October Review: Corpse Bride (2005)

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according to plan, albert finney, animated, animated feature, animated movie, animated movie review, animated musical, animation, animators, barkis bittern, black widow spider, bonejangles, bride, christopher lee, claymation, corpse bride, corpses, danny elfman, dead, elder gutknecht, emile, emily, emily watson, finis everglot, folk tale, folk tales, folktale, helena bonham carter, jane horrocks, johnny depp, Laika, land of the dead, land of the living, maggot, marry, maudeline everglot, michael gough, mrs. plum, nell van dort, Non-Disney, pastor galswells, paul the head waiter, remains of the day, richard e grant, scraps, skeleton, skeletons, stop motion animation, stop-motion, tears to shed, the wedding song, tim burton, tracy ullman, undead, van dort, victor, victor van dort, victoria, victoria everglot, william van dort

A long time ago in Russia, a young Jewish man was on his way to his wedding accompanied by his friends. As they passed by an old tree in the woods, the groom noticed to his amusement a stick poking from the ground that resembled a bony finger clawing its way out of the earth. In jest, the groom placed his wedding ring on the stick and recited his vows to his “wife”, performing the wedding ritual and making his companions roar with laughter. Little did he know that he made a grave error indeed.

The ground began to shake beneath them. A enormous hole opened up, out of it where the stick once lay rose a horrifying corpse! She was little more than a skeleton wrapped in bits of skin and a rotting wedding dress with a spider’s web for a veil. The bride had been murdered on her way to her own wedding years before by anti-Semitic Cossacks. Now that the groom had made his vows to her, she claimed him as her own.

In terror and desperation, the groom and his friends fled to the rabbi for help. Surely the wisest and most learned holy man in the village would know what to do. The groom presented his dilemma (as a hypothetical question, of course), but as the rabbi pondered it, the doors of the synagogue burst open, and there before them stood the corpse bride. Once again she laid claim to the young groom, this time with the whole village – and the groom’s living bride – there to witness it. With the situation blown wide open, the rabbi gathered other rabbis from the surrounding villages to consult with them. The village waited anxiously for their outcome, the groom’s living bride most of all. Finally, the rabbi presented his answer:

“It is true, you have put the ring on the finger of the corpse bride and recited your vows, which constitutes a proper wedding – however, the vows state that you must seek a life together hallowed by faith. Since the bride is already deceased, she has no claim upon the living.”

The groom and his living bride were relieved. The poor corpse bride, on the other hand, wailed and collapsed to the ground in tears. “My last chance at a happy life, gone! My dreams of love and family will never be fulfilled, every thing is lost forever now.” She was a pitiable sight, a heap of bones in a ragged wedding dress sobbing on the floor – yet who should show her compassion but the living bride herself? The young woman knelt and gathered up the corpse bride, holding and comforting her like a mother would a crying child.

“Don’t worry,” she murmured in her ear, “I will live your dreams for you. I will have children in your name, enough for the two of us, and you can rest knowing our children and children’s children will be taken care of and never forget you.” The living bride tenderly carried the corpse bride to the river and dug a grave for her, decorating it with stones and wildflowers, and laid her in there herself. At last, the corpse bride knew peace, and she closed her eyes. The living bride and her groom were married, and she kept her promise to the corpse bride: she had many children, and those children had children, and they always told the story of the corpse bride and the kindness she was shown so she’d never be forgotten.

This is a semi-abridged version of an old Jewish folktale that would have remained in obscurity if it hadn’t reached the late Joe Ranft, storyboard artist for Pixar and a little movie called The Nightmare Before Christmas. He passed it on to his good buddy Tim Burton and big surprise, this rather macabre love story clicked with him. Corpse Bride debuted in 2005, the same year as Burton’s Willy Wonka remake, and it’s safe to say that this my preferred film between the two. Obviously, comparisons between this and the previous Tim Burton stop-motion musical (which he did NOT actually direct, see the opening of my Coraline review) will be inevitable, but Corpse Bride is a fine companion piece to Nightmare in nearly every way.

