Visions Fantastic - EZRAtorial

Visions Fantastic - EZRAtorial http://www.visionsfantastic.com/forum/ Editorials by armchair Disney historian and VF News Editor Ezra. en Sun, 19 May 2013 23:37:31 GMT vBulletin 1440 http://www.visionsfantastic.com/forum/images/misc/rss.png Visions Fantastic - EZRAtorial http://www.visionsfantastic.com/forum/ The Disneyland Effect http://www.visionsfantastic.com/forum/showthread.php/32766-The-Disneyland-Effect?goto=newpost Thu, 27 Sep 2012 05:28:47 GMT

I know what you're gonna say.
The trees are papier mâché.
It's done with mirrors, the magic there.

Each little bird's full of springs;
you push a button, it sings.
Recorded music fills the air.

They've had the mountain refaced;
It's only plywood and paste.
Go on, say it!

I'll turn around and tell you: I don't care!!!
I don't care!!!

"Disneyland"
from the Broadway musical Smile
by Marvin Hamlisch and Howard Ashman

—

—

—

The Disneyland Effect

—

I've been going to Disneyland once or twice a year since it's 50th anniversary celebration. When I mention to friends, acquaintances or co-workers that I'm going to Disneyland again, I'm sometimes asked why I keep returning. Why don't I go somewhere else for vacation? Like the Grand Canyon or Yellowstone. Someplace that's at least real. The answer isn't easy to express, especially to someone who's never been to Disneyland. It's nearly impossible to express my feelings about it. The words escape me. They rebel. They refuse to say what I mean...
—

When I try to describe it,
I am rendered speechless.
When I try to write about it,
I break the pen, and the paper slips away...

Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī

—
I think the closest I can come to a description is borrowed from novelist James Joyce. In the novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, main character Stephen Daedalus explains that a truly beautiful thing will cause a state of "aesthetic arrest": Everything else in the mind stops to appreciate and enjoy the beautiful thing. For me, Disneyland is a place where this consistently happens, without fail. Author Eleonora Druvivier describes this well:
—

The first times I went to Disneyland I was at one with it. In such communion, identification with, you name it, I did not "think". It did not even occur to me that buildings there were built to scale. Even though I had seen real castles in Europe more than once, (for someone who "thinks", such direct vision would not even be necessary) I did not realize that Sleeping Beauty's castle is also built to scale. And I was already a young woman. Call me crazy, I myself do when I come to think about it. However, if I go on thinking some more about it, I realize that Sleeping Beauty's castle, being "the castle" for me, was incomparable, it was "it". When you look at whatever is "it" for you, comparisons, size and quantity do not enter your mind. Whatever is not "it" is obliterated. Love or wonder is what elects something to be "it". And neither love nor wonder is mathematical. Neither admits of comparing, relativizing. Love speaks of quality, not quantity. To love is to deem what you love unique, therefore absolute.

Eleonora Druvivier
Author of the book From Mars To Marcelline

—
You can read her remarkable blog here:

From Mars to Marcelline: Reflections on Disney

I'll repeat one line from that remarkable passage again: "I realize that Sleeping Beauty's castle, being 'the castle' for me, was incomparable, it was 'it'." It's interesting that a fabricated, artificial structure such as Sleeping Beauty Castle can become "the castle", one that's more "real" her mind than the real castles in Europe that she had already seen.

Social theorist Jean Baudrillard famously used Disneyland as a good example of hyper-reality. Sleeping Beauty Castle is a whimsical suggestion of a "real" castle; Main Street U.S.A. is a simulation of a "real" early 20th century small Midwestern town; and these simulations are presented with such detail and conviction that they are more "real" to us than the real thing! They are hyper-real: even more real than reality.

Disneyland doesn't even have to be realistic to be "more real than reality." Main Street isn't and couldn't be a realistic representation. It just has to be convincing. ...and it is. It's utterly convincing.

It's the amount of detail that makes Disneyland so convincing. The depth of stratification, where details are layered on top of one another, is so dense that I can't help but be convinced of it's reality.

For example, on The Haunted Mansion's facade, I noticed that the shutters on each window were held back by an ornate iron clamp with an oak leaf motif. I wondered about who it was who thought to add that little detail. If it weren't there, It's unlikely that anyone would feel that somethings missing. — I once lived in a house once with decorative, non-working shutters that were simply nailed to the walls of the house. I also lived in a house with working shutters; and they were held back with simple hook-and-eyelet fasteners. — So these fancy fixtures on the Mansion were entirely unnecessary, but they add to the profuse detail of the facade to instill a distinct sense of place in the mind of the guest.

Returning to James Joyce, he quotes St. Thomas Aquinas as saying that three things are necessary for beauty: Integitas, Consonantia, Claritas. That is, Integrity, Harmony, and Clarity.

Integrity: For something to be truly beautiful, it has to be fully integrated. Every part of it must serve the whole. It must come together into single, beautiful thing unlike any other.

Harmony: All of it's parts must come together in harmony. The cannot appear to contradict each other or struggle against each other. The separate notes must blend together into a single chord.

Clarity: We should immediately see the thing clearly for what it is. If the object isn't clear, we're left puzzled, wandering just what it is we're seeing. But if the object is presented with clarity, then we see the thing for what it is. To quote Eleonora Druvivier again "It was 'it'."

—

—
In December 1978, New West Magazine ran an article about Imagineer John Hench. Hench clearly understood these principles: "There's a harmony, a definite relation there, the buildings know each other. They were produced by the same spirit. The fire department wasn't designed by some guy who hated the guy who did the opera house. These buildings agree on the rules of the game"

In this article by Charlie Haas, "Disneyland is Good for You", John Hench compares the well planned environment of Disneyland against the chaos of a modern city. "A city is made up of all kinds of things that way, unrelated things, and it doesn't add up to anything except chaos... we know it's the next step before conflict... So cities are threatening.

"But the order here at Disneyland works on people, the sense of harmony. they feel more content here in a way they can't explain. You find strangers talking to each other without any fear. You actually find people patting strange kids on the head, which of course they wouldn't do anywhere else."

Hench was well aware of the Disneyland effect, and so was Walt Disney. "Walt sensed what you could do with entertainment. Entertainment is usually thought of as an escape from problems, an escape from responsibility, but as far as I know he had an original idea — and there are some practicing psychiatrists that happen to agree with us — that what we are selling here is not escapism, but reassurance.

"And we have a number of psychiatrists who support our work, there's something, who've discovered that there is something beyond an amusement park here. Because it works on people. It obviously works on people. "

According to John Hench Walt understood the Disneyland effect intuitively. "He really believed that people are decent. It's a matter of bringing that out, letting them know who they really are."
—

One could say that this man knows not only the magic of all technological means,
but he also knows how to act on the most secret chords of thought, mental images and human feelings.

Sergei Eisenstein on Walt Disney

—

—
So what is the Disneyland effect on me? I feel energized, yet simultaneously serene and placid. My mind is completely absorbed in the enjoyment of the resort, not lost in a busy sea of disconnected, disparaging thoughts. It's almost a kind of Zen.

For the past few years, I've been trying to hold on to the Disneyland feeling; to bring it into daily life. I try to quiet my busy mind and focus on enjoying the good things in front of me everyday. When I'm at work, I try to re-capture that relaxed, open friendliness I experience at Disneyland and share it with strangers.

To keep the that feeling alive, I often think about Disneyland and planning my next trip there. I scour the internet looking for news items for Visions Fantastic. I listen to soundtracks of Disneyland attractions. The audio for Remember, Dreams Come True brings a tear to my eye every time.

Over the past few years since my rediscovery of Disneyland, my overall happiness and sense of inner peace has increased tremendously. That's the Disneyland effect.
—

Here in Southern California a new land has come into being.
It's purpose is Enlightenment.
It's product, Happiness.
This place is Disneyland.

Winston Hibbler
from the narration for the 1956 film
People and Places: Disneyland, U.S.A.

— ]]> EZRAtorial Ezra http://www.visionsfantastic.com/forum/showthread.php/32766-The-Disneyland-Effect Julie Andrews — Home http://www.visionsfantastic.com/forum/showthread.php/32645-Julie-Andrews-—-Home?goto=newpost Wed, 29 Aug 2012 04:53:49 GMT

This lady had crossed my path many, many times. ~Julie Andrews about Gertrude Lawrence, the subject of Robert Wise's film STAR!

—

Julie Andrews — STAR! at Home

—

You can find the review of Robert Wise's STAR! here: Julie Andrews — STAR!
Home: A Memoir of My Early Years by Julie Andrews is reviewed here, as it relates to the film.

—

—
When Robert Wise and Saul Chaplin outlined to Julie Andrews their ideas for STAR!, a film about Broadway star Gertrude Lawrence, they had no idea how connected to the material she happened to be. "This lady had crossed my path many, many times," Andrews recalled, "and I had been asked to consider doing something similar a couple of times before; but never had it sounded so appealing, or never had it sounded so good as when Bob and Saul Chaplin spoke to me about it. Just their enthusiasm in the things they described to me got me interested and I said Yes, I think it would be a wonderful thing to do. I'd like to do it."

Her English music hall experience would come into play again, as it did before in Mary Poppins, but there was much more than that: "I suppose you could say there are many similarities between Gertie's life and mine," she continues. "We were both quite poor when we were young, we both had to really struggle 'up from the bottom', so to speak. And both coming from England, of course. Both being musical performers. It sounds like she had a much rougher time of it than I did, but there are some similarities."

In April 2008, Julie Andrews book Home: A Memoir of My Early Years was released, and it reveals just how similar her early life and that of Gertrude Lawrence really were. Andrews considers Walton-on-Thames her home, but in early childhood her family hailed from the nearby, poorer village of Hersham. She also spent much of her early childhood in much-too-small apartments in London tenements, much as Lawrence had.

Lawrence's parents separated early, as did Julie's. Her mother, Barbara got work providing piano accompaniment to Canadian tenor Ted Andrews. She eventually separated from Ted Wells, Julie's father, to be with him. Julie's last name was changed to Andrews to ease the transition to her new, blended family.

In STAR!, Lawrence is enrolled in Italia Conti's stage school. Andrews went to Cone-Ripman school for the performing arts, named after the school's two matrons. Her family could only afford it because her aunt taught dance there.

Lawrence grew up in show business family, as did Andrews. Lawrence is depicted performing with her father and common-law stepmother. At a very early age, Julie Andrews began performing with her mother and stepfather, standing on a soapbox to reach a shared microphone. As the act's billing shifted from "Ted Andrews with Barbara and little Julie" to "Julie Andrews with Ted and Barbara", her step-father became despondent and turned to drink, and her mother eventually followed. Lawrence's father Arthur and his partner Rose are depicted as heavy drinkers.

In STAR!, the Lawrence's music hall act is presented as putting on airs, as being as good as anything you'll see at Leicester Square; when actually their act is second rate. This isn't quite true for the Andrews family; they were very skilled performers who often had to settle to playing in decidedly low-brow venues. Ted sang light opera, then ballads, then finished up with a few popular songs; attempting to appealing to all tastes. He and Barbara were often guests on radio programs like Worker's Playtime.

The Andrews family played in some very rowdy places, just as the Lawrences did. Although Julie never admits to participating in a pub-brawl, she does remember that, "The audiences were so rowdy in some towns that the management turned on the house lights in the balconies in order to see what was going on. During the second house, on a Saturday night in Glasgow, drunks would throw bottles at each other. Onstage, I trilled louder than usual, my hands clasped in front of me, belting out my arias over the shouting and the fighting."

Here Julie Andrews discusses her music hall experiences with Craig Ferguson:
—

—
There was a lot of traveling from one shabby, dusty theatre to another. In 1953 the Andrews' played one week each in more that thirty towns all over the United Kingdom. Boris Leven's depiction of Brixton Music Hall in STAR! was so faithful that upon seeing the set, Bruce Forsythe (who played Arthur Lawrence in the film) exclaimed "I've played here!" Andrews doesn't mention Brixton in her memoir, but she's met Forsythe years before at London Clinic where she's had her first child, Emma.

Glynnis Johns was considered for the role of Arthur's partner Rose in STAR!, but Noël Coward rightly suggested Beryl Reid for the role. Johns has the requisite sweetness but is a very energetic performer; Reid portrayed the Rose's tipsy obliviousness perfectly. Still, it would have been interesting to see the Mary Poppins co-stars together again, sharing a number.

