Sleeping Beauty

Posted on October 6, 2008 at 6:00 am

Disney’s gorgeous “Sleeping Beauty” is out in a magnificent new Diamond edition this week. This classic should be in the library of every family and every animation fan.

The King and Queen happily celebrate the birth of their daughter, Princess Aurora. The young Prince who is betrothed to the baby and three good fairies, Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather, join the celebration. But wicked Maleficent, a bad fairy, is enraged when she is not included. She arrives at the party to cast a spell on the baby Princess. When she turns 16, she will prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel, and die.

The good fairies cannot remove the spell, but they change it from death to a deep sleep from which Aurora can be awakened only by love’s first kiss. The King and Queen try to protect the princess by sending her off with the good fairies to live in a tiny cottage in the woods until her sixteenth birthday is over. They cannot use their magic powers because it would lead Maleficent to the princess. Aurora (called Briar Rose) grows up. Out in the woods, she meets the Prince, and they fall in love, not knowing they are already engaged. But the fairies prepare for her birthday party and argue about whether the dress they are making for Aurora should be pink or blue, and cannot resist using their magic. Maleficent discovers where they are and is able to make Aurora prick her finger and fall into a deep sleep. Maleficent also captures the prince to make sure he cannot break the spell. After the fairies help him escape, Maleficent turns herself into a dragon to stop him. He kills the dragon and wakes Aurora with a kiss. At her birthday party, they dance, not even noticing that her dress turns from blue to pink as the fairies continue to argue about the color.

In this classic story, as in “Snow White,” a sleeping princess can only be awakened by a kiss from the prince. Psychiatrist Bruno Bettelheim and others have written extensively about the meaning of these stories, and the ways in which they symbolize the transition to adulthood and sexual awakening. Bettelheim’s theory was that such fairy tales begin to prepare children for developments they are not ready to assimilate consciously.

There is no reason to discuss this interpretation with children, of course. But it is worthwhile to talk with them about Maleficent, one of Disney’s most terrifying villains, and why her bitter jealousy makes her so obsessed with vengeance. Is that what she really wants? Isn’t she doing exactly the opposite of what is required to achieve her real goal, acceptance? Children also enjoy the little squabbles of the three good fairies, which may remind them of arguments with their siblings.

Extras on this new edition:

· Art of Evil: Generations Of Disney Villains – This legacy piece spotlights Disney’s favorite villain animator, Marc Davis and his infamous creations of characters such as Maleficent and Cruella. Throughout the piece, we will talk to modern day animators like Andreas Deja and also the new generation of Animators (Lino DiSalvo Animation Director of FROZEN) on how Marc’s designs and characters influenced what they do today.

· DisneyAnimation: ARTISTS IN MOTION (Extended Edition) – Join Walt Disney Animation Visual Development artist Brittney Lee as she goes through the process of creating a three dimensional sculpture of Maleficent, completely out of paper. In this extended edition, go deeper into Britney’s process

· Never Before Seen Deleted Scenes:
o The Fair (With Deleted Character – The Vulture) – In this version of the story, the fairies do not take the Princess to live with them in the forest. Convinced that King Stefan’s order to burn all the spinning wheels in the kingdom will not prevent Maleficent’s curse, the good fairies put a magic circle around the castle and cast a spell: “No evil thing that walks or flies or creeps or crawls can ever pass these castle walls.”
o The Curse is Fulfilled – The three good fairies have just returned Aurora to the castle and give her a crown. They leave the room to give Aurora some time alone…but Maleficent pays her a visit.
o Arrival Of Maleficent (Alternate Scene) – Maleficent arrives uninvited to the christening of the Princess Aurora.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdJpXFVunJ0&list=UU4IEmIzWf_X4lEPtGm7kgzQ

· BEAUTY-OKE “Once Upon A Dream” – Sing along to this kinetic text video of Aurora’s signature song.

· Classic DVD Bonus Features Include:
o The Sound Of Beauty: Restoring A Classic – This featurette covers the creation of the 7.1 mix of the score of Sleeping Beauty that was done for Blu-ray, using the source tapes from the original recording sessions resulting in an audio experience of superior quality with greater detail and fidelity that you have ever heard before.

o Picture Perfect: The Making Of Sleeping Beauty – Discover the behind-the-scenes magic that transformed a beloved fairy tale into a cinematic work of art. Legendary Animators, actors and film historians reveal the secrets behind Disney’s masterpiece.

o Eyvind Earle: A Man And His Art – Early in his career, renowned American Artist Eyvind Earle worked as a background painter at the Walt Disney Studio. Walt Disney liked his work so much that he entrusted him with the assignment to be the Art Director for Sleeping Beauty. This was the first time that one artist was given the responsibility for the entire look on one of Disney’s animated features. This piece follows Earle’s development as an artist and his years at the Studio.
o Audio Commentary by John Lasseter, Andreas Deja and Leonard Maltin

Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist

Posted on October 2, 2008 at 6:04 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for mature thematic material including teen drinking, sexuality, language and crude behavior
Profanity:	Very strong language for a PG-13
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Teen drinking, character gets very drunk
Violence/ Scariness:	Comic violence, no one badly hurt
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	October 3, 2008

There is no question that Nick (Michael Cera) and Norah (Kat Dennings) are destined for True Love. For one thing, they have the same taste in music. Nick is still making mixes for the girl who dumped him (Alexis Dziena as Tris, who doesn’t want Nick but REALLY doesn’t want him to want anyone else) because that is the best way for him to express how he feels. He does not know that Norah snags them because she may not know who he is, but she knows he is her musical soulmate. When Tris threw the most recent one into the trash (“Road to Closure: Volume XII”), Norah retrieved it and loved it.