…Then I watched The Princess and the Scrivener’s video on the film (do check out their channel by the way) where they raised a highly pertinent question. If you’ve seen the movie already, I’m sure you’ve noticed one major difference between this and the story it’s based on:

So because Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride changes the setting of this Russian-Jewish folktale to England and made the characters Christian (as well as taking Burton’s own dodgy history when it comes to diverse casting into account), does that make it guilty of Jewish erasure?

Look, events this past year have made me re-evaluate many of my views and privileges as a white person. I want to be as woke and supportive of as many marginalized voices as possible, and that includes reassessing media I previously assumed was harmless or at least fair for its day. I truly want to see more Jewish characters and stories in mainstream entertainment that aren’t overused stereotypes or victims (the only Jewish movies I can think of that don’t involve the atrocities of World War 2 are Fiddler On The Roof and Yentl). After seeing Scrivener’s video, I sometimes wonder how much more we could have gotten if they kept the film more grounded in its Semitic roots. In fact, wouldn’t there be far more tension and a greater commentary on marrying outside of race, class and religion if they kept Victoria Christian but made Victor Jewish? Wouldn’t it be nice to have a thoughtful, questioning rabbi to counter Pastor Gallswell’s narrow-minded austerity?

That being said, however, I still don’t have much of a problem with the changes made in Corpse Bride. Folktales are meant to be retold with changes naturally evolving through the centuries. Sometimes the true strength in a story lies in how it well it can be told through different ethnic lenses. HBO’s animated series Happily Ever After is excellent in this regard, giving us creative cultural retellings of familiar stories ranging from an Inuit Snow Queen to a Rastafarian Rumpelstiltskin. The fact that so much of the grimness and heart of the original tale remains after its conversion to Christianity is a testament to how well they managed to pull this adaptation off.

March Review: Sleeping Beauty (1959)

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Whenever I discuss Sleeping Beauty with someone who doesn’t share my enthusiasm for Disney, they have an irksome tendency to get it muddled with Snow White; their excuse being “it has the same plot”. I’ll admit, there are some surface similarities that even the most casual viewer can pick up on: a fairytale where a princess is forced into unconsciousness and wakes up with some necking, the comic relief and villain being the most beloved characters, a little frolic in the forest with animals, the antagonist plunging off a cliff, you get the idea. In fact, Sleeping Beauty even reuses some discarded story beats from Snow White, mainly our couple dancing on a cloud and the villain capturing the prince to prevent him from waking his princess. Yet despite that, Snow White and Sleeping Beauty are two wholly different movies shaped by the era and talents of the time.

I’ve discussed how Walt Disney was never one to stick to a repeated formula, no matter how successful it was. He must have noticed the parallels between his first movie and this one, but decided to make one crucial change for Sleeping Beauty that would forever differentiate the two: the look. We all know the traditional Disney house style: round, soft shapes, big eyes; charming as it was and still is, Walt was sick of it after several decades. Meanwhile, artists like Mary Blair and Eyvind Earle were producing gorgeous concept art that rarely made a perfect translation into the Disney house style.

Walt wanted to make a feature that took the pop artistry of their designs and made the animation work for it instead of the other way around – which brings us to another animation studio that was doing well at the time, United Pictures Animation, or UPA.

UPA didn’t have the kind of budget Disney normally had for their animated projects, but what they lacked in fluidity they made up for in style. Watch The Tell-Tale Heart, Gerald McBoing-Boing and Rooty-Toot-Toot to see what I mean. UPA were pioneers of limited animation, taking their scant resources and creating some striking visuals with bold geometric designs. Through this, they defined the look of 50’s animation. Though perhaps unintentional, Sleeping Beauty comes across as Disney’s response to UPA, or what would happen if UPA had the funds they deserved. The characters’ contours are angular but effortlessly graceful, defining their inherent dignity and royalty. And the colors, ohhh the colors…

