Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Cirque Du So What
The title of this entry is has nothing to do with the topic, which is still BAMBI and other Waltian products.
Two friends have emailed me about my latest entry. A Mr. Richard Feder, of Fort Lee, New Jersey writes (actually, it was Andy) that almost all of Disney's cartoons are available, with the exception of SONG OF THE SOUTH (Zip-ah-dee-do-DON'T!) and the probable exception of 'Der Fuhrer's Face." (Would this be because Disney doesn't own this? Was it commissioned by the government? I feel fairly sure there was a disc, about five years ago, of Disney's war effort stuff. Or was that Looney Toons material?)
A friend from Baltimore says he didn't remember the deaths in BAMBI. I can't say I didn't remember them because, having never seen the movie before last week, I didn't have anything to forget. There is a moment in LADY AND THE TRAMP, which I watched for the first time tonight, during which I thought an animal had died, but a couple of scenes later he came back with his leg in a cast. This is an example of Disney being willing to tease his audience about something serious and this surprised me.
I'm also surprised that Disney scrapped plans for a scene in CINDERELLA (which movie I saw for the first time last night) which would have rivalled anything in FANTASIA. The scene is sort of restored for the DVD. Storyboards are shown in succession, accompanied by the song Cinderella would have sung. She is wishing there were more than one of her and the storyboards show her becoming double, then triple, etc. In the actual movie there are no scenes of her actually performing the tasks her stepmother makes her perform. The movie is seriously marred by the same thing which wrecked the Fleischer's GULLIVER'S TRAVELS: characters whose voices are simply highly sped-up voices. The mice, an almost constant presence in the movie, talk this way. The munchkins of THE WIZARD OF OZ, of course, talk this way, but they certainly don't dominate the movie. If they had, Rufus Wainwright wouldn't have been singing Judy Garland's set at Carnegie Hall last week. (I saw him at the Knitting Factory in 2000, and for his encore, he stood on the piano and sang "Over the Rainbow." His mother played piano.)
I watched ALICE IN WONDERLAND tonight and, although it was made the same year as CINDERELLA (1951), it was everything the other was not. When a song became boring, it ended. Hallucinogenic scenes were frankly so and the cuteness bordered on nightmare. It was fun. And Lewis Carroll deserves the Americanization, he being otherwise almost intolerable.
I'd have reported on the short "Lonesome Ghosts," but the DVD I borrowed was scratched and all I can say is it became clear very early that GHOSTBUSTERS took its premise from "Lonesome Ghosts." I'm going to watch it on VHS tomorrow. God bless VHS!
Two friends have emailed me about my latest entry. A Mr. Richard Feder, of Fort Lee, New Jersey writes (actually, it was Andy) that almost all of Disney's cartoons are available, with the exception of SONG OF THE SOUTH (Zip-ah-dee-do-DON'T!) and the probable exception of 'Der Fuhrer's Face." (Would this be because Disney doesn't own this? Was it commissioned by the government? I feel fairly sure there was a disc, about five years ago, of Disney's war effort stuff. Or was that Looney Toons material?)
A friend from Baltimore says he didn't remember the deaths in BAMBI. I can't say I didn't remember them because, having never seen the movie before last week, I didn't have anything to forget. There is a moment in LADY AND THE TRAMP, which I watched for the first time tonight, during which I thought an animal had died, but a couple of scenes later he came back with his leg in a cast. This is an example of Disney being willing to tease his audience about something serious and this surprised me.
I'm also surprised that Disney scrapped plans for a scene in CINDERELLA (which movie I saw for the first time last night) which would have rivalled anything in FANTASIA. The scene is sort of restored for the DVD. Storyboards are shown in succession, accompanied by the song Cinderella would have sung. She is wishing there were more than one of her and the storyboards show her becoming double, then triple, etc. In the actual movie there are no scenes of her actually performing the tasks her stepmother makes her perform. The movie is seriously marred by the same thing which wrecked the Fleischer's GULLIVER'S TRAVELS: characters whose voices are simply highly sped-up voices. The mice, an almost constant presence in the movie, talk this way. The munchkins of THE WIZARD OF OZ, of course, talk this way, but they certainly don't dominate the movie. If they had, Rufus Wainwright wouldn't have been singing Judy Garland's set at Carnegie Hall last week. (I saw him at the Knitting Factory in 2000, and for his encore, he stood on the piano and sang "Over the Rainbow." His mother played piano.)
I watched ALICE IN WONDERLAND tonight and, although it was made the same year as CINDERELLA (1951), it was everything the other was not. When a song became boring, it ended. Hallucinogenic scenes were frankly so and the cuteness bordered on nightmare. It was fun. And Lewis Carroll deserves the Americanization, he being otherwise almost intolerable.
I'd have reported on the short "Lonesome Ghosts," but the DVD I borrowed was scratched and all I can say is it became clear very early that GHOSTBUSTERS took its premise from "Lonesome Ghosts." I'm going to watch it on VHS tomorrow. God bless VHS!
# posted by Fredwemyss @ 4:11 AM 
