Timeless Beauty

It feels like it was just yesterday when I was overjoyed with Platinum Edition DVD release of Disney's contemporary animated classic Beauty and the Beast.  It was actually 2002.  Time marches on without hesitation, especially in regard to entertainment, technology and this ever-so-quickly aging Disney journalist.  But there is one particular constant: Beauty and the Beast remains an entity of entertainment both timeless and extraordinary, and one that has now been enhanced by further advances in home theater technology.

The newly released Blu-Ray Diamond Edition of Beauty and the Beast is simply amazing; it is an exceptional masterpiece in the venue of home entertainment.  Presented for the first time in high definition, it now resonates with a visual clarity that both demonstrates and celebrates the talents and artistry of the individuals who created and produced this animated feature some two decades ago.  The fine lines of the animator's craft are now more distinctly pronounced and visible.  The benefits of a high definition presentation make more evident the nuances and details of hand drawn animation that have sadly been over-polished in the last twenty years of computer-driven production and the transition to purely digital animation.  Similarly, one can now see the film's backgrounds in all their lush, deeply textured artistry, almost as if you were standing before each painting's original canvas.

Like its Platinum predecessor, the Diamond Edition includes three versions of the film: the original theatrical release, the 2002 expanded version that included the new musical sequence Human Again, and the Work in Progress cut that was originally presented at the 1991 New York Film Festival prior to the film's completion.  One disappointment in that regard--the new Diamond Edition only presents the Work in Progress version as a small picture-within-a-picture overlay with the original theatrical release.  There appears to be no option to view it separately in a full-screen mode.

The Diamond Edition migrated over many of the Platinum's special features, but also added a considerable amount of new content, most notably a three-hour branching documentary, Beyond Beauty: The Untold Stories Behind the Making of Beauty and the Beast, that is exceptional in both presentation and information.  One "branch" is especially interesting.  Revealed for the first time is an original treatment reel that was supervised by Richard Purdam, the project's first director.  It encompassed a very different approach to the material, being distinctly non-musical, and was ultimately rejected by Disney execs.  A second new documentary is included entitled Composing a Classic. It focuses on the creation of the music, which proved integral to film's ultimate success.  Also included are the obligatory "family friendly" features such as games, trivia and music videos, necessary to provide appeal to the ever important soccer-mom demographic.  Thankfully, these items are not as overwhelming here as they have been on prior Disney classic releases.

No doubt in another decade or so, we will be singing the praises of Beauty and the Beast in whatever new and wonderful technology that will then be gracing our lives and our home entertainment systems.  And the film will remain as wonderful, timeless and extraordinary as ever.

Drawing on Tradition: The Princess and the Frog

Drawing on Tradition:
The Princess and the Frog
By Jeff Pepper

The Princess and the Frog represented a major paradigm shift for me in terms of how I approach and ultimately purchase access to the latest Disney entertainment.

Translation:  I waited for the DVD.  More specifically, I waited for the Blu-Ray disc.  The cost for a family of four to go to the movies now well exceeds the price of even a deluxe edition Blu-Ray package.  For the first time that I can recall, I balked at running to the multiplex on opening day to see the latest Disney animated feature, and instead patiently waited a very short three months to enjoy The Princess and the Frog in the privacy and comfort of my own relatively well-furnished home theater.  As Bob Dylan would say, " . . . the times they are a changin'."

It's not that I wasn't anxious and excited to see the company's celebrated  return to traditional hand-drawn animation since Home on the Range underwhelmed both critics and audiences in 2004.   (Celebrated, if not just a tad disingenuous--after all it was Disney itself that killed 2D six years ago.)  It's just that I had been feeling a wee bit cynical throughout much of 2009 about the Walt Disney Company's overwhelming uber-synergetic marketing machine and its relatively transparent desire to drain my checking account.

Let me just quickly and unequivocally state that The Princess and Frog was totally undeserving of my somewhat immature and misdirected contempt.  It is a wonderful, energetic and very satisfying film that, while not groundbreaking or wholly original, still manages to set itself apart from the vast majority of over-produced animated fare that has crowded theaters for the past few years.  Despite the film's reliance on tried and true Disney formula, there is still oh so much to compliment and endorse.  The songs and score by Randy Newman infuse the story with a style wholly new to a Disney feature.  Animation is top drawer, backgrounds are lush and beautiful, characters are distinct and well-realized and the story moves along at an energetic and entertaining pace.  And similar to title character Tiana's passion for making the perfect gumbo, the film adds just the right dash of sentiment that will fill and break your heart at the same moment.