"They wanted to show backstage life as it really is, not just the glamour" Andrews recalls of the STAR! production team. "They wanted to get the feel and texture of the theatre, and I became very excited about that."

Music producer Saul Chaplin selected the William Hargreaves song Burlington Bertie for Julie Andrews to perform. Chaplin had no idea that Andrews had seen the original star, male impersonator Ella Shields, perform it live. Not only that, but Andrews has recorded the number in 1957 on an album of English music hall songs.

For a novelty number in STAR! called The Physician, Julie Andrews came up with many of the subtlety naughty gestures herself. She knew just how to do it, where to draw the line, because of the many comedians she shared the bill with in music halls. Many of the same Vaudeville comedians also worked Burlesque houses. They had "dirty" jokes for Burlesque, and cleaned-up, but still slightly naughty, versions of the material tailored for variety shows.

Gertrude Lawrence begins her career at the onset of World War I, and is living in London during the worst of it. Andrews, still a child, lived in a London apartment during World War II amidst the constant air-raids of "The Blitz". She remembers spending some nights on the neighborhood subway platform, listening for unmanned bombers so that she could alert the neighbors of danger. Her parents once awakened to find an unexploded incendiary bomb in the tenement courtyard just outside their kitchen window. They once watched a mid-air dogfight directly above them. To this day, Julie Andrews is still frightened by fireworks and other similar loud noises.

Early in Julie Andrews solo career, her agent Charles Tucker brought the subject of Gertrude Lawrence. He had just come back from seeing the Broadway production of The King And I, and raved about what a success Lawrence was. "One of these days," Tucker told her, "you'll be doing something like that, too." It wouldn't be the only time Andrews was compared to Lawrence.

Early in Star!, Noël Coward warns Gertrude Lawrence that she's "likely to fall flat, right on that very attractive nose." In screen tests directed by screenwriter William Fairchild, actor Daniel Massey is instructed to emphasize the words very attractive nose. "Let's get a little more fun out of that nose.

"Nose!" Massey mutters,"yes, yes, Attractive!"

Under her breath, Julie Andrews is heard to grumble, "I'll thank you to leave my nose alone."

Although Andrews' makeup does nothing to emphasize this, Gertrude Lawrence was known to have a big nose. Although Andrews doesn't, she recalls being sensitive about her own nose. She said to fiancé Tony Walton one day, "I wish my nose wasn't so big. I'd like a small, retroussé nose like, say, Vivian Leigh"

"Nonsense," he replied. "You have a lovely nose. It doesn't disappear into the scenery. Gertrude Lawrence had a large nose—and look what it did for her!"

That "very attractive nose" would get approval again years later, from Mary Poppins' author P. L. Travers. While in the hospital recovering from the birth of her daughter Emma, she received a phone call from Travers. "Yes, yes, but you're going to be playing Mary Poppins?"

"Yes, Miss Travers."

"Well, you're much too pretty, of course. But you've got the nose for it!"

Although quite lovely, Julie Andrews was quite sensitive and critical of her appearance. She refers to herself in Home as "exceedingly plain". At age 11, she had a screen test for producer Joe Pasternak at MGM Studios in Elstree, resulting in her being declared "not photogenic enough for film." Many years later, My Fair Lady costumer Cecil Beaton photographed her in costume, exclaiming; "Of course you are the most un-photogenic person I have ever met."

Being "plain", or not having excessive features, is actually an advantage for the actor. Her slender, willowy figure is an asset as well. It allowed costumers to hang a wide variety of costumes on her, and allowed makeup artists to paint her face to emulate any character. Andrews is given the oval face and statuesque figure of a Medieval portrait in Camelot; a round-faced sturdy figure of a healthy Germanic girl for Sound of Music; a long face with an impertinent up-turned nose for Mary Poppins ( Item Two: Rosy Cheeks. Obviously!); and a triangular face with deep-set eyes and generous nose above an angular frame for Gertrude Lawrence. Her underlying features are subtle, so the result is always lovely.

Lawrence is depicted in STAR! modeling in a fashion salon for extra money between acting gigs. Julie Andrews also did this in New York for extra money during the run of her first Broadway show, The Boy Friend. She posed for a fashion magazine layout arranged for her by Eleanor Lambert, who invented the "International Best Dressed List" in 1940. She also took part in a runway fashion show at the Waldorf Astoria.

Even though she was highly commended in dance exams for school, Julie Andrews is modest about her dancing ability as well. In spite of the obvious skill and grace she displays in her numbers for STAR!, she says, "I've never considered myself an actual, good dancer."

"I disagree," recalls Limehouse Blues dance partner Don Crichton, "because I think she has that ability. When a choreographer gives her something to do, she just sees that pure movement and delivers." Perhaps she compared herself to her good friend, ballerina Svetlana Beriosova.

Both Gertrude Lawrence and Julie Andrews arrived in New York with a show that had already been cast at home in England. Lawrence came with The Charlot Revue; Andrews came with The Boy Friend. Neither arrived without a job.

STAR! depicts Lawrence arriving by boat, and being met with photographers asking her to lift her skirts higher for the cameras. You can see her mouth the reply "Sex maniac!" Andrews met a similar reception at Idlewild Airport (now JFK). The press was waiting on the tarmac, and Andrews was puzzled when asked to "show us some cheesecake!"

"I kept saying, Excuse me? but a couple of the girls knew what they wanted and hiked up their skirts. I felt embarrassed that the moment we got there, we had to show them our legs." Evidently this was a distinctly American experience.

The end of STAR! depicts Gertrude Lawrence struggling with an odd new show Lady In The Dark. Near the end of Julie Andrews run in Camelot, director Moss Hart brought her his personal copy of Lady In The Dark. "He asked if I would be interested in doing a new production of it onstage, and I said I would read it," she recalls. "Fool that I was, I thought it a little dated. Gertrude Lawrence had starred in it with such success, but I was frightened, and didn't trust that Moss could pull it off again with me, though I was incredibly flattered that he asked me."

Getrude Lawrence's co-star in Lady in the Dark was Danny Kaye, who a few years later would headline a Royal Command Performance at the London Hippodrome that also featured 12 year old Julie Andrews. Andrews would sing her number from the popular variety show Starlight Roof and then, to close the show, lead the entire cast in God Save The King.

A Disney Connection: A featured player in Starlight Roof was none other than American comedian Wally Boag, who would make balloon animals and give them out to children in the audience. Julie Andrews would emerge from the audience to collect one of the balloons and then surprise everyone with a song: the incredibly high Polonaise from Ambrose Thomas' opera Mignon. Boag would of course go on to headline Disneyland's Golden Horseshoe Revue for an incredible 40,000 performances. You can still hear him as the voice of José in Disneyland's Enchanted Tiki Room.

Further uncanny coincidences involving the production of STAR!...

While Julie Andrews was working in the Broadway run of My Fair Lady, her fiancé Tony Walton Landed a job working for Noël Coward as production designer of his play, Conversation Piece.

Julie Andrews originated the role of Eliza Doolittle in the Broadway musicalMy Fair Lady, and was now cast as Gertrude Lawrence opposite Daniel Massey as Noël Coward. Daniel Massey's father, Raymond Massey, starred as Henry Higgins in a production of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion opposite Gertrude Lawrence as Eliza.

Not only that, but Daniel Massey's mother, Adrianne Alan co-stared as Sybil in the original production of Private Lives with Noël Coward and Gertrude Lawrence — and now he was performing a scene from Private Lives for a film with comic character actor Bernard Fox standing in for Sybil. This would seem all-too-uncanny if not for the fact that Noël Coward recommended Daniel Massey for the role. It may just some form of nepotism. Still, Massey's performance as Noël Coward is pitch-perfect.

Taken together, it seems that the elements of Robert Wise's production of STAR! came together as if by magic.
—

—

Material for this article came primarily from interviews conducted during the 25th Anniversary event for STAR!, and from Home: A Memoir of My Early Years by Julie Andrews. Home is an easy read. It's a charming and informative portrait of the artist as a young woman, before movie-stardom. It ends with Andrews flight to California to star in Walt Disney's Mary Poppins. It's published by Hyperion, a Disney imprint. I recommend the audiobook. It's delightful to hear Julie Andrews tell her story in her own sweet, soothing voice.

]]> EZRAtorial Ezra http://www.visionsfantastic.com/forum/showthread.php/32645-Julie-Andrews-—-Home A Fallen STAR! http://www.visionsfantastic.com/forum/showthread.php/32612-A-Fallen-STAR!?goto=newpost Thu, 16 Aug 2012 00:11:30 GMT

If I have one major regret... it's the fact that STAR! didn't really take off and wasn't recognized, wasn't appreciated for what it is when it first came out. ~Robert Wise

A fallen STAR!

—

NOTE: My article about STAR! has become a trilogy. You can look at this post as the "saggy, middle section". I'm captivated by the creativity of the dreamweavers who make these fantastical movies. I'm easily fascinated by production details and the star-maker machinery behind them. I realize that not everyone is, but I promise you that the next installment will be thrilling. It will be about Julie Andrews early life on the stage, and the uncanny coincidences that relate it to this film and its subject, Gertrude Lawrence. In the meantime, here is a post about how STAR! was nearly a "lost film". ~Ezra

—

—
I've made 39 films over the years, and... If I have one major regret connected with iny of the films, it's the fact that STAR! didn't really take off and wasn't recognized, wasn't appreciated for what it is when it first came out. ~Robert Wise
—

STAR! It had all the ear-marks of a successful film.

Director Robert Wise and producer Saul Chaplin had already had great sucess with West Side Story, and were looking to produce a screen adaption of The Sound of Music when Walt Disney generously agreed to screen advance footage of Mary Poppins for them. One the strength of that footage, 20th Century Fox production chief Richard Zanuck, (who passed away recently) offered her a three picture deal. Andrews, who wanted to keep her options open, would only agree to two.

When prouction began on The Sound of Music, Wise and Chaplin immediately knew that they wanted to work with Julie Andrews again. So they set to work on developing a second film before the opportunity passed. It would be a "star vehicle" for Andrews, developed especially for her, and it would be BIG!

Writer Max Lamb proposed the life of Broadway star Gertrude Lawrence as a subject. Originally from London, Lawrence was a versatile performer who originated many popular songs by the likes of Gershwin and Cole Porter. Music producer Saul Chaplin could select from dozens of songs she was known for and build a musical for Julie Andrews from scratch. Wise agreed, and the team immediately went to work.

Lawrence's autobiography, and a biography written by husband Richard Aldrich were puchased by Robert Wise but rejected as source material. They didn't reflect the star's reputation as "difficult". Instead, Lamb and Brittish screenwriter William Fairchild began intensive research of Lawrence's life, interviewing her friends and relatives and those of her good friend Noël Coward.

Since Lawrence was a fashion icon in New York, topping Eleanor Lambert's first "Best Dressed List" in 1940; so popular fashion designer Donald Brooks was hired to design costumes for the project. Fox approved a sizeable costume budget, provided that the studio owned the costumes afterward. This allowed Brooks to work with the best materials. One beaded gown weighed 20 pounds and cost $2,200 to make.

Brooks designed 3,040 costumes for the production, 125 for Julie Andrews alone, many of them glamourous haute coture. Draped in a wardrobe worth nearly $350,000 (in 1967 dollars) and millions of dollars in gems borrowed from Cartier, Andrews is presented as stately, elegant, glamourous, and a little sexy.

Her look was inspired by the real Getrude Lawrence:
—

—
Robert Wise is notorious for combing over fine details, insuring that there are no "wristwatch moments". Boris Leven built 185 sets for the production on 7 sound stages. Watch for a stunning New York apapartment done up in powder blue frosted mirrors decorated with a mural in gold leaf. Location shooting was extensive and took place in London, the French Riviera, New York City and the Los Angeles area.

No expense was spared, and every penny appears on screen. It features a lead actress that just had two big box-office hits (Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music) in similar features. It's from the director of classics like Blood on the Moon, The Day The Earth Stood Still, Sombeody Up There Likes Me, Run Silent, Run Deep, Two for the Seesaw, The Haunting, The Andromeda Strain, and two of the biggest hit musicals of all time; West Side Story and The Sound gf Music

By any means, it should have been at very least a moderate success. Instead it's an obscure "forgotten film". So... what happened?

