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An Introduction to Faerie Tale Theatre Reviews

05 Sunday Sep 2021

Posted by UpOnTheShelf in 1980's, Faerie Tale Theatre, Fantasy, TV Reviews

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

1980's, 80's fantasy, 80s, actors, Aladdin, anthology, anthology series, beauty and the beast, Big Bad Wolf, brothers grimm, celebrity, celebrity casting, Cinderella, dwarfs, Faerie Tale Theatre, fairies, fairy, fairy tale, fairy tales, folk tale, folk tales, frog prince, goldilocks, goldilocks and the three bears, gretel, grimm, hamelin, hans christian andersen, hansel, hansel and gretel, introduction, Jack and the beanstalk, little mermaid, little red riding hood, magic mirror, mirror, nightingale, pied piper, Pinocchio, puss in boots, Rapunzel, red riding hood, review series, rip van winkle, rumpelstiltskin, series, seven dwarfs, shelley duvall, sleeping beauty, snow queen, Snow White, snow white and the seven dwarfs, television review, television series, the boy who left home to find out about the shivers, the dancing princesses, the emperor's new clothes, the emperor's nightingale, the little mermaid, the pied piper, the pied piper of hamelin, the princess and the pea, the princess who had never laughed, the snow queen, the twelve dancing princesses, three little pigs, thumbelina, tv review, tv series, witch, witches, wolf

faerie tale theatre

“Hello, I’m Shelley Duvall. Welcome to Faerie Tale Theatre.”

Once upon a time in the faraway land of Malta, an actress named Shelley Duvall starred in a little movie called Popeye. A blithe innocent spirit, Ms. Duvall kept herself entertained with a charming book of fairy tales in between shooting. Duvall recounted the story of The Frog Prince to her costar, Robin Williams, who found the tale humorous enough to his liking. From there, an idea sprung that would stay with many a child of the 80s and 90s.

From 1982 to 1987, Duvall produced and hosted Faerie Tale Theatre, a 27-episode long anthology series on Showtime. She convinced many of the biggest stars of the time to play the roles and even a few well-known auteurs to direct using her clout and gregarious charm. Duvall herself would star in seven of the episodes as well. This show, along with HBO’s Fraggle Rock, proved to be one of the first successful examples of cable programming and cemented itself as a cult classic. My own experience with Faerie Tale Theatre stems from renting episodes on VHS from my library at a very young age. Back in the day, if you really wanted to know what you were in for, then you could turn to the VHS cover. Yes, we’re all familiar with the old adage about not judging a book et cetera, but there’s an art to home media releases that’s tragically all but lost. The VHS tapes of Faerie Tale Theatre had a specifically crafted painting made for each episode done in a famous art style that the episode itself replicated in its set and costume design. Apart from giving you an idea about the content on the tape, it was just pretty to look at. Tell me, which is the more inviting, this –

ftt dvd sleeping beauty

or THESE?

pg25-snow-queen
pg12-jack-beanstalk1
pg6-boy-who-left1
pg7-cinderella1
pg4-aladdin2
pg18-princess-pea
pg21-rapunzel
pg24-sleeping-beauty

After a lengthy time gap, I rediscovered the entire series on Youtube and watched with fascination. While many of the effects and the over-reliance on green screen certainly dates it, there’s a nostalgic charm that’s far from a deal-breaker. This was well before Disney began building upon and later deconstructing classic fairy tales with the Renaissance and Revival periods of animation, meaning the stories are told completely straight with just the bare amount of changes needed to fill an hour runtime. Seeing a score of well-known actors in fantasy costumes playing to the cheap seats can make you feel like you’re watching a pantomime, but there’s hardly a moment where it seems like they’re doing it just for the paycheck. Everyone involved looks like they’re in on the idea of putting on an entertaining show. Some performances remind us how excellent some of the actors are at their craft, others show sides to their talent that were rarely seen – though for the most part, there’s plenty of ham to go around, ham smothered in heaps of delicious cheese.

So I’ll be going through every episode in order, providing a ranking, a little bit of the stories’ history, why they were changed, and how they hold up compared to other versions. I won’t be classifying the reviews season by season as the amount of episodes in each one is erratic, with some having as many as six or as few as two. Despite their being only twenty-six of them (plus one reunion episode), there’s going to be a lot to unpack.

See you tomorrow when I review the first entry in this series, The Tale of the Frog Prince.

