Think of them as the very EYES of Notre Dame statues from the opening song of the movie (they all line up shoulder to shoulder at one point and he has to weave in and out between them, the effect is extremely striking) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JZvLjjsYnU ^^ This performance doesn't have anything like the "voice" that the Quasimodo I saw does, which is ... god I don't even know how to talk about it but it is 1 million percent the highlight of the show
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Mar 25, 2024 21:27
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That actually works pretty well honestly, I always felt that if you must include them they’d be better served as figments of Quasimodo’s imagination (which the movie kind of depicts them as at first before eventually tossing that out the window)
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Mar 25, 2024 22:53
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They also waste George Costanza by giving him a superfluous role when two gargoyles were enough, and imaginary.
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Mar 25, 2024 22:55
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That too. Also unrelated to the Disney movie apparently there was a Hunchback cartoon series at one point as well. Was it any good out of curiosity (or conversely, how bad was it)? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Adventures_of_Quasimodo Larryb fucked around with this message at 23:23 on Mar 25, 2024 |
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Mar 25, 2024 22:59
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Frankly, Vern was the most superfluous of the three gargoyles, Victor and Hugo at least had the straight guy and funny guy dynamic, she's mostly there to complain about pigeons. Still, the Gargoyles were just too goofy for the movie's tone (I love apparently Phobeus' "Achilles, Heel" was an adlib)
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Mar 25, 2024 23:22
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I stumbled across recordings of the Hunchback's stage production songs on youtube a while ago and i keep them in my recommended because they are all bangers, op
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Mar 25, 2024 23:24
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Yeah there is very little humor and zero comic relief in the stage show. What laughs there are are of the  variety, like what they did for the vision of St. Aphrodisius appearing out of a stained glass window (in which he is depicted decapitated and the actor's head is sticking through the window in the crook of the saint's arm at first, before the panels fall away and he shimmies himself back into human shape) to sing the "Flight into Egypt" song,To connect it with animation, one of the other things that really struck me about the Quasimodo actor's performance was that he had an extremely good sense of silhouette. He knew just how to hold the right posture, how to maintain this weird loping gait as he hopped around the stage, how to let his legs drag all cockeyed, how to plant himself and create a dynamic image as he hauled on the huge rope depicting the bell he rings
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Mar 25, 2024 23:41
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From what I've heard from theatre people where I live (we've been trying to put it on for a couple of years) the reason it hasn't made it to Broadway is because it would be one of the most expensive productions of the modern era. The ensemble would be huge (you need a full choir in addition to all the on-stage actors) and since it's Broadway, those people are getting paid a lot more than in the smaller theatres. The orchestra needs are more specialized. I think Disney doesn't want to admit that it would be too expensive, even though it would probably be a hit. But I also get a feeling that current Disney wouldn't want something like this to get so much publicity in that way. Hunchback the musical is a lot darker than the film, and that's too big a risk for what Disney is like these days
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Mar 26, 2024 01:01
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Do they still do Broadway adaptations of Disney films for that matter or did that stop a while ago?
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Mar 26, 2024 01:09
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Is there any reason it has to be specifically a Disney Hunchback of Notre Dame musical and not just a Hunchback of Notre Dame stage show with none of the movie parts? Does it use the same songs?
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Mar 26, 2024 01:37
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mycot posted:Is there any reason it has to be specifically a Disney Hunchback of Notre Dame musical and not just a Hunchback of Notre Dame stage show with none of the movie parts? Does it use the same songs? mystes fucked around with this message at 01:43 on Mar 26, 2024 |
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Mar 26, 2024 01:41
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It uses almost all the songs from the animated version, A Guy Like You is excluded but I think they have all the rest. And some more. It's excellent.