STAR! suffers from several identity issues. Robert Wise instructed screenwriter William Fairchild to "invent a new concept for the biographical musical film". As such, it doesn't conveniently fit into the "musical comedy" film category. Although there are bits of comedy here and there, mostly in the beginning of the film, it's not a light-hearted film. It's a mellodrama that becomes more and more serious as the film progresses. Gertrude Lawrence's antics become less amusing as the story goes on — in fact that is the story. It's all fun and games until it up in bankrupcy court surrounded by frustrated ex-lovers and a disinterested, estranged daughter.

Although typical Hollywood liberties were taken with the story (eliminating or re-naming characters and them into composit, representative fictional characters), the intent was to paint a somewhat faithful portrait of Gertrude Lawrence — which was more than a little worrisome to it's star, Julie Andrews. "This lady, the way the script eventually turned out, was portrayed in a not particularly flattering way. She wasn't enormously loveable," Andrews recalls. "I actually enjoyed the challenge of playing something a little bit more heavy, a little bit more real."

Unfortunately, there was little public awareness of Gertrude Lawrence. She was famous on Broadway, but that had been decades ago. Older, hardcore theatre fans had her record albums; but Lawrence hadn't done much in the way of film or television appearances. As such, she wasn't a "household name" the way Ethel Merman or Mary Martin were.

Then there's the title, "STAR!". It was selected because several of Gertrude Lawrence's recored albums feature the word "star" in the title (The Star Herself, Star Quality, A Star Sings!, etc.), or a graphic of a star, or both. It was a logo of sorts for Lawrence.
—

—
But the one-word title is vague. 20th Century Fox was aware of this problem, requestiong suggestions from the sudio staff. Titles like Standing Room Only, Center Stage, Curtain Going Up, or Commmand Performance weren't any better, and the end result of decision " by comittee" resulted in "STAR!" being selected anyway. But a vague title related to a celebrity so little remembered isn't exactly a marketing asset.

There are mild story problems as well. The filmmakers have taken three hours to present the story, but couldn't find the time to foreshadow a few of the films turning points. We're suddenly given extended scenes of the rift between Lawrence a daughter that has so little mention in the film that we've forgotten all about her by then. A bankrupcy crisis is suddenly sprung on us unawares, when a line or two about "How are you paying for all this?" would have given us some warning. But these are minor quibbles that don't explain the utter failure of this film.

STAR! is a period piece, taking place in the "Roaring 20s" and continuing into 1940. Robert Wise's lavish attention to detail is as much a detriment as an advantage. Often, period pieces are intentionally nudged forward a bit to appeal to contemporary tastes. Compare this film to, say, Thoroughly Modern Millie, in which the Flapper-fashions are given a slightly 1960s "Mod" interpretation.

STAR!, by comparison looks old-fashioned. Even the most fasion-forward elements — Andrews' costume for "Lady in the Dark", or her rehearsal outfits for "Skylark" — look like the beatnick outfits in the 1958 production of Auntie Mame.

The color palate of the film — begining in a smoky sepia tone representing the shabby music hall period; then progressing to Technicolor-style "candybox colors" as the film progresses — has the look of an older film. Wise's West Side Story and The Sound of Music both have a fresh, crisp, modern look that this film lacks. Giving STAR! a much too faithful period look merely makes the film seem dated.

STAR! is a "jukebox musical": It's score is made up almost entirely of older already popular songs. This only adds to the public impression that there is nothing new to be seen here. It's really as shame. Andrews' performances of these classic songs — especially the minimalist presentations of Someone To Watch Over Me and My Ship — perfectly illustrate the reason these songs are standards: They're timeless.

Being a "jukebox musical" isn't a dissadvantage in itself: Thoroughly Modern Milliewas also a "jukebox musical" and a modest success. But added to the other seemingly "old fashioned" elements doesn't help pique public interest. The real problem is that there are too many period elements all together in the same film: there's very little that seems "unique" about the production.

Actually, there's much that is unique about STAR!: It's a musical, but NOT a musical comedy: It's quite serious. All the numbers are performances; nobody spontaneously "bursts into song". The portrayal of backstage life in all its shabbiness was unusual at the time — long before All That Jazz or A Chorus Line. And there's a certain psychological element present in the second half of the film.

It's only near the very end of the film that modern elements creep in; specifically, the psychically charged relationship between Lawrence and Richard Aldrich. By then, it's too little, too late: The audience has already taken away the "old-fashioned" impression of the film.

Marketing was a challenge, and it's mishandling played a major part of it. Wise Productions publicist Mike Kapland and Fox publicist Howard Newman worked well together in the begining. For more than a year, they released multi-page inserts for newspapers in the style of an issue of Variety, full of articles and publicity stills about the production of STAR!

An advertisement in the New York Times announcing the dates of the film's premiere engagement there was placed 18 months in advance. The ad instructed potential viewers to write in and be put on a list for reserved seating. An astounding 15,000 people answered that ad.

They hired famed New Yorker caricaturist Al Hirschfeld to observe the filming. Hirschfeld submitted 39 utterly charming drawings, many of which would have made fine ad copy. Beautiful posters were painted, looking remarkably like the famous poster and album cover for My Fair Lady. There were also posters featuring Andrews looking elegant in her "Lady in the Dark" costume.

Unfortunately, Fox executives took control of publicity out of Wise's hands; deciding for themselves that the film needed something like a logo; an image that would be associated with the film in the minds of the movie-going public. Wise had proposed a steamer-trunk with the title and details stenciled on it, but it was rejected.

What the studio came up with instead is a screen printed extreme close-up of Julie Andrews face with a star superimposed over one eye. The face is not necessarily recognizable as Andrews, looking a bit like the poster for Judy Garland's I Could Go On Singing. The combination of screen print and Wise's stencil typeface could give the impression that this is a re-release of a much older film. Wise recalls being asked "why the black eye?" Out of all the beautiful artwork submitted, this is what they settled on?
—

—
Robert Wise had already arranged for a roadshow presentation of the film. Roadshow pictures only played in luxury theatres like the El Capitan. These theatres offered reserve seating at a premium ticket price. Many had larger, more plush seats in the front which were offered at an even higher ticket price. Ushers guided patrons to their assigned seats. An overture played before the film began, and there was an intermission, just like a live theatre performance. Roadshwo pictures held limited engagements in a handful of cities, then moving on to the next few cities on the itinerary.

Only a highly anticipated feature could do with in a roadshow presentation, but Wise was confident that a big, lavish production like STAR! would do well. The Sound of Music did very well in it's roadshow run. A general release of a 35mm print would follow later, at regular ticket prices. The studio could make twice the money on the same picture this way.

But roadshow presentations were swiftly becoming a thing of the past, as more and more general release theatres were upgraded with the capability to show 70mm "Cinemascope" and "Sensaround" audio. Even so, the roadshow had always been a dicey proposition. If a film doesn't do well in the roadshow circuit, it can sour public opinion of the general release that would come later. Walt Disney's Fantasia in 1940 failed miserably as a roadshow, and as a result, even the general release didn't recover the investment. (Fantasia didn't make it into the black ink until 1974!)

Unfortunately for STAR!, the timing of it's release couldn't have been worse. Funny Girl, Barbara Streisand's film debut, was released the month before. It was also a musical about famed vaudeville performer, but had the advantage of being a new rather than a "jukebox" movie. The broadway run of Funny Girl was quite recent, it's cast album lp was popular, and Streisand made sensational televisions appearances.

Even it's subject, Ziegfeld Follies' Fanny Brice was much more well known nationally than Gertrude Lawrence, having featured performances in several revue films, such as The Great Ziegfeld and Everybody Sing. Her character "Baby Snooks" was enormously popular on radio, and made numerous appearances in television's early days.

Interest in seeing yet another musical about yet another lesser known old state peformer so soon after Funny Girl was minimal. Of the 15,000 people on the list for the New York engagement of STAR!, only a handful responded when the time actually arrived. And most of them opted for a matinee showing, rather then the full ticket evening performance.

The other cities fared no better. although glowing fan mail came in prasing the movie from those few who did see it. In general release it could have been a "sleeper" hit, relying on word of mouth advertising. As a roadshow, it was a complete flop.

After only a week, Fox ordered an edited version of STAR!, thinking that perhaps the long running time was keeping people away. Rather than releasing a new print, the studio issued instructions to the exhibitors, trusting the projectionists to cut the film. The "Private Lives" performance; probably the most illustrative of Gertruce Lawrence and Noël Coward as performers, hit the cutting room floor.

The cuts didn't help how the film played at all. People who saw the film and liked it enough to return saw a radically edited version only a week or two later. This was very disconcerting to the few fans the film did have, who wrote letters of complaint to the studio.

20th Century Fox pulled the plug on the roadshow schedule early, opting for general release. Robert Wise, perhaps hoping to shame the studio into restoring the cut film, slipped a poster into Fox's publicity machine: One he felt properly touted Julie Andrews performance and promised that moviegoers would see "All Of It":
—

—
Fox used this poster, but released the edited version of the film instead. (Personally, I'm not critical of the idea of cutting the running time down by 20 minutes: It's a very long movie. But I would have simply cut down the begining of the movie, and started with Gertie barging in on André Charlot's audition. The first few music hall numbers are adorable, but not really necessary to the story. An audience wouldn't feel like they were misssing anything.)

Clearly the studio was desperate to wring its invenstment out of this movie one way or another. They even devised a new, andvertising campaign that made the movies seem steamy. Tag lines like "The many loves of a STAR!" and images of Julie Andrews on a motorcycle were featured. (There is a police motorcycle in the film, but Gertie doesn't ride it! It must have been a between-scenes moment for Andrews.) There was even and ad which read "Why is she running from these men" and shows a doctored photo of Andrews running and being grabbed by a masculine hand that had been inserted.

The new campaign completely misrepresented the picture. After responding to torrid ads like these, and seeing Burlington Bertie instead, is it any wonder that someone would walk out of the theatre in the first hour? So, the incomplete STAR! had a ho-hum general release.

The following year, the film was re-cut and released in a 35mm print under a new title of Those Were the Happy Times. As I've said, this is not a light-hearted film, so to release it with a title of Happy Times and a tagline of Be GLAD they still make pictures like this! is yet another misrepresentation of the film. The main image on the poster — Julie Andrews with full, flowing hair, wearing a psychodelic print shirt and scattering flowers from a basket — looks more like an ad for a kooky 60s comedy like What's New, Pussycat? or Please Don't Eat The Daisies

Even more rediculous is the fact that the new poster and trailers acutaly say "Formerly titled STAR!" right on them! Wouldn't it be better to say nothing and hope the public assumes that it's a new film?

Unbelievably, this release cut the running time down to 120 minutes: that's less than half the film! The first three Vaudeville numbers remain, but the prop-gags in the middle Burlington Bertie are gone. Limehouse Blues and Someone to Watch Over Me is gone, as is My Ship. Someday I'll Find You and everything else from Private Lives. Has Anybody Seen My Ship? is still there, but the dressing room scene in which Noël and Gertie discuss how rediculous the number is, was cut.

Nearly everything that Gertrude Lawrence was famous for is gone from the picture. With no demonstration of what made Lawrence so special, we have no reason to care about the story of her personal life. We're left with an out-of-control nutjob who performs hokey novelty acts.

Even the connecting scenes, which briefly provide the audience with important plot exposition newsreel style, are cut. The introductions of two of her lovers are cut, so when they show up later, we're left to wonder just who the heck are they? The sequence with her estranged daughter is there, but the moment when she asks to leave early is gone! So the whole point of the segment is gone. Why not cut her out entirely, then?

What we're left with is a mess of amusing but disconnected scenes that don't add up to a story. Robert Wise pressed for the removal of "A Robert Wise Picture" from the credits.

Sadly, this is the version of Happy Times that ran on television. So if you vaguely recollect seeing some near-unwatchable movie with Julie Andrews in it on the late-late-late show, Those Were the Happy Times is probably what you saw. The original STAR! had dissapeared.

In the wake of Funny Girl's success, the studio could have postponed the release of STAR! to give it some breathing space. If they had held this release until the following summer, it may have fared much better, by then the public could have been looking for another film "like Funny Girl" This frenzied activity to salvage (or rather scavenge) it could have been completely unnecessary. I suppose that no one involved had the slightest doubt that is film would be anything but a big hit.