Because of the immense amount of work required to animate in this difficult new style (and in the Cinemascope ratio, no less) as well as story troubles and Walt barely supervising the animation studio now that he had his hands full with live-action films, television, and a theme park, Sleeping Beauty had a turbulent production that lasted the entirety of the 1950s. For a time, Chuck Jones of Looney Tunes fame was set to direct. Director Wilfred Jackson suffered a heart attack partway through production and Eric Larson, one of the Nine Old Men, took the mantle from there before Walt Disney replaced him Clyde Geronimi. And even after that, Wolfgang Reitherman teamed up with Geronimi as co-director to get the film finished after no less than three delays. Also, Don Bluth got his foot in the door as an assistant animator for this feature, beginning his short-lived but impactful tenure at Disney. Did all this hamper the movie, or did they succeed in what they set out to accomplish?

Well, one of the reasons why this review took so long was because I had a hard time not repeating “MOVIE PRETTY” and “MALEFICENT AWESOME” over and over. Make what you will of that.

April Review: The Pagemaster (1994)

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1990's, 20th century fox, 2D animation, 90's, 90s movie, adventure, animated, animated feature, animated movie, animated movie review, animation, animators, book, books, captain ahab, cartoon review, christopher lloyd, classic literature, david kirschner, dr. jekyll, dream away, edward hyde, fairies, fairy tale, Fantasy, film, film review, frank welker, frankenstein, george hearn, ghost stories, hand drawn animation, haunted house, henry jekyll, Horror, James Horner, jim cummings, joe johnston, leonard nimoy, library, literature, living books, macaulay culkin, moby dick, mother goose, movie, movie review, mr. hyde, Non-Disney, nostalgia, obscure animated movie, obscure animation, pagemaster, patrick stewart, puns, review, stephen king, The Pagemaster, the strange case of dr. jekyll and mr. hyde, traditional animation, treasure island, turner animation, wendy moten, whatever you imagine, whoopi goldberg

I expected this movie to have a few votes from those who remembered it as kids. I never expected it to win by a landslide. Lesson learned: never underestimate a nostalgic kids’ movie from the ’90s.

Once upon a time, David Kirschner, producer of An American Tail among other things, took his daughters to the New York Public Library. This visit inspired him to write a story about a fantastical adventure that would get kids excited about reading. The result was The Pagemaster, a 1994 box-office bomb that would go on to develop a cult following among children like me who grew up watching it. Animation historians tend to lump The Pagemaster in with the likes of Thumbelina or Quest For Camelot: 90s features that tried to coast off the success of Disney’s Renaissance films yet failed to match their caliber. But actually, trailers for The Pagemaster played in theaters and on home video a good four years before the movie was released…it was still in production for most of that time so the amount of influence Disney had on it is up for debate, but the point remains. I’m willing to bet what played a major part in its delay was the myriad of problems that cropped up during the filmmaking, from David Kirschner suing the Writers Guild of America for not receiving the sole story credit he felt was owed, to the plot being rewritten in the middle of the animation process, which is never a good thing. I’ve also heard stories about Macaulay Culkin being a diva on set, but knowing what we know now about his abusive father explains a lot so I’m not holding that against him.

And here’s another fun fact I dug up while doing my research: apparently Stephen King of all people wrote the treatment for The Pagemaster, which certainly explains the film’s more horrific elements. Does this means this movie is technically part of the King multiverse? I can see Richard hanging out with The Losers Club on weekends and trying to avoid killer clowns and langoliers in his spare time.

Though it was released under the 20th Century Fox banner, The Pagemaster was the first of only two animated films created by Turner Feature Animation, an off-shoot of Hanna-Barbera founded by media mogul Ted Turner. In hindsight, it’s not surprising that Turner had a hand in this children’s flick with an educational message. Let’s not forget the last animated project he invested himself in was all about teaching kids environmentalism in the cheesiest way possible.

But unlike Captain Planet, does The Pagemaster hold up after all these years? Will it get kids sucked into the magic of reading? And how long can I go without forcing in a Home Alone reference? Read on and find out.

