Pragmatically, Disney’s new version of Aladdin only had one bar it absolutely had to clear, and it clears it. While this is anywhere from the sixth to the eleventh entry in this unkillable cycle of live-action remake nostalgia jobs, depending on how you count them,* it’s only the second one based on one of the 1990s “Disney Renaissance” films that are in large part the reason anybody living in the […]
I’m going to lead off with something that’s kind of small and petty, but it bothers me too much to wait: Aladdin and the King of Thieves, the second direct-to-video Disney sequel ever, and the second sequel to the 1992 blockbuster Aladdin, was released in 1996 on home video, in a 4:3 aspect ratio. This makes perfect sense, given that virtually all televisions at that time had just such dimensions, […]
Going to quite the Disney Top Tens with this one, and one of the most damnably difficult lists I’ve ever put together, it is. The ten best musical numbers in any Disney feature, as defined by the quality of the song, the visual, the performance, and so on and so forth. I have elected to limit myself to one per feature; the film that would have otherwise dominated the list […]
Once again, it all comes down to Howard Ashman: it was in the late 1980s, as animation was purring along for The Little Mermaid, and the story for Beauty and the Beast was just barely starting to take form, Ashman suggested another musical project for Disney: an adaptation of Aladdin, one of the tales in the European versions of the collection of Arabian fairy tales, One Thousand and One Nights […]
This is a very special column: the first time I am fulfilling a reader request! In fact, this entire YEAR will be dedicated to films chosen by you, the readers of this obscure little corner of the Internet. So many thanks to you, readers, and above all thanks to pulpatoons, who picked this month’s subject. You chose a doozy. Happy New Year! And Merry Christmas! Lest we forget, a substantial […]
One of the very first lines of dialogue spoken in the 1989 animated feature The Little Mermaid is “A fine strong wind and a following sea. King Triton must be in a friendly-type mood.” The approximately equivalent line of dialogue in the 2023 remake of that same film is “This is a dangerous time. Tonight’s the coral moon. They say this is when the Sea King calls his mermaid daughters […]
At one point in The New Adventures of Cinderella, which I covered last time, the evil stepmother (Josiane Balasko) consults her magic mirror (I guess this is standard-issue for evil stepmothers; maybe it’s an MLM scheme), but she has forgotten her password, because it’s funny when magical objects act like smartphones. One of the recovery questions is her favorite movie. She looks around to make sure she’s alone, then whispers […]
With Lightyear having come out this weekend, bearing the baffling premise that it’s the Star Wars-style movie that inspired the cartoon character that inspired the toy that Andy loves in Toy Story (we think?), Tim, Carrie, and Brennan (subbing in this week for Rob) have decided to discuss their childhood favorites! Brennan Top 5: The Little Mermaid X2: X-Men United Airplane! Bartok the Magnificent Big Fat Liar Carrie Top 5: […]
As any cultural observer has noticed, the Disney Ouroboros, having consumed every intellectual property on earth, has now turned on its own tail and cannibalized the very animated films that were once the hallmark of its artistic output, excreting pre-digested live-action remakes in its wake. What began as a trickle in the nineties and early aughts turned into a veritable flood during whatever we call the last decade. While Disney […]
Intermittently throughout the summer, we’ll be taking an historical tour of the Hollywood blockbuster by examining an older film that is in some way a spiritual precursor to a major new release. This week: after 25 years, Space Jam: A New Legacy returns the classic animated figures of the Looney Tunes & Merrie Melodies series to the basketball court, a place where they do not and have never belonged. Let […]
One might hold any opinion they like about Guy Ritchie, the onetime English enfant terrible whose career as a director of feature films is now entering its 23rd year, but I think we can agree at least on this: he has a “thing”. He has so much of a “thing”, in fact, that he has been able able to apply the basic material of it – sarcastic wiseguy banter, frantic […]
There are so god-damned many film and television incarnations of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle’s iconic misanthropic detective, it would be ludicrous to make a definitive claim about any of them being the best or worst, the most or least faithful, or just about anything else. But I will nudge far enough into this dangerous territory to say that I have not personally seen any version of Holmes that gave […]