The original run of STAR! was a great success in England, where "our dear Julie" had come home again. The film was never edited there, and a very clean and well preserved 70mm copy was discovered circulated around the country in 1981, where it did very good business yet again. Fox noticed it and ordered new prints of the full length film direct from the 70mm negative, to be made available by request in an open release.

The original version of STAR! played film festivals and repertory art houses in the US and did well enough to make the list of "most wanted" home videos in Premiere Magazine in 1991. For the film's 25th Anniversary, Fox released this original version on laser disk: the same one that's now available on DVD.

It's a nice clean print, but it's a tiny bit spooty, and slightly yellow: not enough to be annoying, just not quite upt to modern HD standards of quality. It sounds good, too. The extras are minimal and the Menu is wonky, but it's a lovely presentation of a visually impressive film. The DVD is available from Amazon: STAR! (1968)

Still, in a few more years STAR! will have its 50th Anniversary, so perhaps there'll be a good digital clean-up and a new release. I'm hoping for a good featurette about Julie Andrews early life on the stage and her personal connections to this production, and to Gertie Lawrence. That will be the subject of part III. ]]> EZRAtorial Ezra http://www.visionsfantastic.com/forum/showthread.php/32612-A-Fallen-STAR! Julie Andrews — STAR! http://www.visionsfantastic.com/forum/showthread.php/32550-Julie-Andrews-—-STAR!?goto=newpost Thu, 02 Aug 2012 08:09:10 GMT

She's a magical, glorious, radiant, glamourous, thoroughly fabulous STAR!

If the lady's brilliantly witty, If she makes the dialogue flesh;
If the lady's way with a ditty, makes the ditty seem like a smash! ;
If her songs add up to a fancy repertoire;
The chances are, the lady's a star!

She's a genuine, positive, totally marvelous, perfectly wonderful STAR!
—

Julie Andrews — STAR!

—

—

A few months ago I was browsing Netflix, hoping to find Victor/Victoria, a movie I remembered fondly and wanted to see again. I found the stage show instead, and enjoyed it immensely. But I found something else as well: STAR! A Robert Wise Film . I'd never heard of it, but on the cover was a very glamourous Julie Andrews, so I settled in for a viewing — and was astounded by what I saw and heard.

STAR! is one of the "big movie Musicals" of the 1960s and features Julie Andrews, one of my favorite performers — I can hardly understand how I could possibly have missed it all these years. With a running time of nearly three hours, it's a candy-colored 70mm extravaganza, with about 15 fully staged musical numbers, not counting background pub songs.
—

—

STAR! begins without credits, just a pit orchestra playing an overture. I recognized the tune Someone to Watch Over Me; and something who's name I didn't know but is shorthand for "this is a busy bustling big city" in old cartoons and movies; and then another familiar melody. It's Gershwin isn't it? This should be fun...

The film that follows is a biography of Gertrude Lawrence, Broadway star and lifelong friend of playwright Noël Coward. I didn't know anything about her, but was delighted to catch Julie Andrews dressed in a Pearlie costume (a nod to Mary Poppins, that) perform a Vaudeville novelty number in a shabby English music hall. We see her in in the chorus in World-War-I-era Oh! Oh! Oh! It's a Lovely War and then a "Daffodil Girls" number so atrociously awful that her attempts to sabotage the number is a great improvement.

As the film follows Gertie's struggle up the show business ladder, the numbers get progressively more tasteful and elaborate, such as her attempt to upstage a Fred-Astaire-type number. As an understudy Gertie gets her big break performing a comic hobo number as "Burlington Bertie". It's a coy, flirtatious Julie Andrews clearly relishing every moment of a "low brow" number. Watch for plenty of prop stunts, an impressive full-body 30° lean, planking(!).
—

—
Her friend Noël writes a number for her, Parisian Perot. Gosh! This looks like something out of An American In Paris! In white-face and a silk Harlequin costume, Andrews is elegant, precise and exceptionally graceful. For the first time in the film, we get to hear her pure voice. It's impressive and lovely: she's at the top of her game.

Gertie's first opportunity in America is in a review show. She's the featured performer in a modern-dance ballet number: Limehouse Blues. Wow! This is a really big Hollywood number (think Cyd Charisse). It's staged on a complex, vivid set, with a big cast of dancers playing parts in a film-noir-style drama. I don't want to overload this piece with embedded videos, but if you'd like to see the number, it's here: Limehouse Blues Here's a publicity still:
—

—
After the success of this review, Gertie a show of her own, her first Broadway musical. Here she is rehearsing, then performing a number from Oh! Kay:
—

—

The quiet numbers like Someone to Watch Over Me are the best thing about STAR! in my opinion. There's danger in songs like this: unless they're presented with utter sincerity, they tend to be corny. Here we get the simple purity of Julie Andrews voice and her remarkable presence as a performer.

Several big, bawdy novelty numbers follow, and she's adorable in them, but it starts to feel like too much of a good thing. I'd recommend that this movie be watched in bits and pieces if it played like a string of disconnected numbers, but fortunately it doesn't. Wedged between the numbers is the personal life of Gertrude Lawrence, which is fairly compelling, and the choice of songs sets the tone for each segment. In addition to the struggle up the show-business ladder of success, there's an early marriage and divorce. There's the problem of Gertie juggling three or four suitors at once but refusing to commit to any of them. (Michael Craig and Robert Reed are especially charming, and Julie Andrews plays against them quite well.) There's Gertie's unfortunately too-late attempt to re-connect with her estranged daughter. When her extravagance leads to financial crisis, she works herself to exhaustion.

Most especially, there's the friendship between Gertrude Lawrence and Noël Coward, wonderfully played by Daniel Massey. Noël is always ready with a quick-witted joke, but under that there's a tender sweetness and caring for Gertie. Andrews and Daniel Massey have several intimate scenes together, and they're the best thing in the picture. As a bonus, we get a substantial scene from the play Private Lives, complete with Julie performing Someday I'll find you, and looking elegant in a white satin sheath dress. It's the classiest thing in the whole picture.

All the while, Gertie is becoming more and more demanding, self-centered and egotistical until she's spun completely out of control. Julie Andrews might be a smidge too genteel to play this well, but in a way, that's what makes it believable: A person who isn't utterly charming, would never get away with Gertie's outrageous behavior.

Here is a scene in which Gertie has just received some terrible news. She's already had quite a bit to drink, when her friend Noël Coward springs a surprise party on her, with disastrous results. I think it's a fine piece of acting:
—

—
Richard Crenna plays Richard Aldrich, the one man other than Noël who's willing to look past her over-the-top primadonna persona. In fact, he assigns himself the task of busting her ego, which by this point is tremendous.

Gertie prepares for a bizarre new Broadway show, Lady In The Dark. For a quick break from the high drama that is Gertrude Lawrence, we get another quiet rehearsal number from Julie Andrews, the sublime My Ship:
—

—

After some struggle, Gertie gets a handle on the closing number of Lady In The Dark and the movie. It's a big, oddball circus-themed number called The Saga of Jenny, which Julie Andrews performs while participating in some of the stunts herself. Presenting a verse of the song while being juggled by acrobats in a Risley act is especially impressive, and the recorded vocal has all the jostle of a voice being jolted by the act. Except for coming down a zip-line, Julie Andrews is clearly doing all her own stunts. The number has hip-swinging jazziness to it, and Julie is surprisingly sexy in a black sequins bodysuit. It's the movie's big finish.

There is a coda that wraps up the film nicely, but I'll let you search for it on your own. I'd link to everything I could find on YouTube but instead, I'd rather encourage you to seek this movie out for yourself, and see it all on as big a screen as you've got. This is filmed to take advantage of the 70mm widescreen presentation. The environments are expansive, the locations impressive. There are enormous Broadway theatres, massive Manhattan hotels, British palaces, and an estate on the French Riviera.

I'd like to put in here that today's filmmakers should re-learn the old Cinemascope technique. Most films place most of the action in the middle third of the frame using medium angle shots, in order to cater to the aspect ratio of television. But Cathode Ray Tube televisions are long gone now. Everyone is viewing their movies on a widescreen television, most of them quite sizable. It's time veer away from over the shoulder quick cuts; and return to long angle shots and leisurely takes.

While we're talking about the visual appeal of this movie... I have never seen Julie Andrews presented so glamourously in any other film. The costumes and jewelry are amazing, as are the sets. (Or at least what I think are sets. It's hard to tell what's location and what isn't. At least we can be certain that what's on stage during the numbers are sets. I think some of grand old theatres they're playing are real.)

How on earth could I have missed this? I've been a fan of Julie Andrews since I saw Mary Poppins in the local moviehouse as a child. We used to watch Sound of Music on television every Thanksgiving. (It played Thanksgiving because Wizard of Oz already had the lock on Christmas) I watched The Julie Andrews Hour every chance I got; which, sadly, wasn't very often since the family didn't like it. (My parents preferred The Laurence Welk Show instead. go figure?!)

I saw Thoroughly Modern Millie and Darling Lily several times. Blake Edwards' S.O.B. and Victor/Victoria were favorites in our house. I even saw [I]The Americanization of Emily[I] a couple of times. I highly recommend [I]Emily[I] to adults. I didn't understand it as a child (still enjoyed it, though). I recommend S.O.B. to Adults ONLY for somewhat different reasons. VF isn't the place for that discussion, though.

How did I miss it? That's where the research comes in. It's also where the Disney tie-in resides. I'll discuss that in Part Two.
—

— ]]> EZRAtorial Ezra http://www.visionsfantastic.com/forum/showthread.php/32550-Julie-Andrews-—-STAR! <![CDATA[Storytellers' Anachronism]]> http://www.visionsfantastic.com/forum/showthread.php/32490-Storytellers-Anachronism?goto=newpost Thu, 12 Jul 2012 23:57:17 GMT It is a young Walt Disney as you would have seen him when he just stepped off the train from Kansas City in 1923, arriving in California to pursue...

It is a young Walt Disney as you would have seen him when he just stepped off the train from Kansas City in 1923, arriving in California to pursue his dreams. - Imagineer Ray Spencer
—

—

The Storytellers' Anachronism

—

I have not seen Disney California Adventure's new Storytellers statue in person yet. I'm not likely to return to Disneyland Resort this year, sadly, but I do have a few observations to share about the new statue of Walt and Mickey. Walt Disney Imagineering informs us that this is the image of a young Walt just arriving in Hollywood in 1923. A quote by Walt Disney engraved on a nearby plaque reinforces this notion:
—

Quote:

Originally Posted by commemorative plaque

It was July 1923. I packed all of my worldly goods – a pair of trousers, a checkered coat, a lot of drawing materials and the last of the fairy tale reels we had made – in a kind of frayed cardboard suitcase. And with that wonderful audacity of youth, I went to Hollywood, arriving there with just forty dollars. It was a big day the day I got on that Santa Fe California Limited. I was just free and happy!

—

Sculptor Rick Terry and Imagineer Ray Spencer were faced with something of a dilemma: When depicting the scene, Walt had to be recognizably Walt Disney. The presence of an early, pie-eyed Mickey Mouse helps, of course. And the fact that the side of Walt's suitcase is an oversize image of Walt Disney's Kansas City business card helps too. Also, for you history buffs, the name Marcelline is imprinted in the sole of his shoe. But what I'm referring to is the image of Walt Disney himself.

That this Walt is more slender than the middle-aged "Uncle Walt" we know from television is so obvious as to barely be worth mentioning. He was "half starved" at that time. Still, this is certainly not the image of the Walt Disney who operated his studio out of a store-front on Kingswell Avenue. There are very few early photos of Walt Disney. Photography was a new and somewhat expensive art. If Terry had sculpted an image of Walt Disney, based upon his appearance at the time he left Kansas City, well, it would not have been a recognizable Walt....
—

—
...and even the image of Walt that appeared on the cover of the first Disney Twenty-Three magazine (which was actually taken in 1926) is hardly recognizable:

—

—
This Storytellers Walt looks a bit more like the Walt who introduced the world to the Seven Dwarfs...
—

—
...which stands to reason, as the statue is placed before a replica of Carthay Circle Theatre, where Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs premiered. But even this Walt still doesn't have the deep "crows feet" and "smoker's lines" we've come to associate with Walt's broad smile. Those started to show a couple of years later, after the flush of success from Snow White, when this photo was taken:
—

—
Now we have a "Walt" that is recognizable to most people; a "Walt" who hadn't changed too terribly much when he began working in television.