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Mar 26, 2024 02:21
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Awesome, thanks for finding that ^^ I needed to go back and rewatch a few bits and see how else it had been staged (e.g. in higher-budget productions). But that actually helps illustrate that I don't think it necessarily would need to be a massive Broadway production, because the version I saw was with a much more modest stage, limited lighting, recorded music and no mikes, but the effects like the hunchback costume elements and especially the makeup smears (which are used in a highly stylized and allusive way to suggest deformities rather than using actual prosthetics or masks or anything like that) are seemingly keyed around the intimate-scale theater of the kind I saw it in. To put those same elements into a big-budget production kind of defangs the inventiveness of the choices they made in the name of economy, I think. More money doesn't necessarily improve it.
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Mar 26, 2024 02:47
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The productions I've seen have all been "small" in comparison to a Broadway stage, but they all had sets, costumes, and people that were very into the whole thing. All I was saying is that the reasons it hasn't made it to that size of stage are, honestly, all late-stage capitalism reasons, i.e., a whole load of bullshit on the part of Disney
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Mar 26, 2024 03:22
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I don't need it to come to Broadway, but I'm just begging for some loving proshots. I can 100% guarantee the public will still pay out the rear end for the live experience, and those of us who, for example, don't have a passport or a car or enough money for plane tickets might get to see more musicals.
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Mar 26, 2024 04:22
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Larryb posted:That too. Also unrelated to the Disney movie apparently there was a Hunchback cartoon series at one point as well. Was it any good out of curiosity (or conversely, how bad was it)? I recall it being the worst of the Disney movie to cartoon series. I think I only saw like 2 episodes of it.
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Mar 26, 2024 05:26
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Disney's Hunchback never got a TV series, it did however get one loving godawful DTV sequel
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Mar 26, 2024 05:31
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Darth TNT posted:I recall it being the worst of the Disney movie to cartoon series. I think I only saw like 2 episodes of it. As I said in the post you quoted, the show had nothing to do with the Disney movie though it came out the same year, all the Disney version got was a terrible DTV sequel That said, based on the description of the former from the wiki article the cartoon doesn’t really sound much better Larryb fucked around with this message at 05:50 on Mar 26, 2024 |
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Mar 26, 2024 05:45
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Das Boo posted:Maybe it's not as fanciful, but "You're not going to get everything you want and that's okay." is a fine message. Monsters U did it well. Monsters U is a frustrating movie for me because as much as I like that lesson and as much as I enjoyed watching it I just find it so hard to believe that not a single child in the world would find Mike Wazowski scary. That dude is built like a Beholder with spindly little clawed lizard legs! If I saw something like that skittering around my room I would run screaming out of my house and never return, anyone would! Saying Mike Wazowski wouldn't terrify a child if they saw him out of the corner of their eye on a dark night is like when movies try to pretend a conventionally attractive actress is ugly because she has a ponytail and glasses. Mike Wazowski isn't "not scary" he's "Hollywood not scary".
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Mar 26, 2024 06:05
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Space Cadet Omoly posted:Monsters U is a frustrating movie for me because as much as I like that lesson and as much as I enjoyed watching it I just find it so hard to believe that not a single child in the world would find Mike Wazowski scary. That dude is built like a Beholder with spindly little clawed lizard legs! If I saw something like that skittering around my room I would run screaming out of my house and never return, anyone would! Saying Mike Wazowski wouldn't terrify a child if they saw him out of the corner of their eye on a dark night is like when movies try to pretend a conventionally attractive actress is ugly because she has a ponytail and glasses. Mike Wazowski isn't "not scary" he's "Hollywood not scary". It is kind of funny how at the end the headteacher is clearly underplaying what happened to try to save face where she's like "You... surprised me..." C'mon, give them the credit, you were scared shitless.