And they share names with the most adorable couple in the history of movies, Nick and Nora Charles, played by William Powell and Myrna Loy in the “Thin Man” series. Powell and Loy, who appeared together more than any on-screen team in the sound era, were always magic together (I am especially partial to “I Love You Again”), but what made their “Thin Man” couple so unusual was that they were already married when they began. The original Nick and Nora made marriage look like fun; they were better evidence that there is such a thing as happily ever after than a hundred movies that end with a wedding.

This Nick and Norah have a way to go to get to happily ever after, but it is a journey we enjoy taking with them. First, the characters are played by two of the most endearing young performers in films today, Michael Cera (from “Juno” and “Superbad”) and Kat Dennings (“40 Year Old Virgin” and “The House Bunny”). Second, the script is fresh, funny, and real, and third it is superbly directed by Peter Sollett, whose Raising Victor Vargas showed great skill at telling stories about teenagers that feel true, immediate, and intimate.

It all takes place on one night in the small town that is New York City, or at least the part of New York that is cool for high school seniors, who cruise around and run into each other pretty much constantly except when they are trying to find each other. Nick, Norah, Tris and her new date, Nick’s kind-hearted gay bandmates, and Norah’s very drunk friend Caroline (Ari Graynor, whose dazzling smile almost completely de-tawdrifies her character’s situation, even when she’s barfing into a bus station toilet that was already plenty disgusting enough).

The film adroitly sidesteps the expected teen movie cliches. Nick and Norah are tentative about their feelings for one another but they each know who they are and they both have a level of confidence about interacting in the world and understanding what is important to them. I liked the way Norah talked about “tikkun olam,” the Jewish imperative to heal the world.” It is very nice to see a movie character, especially a young one, who draws something meaningful from religion and to see something Jewish in a movie that is not “oy vay,” bagels, or guilt. The movie also draws from the emerging world of cuddle puddles and technological omni-connectedness to move the story forward without being intrusive or showy or trying too hard to be hip. And it beautifully catches the way that falling in love at the same time transforms us and makes us our most authentic selves.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall

Posted on September 30, 2008 at 8:00 am

“How I Met Your Mother’s” Jason Segal wrote and stars in the latest from the Apatow atelier, another raunchy comedy with a tender heart, and once again the story of a childish and helpless man who is perpetually longing for sex and love but inept with women.
Segal plays Peter who is dumped by the title character in the first scene, and who is so devastatingly nonplussed that he stands before her — and us — naked. Yes, record-keepers, while Apatow’s “Walk Hard” gave us what was probably the first mainstream close-up of an anonymous full Monty, this is the watershed moment for the R rating, at least four sightings of the Monty of the main character.
Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell) is the star of a successful television series. After the deadly “We have to talk,” she tells Peter there is no one else but it is soon clear that she is now with a self-absorbed rock star named Aldous Snow (British comic Russell Brand). Peter flees to Hawaii to get away from it all only to find that Sarah and Aldous are staying at the same hotel. Peter sobs in the suite given to him by Rachel (Mila Kunis), a beautiful and sympathetic hotel manager, while Sarah and Aldous have a lot of very loud and athletic sex. Peter feels bad. He spends time with Rachel.
There are some very, very funny moments in this film, though many of them come from seeing Peter behave like a blubbering boob. Apatow regulars Paul Rudd (a happily stoned surfing instructor) and Jonah Hill (a hotel restaurant manager and major Aldous Snow fan) are underused, but Bill Heder as Peter’s brother gets in some good moments giving long-distance advice.
I’m getting a little impatient with these clueless boy-man characters, though. It may be funny that Peter (and Seth Rogan in “Knocked Up” and Steve Carell in “40 Year Old Virgin” etc. etc.) do not understand anything about women, but the people who make the movies should at least make it seem that they know a few. The Apatow crew needs to find a way to create a female character as fully-realized and messy as the men. Both Sarah and Rachel are bland and frustratingly inconsistent, behaving and reacting in whatever way Segal thinks will be funniest for Peter to react to at a given moment. It is a shame to write off, almost write out, half of the population and half of the equation in a movie about romantic complications, especially with actresses as lovely and talented as Bell and Kunis.
Segal writes some hilarious lines, and there is a deliriously random and extremely funny detour into vampire musical theater puppetry. But the film’s happiest surprise is Brand, who seems to be in his own movie, which is perfect for the role of the self-absorbed rock star. His reaction to the gift of a shirt is funnier than all four Montys and singing vampire puppets put together.