Of course, we suspected that this statue doesn't really depict Walt Disney's first arrival in Hollywood. Walt didn't arrive with Mickey Mouse, or even Oswald. Inside the suitcase was "the last of the fairy tale reels we had made" at the recently bankrupt Laugh-O-Grams in Kansas City; as well as the just-finished Alice in Cartoonland, the first of the Alice Comedies starring a live-action Virginia Davis. If this were really 1923, Julius The Cat (or Alice herself) would be atop the suitcase. It was five years of Alice, and a year of Oswald The Lucky Rabbit before Mickey finally hit the scene.

In a way, this statue could be thought of as depicting Walt's arrival in Los Angeles after his disastrous meeting with Charles Mintz, in which Oswald was stolen from Walt Disney and subsequently given to Walter Lantz (Woody Woodpecker). Legend has it that Walt Disney dreamed up Mickey Mouse on the train ride back, and therefore, would have "arrived" with him.

Also, Walt Disney was unmarried in 1923 when he arrived. He met Lillian Bounds when she came to work for Disney Brothers studio, and married her in 1925. And yet the "Walt" in the Storytellers statue is wearing a wedding band:
—

—
Which further supports the scene of his arrival with Mickey Mouse.

Really, Storytellers is an anachronism: a pastiche of elements from several periods of Walt Disney's early days in Hollywood. It could be said to represent an enthusiastic young Walt of the period 1923-1937. ]]> EZRAtorial Ezra http://www.visionsfantastic.com/forum/showthread.php/32490-Storytellers-Anachronism Steamboat Bill Jr. http://www.visionsfantastic.com/forum/showthread.php/32439-Steamboat-Bill-Jr?goto=newpost Thu, 28 Jun 2012 04:28:24 GMT

—
If you're a member of Visions Fantastic, you most likely know that Mickey Mouse made his theatrical debut in a short called Steamboat Willie in 1928. If you haven't seen it in it's entirety before now, you've at least seen the image of Mickey at the wheel of the steamboat, whistling the tune Steamboat Bill. It appears during the Walt Disney Animation Studios fanfare. Here's a clip of three young people re-creating it in chalk in a parking lot as a stop-motion animation project:
—

—
Still famous after all these years, but the popular culture references that inspire it are all but forgotten. First, there's the song; Steamboat Bill was written in 1910 by the Leighton Brothers, with lyrics by Ren Shields. It was a bit hit for Arthur Collins in 1911:
—

—
If you have any difficulty making out the lyrics, they're at TraditionalMusic.co. Although fictional, the popular song quickly took on folklore status, patterned as it was after 1909's Casey Jones who was not fictional. At any rate, Steamboat Bill was still a popular song in 1929, mostly though jazz renditions. (It's not the only Arthur Collins hit to achieve cartoon legend status. His Hello! Ma Baby from 1899 is performed by Michigan J. Frog in the Chuck Jones classic One Froggy Evening.)

There's nothing particularly remarkable about the use of an old popular song from a bygone era. The real fun comes in comparing Mickey's Steamboat Willie to the 1928 feature Steamboat Bill, Jr. starring silent film comedian Buster Keaton.

Having swapped his trademark pork-pie hat for a Captain's cap and Cracker Jack shirt, Keaton is seen here in a publicity still, firmly grasping the wheel of the tramp steamer:
—

—

—
Although Keaton doesn't actually appear in quite this way in the film, it's a memorable image. Mickey takes a similar heroic pose when piloting his own paddle-wheeler; or so we think. He is soon manhandled by the real steamboat captain (Pete) and ordered to work below.

The interaction between Mickey and Pete echoes that between the feature's Captain William "Steamboat Bill" Canfield (Ernest Torrence), and his estranged son William Jr. (Buster Keaton) who's just returning from college in Boston to visit his father in River Junction.
—

—
When Junior arrives, he isn't exactly what Steamboat Bill expected of "my Willie". He's small and scrawny; He's a dandy with a pencil-thin mustache in a striped sport-coat, loud argyle waistcoat, bell-bottom trousers, polka-dotted tie and French beret; he's timid and effete. All attempts by Bill to make junior over fail comically. Junior is afraid of the burly deck-hand aboard his father's ship. And when Bill tries to teach him how his steamboat operates, he nearly wrecks it! Captain Pete in Steamboat Willie seems to combine the worst elements of the bullying deck-hand and Captain Bill.
—

—
Captain Pete even has a tobacco chewing gag, reminiscent of Bill's attempt to share his chaw with Junior; who quickly becomes ill. When all attempts to "toughen up" poor Junior fail, bill buys him a ticket back to Boston. But Junior won't leave because he is in love with the Kitty King (Marion byron). She's the daugher of J.J. King, Steamboat Bill's wealthy rival and owner of the brand new Steamboat King.

When King has Bill's riverboat, the Stonewall Jackson, condemned as unsafe; Steamboat Bill's resistance lands him in jail. It's up to Willie Junior to save the day. Unfortunately, a cyclone hits town making Junior's attempts all the more difficult; and hilarious. Keaton's combination of broad, physical slapstic and wry, sardonic expressions is brilliant. The storm segment features one of the most famous (and most dangerous!) Buster Keaton gags, in which the facade of a house falls, barely missing him:
—

—
The storm sequence is full of outrageous special effects and stunts, including an entire house falling on poor Junior, embedding itself in the ground. Just as he exits unscathed through the front door, the house collapses into a pile of lumber behind him. This five minute excerpt is well worth a look. None of this is spoofed in Steamboat Willie, which is more involved in musical sight-gags involving livestock and kitchenware, but it's wildly entertaining nonetheless.

As Junior arrives at the Stonewall Jackson, he spies his beloved Kitty King atop an oveturned house afloat in the river. Acting quickly, he casts the ships anchor across, using it to hook the debris and haul Kitty so safety.
—

—
We see a similar "rescue" in Steamboat Willie: Minnie has been left behind at Podonk Landing and is racing along the shore. Mickey uses the cargo hook to haul her aboard by her underdrawers. (Kitty's rescue is a wee bit more dignfied.)

When the jailhouse containg Steamboat Bill slides into the river and begins to rapidly fill with water, it's up to Willie Junior to rescue his dad. Acting quickly, he cleverly rigs the engine room controls to ropes so that he can operate them from the wheelhouse...
—

—
...and single-handedly resues Steamboat Bill as well as Kitty's father, who was aboard the capsized Steamboat King. This is the famous "wheelhouse moment" as seen in the feature film, and so memorably invoked by Mickey at the begining of Steamboat Willie.

Please consider giving the complete Steamboat Bill, Jr. a look. It's wildly entertaining; well worth seventy minutes of your time.
—

—
Since it's in public domain you can view it in it's entirety at Archive.org BUT Buster Keaton's facial expressions are such a vital part of the comedy, even during action stunts, that I would urge you to view it on a larger screen, at a higher resolution.

Netflix has a good clean restored print available to watch instantly, or better yet, buy it. Since it is public domain, it doesn't cost much and can be found in most retail bargain bins for only a few dollars.

I have this copy from Kino International, the folks who lovingly restored this film. The picture is crisp and beautiful, and the new music is much less annoying than the online stuff. It's worth a few dollars to show these dedicated historians and movie buffs a little love. This one also includes The General, an epic silent Civil War comedy/drama starring Buster Keaton, as well as College and a later talkie The Misadventures of Buster Keaton, which collects a series of Keaton Vaudeville acts on film. ]]> EZRAtorial Ezra http://www.visionsfantastic.com/forum/showthread.php/32439-Steamboat-Bill-Jr Tangled — Netflix Second Look http://www.visionsfantastic.com/forum/showthread.php/32018-Tangled-—-Netflix-Second-Look?goto=newpost Thu, 01 Mar 2012 07:02:59 GMT

"Rapunzel Unbraided has to be a film of astonishing beauty," Glen Keane stated. "I knew that producing Rapunzel the way that I originally envisioned the picture was now possible in CG."

Netflix
Second Look

Since this is the last month day that recent Disney content will be available on Netflix Watch Instantly (see Netflix loses Disney streaming content), I've spent an evening or two each week re-watching whatever Disney movies are featured on Netflix StarzPlay. Today's entry:

Tangled

—

—

Development of veteran animator Glen Keane's pet project, a retelling of the classic fairy tale "Rapunzel", began more than a decade ago. I first read about it in an article by Jim Hill (see ...a film of astonishing beauty at Jim Hill Media). At that time, I doubted that CG could ever be suitable for storybook material, unless it was a Shrek-like modern-day spoof. Early tests included things like animating Jean-Honoré Fragonard's rococo painting "The Swing", and rendering the dwarfs' cottage from Snow White in CG. I watched the progress with interest, hoping beyond hope that Keene was right; that someday CG characters' movement would be as fluid as hand-drawn, and that CG backgrounds could be as lush and rich as a Late Baroque paintings.

The animation team also studied a real-life fairytale environment; Disneyland's Fantasyland...
—

—
Although directing duties shifted from Keane to co-directors Nathan Greno and Byron Howard, Keane had already completed the bulk of the research and development necessary to achieve the look he was going for. When I saw this movie at the cineplex (now titled Tangled), I thought that, visually, he had succeeded to some great degree. The movie does have a bit of a modern snap to it, but it's fairly gentle. It's certainly doesn't have the crassness or adult content of Shrek.

Well, all of that makes for quite a prologue! Now, about watching it on the small screen...

Wow, this really is a beautiful film! The environments manage to look painterly and textural simultaneously. Just have a look at an early scene:
—

—
A viewer can easily get lost just looking at the scenery, but no fear of that. Disney has come up with a compelling story, which was the real surprise to me. The fairy story is so slight, and the characters actions make such little sense, that Rapunzel was one of my least favorite stories as a child. In Tangled, rapunzel is given a longing for the outside world, and her captor is given vain self-centeredness and a strong desire to fend off old-age as motivation. What in the story is a featureless prince is in this film an entertaining rogue. It's all very satisfying.

The variety of Alan Menken's songs range from contemporary, to tribal, to showtune; somehow without clashing. And Mother Knows Best is a real star turn for Donna Murphy's villianous Mother Gothel.

Tangled has just the right balance of tone I was thinking of when I wrote my essay What Makes a Family Feature. The characters are complex enought to be compelling, and the story moves along briskly enough to keep the adults interested; and it's peppered throughout with slapstick comedy to keep small children entertained — But the very same gags (unlike the antics of the seven dwarfs) are clever enough to provoke good belly laughs from the adults as well. And did I mention how gorgeous this film looks? ...sorry I just had to say that again.

As a family feature, it's not without it's little problems, however. Mother Gothel's self-serving advice to Rapunzel isn't really very different than the advice that protective and well-meaning parents give. In this story, disobedience is the correct choice, but how is a child to tell the difference? It's troubling.

Also, the slapstick comedy that I enjoyed so much is the "mild violence" that earned Tangled a PG rating from the Motion Picture Association of America. So, parents, be warned:
—

—
But I think these are minor caveats to what's by-and-large a thoroughly enjoyable film.

Would I watch this film on the small screen again. Definitely. Enough to buy the DVD. Certainly. It doesn't have to be on sale, either. ]]> EZRAtorial Ezra http://www.visionsfantastic.com/forum/showthread.php/32018-Tangled-—-Netflix-Second-Look Mars Needs Moms — Netflix Second Look http://www.visionsfantastic.com/forum/showthread.php/31955-Mars-Needs-Moms-—-Netflix-Second-Look?goto=newpost Fri, 24 Feb 2012 01:27:02 GMT

This is like throwing my daughter into a pit of tattoo artists and hoping I'll still recognize her after pulling her out. I just hope that they don't draw flaming skulls all over her forehead...