January Review: Fantasia 2000

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2000, 2000's, 2D animation, action, al hirschfeld, angela lansbury, animated, animated feature, animated movie, animated movie review, animated musical, animated short, animated shorts, animation, animator, animators, anthropomorphic animals, art, ballerina, Beethoven, bette midler, brave tin soldier, Camille Saint-Saëns, Carnival of Animals, Carnival of the Animals, carnival of the animals finale, cgi animation, computer animation, continuation, continued, daisy duck, deer, Disney, disney animated, disney animated feature, disney animated movie, disney animation, disney love, disney review, Dmitri Shostakovich, Donald Duck, Edward Elgar, eric goldberg, fairy tale, Fantasia, Fantasia 2000, Fantasy, Fifth Symphony, film, firebird, firebird suite, flamingo, flamingoes, flight, flood, flying, George Gershwin, gershwin, giant whale, Great Depression, great flood, hand drawn animation, hans christian andersen, Igor Stravinsky, jack in the box, James Earl Jones, Ludwig van Beethoven, Mickey Mouse, music, nature, New York, noah's ark, Ottorino Respighi, part 2, penn, penn and teller, Pines of Rome, pomp and circumstance, rebirth, review, Rhapsody in Blue, sequel, sorcerer mickey, Sorcerer’s Apprentice, spring sprite, stars, steadfast tin soldier, Stravinsky, supernova, Symphony No. 5, teller, the steadfast tin soldier, themes, tin soldier, traditional animation, volcano, Walt Disney, whale, whales, yo-yo, yoyo

Last year I talked about Fantasia, which is not just one of my favorite Disney movies, but one of my favorite movies in general. And if I may be self-indulgent for a moment, it’s also one of the reviews that I’m the proudest of. Fantasia is a visual, emotional masterpiece that marries music and art in a manner few cinematic ventures have come close to replicating. One question that remains is what my thoughts on the long-gestated sequel is –

…you might wanna get yourselves some snacks first.

As anyone who read my review on the previous film knows, Fantasia was a project ahead of its time. Critics and audiences turned their noses up at it for conflicting reasons, and the film didn’t even make it’s budget back until twenty-something years later when they began marketing it to a very different crowd.

“I don’t wanna alarm you dude, but I took in some Fantasia and these mushrooms started dancing, and then there were dinosaurs everywhere and then they all died, but then these demons were flying around my head and I was like WOOOOOAAAHHH!!”

“Yeah, Fantasia is one crazy movie, man.”

“Movie?”

Fantasia’s unfortunate box office failure put the kibosh on Walt Disney’s plans to make it a recurring series with new animated shorts made to play alongside handpicked favorites. The closest he came to following through on his vision was Make Mine Music and Melody Time, package features of shorts that drew from modern music more than classical pieces.

Fast-forward nearly fifty years later to the golden age known as the Disney Renaissance: Walt’s nephew Roy E. Disney surveys the new crop of animators, storytellers, and artists who are creating hit after hit and have brought the studio back to his uncle’s glory days, and thinks to himself, “Maybe now we can make Uncle Walt’s dream come true.” He made a good case for it, but not everyone was on board. Jeffrey Katzenberg loathed the idea, partly because he felt the original Fantasia was a tough act to follow (not an entirely unreasonable doubt) but most likely due to the fact that the last time Disney made a sequel, The Rescuers Down Under, it drastically underperformed (even though the reasons for that are entirely Katzenberg’s fault. Seriously, watch Waking Sleeping Beauty and tell me you don’t want to punch him in the nose when Mike Gabriel recalls his opening weekend phone call).