What truly impressed me most was the obvious desire on the part of the film's makers to not just return to the mechanics of hand-drawn animation, but to literally draw on techniques and visual styles that could never be realized or matched in computer-generated productions.  The musical sequences "Almost There" and "Friends on the Other Side" especially feature creative designs reminiscent of classic vignettes from films such as The Three Caballeros, Melody Time and Dumbo.  To think that some bone-headed executive decided five years ago that this type of visual expression was obsolete and irrelevant is both chilling and disturbing.  Thankfully, saner minds have been restored to Walt Disney Animation Studios.

Though the disc's supplemental features are a generally slight collection of very brief sound bite vignettes by the film's directors, cast and animators, they serve to very much illustrate the passion that these individuals had for bringing about a return of traditional animation to the Disney company.  The Princess and the Frog was truly a labor of love, especially for 1980s and 1990s animation veterans such as Mark Henn, Andreas Dejas, Eric Goldberg and directors John Musker and Ron Clements.  Experiencing their joy and enthusiasm by way of what are usually standard talking-head segments was an unexpected delight.

Though not a success on the level of a Pixar film, The Princess and the Frog demonstrates that a traditional animated feature can still be welcomed and enjoyed by critics and audiences alike.   Bravo to its creators, animators, cast and crew.  You have accomplished something truly meaningful at the precise moment in time when it so desperately needed to be accomplished.  Well done.

You Can't Reason With a Headless Man

While Donald Duck's 1952 cartoon Trick or Treat bears the Disney Studio's most direct homage to the Halloween holiday, the Legend of Sleepy Hollow segment from the feature film The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad serves up equal amounts of ghostly chills and jack-o'-lantern imagery. For All Hallows Eve is in fact the setting for Ichabod Crane's penultimate encounter with perhaps one of Disney's most underrated villains, the Headless Horseman.

One of the true highlights of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and perhaps one of the most overlooked musical vignettes in Disney films, is the song "The Headless Horseman" from composers Don Raye and Gene de Paul, noted Hollywood talents, both with extensive popular music resumes.

Don Raye transitioned in the mid-1930s from vaudeville entertainment to songwriting, working with other bright young composers, most notably Sammy Cohn. A fortuitous match was made in 1939 when the Andrew Sisters began performing his material. This led to work in Hollywood, first on the 1939 movie Argentine Nights and later the 1941 Abbott and Costello debut film Buck Privates, both of which prominently featured Andrews Sisters' performances. He became a resident song smith for Universal Studios, teaming with Gene de Paul beginning in late 1941 and the two subsequently collaborated on such films as In the Navy, San Antonio Rose, Keep 'Em Flying and Ride 'Em Cowboy. de Paul was also on the Hollywood fast track; that same year he was Oscar nominated for work on the film Hellzapoppin. The two found their way to Disney in the late 1940s, contributing to So Dear to My Heart, Ichabod and Mr. Toad, and Raye later on Alice in Wonderland. Shortly thereafter, dePaul would become especially famous for the musical numbers in MGM's classic Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, released in 1954.

Distinctly reflecting their own musical backgrounds, Raye and de Paul infused the colonial American setting of Sleepy Hollow with the popular music styles of the mid 20th century. Frequent Andrew Sisters co-performer Bing Crosby tells the story via narration and song, and at one point provided vocal instructor Ichabod with his trademark "bo bo bo baba bo" crooning. But the segment's true musical highlight is in fact Crosby's vocalization of villain Brom Bones performance of the Headless Horseman ghost story.

Famous for such wartime hits as "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" and "Beat Me Daddy Eight to the Bar," Raye's skills for clever, densely-worded lyrics are clearly evident in the tale of Sleepy Hollow's resident pumpkin thrower:

Now gather round while I elucidate,
On what happens outside when it gets late.
Along about midnight the ghosts and banshees,
Get together for their nightly jamboree.
There's ghosts with horns and saucer eyes,
And some with fangs about this size.
Some short and fat, some tall and thin,
And some don't even bother to where their skin.
I'm telling you brother it's a frightful sight,
To see what goes on Halloween night.

Oh, when the spooks have a midnight jamboree,
They break it up with fiendish glee.
Ghosts are bad but the one that's cursed,
Is the Headless Horseman, he's the worst.
When he goes a jockeying across the land,
Holding his noggin in his hand.
Demons take one look and groan,
And hit the road for parts unknown.
There's no spook like a spook that spurned,
They don't like him and he's really burned.
Swears to the longest day he's dead,
He'll show them that he can get a head.