Netflix
Second Look

Since this is the last month that recent Disney content will be available on Netflix Watch Instantly (see Netflix loses Disney streaming content), I plan to spend an evening or two each week re-watching whatever Disney movies are featured on Netflix StarzPlay. Today's entry:

MARS NEEDS MOMS

I have to confess: This isn't a "second look". It's a first look. I never got around to seeing Mars Needs Moms until now. The press drubbed the daylights out of this movie, but I know that "the trades" can be particularly harsh. When the first trailers arrived, I thought "this doesn't look so bad"; and yet for some strange reason, I couldn't bring myself to the cineplex to see it. So now, finally, here's my "first look":

This is the second collaboration between Robert Zemeckis' ImageMovers Digital and Disney (the first being Disney's A Christmas Carol). Mars Needs Moms is an adaption of a childrens book by Berkeley Breathed, creator of the Pulitzer Prize winning Bloom County and Opus comic strips. One would think the quirky comedic source material prime territory for a contemporary Disney animated feature, but even the book's author had his doubts about turning his material over to Disney:
—

Quote:

Originally Posted by Washington Post

"This is like throwing my daughter into a pit of tattoo artists and hoping I'll still recognize her after pulling her out," Breathed tells us. "I just hope that they don't draw flaming skulls all over her forehead."

—
Unfotunately, very little of Breathed's quirky charm was left after Mars Needs Moms had been put through the mill. The crux of the story is that the inhabitants of Mars, who live in a subterranean colony, have no parenting skills. So when their hatchlings are due, they abduct 9-year-old Milo's mom in order to extract her "momness" and use it to program thier robot nannies. Here is an early production still of aliens observing Milo's mother:
—

—
Our protagonist, Milo, stows away on the Martain ship. He soon discovers that he isn't the only child who's attempted to save his mother. Here is the official trailer.
—

—
Oh, there are a lot of problems with this movie, especially in the Earth scenes. The animation is not very good. In fact, it's distractingly bad. The Earth environments, especially Milo's house, don't look right. The soft, ambient lighting in the interior does nothing to hide the fact that every detail of every room is in the exact same sharp focus. I don't believe a live action cinematographer would ever shoot an intimate interior with a field of focus that broad, even if it were possible.

The crew clearly did their best to avoid the "uncanny valley" syndrome (see NPR article - Storytelling and the 'Uncanny Valley') by making the characters stylized and cartoony; and yet, it still doesn't come off. Facial expressions are a touch too quick, eye-blinks are bit too slow; there's just something off about Milo and his mom. Have a look:
—

—
It looks rather like a feature film version of The Sims video game.

These problems tend to clear up once the film reaches subterranean Mars. Perhaps it's just that there's much more to look at, or that this style of animation is better suited to the exotic, slick, futuristic environments than mundane ones. Here Milo's new friend Gribble is helping him reach mom's containment pod:
—

—
Once on Mars, the quality of animation seemed much less of a distraction, and I actually began to enjoy myself. There's a bit of subplot about the hyper-orderly, colorless, militaristic Mars society leaving no room for creativity or art. There's nothing new here, but it's amusing. I wish that Earth graffiti was that pretty.

...And then came the story concerns, such as:

Why does Mars have the same family-dynamic as every second-rate sit-com? You know, the ones where the dads are complete doofuses, and the moms have to hold it all together?
Any concern that the Martian supervisor is an inapproprate Asian stereotype? The shrill, nagging Dragon Lady?
Oh, and the absent dad comes home? Is that the solution all of Earth's problems? Really? (Disney over-indulges in this one. Just because it worked so well in Mary Poppins, doesn't mean that it's appropriate for the end of every single film with Disney's name on it.)

These concerns are problematic on so many levels, and just when I've set them aside, we're finally back on Earth; which looks a bit too much like a plastic Lego-land.

There are so, so many things wrong with this movie. It's a shame, really. The performances by some very talented performers (Seth Green, Dan Fogler, Joan Cusac, Mindy Sterling) are captured, then ruined by poor decisions and sub-par animation.

I've made almost no mention of the motion-capture technology. That's because I don't blame the technology for this film's problems. Filming performers as reference to animation is a tradition that predates the animated feature: It's nothing new. Disney was never above "rotoscoping", a process of tracing-over live action footage to create animation. Live-action footage of a gypsy cart was dropped into Disney's Pinocchio after being washed and recolored. Given all that, i'm not an elitist snob who feels that all animation should be done by hand.

Accepting that referance footage is a part of the animation tradition; it follows that capturing an actors performance using a dozen camera should be a distninct advantage, not a disadvantage. The important thing here is that the work of translating the performance should be the work of animators, good ones. But here, it isn't.

I suppose there are times when relying to heavily on reference footage can be a hinderance instead of an asset. In animation, the artists have an opportunity to make certain that every frame conveys the mood, feeling and attiude intended. It's a rare performer whose every movement is on-point at all times. Even months of rehearsal don't necessarily achieve that. It's up the animators who work with the captured performances to creatively tweek things and make that happen.

The performers were just fine. (Dan Fogler was particularly funny and endearing.) It's the animators that aren't up to snuff. I suspect that if the same technology were handed over to the staff at Pixar, something far superior would result.

Family Friendliness? I suppose it's all right. It's mostly harmless and somewhat cute.

So, would I watch this film again? Never. Sadly, Mars Needs Moms, deserves it's bad reputation.

I leave you with author Berkley Breathed's illustrated reaction to the film, courtesy of The Hollywood Reporter:
—

— ]]> EZRAtorial Ezra http://www.visionsfantastic.com/forum/showthread.php/31955-Mars-Needs-Moms-—-Netflix-Second-Look Prince of Persia — Netflix Second Look http://www.visionsfantastic.com/forum/showthread.php/31899-Prince-of-Persia-—-Netflix-Second-Look?goto=newpost Sat, 18 Feb 2012 02:39:53 GMT Legend tells of the most powerful force on Earth. There are those sworn to protect it; those who would do anything to posses it; and those whose...

Legend tells of the most powerful force on Earth. There are those sworn to protect it; those who would do anything to posses it; and those whose destiny is tied to it...

Netflix
Second Look

Prince of Persia
The Sands of Time

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is based on a popular video game. The plot of this movie is very complicated, so I'll let producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Mike Newell explain it:
—

—
In a nutshell, Prince Dastan finds the dagger, and the priestess Tamina follows because it's her job to protect it. Meanwhile a band of trained assassins under contract to a shadowy villain, also seek the dagger.

Visually this movie is stunning. The environments are grand, sumptuous and highly detailed, but run a little heavy on the saffron-colouring. Very little of the spectacle is lost viewing this on the small screen. There are plenty of magical special effects, martial arts fight scenes and stunts, including parkour a form of martial art that features running up walls and jumping obstacles. It looks a bit strange, but aids in keeping the film true to it's video-game origins. It's not too far afield from the wire-work that is typical of fantasy martial arts films such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Here's a short clip about the stunts:
—

—
Re-watching this feature on Netflix, I had similar reactions to those I remember having in the movie theater. The story is interesting and has a near-Shakespearean level of complexity, but still manages not to be too confusing. I was again thrown off by a few inaccurate historical details in the film, but that's because I know a bit about world history. When Alamut is described as a "holy city" and depicted as paradisaical in the film, I was a little confused. (Alamut is actually an ancient fortress in Iran.) And later, when the Hassansins (yes, the English word "assassin" comes from this name) don't reside in Alamut, this also throws me for a moment.

(Hassansins were the followers of Shi'a leader Hassan i-Sabah, the ruler of a fortress called Alamut. They were ruthless killers, believing that if they died in battle or during an assassination, that they would immediately be dispatched to Paradise. The middle-eastern concepts of Fatwa and Jihad have their roots in historical Alamut. Hence the confusion.)

Brief glimpses of the inner sanctum of the film's Alamut reveal statues of Ganesh and Lakshmi. What? Pre-Islamic Persians had their own ancient pagan gods (Hormuz, Zarathustra, etc.); they didn't worship Indian ones. This is [robably just laziness on the part of a set-dresser. It's a momentary distraction would only bother a hardcore history-buff. Still, given currently uneasy foreign relations with the Middle East, re-naming this location in the script would would have been a good idea, serving to further fictionalize the locale.

The supporting cast is excellent, especially a stately Ben Kingsley as Dastan's royal uncle, and the always solid Alfred Molina as badlands' shady Sheik Amar. Yet, for some reason, everyone in sixth-century Persia speaks in a stilted Queen's English accent. (I understand the Americans even had to study it.) And one of Dastan's older brothers looks, I dunno, Irish maybe? Yet Kingsley and Molina are given ethnic make-up jobs to highlight middle-eastern features. I wonder whey the English players weren't coached to speak in American accents? It's every bit as inaccurate either way.

As for the lead actors: There's something off about the chemistry between Jake Gyllenhaal's Dastan and Gemma Arterton's Tamina. I should enjoy the playful back-and-forth banter between these two more than I actually do. They're likable enough, and they're certainly easy on the eye, but somehow it still doesn't work. As for Jake Gyllenhaal's ability to carry this picture, I think he falls a bit short. He's excellent in action sequences, but doesn't seem to exhibit much range of emotion. Jake, you're a charming, good-looking man; but you can't walk through an entire film doing "the smolder" and expect that to carry you through.

I think it's this lack of chemistry between the leads that brings the tone of Prince of Persia down. This movie looks great, and the many plot twists are interesting; yet it's just not very engaging. I feel detached from it all. Maybe it's a bit too much like a video game; one that would be awesome if I were playing it, but is only mildly amusing when someone else is playing.

Would I watch this movie again? Maybe in eight or ten years. However long it takes older movies to become available for Netflix streaming. Would I buy it? Only from the bargain bin of a clearance outlet.

How is Prince of Persia as a "family feature"? There is violence, but it's "fantasy violence". It's probably fine for teenagers. Its main problem is that the story is much too complicated for younger family members. And the whiz-bang action may amuse teens, but might be a bit tedious for adults because, as I said, it's like watching someone else play a video game. ]]> EZRAtorial Ezra http://www.visionsfantastic.com/forum/showthread.php/31899-Prince-of-Persia-—-Netflix-Second-Look <![CDATA[Gnomeo & Juliet — Netflix Second Look]]> http://www.visionsfantastic.com/forum/showthread.php/31877-Gnomeo-amp-Juliet-—-Netflix-Second-Look?goto=newpost Wed, 15 Feb 2012 01:20:40 GMT

What's in a gnome? Because you're blue, my father sees red. And because I'm red I'm feeling blue... Happy Valentine's Day.

Netflix
Second Look

Gnomeo
& Juliet

—

—

This retelling of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet features a cast of garden gnomes playing all the major parts. When feuding neighbors Ms. Montague and Mr. Capulet leave for the day, their lawn ornaments come to life, continuing the feud of their owners. It's red gnome against blue in back alley lawn mower races, as well as subtle sabotage against eachother's gardens. When Gnomeo (blue) and Juliet (red) meet and fall in love, it's trouble for everyone involved.

The slapstick gags come fast and loose. The cast of ceramic, rubber, and plastic creatures is absurdly charming. The vocal cast includes everything highbrow (Maggie Smith, Patrick Stuart), lowbrow (Hulk Hogan, Ozzy Osbourne) and middling (Dolly Parton, Michael Caine), but amazing talents, all.

Concieved and produced by Elton John, Gnomeo & Juliet features the singer's classic hits but does so in a surprisingly unobtrusive way. I was concerned that the whole affair would be an excuse to string pop songs together, but they're mostly background score. Their appearance is sometimes clever and surprising. Yes, the old Windows error alert does sound like the opening chords of Benny and the Jets! When songs do take the lead, it's to further dramatic moments in the story, and they work rather well.

Of course, there is the trouble that any adaption of this Shakespeare classic faces: Romeo and Juliet is a trajedy. Instead of ignoring the issue, this film handles the problem in an interesting way. Gnomeo directly confronts the bard (in bronze statue form) to make his complaint about the grim ending:
—

—

Gnomeo & Juliet has the look and feel of a Dreamworks Animation or Blue Sky film. The animation was outsourced to Starz Animation, the production house responsible for the Ice Age movies; and its directed by Kelly Asbury, who helmed Shrek 2. So, if you enjoy those films, this is right up your alley. This is a highly enjoyable, funny "popcorn movie", one that I wouldn't mind seeing again and again.

Visually the animation is quite good. It's somewhat limited but well suited to the small scale of the environments (overly manicured gardens), and the "artificial" nature of the (ceramic, plastic) characters.