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October/Special Request Review: Return To Oz (1985)

30 Wednesday Oct 2019

Posted by UpOnTheShelf in 1980's, Action-Adventure, Disney, Fantasy, Halloween, Horror, Movie Reviews

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1980's, 1985, 80's fantasy, 80’s Disney, 80’s movie, Aunt Em, beware the wheelers, billina, brian henson, chicken, claymation, cowardly lion, david shire, deadly desert, Disney, disney feature, disney film, disney movie, dorothy, dorothy gale, dr. worley, electroshock, electroshock therapy, emerald, emerald city, emeralds, Fairuza Balk, furnace, George Lucas, gnome king, gnomes, gump, Halloween, heads, jack o'lantern, jack pumpkinhead, Jean Marsh, Kansas, L. Frank Baum, magic mirror, mombi, mountain, Nicol Williamson, nightmare, nome king, nomes, nurse wilson, ornament, ornament room, oz, Ozma, Piper Laurie, puppet, puppeteers, puppets, Return To Oz, robot, royal army, royal army of oz, ruby slippers, scarecrow, scary, scary 80s movie, scary kids movie, scary moments, scary scenes, stone, stone statues, stop motion animation, stop-motion, switch heads, the gump, the land of oz, Tik-Tok, tin man, turned to stone, Uncle Henry, underground, Walter Murch, wheelers, Will Vinton, wizard of oz

return to oz poster.jpg

“Hey, Ironic Disney Logo, you’ve been gone for a while. How are you feeling?”

disney-logo

“A bit better, thanks. Having to relive The Black Cauldron and Mickey’s Christmas Carol in the same year took a toll on me. The 80’s were a rough decade.”

caricature self

“Funny you should mention that. I’m looking at another 80’s Disney movie and wanted to ask if you’d give your two cents.”

disney-logo

“Which one is it?”

caricature self

“Return to Oz.”

disney-logo

“OHHHHH NO, you get yourself another logo to drag through this nightmare ’cause I’M. NOT. DOING IT.”

caricature self

“Too late, you’re already in the review talking about how you don’t want to be in it.”

disney-logo

“I-but-I…fine. Just let me have a good hard drink first while you do the intro.”

caricature self

“Gladly.”

Few know that one of Walt Disney’s unrealized dreams was to make an Oz movie he could call his own. There’s plenty of books in the series beyond the first and most popular one, and Walt bought the rights to them before they went into the public domain. He could take the material in any direction he wanted so long as he didn’t tread on MGM’s toes. The closest we ever got to seeing his vision was an episode of Walt Disney Presents where the Mousketeers “pitched” a musical called The Rainbow Road To Oz to their beloved leader. It was a perfect way to build hype for a movie…that never even made it past the planning stage for whatever reason. Since then Disney released a few Oz-themed song and story records, but Filmation was the first to make their own unofficial sequel. It starred Judy Garland’s daughter Liza Minelli as Dorothy and Margaret Hamilton as Aunt Em –

Wait, Margaret Hamilton was the actress that played the Wicked Witch of the West. What was it that she said at her most evil moment in the original movie?

“I’LL give you Auntie Em, my pretty! AAAAHHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA!!!”

“Run, knockoff animated Dorothy!! IT’S A TRAP!!!”

Anyway, Disney all but sat on the Oz books until the 1980’s when the copyright on them was set to expire. Just like Sony with Spider-Man before the MCU came a-knocking, they rushed to come up with a movie so they could hold on to the rights for that much longer*. By a staggering coincidence, Walter Murch was interested in launching his directing career with a new Oz story. Murch is a legendary Academy Award-winning editor and sound designer, and this is his first – and as of writing this review, only – cinematic directorial venture. A pity he didn’t stick with it; based on what we got from Return To Oz he could have been one of the greats. That’s a hole not even three Oscars, a Nikola Tesla award, the 2015 Vision Award Nescens and two honorary doctorates could ever hope to fill.

Return To Oz was released in 1985, the same year as The Black Cauldron. And just like that experimental venture into the darker side of fantasy, it was a box office bomb that went on to develop an immense cult following. Some big names that have come out as fans include the Scissor Sisters, who wrote an entire song inspired by and named after the film on their first album, and no less an authority on the cynical side of fantasy/sci-fi than Harlan freaking Ellison. But why did it flop to begin with? Well, dear reader, there are a few reasons as to that:

1. Change of Management

Return To Oz was filmed as Michael Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Frank Wells stepped in to give Disney a much-needed overhaul. I’ve already discussed the pros and cons of their sweeping changes to the animation department, but live-action is a trickier subject. Whenever there’s a regime change at a major studio, expect certain previously announced movies to either get axed or rushed out to theaters with little fanfare depending on the new CEOs’ tastes. By the time Wells, Katzenberg and Eisner took over, Disney’s live-action features had gone from safe, bland “What would Walt have done” fare to edgier fantasy flicks, though neither routes had turned a desired profit. Return To Oz was the last of the latter category to be released; when it wasn’t the box office or critical darling they hoped it would be, it left theaters almost as quickly as it came and hasn’t been mentioned again since. It’s not the first instance of this sort of thing happening to great films (alas, poor Baron Munchausen) and it won’t be the last.