They say he's tired of his flaming top,
He's got a yen to make a swap.
So he rides one night a year,
To find a head in the hollow here.
And he likes 'em little, he likes 'em big,
Part in the middle, or a wig.
Black or white or even red,
The Headless Horseman needs a head.
With a hip, hip and a clippity clop,
He's out looking for a top to chop.
So don't stop to figure out a plan,
You can't reason with a headless man.

Now if you doubt this tale is so,
I met that spook just a year ago.
Now I didn't stop for a second look,
But made for the bridge that spans the brook.
For once you cross that bridge my friend,
The ghost is through, his power ends.
So when you're riding home tonight,
Make for the bridge with all your might.
He'll be down in the hollow there,
He needs your head. Lookout! Beware!
With a hip, hip and a clippity clop,
He's out looking for a head to chop.
So don't stop to figure out a plan,
You can't reason with a headless man.

"Grim Grinning Ghosts" vocalist Thurl Ravenscroft did an equally fun yet slightly more sinister studio version of the song that was recently included on the iTunes exclusive Walt Disney Records Archive Collection Volume One.

Melody Time

Vastly underrated, largely unrecognized, and sadly little discussed by even the most serious and well respected of Disney historians is the 1948 animated feature Melody Time. It is in many ways an unheralded classic and a very notable showcase for many of the studio's most talented writers, artists and animators. It was released six decades ago on May 27, 1948.

The initial lack of financial success for Fantasia forced Walt Disney to abandon plans for successive reissues of that film with new material, but he did in fact revisit the style and structure of Fantasia, though not its classical music format, in both Make Mine Music which followed in 1946, and then Melody Time. Along with the other late-1940s "package" films Fun and Fancy Free and The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, the films quickly lost their identities when Disney chose to subsequently break them apart into individual sequences for later theatrical releases and television airings. It was not until the mid-1990s that Melody Time emerged again in its original form, though albeit in very low profile Disney Channel airings and then a few years later in home video releases that, at least in America, included the unnecessary editing of cigarette smoking references. These factors, combined with the film's very distinct post-World War II popular music have sadly served to diminish its otherwise significant artistic and creative achievements. Even contemporary critics tend to still compartmentalize the film, analyzing and discussing its component parts rather than addressing its overall theme and presentation.

Melody Time is comprised of seven musical vignettes--Once Upon a Wintertime, Bumble Boogie, The Legend of Johnny Appleseed, Little Toot, Trees, Blame It on the Samba and Pecos Bill--presented in the form of an overall musical program, somewhat akin to a concert hall program. Though it jettisoned the classical music trappings of Fantasia, it still retained that film's prominent theme of artistic interpretation. Each sequence begins with a paintbrush and canvas introduction. Though generally well received, most criticisms of the film focused on these connecting narratives, considering them generally weak, and undermining the film's overall presentation. While generally praising Melody Time's individual segments, Leonard Maltin remarked in his book The Disney Films:

"What Melody Time lacks is unity. The paintbrush format and Buddy Clark's introductions are a poor substitute for cohesion, and, though one can enjoy the various segments, there is a feeling, when Pecos Bill brings the film to an abrupt conclusion, that something is missing. Fantasia was episodic, too, but one felt that it was cut from a whole cloth, as it were. There was never a feeling of fragmentation."

It is an opinion with which I must respectfully disagree. The cohesion that Maltin found lacking is in fact present on a much more subtle yet still overriding level. The overall art direction of Melody Time represented a dramatic shift away from the more literal artistic interpretations that had characterized most Disney animation up until that point. Mary Blair, Claude Coats and Dick Kelsey, despite the episodic format, provided the film a unified visual style heavy with impressionistic influence and very atypical uses of color. It is a film that is consistently painted in very bold strokes and in many places truly bears the mark of Mary Blair's artistic genius. This is especially apparent in Once Upon a Wintertime, Trees and Johnny Appleseed. It is indeed ironic that Blair's legacy has been recently so wrapped up in It's a Small World, by individuals who tend to disregard efforts such as Melody Time where her talent and creativity are so very better represented.

The Legend of Johnny Appleseed in particular is easily one of the most underrated and unappreciated works of Disney animation. Studio veteran Winston Hibler created a rhythmic narrative and successfully combined it with wonderful songs and Blair's often stunning tableaus. Hibler's eloquent and frequently beautiful poetic narration is complemented so often by Blair's amazing designs. The sequence's final moments that highlight " . . . John's heavenly orchard of apple trees," where apple blossom trees merge into a cloud-filled sky, is simply breathtaking.