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Mar 26, 2024 06:45
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I'm still pretty sure that Gargoyles probably started as a concept for a Hunchback of Notre Dame spinoff that got awesomely off the rails.Space Cadet Omoly posted:Monsters U is a frustrating movie for me because as much as I like that lesson and as much as I enjoyed watching it I just find it so hard to believe that not a single child in the world would find Mike Wazowski scary. That dude is built like a Beholder with spindly little clawed lizard legs! If I saw something like that skittering around my room I would run screaming out of my house and never return, anyone would! Saying Mike Wazowski wouldn't terrify a child if they saw him out of the corner of their eye on a dark night is like when movies try to pretend a conventionally attractive actress is ugly because she has a ponytail and glasses. Mike Wazowski isn't "not scary" he's "Hollywood not scary". I feel like it's less appearance and more attitude. Sully may be a kind and gentle guy but he has both the looks and the poise, like an actor, to make the most of being a monster, and the massive roar helps. Mike is an almost literal goofball who's pretty much impossible to take seriously.
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Mar 26, 2024 06:46
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Ghost Leviathan posted:I'm still pretty sure that Gargoyles probably started as a concept for a Hunchback of Notre Dame spinoff that got awesomely off the rails. It's absolutely this. Being a walking eyeball should be freaky, but Mike is A: a complete klutz (hard to find an eyeball scary when it trips over your tonka truck or accidentally spray itself with a hairspray) - even the scariest monsters you can think of can lose a lot of impact if they're prone to pratfalls B: It's just not in his nature, no matter how much he tries - his forte is comedy, being scary is hard work for him and if he's not 100% focused, it breaks. As for Gargoyles, Demona is absolutely a pitch-perfect depiction of a tragic villain. Her misery is entirely of her own making, and she has moments where she is absolutely pitiable but they do not excuse her actions. "What have I... What have They done." The entire scene that line comes from completely encapsulates her character and the crux of her tragedy - if she were to EVER acknowledge her role in the massacre of her clan, her betrayal of Macbeth, and later Angela's estrangement from her - it would completely and utterly destroy her. And her refusal to accept it is part of why she's unable to connect with Manhattan clan, leaving her alone.
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Mar 26, 2024 07:11
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I remember a special feature where it talked about why Mike wasn’t scary. Every time he tries to make a scare pose, he’s doing it slightly wrong. He isn’t selling it, and it’s just enough to keep him from being scary. He can do it when he really wants, like when he scares Sully into knocking over the canister. Otherwise he’s just missing it.
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Mar 26, 2024 12:07
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YggiDee posted:It uses almost all the songs from the animated version, A Guy Like You is excluded but I think they have all the rest. And some more. It's excellent. What kind of slime tutorial is this 
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Mar 26, 2024 13:58
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A Guy Like You isn't a bad song in isolation, it's just *very* inappropriate for the movie, especially when it's set up to crush Quasimodo's heart. I do like the fan theory that the Archdeacon is to Frollo what the Gargoyles are intended to be to Quasi, where the gargoyles staves off Quasi's loneliness and bolster his courage/self-confidence, the Archdeacon is essentially Frollo's conscience that tries to pull him back from the brink.
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Mar 26, 2024 17:31
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IUG posted:I remember a special feature where it talked about why Mike wasn’t scary. Every time he tries to make a scare pose, he’s doing it slightly wrong. He isn’t selling it, and it’s just enough to keep him from being scary. He can do it when he really wants, like when he scares Sully into knocking over the canister. Otherwise he’s just missing it. Yeah, it's just typical of a skill he has no talent with; it's not impossible for him to pull it off, but once it starts to come apart he can't put it back together. And even kids can sense that. On the flipside, he turns out good at comedy probably because he's just not inherently scary, and has a natural knack for slapstick. Heh, I wonder if that's a reference to how horror and comedy share a lot of skills in acting and directing.
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Mar 26, 2024 21:51
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I'm in a weird camp where I like Monsters U more than I liked Monsters Inc
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Mar 26, 2024 22:02
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Found the special feature: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTzSVDJ2jhs I’m on mobile, so I can’t get the time stamp link. The relevant part is from 3:13 to 4:10.