Once Katzenberg was out of the picture, though, Fantasia 2000, then saddled with the less dated but duller moniker Fantasia Continued, got the go-ahead. Many of the sequences were made simultaneously as the animated features my generation most fondly remembers, others were created to be standalone shorts before they were brought into the fold. Since it was ready in time for the new millennium, it not only got a name change but a massive marketing campaign around the fact that it would be played on IMAX screens for a limited run, the very first Disney feature to do so. As a young Fantasia fan who had never been to one of those enormous theaters before, I begged and pleaded my parents to take me. Late that January, we traveled over to the IMAX theater at Lincoln Center, the only one nearest to us since they weren’t so widespread as they are now, and what an experience it was. I can still recall the feeling of awe at the climax of Pines of Rome, whispering eagerly with my mom at how the beginning of Rhapsody in Blue looked like a giant Etch-A-Sketch, and jumping twenty feet in the air when the Firebird’s massive eyes popped open. But did later viewings recapture that magic, or did that first time merely color my perception?

Previews for Patrons!

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animated movie review, cartoon review, Christmas review, disney review, early access, excerpt, film review, movie review, musical review, patreon, patron, preview, review, reward, television review, tv review

Hi all, I’ve been doing some thinking about Patreon lately and I feel like I’m not doing enough. I’m grateful to my loyal patrons but it isn’t easy creating bonus content or early access for blog posts as it is videos.

That’s why from now on, for $5 or more, you can access excerpts from upcoming reviews. Join today and you can get a sneak peek at a bit of the Rudolph review, which won’t be out until December 1st. Thanks, and I’ll see you soon!

August Review: Shrek (2001)

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2000's, 2001, academy awards, Action-Adventure, adventure, all star, animated, animated feature, animated franchise, animated movie, animated movie review, animation, anthropomorphic animal, Cameron Diaz, cgi animation, children’s book, computer animation, donkey, dragon, Dreamworks, Duloc, Eddie Murphy, fairies, fairy, fairy tale, Fantasy, Farquaad, Fiona, franchise, Gingerbread Man, Gingy, hallelujah, Hollywood, I'm a Believer, jeffrey katzenberg, John Lithgow, knight, Lord Farquaad, magic mirror, meme, memes, Michael Eisner, Mike Myers, movie review, ogre, ogres are like onions, ogress, onion, oscar winning, oscars, Pinocchio, pop culture reference, princess, Princess Fiona, quest, review, Robin Hood, Shrek, shrek is love, shrek is love shrek is life, shrek meme, shrek memes, smash mouth, spell, swamp, three little pigs, Vincent Cassel, william steig

Oh, Shrek. Where to begin with this guy?

That’s a rhetorical question, I know exactly where to start. It all comes back to one man, a man with a vision: to stick it to his former boss.

We meet again, Katzenberg.

There’s a lot of history and tangled truths behind the birth of Shrek, and Jeffrey Katzenberg is at the dead center of it. I was sorely tempted to make this another two-parter like the Black Cauldron review to go into more detail, but I was already running behind schedule with March of the Wooden Soldiers so here’s a slightly condensed version:

Between the disaster that was the making of The Black Cauldron and the glorious premiere of The Lion King, Katzenberg picked up a few tricks when it came to making acclaimed animated features. Then in 1994, Disney CEO Frank Wells was killed in a helicopter accident, and the Magic Kingdom was torn asunder as Michael Eisner took the reins and began his descent into madness. Katzenberg hoped that he would inherit Eisner’s former position of Vice President, but here’s where things get tricky. Katzenberg claims that Eisner fired him when he made his ambitions known; but the way Eisner tells it, Katzenberg was impatient, ungrateful, took way too much credit for the studio’s successes, and left of his own accord. Either way, it was a notoriously bitter separation with deep ramifications for the animation industry. Apparently Disney didn’t learn their lesson with Don Bluth because once again they wound up creating their biggest competitor – and this time, they were here to stay.