And this is not to in anyway discount any of the other six segments. Once Upon a Wintertime is a holiday greeting card come to life and is especially notable for the aforementioned atypical uses of color. Though brief, Bumble Boogie is a high energy tour de force through a surreal piano inspired naturescape. Well realized are both Little Toot and Pecos Bill, which stylistically come closer in storytelling and design to Disney's then more traditional efforts. Blame It on the Samba returns to the visually dynamic settings, music and characters of The Three Caballeros, while Trees presents a dramatic and again clearly Blair-inspired interpretation of the Joyce Kilmer poem. Ward Kimball's broad interpretation of Pecos Bill is especially well realized.

Similar to Make Mine Music, Melody Time is also an entertaining representation of pre-rock and roll American popular music figures. While little remembered today, Dennis Day, Frances Langford, Freddy Martin, Ethel Smith, and most especially the Andrew Sisters and Roy Rogers and the Sons of the Pioneers were well known personalities via both film and radio. For many, it serves as a nostalgic musical time capsule; for others it unfortunately severely dates the movie and diminishes its overall appeal. Regardless, in the history of Disney music, songs such as Johnny Appleseed's "The Lord is Good to Me," "Blame It on the Samba," and Pecos Bill's introductory "Blue Shadows on the Trail" deserve far more recognition than they have heretofore received.

The film's most lasting legacy would certainly be the Pecos Bill segment. Those particular characters successfully transitioned into theme park incarnations over the years, with Walt Disney World's Pecos Bill Tall Tale Inn and Cafe being the most prominent example.

It is unfortunate that Melody Time has suffered somewhat unfair comparisons to Fantasia, and also the often very unfair perceptions of stagnant creativity associated with the post-war package films. It certainly deserves better.

Pleased to Meet the Robinsons

I just met the Robinsons. And it was a happy encounter indeed.

While the reviews for Disney’s newest animated feature film have been generally positive, there have been a few (most notably the New York Times), that have taken a decidedly harsher view of Meet the Robinsons.

It really represents a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t situation.

Meet the Robinsons is quirky, frantic at times, and clearly unconventional. It is also fresh and original. It has so many of the qualities that countless critics found missing in the numerous animated features that seemed to be constantly falling out of the sky over the last year. So when the film is described as “. . . surely one of the worst theatrically released animated features issued under the Disney label in quite some time,” such comments bear a note of exaggeration with fair degree of malicious intent.

The film chronicles Lewis, an orphan and scientific genius, and his time traveling adventures with Wilbur Robinson and Wilbur’s eccentric family of the future. The story does not by any means take the form of a smooth and linear narrative. Much of the movie is a disjointed bumpy ride, where the storytelling can sometimes be as off kilter as its cast of characters.

But ultimately that it what Meet the Robinsons is all about--happy, energetic spontaneity, with a very direct emphasis on fun. Director Stephen Anderson took to heart the story’s oft-repeated mantra of “Keep Moving Forward.” At the same time, the film refreshingly does not pander to the current entertainment climate that requires flatulence-based humor and PG-13 innuendos to effectively reach all the target demographics. It is unapologetic in its old fashioned, yet never over the top sentimentality.

And it is a healthy dose of that sentimentality that sneaks up and emotionally wallops you by the film’s conclusion. Personally, I didn’t see it coming. And that is why I ended up truly loving the movie. It surprised me on a level that was wholly and totally unexpected, with a heartfelt finish that reminded me of what Pixar accomplishes so well in just about all of their films. Yet it is not difficult to understand, in our popular culture which has become increasingly cynical and fueled constantly by internet negativity, why many critics and like-minded viewers would reject the Robinsons’ positive and idealistic message.

Enhancing the experience of Meet the Robinsons tremendously was its Disney Digital 3D format. The process was nothing short of amazing. It was my first exposure to the new digital-based process that utilizes circular rather than linear polarization, and in turn results in stronger more vibrant colors and an almost total elimination of “ghost images.”

An added bonus for most, but a near-religious experience for myself, was the presentation of the 1953 Donald Duck short Working for Peanuts. Made originally in 3D at the height of the format’s post-war wave of popularity, it was a joy to see it restored to a big-screen theatrical presentation. While the cartoon had enjoyed a brief run in the late 1980s as the pre-show for the Magic Journeys movie at Disney World’s Magic Kingdom, that small scale presentation did not do it justice. Here's hoping that Adventures In Music: Melody, the company's only other theatrical 3D film, will accompany a future Disney Digital 3D release.