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Mar 26, 2024 23:30
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Macaluso posted:I'm in a weird camp where I like Monsters U more than I liked Monsters Inc I can respect this opinion but disagree. I thought the lesson of needing to let go/ pivot away from some dreams was pretty crushing (at least it hit hard during that specific part of my life) in MU, but the heart of the original is too much to let go of.
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Mar 27, 2024 04:15
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I can't even remember a single thing about Monsters University, and that's despite having gone in being optimistic about it because I liked Monsters, Inc.
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Mar 27, 2024 04:20
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The Bad Guys 2 coming in August 2025 full cast returning https://twitter.com/DiscussingFilm/status/1772702645116969451
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Mar 27, 2024 16:39
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Cinderella It always surprises me that after the big hit that was Snow White, it took 13 years for Disney to do their second princess movie, especially given how much of a brand that's become for them since. Walt was reticent on the idea of sequels in general (another funny thing in retrospect) and it seems they treated the followup to Snow White as more of a "break glass in case of emergency" concept, in this case in response to the string of commercial flops and lean financial years that led to the package film era. Disney was going to come back in style, doing what made them famous in the first place. And with all that experience and artistic development that they had built up in the meantime, they nailed it. Snow White is the first Disney movie to feature a princess, but I think Cinderella is the first true Disney Princess Movie. I hadn't seen this since childhood, and it is pretty neat just how much of the DNA of their subsequent movies you can see in this. The narrated storybook opening was straight up used again in Beauty and the Beast. The petty human evil of Lady Tremaine feels like a template for the likes of Mother Gothel. The prince who doesn't want to marry until he finds the right woman a la Eric in The Little Mermaid. The comedic animal sidekicks would become a staple. The musical numbers are much more plentiful and integrated into the story, moving a little closer to the Broadway style musicals of the Renaissance. And so on. There's a more fun energy to the whole thing. It helps the pacing tremendously. There's not really much more plot than Snow White, but it feels far less padded than that movie because instead of filling the rest with long unrelated musical numbers and showing off animation, we get all these great little character moments and fun side characters. Like it says something for how memorable the Fairy Godmother is despite appearing in only a single scene. And Cinderella is actually a real character and enjoyable protagonist, with like, agency and wants and personality. Even the Prince gets a moment or two of personality. And I already mentioned Lady Tremaine, but I need to again because goddamn is she such a good and nasty villain in a horribly real way. She doesn't even get a real comeuppance, just the world's greatest shocked face when Cinderella pulls out a second slipper and she knows she's lost:  So yeah, Cinderella well deserves its status as a classic, and I'm so happy to be back in the era of good movies again. Lord Hydronium fucked around with this message at 04:10 on Mar 28, 2024 |
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Mar 28, 2024 03:56
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Your analysis has been a delight to read. And yes, Cinderella's Prince Charming is as characterless as the Disney male love interests get. Dude straight up has like three lines in the whole movie. I haven't watched it myself but I've seen bits of Cinderella 3 (yes, i know, disney sequels, bear with me) that imply they give him a lot more personality. Like this one! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwQrEUZDJCk what a lad. I'm glad he'll lead a country some day.
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Mar 28, 2024 04:14
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granted, even Charming's three lines and body language gives him more personality than Snow White's prince got with more dialogue and a full-rear end song (and you can infer more from the paintings as the king laments over his son growing up). So the snarky daredevil in Cinderella 3 is really an extrapolation of what's shown instead of made up wholecloth But yeah, it's so frustrating seeing people claim Cinderella is some weakling who waits around to be rescued when she shows a lot of agency given the kind of position she's in (a young woman in an abusive household in a time and place that there really isn't anything for a woman on her own) and she wasn't even out to marry a prince - she just wanted ONE nice night where she isn't subjected to her step family's abuse. And again the shoe thing was the King's idea to latch onto the idea that even if Charming didn't find his dream girl, he'd find A girl he has to marry (and give him grandkids) thanks to using exact wording. Robindaybird fucked around with this message at 04:53 on Mar 28, 2024 |
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Mar 28, 2024 04:45
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