Katzenberg teamed up with David Geffen and the one and only Steven Spielberg to create Dreamworks SKG, the first major studio to truly rival Disney when it came to making animated motion pictures. The most important thing to them was to not be like every other feature on the market. For the first few years they flipped between making some great traditionally animated films that have been swept under the rug (Spirit, Sinbad and The Road to El Dorado are enjoying a comfortable cult status online and The Prince of Egypt only just got upgraded to blu-ray last year. Still waiting on that Broadway version, though), and openly trying to one-up their direct competition (when not teaming up Aardman to produce the same but with effort and a soul). Pixar announces their next movie is about ants? Dreamworks comes out the following week and says they’re doing a CGI movie about ants. Pixar says they’re making a film about fish? Dreamworks makes one about fish the following year. They make movies for children of all ages but with A-list actors, no Alan Menken musical numbers, and attituuuuude, dude. And nowhere is that jealousy and vitriol towards Disney more obvious than in what we’re reviewing today.

Shortly after Dreamworks was founded, co-head of the motion pictures division Laurie MacDonald gave Katzenberg a book by esteemed children’s author/illustrator William Steig simply called “Shrek!”; a fractured fairytale where a fire-breathing ogre was the hero, a donkey was his noble steed, and his happily ever after is defeating a valiant knight and marrying a princess even uglier than he is. He took one look at it, saw how it turned the traditional Disney-style fantasy he helped re-popularize in the 90’s on its head, the potential for even more slams at Disney fairytales and celebrity voice casting that worked gangbusters with Aladdin and had this to say:

Shrek evolved far beyond its humble literary origins into a green middle finger pointed at Katzenberg’s former workplace, and audiences and critics ate it up because nobody had dared to do such a thing before. And I’m not gonna lie, I loved this movie when I was a kid. But over time, mostly thanks to Katzenberg’s penchant for quantity over quality, Shrek became the very thing it was parodying: a shallow, over-hyped, over-marketed fairytale cash grab, and it’s affected my view of the original installment somewhat.

Well, it’s time for this non-star to get my game on and hopefully get paid. Let’s look at Dreamworks’ watershed studio-defining blockbuster…Shrek.

March Review: Fantasia (1940)

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abstract, adventure, alligator, animal ballerinas, animated, animated movie review, animation, Arabian Dance, Ave Maria, Bacchus, bald mountain, ballerina, ballet, Beethoven, bells, Bill Tytla, cartoon review, cathedral, centaurettes, centaurs, Chernabog, cherubs, Chinese Dance, classic disney, classical, classical music, crocodile, Dance of the Hours, Dance of the Reed Flutes, Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy, dawn, Deems Taylor, demons, devil, devils, dinosaurs, Disney, disney animated, disney animation, disney review, elephant, expressionism, fairies, Fantasia, fantasound, fauns, flowers, Franz Schubert, ghosts, herman schultheis, hippo, holy pilgrimage, Igor Stravinsky, La Gioconda, Leopold, Leopold Stokowski, lost notebook, magic, Mickey Mouse, Modest Mussorgsky, movie review, mushrooms, music, musical, musical review, nature, nature ballet, Night on Bald Mountain, Nutcracker suite, ostrich, Pastoral Symphony, Paul Dukas, pilgrims, Rite of Spring, Russian Dance, slavic folklore, slavic gods, snow, snowflakes, Sorcerer’s Apprentice, soundtrack, stereo, Stokowski, Stravinsky, Sunflower, Tchaikovsky, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Toccata and Fugue, Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, unicorns, Vladimir Tytla, walpurgis night, Walt Disney, Waltz of the Flowers, witches, Woolie Reitherman, Zeus

And now we come to the final piece of Walt Disney’s original animation trifecta, Fantasia, and it’s one I’m both anticipating and dreading. Fantasia isn’t just one of the crowning jewels in Disney’s canon, a landmark in motion picture animation, and second only to Snow White in terms of influential music and storytelling in the whole medium, it’s one of my top three favorite movies of all time. Discussing it without sounding like an old history professor, a pretentious internet snob, or a hyper Disney fangirl is one hell of a daunting task.

“Did someone say hyper Disney fangirl?! I LOVE Disney!!”

“I thought you only liked Frozen.”