And this ties into…

2. Misaimed Marketing

Return To Oz was marketed as a straight-up sequel to the 1939 classic, so people came in expecting a lighthearted musical romp and walked out not knowing what had hit them. Unlike the other attempts at sequels that more or less followed the formula of the first film, Return To Oz is much closer in terms of plot, character and tone to the novels. There were complaints that it was unfaithful to the Oz stories, but as someone who’s read most of them, I disagree; if anything, Return To Oz is far more faithful to the L. Frank Baum books than The Wizard of Oz ever was, deftly combining elements from the second and third entries into a deep, cohesive narrative that still manages to tie into the first one. The only thing that even remotely links Return To Oz to The Wizard of Oz are the ruby slippers, which Disney paid a hefty fee to MGM to use. This makes the movie more of a spiritual sequel than a canon continuation, at least for me. If the original Wizard of Oz had stuck to the aesthetic and writing of the book it was based on, then this would have been a direct sequel; though I understand how difficult it must be to market a sequel to a version of a beloved movie that was never made.

3. Behind The Scenes Drama

With the amount of major set pieces, special effects and hands that go into making any film, it’s usually no big surprise if some drama breaks out. Shooting Return To Oz went over schedule and over budget, the script was rewritten many times to try to combat the darker tone, and Walter Murch’s clashes with executives nearly resulted in his firing. He barely kept his job through some divine intervention:

Butler

“Mr. Shortmeind, a trio of directors wish to have a word with you.”

“Jeeves, how many times have I told you not to interrupt my hourly money fanning?!”

super directors

“Don’t worry, Jeeves, we’ve got this.”

“S-Spielberg…Lucas…Coppola!! I am at your beck and call, gentlemen! Say the word and you and all your beautiful box office returns can have whatever you wish!”

super directors

“Save your groveling for awards season, Shortmeind. What’s this we heard about our good friend Walter Murch being fired from his Oz movie?”

“Fired?! Wha-wh-who said anything about being fired? No no no, I said Murch was…inspired! Yeah, that’s it! Inspired! What a damn good director he is!”

“So we trust there’s no issue with him finishing what he started?”

“Absolutely, gentlemen! Everything’s peachy keen here!”

super directors

“Good. We’ll be back on Wednesday to discuss the plans for Star Tours, Roger Rabbit, and the Apocalypse Now re-theming of the Jungle Cruise. Toodles!”

“Jeeves!! Get Murch on the phone and tell him to be back here first thing in the morning!”

Butler

“At once, sir. Shall I check in on Mr. Katzenberg’s progress in editing The Black Cauldron as well?”

“This money ain’t gonna fan itself, Jeeves! There’s only so much of me to go around!”

4. It’s Terror Time Again

If Ironic Disney Logo hasn’t clued you in already, Return To Oz has a reputation surrounding it – that being it’s one of those films that terrified an entire generation of 80’s kids. It doesn’t downplay the grimmer elements borrowed from the novels – hell, it bravely takes them even further. I only caught glimpses of Return To Oz on tv a few times though I somehow always missed the frightening bits; yet when I finally saw it in full in my teens, I totally understood why certain scenes would leave a few scars. But there’s no gore, nudity, swearing or terrible messages that would make this movie unsuitable for children. Like An American Tail, it has a likable set of heroes that you want to follow and there’s a happy ending, both of which make it easier to see it through. Despite how much I’ve gone on about what scared me as a child, I’m of the mind that kids should be exposed to a bit of safe darkness through their movies or shows to challenge them and make things a little more exciting. I mean, I grew up with this,

this,

this,

and this,

– and I turned out okay. Just ask my therapist.

Brace yourselves, folks. We’re heading down the yellow brick highway to hell. This is Return To Oz.

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August Review: Shrek (2001)

01 Thursday Aug 2019

Posted by UpOnTheShelf in 2000's, Action-Adventure, Comedy, Dreamworks, Fantasy, Movie Reviews, Romance

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

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

img_1523

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.

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

01 Friday Feb 2019

Posted by UpOnTheShelf in 1930's, Comedy, Disney, Drama, Fantasy, Horror, Movie Reviews, Musicals, Romance

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

1930's, animated, animated feature, animated movie, animated movie review, animated musical, animation, bashful, buddle-uddle-um-dum, castle, classic, classic disney, classic Hollywood, dark forest, diamond mine, Disney, disney animated, disney animated feature, disney animated movie, disney animation, disney princess, disney review, disney villain, disney villain death, doc, dopey, dwarfs, evil magic, evil queen, fairest one of all, fairy tale, fairy tale adaptation, fairytale, falling, Fantasy, ferdinand, florian, forest, grimms fairy tale, grumpy, hag, happy, heigh ho, Horror, horror movie, huntsman, i'm wishing, magic kingdom, magic mirror, musical, musical review, one song, poison apple, poisoned apple, prince charming, princess, Romance, romantic cliches, romantic comedy, romantic interlude, scary animation, silly song, sleepy, sneezy, Snow White, snow white and the seven dwarfs, snow white's scary adventures, someday my prince will come, themes, traditional animation, transformation, Walt Disney, whistle while you work, wicked queen, witch, with a smile and a song

snow_white_and_the_seven_dwarfs_poster

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…

caricature self

“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.”

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