Gnomeo had a long and troubled history with Disney. Elton John brought it to Disney during Michael Eisner's last days. The project was recieved enthusiastically, partly on the strength of his long history with Disney (The Lion King, Aida). But a coming regime change placed Walt Disney Feature Animation in the hands of Pixar's John Lasseter, who was less than enthused. He may have felt that the whole project was a bit too much like his own Toy Story.

The project was dropped by Disney, but picked up by Disney subsidary Miramax. Gnomeo stayed with Disney after the sale of Miramax, probably because of the troubling amount of Disney references in it. It was finally released through another Disney subsidiary, Touchstone. My feeling is that it's a "good enough" movie to deserve the Disney name, and will probably get it in future releases.

It's a good movie, but I can't help thinking that it would be even better with some guidance from John Lasseter. I think that the will they die or won't they? drama at the end of this film would have played better. A similar scenario in Toy Story 3 had the audience in tears, whereas in this film... we all knew it wasn't going to go that way.

Is it a "family feature". Yes. Absolutely. Having it's source in Shaekpeare, it's fairly complex. But there are enough amusing bits of slapstick and silliness to keep the little ones enthralled, and as well as some cute Shakespeare references to amuse the adults. Also the two leads vocally play it straight. There's none of the hokey insincerity that amuses children, but tends to tick off the adults. The movie doesn't "talk down" to anyone.

How does this movie fair in repeat viewing? Very well. Better than I expected. I would watch this again in a few years. Would I buy this on DVD? It wouldn't have to be in the clearance bin, but it will need to be on sale. ]]> EZRAtorial Ezra http://www.visionsfantastic.com/forum/showthread.php/31877-Gnomeo-amp-Juliet-—-Netflix-Second-Look Christmas Carol — Netflix Second Look http://www.visionsfantastic.com/forum/showthread.php/31845-Christmas-Carol-—-Netflix-Second-Look?goto=newpost Tue, 07 Feb 2012 21:20:15 GMT

It's Charles Dickens' 200th birthday, and a flawed but visually stunning adaption of A Christmas Carol is in the offing.

Netflix
Second Look

Disney's
A Christmas Carol

Today's Google Doodle features characters created by Charles Dickens, in honor of his 200th Birthday:
—

—
In time for the anniversary, I take a second look at Robert Zemeckis' adaption of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. This film was initially surrounded by controversy. ImageMovers, under the direction of Robert Zemeckis, had already produced Polar Express, animated using motion-capture technology. It's a perennial holiday favorite among children, but critics don't like the look of the characters. (see NPR article - Storytelling and the 'Uncanny Valley')

Disney partnered with Zemeckis in 2007 to found ImageMovers Digital for further research and development into motion capture technology. Disney's A Christmas Carol is the first product of that partnership.

—

—

I saw this in 3D at the cineplex when it premiered in 2009. I also saw a 3D preview a few months earlier in an inflatable movie house at Portland's Union Station as part of Amtrak's Christmas Carol Train Tour.
—

—
I even got the opportunity to become a different ghost! But that's all part of Christmas Past. On to the present: Re-watching this film on Netflix. How will it play in 2D on the small screen at home?

For the most part, the opinions I voiced here a couple of years ago haven't changed. So I'll refer you to my looong review of that time. I still feel that this is a very satisfying adaption of A Christmas Carol, in spite of it's many flaws. I'd almost venture to say that this movie is better on a small television than on IMAX 3D. Bob Cratchitt's grief at the loss of Tiny Tim reads just as well, as do all of Jim Carrey's precise little movements and bits of business as Ebenezer Scrooge. The detailed animation of these characters is excellent, and the "uncanny valley" nature of the extras is so much less noticeable on the small screen.

The environments are stylish, stunning and very painterly, and they look beautiful on television as well. Camera angles and lighting designed to take advantage of 3D, not only translate well to 2D but enhance it. The camera work has a dramatic, film noir quality hardly ever seen in movies today. Visually, this movie is gorgeous. (However, the scene in Fezziwig's shop still doesn't cut it. It looks bland and flat, and Mr. and Mrs. Fezziwig's dance still looks ridiculous.)

What I have changed my mind about is the film's consistency. Much of the film has a stately elegance to it: but it's punctuated with staccato moments of broad, slapstick comedy that are a bit too big to fit the tone of the picture. It's a faithful adaption of Dickens' novella that frequently drops into silly farce, and just as quickly picks itself back up again. It feels uneven, disjointed, nearly schizophrenic. You have to choose to ride it out, or be frustrated by it.

As for it's "family friendliness", the silly bits will amuse the children; and the somewhat philosophical script, taken straight from Dickens, will satisfy the adults. However, there are moments of sheer gruesomeness that will terrify children. Ignorance and Want are quite threatening. When the ghost of Jacob Marley's jaw dislocates, even I found it disturbing. It's immediately followed by a comic bit of Jacob "fixing" it, but still, I'm sure it's to much of a gross-out for some kids.

And yet, it includes all the lessons and didactic story elements of the original novella, and for that alone I give it high praise. A Christmas Carol is, after all, a morality tale; and in that, this version succeeds where so many others fail. So with that in mind, I say that Disney's A Christmas Carol is both brilliant and deeply flawed. ]]> EZRAtorial Ezra http://www.visionsfantastic.com/forum/showthread.php/31845-Christmas-Carol-—-Netflix-Second-Look <![CDATA[Sorcerer's Apprentice — Netflix Second Look]]> http://www.visionsfantastic.com/forum/showthread.php/31835-Sorcerer-s-Apprentice-—-Netflix-Second-Look?goto=newpost Sat, 04 Feb 2012 09:36:53 GMT Wizards duel, geek meets girl, and enchanted brooms dance in this odd live-action makeover of an animated classic... Netflix *S*econd *L*ook...

Wizards duel, geek meets girl, and enchanted brooms dance in this odd live-action makeover of an animated classic...

Netflix
Second Look

The
Sorcerer's Apprentice

Disney clearly had trouble promoting this movie. I was somewhat dismayed when I first heard of this live-action "remake" of The Sorcerer's Apprentice, an eight minute segment of Fantasia featuring Mikey Mouse. How on Earth could a story so simple be teased into a full length feature? The initial description at Hollywood Reporter was no help:
—

Quote:

Originally Posted by Borys Kit

Taking its cues from the classic Goethe poem, the live-action feature centers on an apprentice who is left to tend to a magic workshop when his sorcerer master leaves it in his hands. The apprentice gets a broomstick to do his chores for him, but things get out of control when the broom develops a mind of its own.

—
How exactly would this work? Will there be 90 minutes of man vs broom? The first promotional video did nothing to asuage my concern:
—

—
"It's the coolest job ever"? What kind of tag line is that? Former Disney marketing executive MT Carney came up with it. She previously marketed CocaCola and Kraft, but selling a movie is not the same as selling a soft drink or a bag of chips.

After several failed attempts to impress, trailers like this sparked my curiosity.
—

—
Maybe this movie isn't a complete disaster after all. I'm not expecting a masterpiece, mind you, but this could make for an enjoyable matinée. So, with much ambivalence, I saw it at the cineplex. How would it hold up to a repeat viewing?

When awkward physics major Dave Stutler (Jay Baruchel) is identified as a successor to the legendary wizard Merlin, he finds himself caught up in the rivalry between two powerful sorcerers; the eccentric Balthazar Blake (Nicolas Cage) and the suave-but-sinister Maksim Horvath (Alfred Molina). Balthazar, who discovered Dave, takes him as an apprentice. Both sorcerers seek Dave's untapped magical powers, as well as control of several magical objects; most especially the grimhold, a nesting doll set in which the spirits of several ancient sorcerers are imprisoned. Dave and Balthazar seek to prevent Horvath wreaking havoc on New York City by releasing the treacherous sorcerers, especially the infamous Morgana Le Fay.

There are plenty of wonderful special effects, which have a special, whimsical quality. Something about them reminds me of old-school magic in Disney films like, Child of Glass, Something Wicked This Way Comes, or the end of Darby O'Gill and the Little People. It's the sort of movie magic that Peter Elenshaw and Ub Iwerks would have done, if they had been able to develop the tools we have today.

Jay Baruchel brings an amusing comic physicality to the role of the awkward schlep, Dave. The Hollywood convention would be to cast a young heartthrob is this role, artfully tousle his hair, throw a pair of chunky glasses on him, and expect us to accept him as a science geek. It's nice to see a role like this played by an actor who's somewhat nebbish. His oddball reactions to absurd situations are fun to watch.

Reliable character actor Alfred Molina lends a much needed gravity to the character of Horvath. All the roles are over-the-top, but it's Molina that keeps The Sorcerers Apprentice from feeling too frivolous. He grounds the picture.

Nicolas Cage is... Nicolas Cage. He's more of a personality than an actor. The trick of casting is to place him where his personality fits the role. Here I suppose it's a good enough fit. Sometimes celebrity and be distracting; for me, this was the case with Cage, uh, I mean Balthazar.

This is a fun "popcorn movie" filled with likable characters, but I do have a little trouble going along for the ride. The main conflict feels irrelevant. There are sorcerer's on the side of Morgana, and sorcerers on Merlin's side, but they're hardly different. The Merlinians are the "good" guys and the Morganians are the "bad" guys; but only because we are told so by Balthazar. This conflict isn't conveyed very clearly throughout the movie, and a prologue added to the beginning doesn't seem to help much.

The final showdown with the villainous Morgana isn't very satisfying, either. With the exception of an all-too-brief prologue, she only appears in the last few minutes of the film. I think the performances don't stress the impending menace of her release. It's in the script, but gets buried in all the special effects and scenery-chewing. As the focus of the final "boss fight" (to use a game term), she's something of a disappointment. Horvath was much more interesting.

The whole affair feels like the wizards dual in 1963's The Raven, in which Peter Lorre gets caught in the middle of a magical struggle between Vincent Price and Boris Karloff. It's amusing, and the people involved are charming and charismatic; but there's little sense of danger and it doesn't seem to matter who wins. The same could be said of Merlin's duel against Mad Madame Mim in The Sword in the Stone, which spoofs The Raven. It's clever, amusing, and much ado about nothing.

It won't be available for streaming again for a few years, so... It was enjoyable to watch again but, would I buy the DVD? Mmmm... Perhaps, but I wouldn't spend much for it. If I found it in a bargain bin, maybe.

Here's and early scene from the film that should give you the flavor of it. It features Nicolas Cage, Alfred Molina, and young Jake Cherry as 10-year-old Dave.
—

—
P.S. Yes, there's a girl. Of course Dave gets the girl. ...also there's a girl for Balthazar. I suppose there's one for Horvath too, if you count Morgana. ]]> EZRAtorial Ezra http://www.visionsfantastic.com/forum/showthread.php/31835-Sorcerer-s-Apprentice-—-Netflix-Second-Look What makes a Family Feature http://www.visionsfantastic.com/forum/showthread.php/31802-What-makes-a-Family-Feature?goto=newpost Sun, 29 Jan 2012 05:25:59 GMT Netflix *S*econd *L*ook Image: http://www.visionsfantastic.com/forum/gallery/data/3/Netflix.png Since Disney content will only be available...

Netflix
Second Look

Since Disney content will only be available on Netflix Watch Instantly for another month, (see Netflix loses Disney streaming content), I plan to spend an evening or two each week re-watching whatever Disney movies are featured on Netflix Starz Play. But before I begin reviews in earnest, I'd like to give my thoughts on what makes a good "family film" satisfying.

"Family film" has come to mean "kids' movie", but that's not what I'm referring to. I mean "family film" in the sense that Walt Disney himself talked about: A motion pictures that adults and children can all enjoy together. It can be the animated fairy stories that Disney is famous for; or grown-up film that kids also enjoy, like Swiss Family Robinson, or Treasure Island: Either way, it should have some elements that keep everyone engaged.

Creating a "family feature" involves a delicate balance of elements that will appeal to small children, teens, and adults. It's like chemistry, or cooking, and the proportions have to be just right. Each element must make an appearance frequently enough to keep everyone interested. Yet, nothing should seem disparate or out-of-place. The ingredients must blend together enough to feel organic, to seemingly arise naturally from the story.