“Well, DUH, Frozen is my favorite, which makes it, like, the best Disney movie ever! But Disney’s awesome! There’s a bunch of other movies I like that are almost as good!”

“And Fantasia’s one of them?”

“Yeah!!…Which one is that again?”

“The one with Sorcerer Mickey?”

“Ohhhh, you’re talking about the fireworks show where he fights the dragon!”

“No, that’s Fantasmic. I’m referring to Fantasia. Came out the same year as Pinocchio? All done in hand-drawn animation…has the big devil guy at the end?”

“THAT’S where he’s from?! Geez, that’s some old movie. Why haven’t I heard about ’til now?”

“Probably because you spend twelve hours a day searching for more Frozen GIFs to reblog on your Tumblr.”

“Ooh, that reminds me! I need to go post my next batch of theories about the upcoming sequel! Toodles!!”

“Thanks. Another second with her and I would’ve bust a gasket.”

“Don’t mention it.”

Shelf Updates, February 2019

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animated movie review, break, cartoon, cartoon review, disney review, movie review, music review, musical, musical review, tv review

What’s up, fellow readers? It took longer than I anticipated, but the Pinocchio review is finally out. And thankfully I’ve got at least a week before March’s review is due so that should be plenty of time to finish –

Oh. Right. Shortest month of the year. Duh.

See, normally I’d go into overtime to get it done as close to the due date as possible, but I’ve got to prepare for my cousin’s wedding next week. That normally wouldn’t be a big deal except for the fact my cousin is getting married IN ARGENTINA.

Like, WOW.

It’s not mind blowing enough that the first of my generation’s kin is partaking in holy matrimony, but it’s a major destination wedding. I’ve never left the country to visit a completely new one before. It’s an experience I’m eagerly looking forward to.

On top of that, Argentinian weddings aren’t your average sit-down dinners punctuated with dancing to Top 40 hits like here in the states, no no no no. Argentina weddings are FUCKING BACCHANALIAS. They literally, and I mean LITERALLY last the entire night, with more and more varieties of delicious barbecued sustenance and desserts added by the hour. So not only will I be very busy preparing for this trip, I will most likely be in a giant food coma for some time after, thus unfit to complete a review in time for April. All this to say I’ll be focusing on March’s review any time I can spare, and when it’s done I’m taking a break. Voting for May’s Movie Review will resume April 1st.

That’s not to say I’ll be leaving you with nothing that whole time, however. I’d like to take the opportunity to announce a new series I’ve been tossing around since I was writing the Snow White review.

While listening to the music of Snow White, I was reminded of just how many covers of its songs there are. I was introduced to a number of them through a website I used to frequent called Covering The Mouse, a veritable musical encyclopedia of Disney song covers. Here’s how it looked back in the day:

And here’s what it looks like now:

“Um…WHAT?!”

So, a site that rescued hundreds of songs from obscurity is now replaced a fifty-year old woman posting updates about her favorite Mickey plushie. The fuck happened in the eight years I was gone?! The Wayback Machine hasn’t been a big help as it only captured the home page and not much else; a real shame since the site had categories belonging to specific Disney movies, shows, attractions, and songs. They’re on social media but one, they haven’t updated in ages, two, their Tumblr links are virtually dead, and three, I am NOT wasting time scrolling through all their Facebook posts.

But as a wise crab once said, “If you want something done, you’ve got to do it yourself.” So I present to you By The Cover, a look at what I consider the best (and some of the worst) covers of tunes from musicals I’ve looked at in the past and will in the future, Disney and otherwise. Unlike my movie reviews there’s no set schedule, but I’m gonna go out on a limb and say I’ll try post one every couple of weeks starting this month.

By The Cover will also be my first early access series, meaning Patreon supporters will get to read it a few days before it’s made public. If you want to sign up, it’s only $2 minimum and you’ll get plenty of other perks in the bargain.

Just a reminder, voting will resume as usual on April 1st . Patreon donations get you extra votes, etc. Leave your thoughts in the comments or by emailing me at upontheshelfshow@gmail.com and until I return, here’s some music for you to enjoy. See you later!

 

January Review: Pinocchio (1940)

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“When You Wish Upon A Star
Makes No Difference Who You Are
Anything Your Heart Desires
Will Come To You…”

In my last review, I compared Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to Star Wars; a blockbuster that captivated audiences, revolutionized filmmaking, and was an all-around fun adventure with a likable cast. Well if Snow White is Disney’s Star Wars – before Disney owned Lucasfilm, I mean – then Pinocchio is undoubtedly Disney’s Empire Strikes Back: refined visuals, more complex storytelling and characters, and much, MUCH darker.

The success of Snow White marked the beginning of big things for Disney animation. The sizable influx of cash meant Walt could build a bigger studio, hire more staff, and give his projects a noticeably larger budget. The question is, where to go from here? What movie could possibly follow the fairest one of all? Investors were clamoring for a sequel and the idea was toyed with for a time, but Walt was not a one-trick pony. Then animator Norm Ferguson brought a copy of Carlo Collodi’s Le avventuri di Pinocchio to Walt’s attention. Walt and a few of his key guys had attended a performance of Yasha Frank’s successful staging of Pinocchio prior to Snow White’s release and noted the story had possibilities for adaptation – plenty of spectacle, cute comic relief critters, etc. Seeing that book sparked Walt’s memory; after reading it, he intended to make Pinocchio his third animated venture behind the upcoming Bambi. But when that movie ran into production troubles, Pinocchio was bumped up to its place. Does it measure up to Snow White, though? Let’s find out.

February Review: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)

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If there’s a reason why we’re able to recall the story of Snow White from memory, and why said princess is usually depicted with short hair, a cute bow and surrounded by woodland fauna, look no further than Disney. Their take on the Grimms’ fairy tale is the prime example of pop cultural osmosis. Even if you’ve never watched Disney’s Snow White, it’s easy to recognize when a piece of work is borrowing from it or spoofing it. And I can definitely see why – not only is it going eighty-plus years strong, but its influence on nearly every Disney feature to come after it is a profound one.

The real story of Disney’s Snow White begins in the early 1910’s when a young Walt Disney saw a silent film version of the Grimms’ fairytale starring Marguerite Clark. The movie stuck with him well into adulthood. One night, well after he had established himself as an animation giant the world over, Walt gathered his entire staff of animators and storymen and re-enacted the tale for them in a mesmerizing one-man show. They were enraptured, but what he told them next struck them dumb – they were going to take what he performed and turn it into a full-length film.

In Tony Goldmark’s epic(ally hilarious) retrospective of Epcot, he performs a quick sketch he summed up as “Walt Disney’s entire career in 55 seconds” where Walt presents his career-defining ideas to a myopic businessman capable of only saying “You fool, that’ll never work!”. Considering how animation is everywhere today, it’s easy to forget that an animated film was once seen as an impossible dream. The press hawked Snow White as “Disney’s Folly”, and Hollywood speculated that it would bankrupt the Mouse House. It very nearly did. Miraculously, a private showing of the half-finished feature to a banking firm impressed the investors enough to ensure its completion.

Snow White is touted as the very first animated movie – admittedly something of a lie on Disney’s behalf. Europe and Russia were experimenting with feature-length animation decades before Walt gave it a try. But consider this: most animated films predating Snow White’s conception are either sadly lost to us or barely count as such by just crossing the hour mark. With all the hard work poured into it showing in every scene, with each moment displaying a new breakthrough in the medium, Snow White might as well be the first completely animated movie after all. Hell, it’s the very first movie in the entire history of cinema that was created using STORYBOARDS. A tool used by virtually every single movie put out today. If that’s not groundbreaking enough, I don’t know what is.

But is Snow White really…but why does it…can it…

“You know what? No. I’m not doing this teasing question thing before the review starts proper. OF COURSE Snow White is a masterpiece. OF COURSE most of it holds up. Let’s skip the middleman so I can explain why.”