Walt Disney refined his movie making technique quite early in his feature career. You can see a bit of struggle in the first few features. In Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs the childish and more adult elements don't blend very well. The interactions of the Wicked Queen, the Huntsman, the Prince, and Snow White are clearly in adult territory. Only with the appearance of the forest animals and dwarfs do we really have children's entertainment; and those extensive segments are a bit too long, and (although endearing) are a bit too silly for adults. But, that film is breathtakingly beautiful. It's a glorious masterwork, imperfect though it may be.

With Pinocchio some thought is given to alternating between comic gags and serious story elements much more frequently. In that regard, it's more of a success. But the three "acts" (Stromboli's puppet theater, Pleasure Island, and Monstro segments) aren't well connected. The story doesn't flow the way Snow White did, in a way that adults prefer. Yet it's another finely crafted and stunning film. Perfect in it's imperfection.

After those films Dumbo seems like a retreat. It places itself squarely in kiddie territory, shying away from the more dramatic elements of the previous films. (There are patricular moments of horror in Snow White and Pinocchio, which are absent here.) The characters are overly cute, and the whole affair has the look and feel of a Silly Symphony cartoon. But it's utterly charming, has some catchy tunes, and is mercifully short at 64 minutes.

Bambi seems to strike a more even tone between cuteness and drama throughout, although it turns quite dark at the end. Each film improves on the methods of the previous ones. Is there a "perfect" family film? One that the adults and teens enjoy all the way through, that also doesn't make the little ones restless? It's hard to say, but some films come closer than others.

Anyway, you get the idea. As I review various films before they disappear from Netflix, I'll occasionally touch of how the films plays as a "family features". ]]> EZRAtorial Ezra http://www.visionsfantastic.com/forum/showthread.php/31802-What-makes-a-Family-Feature Be Our Guest, Gustav Mahler! http://www.visionsfantastic.com/forum/showthread.php/31694-Be-Our-Guest-Gustav-Mahler!?goto=newpost Thu, 05 Jan 2012 05:10:51 GMT Amid Amidi from Cartoon Brew pointed out a distinct similarity (http://www.cartoonbrew.com/disney/be-our-guest-and-mahlers-symphony-no-3.html)... Amid Amidi from Cartoon Brew pointed out a distinct similarity between Alan Menkin's song "Be Our Guest" from Beauty and the Beast and a dance-like theme from the first movement of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 3. Here is the accompanying video:
—

—
I own Gustav Mahler 10 Symphonies by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Rafael Kubelik. So I already knew about the similarities between "Be Our Guest" and Mahler's Symphony No. 3, but never even thought to mention it. It's very common for popular music composers to draw from classical sources, especially for movie scores.

In fact, classical composers adopt themes from popular songs as well. Bach, Beethoven and Mozart are particularly notorious for borrowing "street songs" for some of their lighter works. This borrowing was not only accepted, but encouraged, especially among the Romantics. Rachmaninoff played piano in movie houses for a living, and Prokofiev scored films. It's only natural that classical and popular music inter-marry.

Gustav Mahler borrowed not only from drinking-songs heard in his father's Bavarian tavern, but also from marches played by a local military band in his hometown.

In the context of the symphony, this music comes as a relief, after a bombastic fanfare, and nearly ten minutes of a slow, tense, march reminiscent of a funeral dirge. Here is the theme slowly unfolding, only to be interrupted by the dirge again and again...
—

—
...this dance-like theme is nearly swallowed by other themes. But after adopting the tonality of the opening fanfare, and the heaviness of the dirge, and the crispness of the marching band, the theme emerges again, triumphant:
—

—
Composers know good music when they hear it. It's irresistible, regardless of the discipline it's from.

I'll leave you with this... the romance between the Land of Symphony and the Isle of Jazz... From Walt Disney's Silly Symphonies' Music Land.
—

— ]]> EZRAtorial Ezra http://www.visionsfantastic.com/forum/showthread.php/31694-Be-Our-Guest-Gustav-Mahler! <![CDATA[Where's Pooh?]]> http://www.visionsfantastic.com/forum/showthread.php/31117-Where-s-Pooh?goto=newpost Fri, 15 Jul 2011 06:09:40 GMT *Pooh placed on too few screens* Finding Winnie the Pooh on a the big screen near you may prove to be a daunting task this weekend. The new...

Pooh placed on too few screens

Finding Winnie the Pooh on a the big screen near you may prove to be a daunting task this weekend. The new animated feature from Disney is having difficulty finding sufficient placement with exhibitors this week. In a summer season crowded with tent-pole features, most notably the final Harry Potter film, on screen sightings of the silly ol' bear are few and far between.

Here in Portland, OR, for example, there are 16 movie houses listed on Fandango, a majority of them multiplexes. To my dismay, when I search for a Saturday showing, I find Winnie the Pooh on only one screen. Even worse, it's screening only three show-times, implying that's it's sharing it's sole screen with another film. There are more options if I were to choose to take a commuter train out to the 'burbs. It's not that Portland is a small market: Even movies that are in very limited release play here.

I assume, based upon the reviews I've read, that Winnie the Pooh is a gentle, quiet little film. A review in yesterday's Willamette Week calls it's simple, unassuming and "a bit of an anachronism" (A bear of very little impact).

Given that point, I question the decision to release it in the summer, where it can barely find a foothold wedged as it is amid big blockbusters. A quaint, old-fashioned hand-drawn film like this seems better suited to the winter holiday season than midsummer. I especially question Sean Bailey's choice of July 15th, the same day the final installment of the Harry Potter Juggernaut arrives. Bailey couldn't have expected adequate placement for Pooh this weekend.

It hardly seems possible that this opening could be merely a poor choice; it's more like a planned obsolescence. I wonder if Rich Ross and Sean Bailey want to intentionally "drive another nail into the coffin" of traditional hand-drawn animation. Meager box office numbers in Winnie the Pooh's domestic opening weekend could do just that — and with very little real financial risk: This film will make a fortune in DVD sales, and spark a healthy up-tick in Pooh-related merchandise.

Worst of all, there's little a Disney fans can do to show support for the traditional art of hand-drawn animation — because, quite frankly, how much money could three Saturday screenings take in, even if they sell out? Not much by Hollywood standards. It's a sad situation. Very sad.

—

]]> EZRAtorial Ezra http://www.visionsfantastic.com/forum/showthread.php/31117-Where-s-Pooh Dragonwyck http://www.visionsfantastic.com/forum/showthread.php/31066-Dragonwyck?goto=newpost Sun, 03 Jul 2011 17:27:14 GMT

Following so closely after last month's Haunted Influences, I was tempted to name this article Haunted Affluence because it's more of a "class act" than the previous entry: Joseph L. Mankiewicz's 1946 film Dragonwyck, starring Gene Tierney and Vincent Price. Although not, strictly speaking, a horror film, Imagineers may have screened this film on the strength of Vincent Price's later reputation.

Dragonwyck is a Gothic romance, much along the same lines as 1940's Rebecca. A young, naïve Gene Tierney is brought to stay at Dragonwyck, an estate in the Hudson Valley owned by the handsome and enigmatic Vincent Price. Price wouldn't be typecast as the "master of horror" for another decade, and is a "dreamboat" leading man here. A darker side to his character is eventually revealed — Just what is he doing up there in his forbidden tower room? The creepy chambermaid gives cryptic warnings (à la Rebecca).

Although Vincent Price and Gene Tierney are excellent in this film, there's nothing in the story that relates to The Haunted Mansion; so we'll focus on the production design, which closely resembles the Florida version of this classic attraction. First there's the location on a bluff overlooking the Hudson river...

Look familiar?

There is a conservatory at the end of one wing of the house...

... where our lovely protagonist has an early pivotal scene with her handsome costar.

There are stately gardens, with very heavy cement urns on pedestals every so often.

You'll also see these in 1964's Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte where they figure prominently in the story. As an aside, I'd like to suggest Hush, Hush as another design influence. Who can look at this publicity still of Bette Davis and Joan Crawford and not think of Marc Davis' stretching portrait of the Widow Patecleaver perched atop George's headstone?

...anyway, back to Dragonwyck. The interiors resemble every version of the The Haunted Mansion attraction so named (i.e. not Phantom Manor or Mystic Manor).

There is a wood-paneled ballroom with a long stairway at the back leading to an upper floor.

Also take note of the old-fashioned maid uniform, which is similar to that of attraction hosts — although the design has been simplified over the years.

Doors leading to the bed-chambers are enormous and ornate, similar to those in Robert Wise's The Haunting. Although these don't breathe, they do admit that oh-so-creepy chambermaid.

There are heavy, dark, ornately carved and vaguely coffin-shaped wood moldings everywhere in the house....

...as well as a few typical "old dark house" conventions scattered about; such as an eerily lit and creepy grandfather clock...

...and the portrait of a deceased wife, illuminated by frequent lightning flashes.

Once again, I have no references to present that link this film to the attraction, so my ascertains that Imagineers saw this film are solely conjecture. Do you suppose they did?

]]> EZRAtorial Ezra http://www.visionsfantastic.com/forum/showthread.php/31066-Dragonwyck Haunted influences http://www.visionsfantastic.com/forum/showthread.php/31016-Haunted-influences?goto=newpost Thu, 23 Jun 2011 23:22:35 GMT

Disney is fond of touting classic horror films like Robert Wise's 1963 film The Haunting as reference material for The Haunted Mansion attraction — and the influence is clearly evident — but I suspect that many lesser films or "B movies" also had some small influence. When viewing Marc Davis' humorous concept sketches for The Haunted Mansion, for example, I'm reminded of the ghostly lion and lion-tamer in William Castle's 1960 gimmicky 13 Ghosts (13 Times the Thrills! 13 Times the Fun!).

Rolly Crump recalls watching a lot of horror films during the early 1960s. Imagineers watched every spooky film that came out, and ordered prints of every older film they could lay their hands on. "We watched everything!"

Today I'm going to submit a terrible B movie for consideration as possibly influential to the development of The Haunted Mansion: 1962's Carnival of Souls, a film with an amateur cast and minuscule budget made by production company that specialized in industrial how-to films. After inexplicably surviving a serious auto accident unscathed, a young woman is plagued by brief glimpses of a ghostly, corpse-like figure, seen chiefly in reflections "out of the corner of the eye" so to speak.
—

—

A second glance usually reveals her own reflection instead.
—

—
The Haunted Mansion's hitchhiking ghosts, seen a reflections in mirrors, is brought to mind. I am also reminded of the ghostly images that briefly appear in portraits when a flash of lightning falls on them. This also reminds me of the intermittent appearance and disappearance of transparent ghosts in the ballroom.

If this were the only similarity, I'd pass it off as coincidence, but it isn't. Our heroine is attracted by the abandoned Saltair Amusement Park on the Great Salt Lake, which she explores. She is drawn to return at the end of the film to find a crowd of the dead frolicking there. The idea of ghosts having a party definitely reminds me of the last half of The Haunted Mansion attraction: which is one big shindig.

In the dilapidated dance pavilion, she finds a party in progress. Ghosts are dancing to a "spirited" waltz.
—

—
Look familiar?

If that isn't enough to convince you that this is more than just a coincidence, there's the movie score... The main character, you see, is a musician; specifically an organist. In the beginning of the film she's employed demonstrating the enormous instruments in a pipe-organ factory.
—

—
It's a little character detail that justifies Glen Moore's remarkable score for the film, comprised almost entirely of pipe-organ solos. Even the pop music emitted from a car radio is pipe-organ. Similarly, The Haunted Mansion's score, while not entirely organ solos, features the pipe-organ quite heavily. The organ is nearly always part of every music ensemble in some small capacity, even in the "swinging" graveyard scene.

After our heroine's near-fatal accident, she takes a job as a church organist. While practicing hymns, she daydreams about the abandoned amusement park. She falls into a trance and begins to play an urgent, frenetic, carnival-like waltz.
—

—
The same music is repeated later on in the dance pavilion, where the dead are waltzing to it. While none of the music in the film has melodies similar to that of Grim Grinning Ghosts, it has a strikingly similar feel and character... especially the carnival waltz.

This ascertation of mine that Carnival of Souls was an influence in the development of The Haunted Mansion is solely based on conjecture. I have no references to present that link this film to the attraction. I am merely pointing out similarities between the attraction and the film. But these traits are not common to all "old dark house" horror films: The qualities that make this film similar to the attraction, also make this film unique.

]]> EZRAtorial Ezra http://www.visionsfantastic.com/forum/showthread.php/31016-Haunted-influences