(more…)

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Nights in Rodanthe

Posted on September 25, 2008 at 6:00 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for some sensuality.
Profanity:	Mild language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, characters get drunk
Violence/ Scariness:	Sad death
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	September 26, 2008

Of course Richard Gere is going to fall in love with Diane Lane in this movie. How could he resist her and why would he try? Certainly the audience will fall in love with her, too. There is no actress who conveys so much with so little. The subtlety and complexity of her performances is one of the wonders of cinema. Close-ups were invented for Lane’s rare beauty, inside and out. We feel that it is her spirit as an actress and a character illuminating this story.

And we cannot help but feel a sense of completion in seeing the two of them together, after two previous films that showed their palpable connection. This film, based on the book by chronicler of the grown-up romance Nicholas Sparks (The Notebook, Message in a Bottle) puts their relationship center stage. Lane is Adrienne, a devoted single mother who is watching her best friend’s bed and breakfast for a weekend. Gere is Paul, the only guest. Adrienne’s husband, who left her for another woman, wants to come back home. Paul has come to the Outer Banks of North Carolina not to enjoy the coast but to have a conversation with someone who feels damaged by him. A storm hits the coast and (metaphor alert) Paul and Adrienne shore up the inn as they begin to open up to each other.

It is lovely to see a mature romance and this one is beautifully played by Gere and Lane, with Scott Glenn as a widower whose story provides poignant counterpoint. Viola Davis is superb as always in the thinly written role of the best friend, Christopher Meloni is fine as Adrienne’s maddening ex-husband, and an unbilled James Franco makes the most of his brief appearance as Paul’s doctor son. But it is Lane who simple honesty and luminous spirit keep us watching and believing that some day we, too, might find love and meaning and forgiveness on a stormy night in Rodanthe.

Sex and the City

Posted on September 23, 2008 at 8:00 am

No spoiler alert is required before disclosing that the very appropriate and deeply satisfying fade-out at the end of this film has its four heroines happily going off into the metaphorical sunset….with each other. That is the great love story of the movie.

The four women in this movie version of the wildly popular and influential HBO series (off the air for four years but now running in expurgated form on broadcast channels in reruns) may think they yearn for romance. But in reality the men in their lives are there primarily as topics of conversation for the relationships that matter most. It is their friends who make them laugh, their friends that they want to call first with good news or bad, their friends whose lives — and clothes — are their primary concern, their friends who are always intensely interested in every detail of each other’s lives, their friends who reflect themselves and all they might be back to them like a dressing room with a magic mirror. In this woman-centered, fashion-drenched world, men are an accessory.

Indeed, as with stories like, well “Friends,” “Seinfeld,” “Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood,” “Steel Magnolias,” and even “Bratz,” the intense connection of those relationships is the essence of the appeal of the series and the movie. While we watch them, we connect to our own reality about the vital role that friends play in our lives and we tap into the deep wish in all of us for people in our lives who are infinitely interested and spaciously accepting of the tiniest details of our lives. It is telling that the biggest falling-out among the four friends in this movie is not about doing something wrong. The real transgression is in not being willing to confess all immediately.

Here we also connect to the fantasy of their ziplessness. The four women eat and drink constantly and never seem to exercise or diet but always look model-thin and glowingly gorgeous, their sexual encounters are almost always steamy and satisfying and when they aren’t they are even more fun to talk about, they almost always recover from unhappy romantic encounters by the next episode, and they manage to buy and look sensational in endless and endlessly fabulous ensembles of high-fashion mixed with impeccably chosen vintage and street goodies. It’s like playing Barbies for grown-ups. The sex scenes are not nearly as titillating as the fantasy of fashion and New York glamour, wrapped in a cozy feather comforter of the perpetually supportive cheering section.

Friendship is at the core, but there is plenty of material about the other great pre-occupations of the movie, like the television series: romance, sex, fabulous clothes and shoes, parties, and plumbing the depths of one’s own desires), plus what may be an all-time record number of on-screen apologies. My husband says that an apology, preferably humiliating and public, is the essence of a chick flick. If he is right, this one goes to the top of the list.

The credit sequence briskly brings us up to date, letting us know that the ladies and the world have moved on since writer Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), lawyer Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), married mom Charlotte (Kristen Davis), and publicist/manager Samantha (Kim Cattrall) appeared to be headed for happily-ever-after-ville at the conclusion of the series. The tinkling theme music quickly shifts into hip-hop and we find that everything that seemed neatly tied up four years ago is about to become if not completely untied a little bit tangled. People in their 40’s know themselves better than those in their 30’s, but they are also more aware of their narrowing options and the impact of the choices they are making and the ones they do not make.

Carrie and Mr. Big (Chris Noth as John James Preston) are still happily in love and looking for a place to move in together. An jewelry auction for the collection of a billionaire’s discarded mistress, she begins to worry about what would happen to her if Preston decided to leave her. When she tells him that, they decide to get married. Caught up in the fantasy of the ultimate wedding as fashion statement, helped along by posing for a magazine spread modeling bridal gowns by all the top designers, Carrie loses sight of the meaning of the event and the pressure she is putting on the man we will continue to refer to as Mr. Big. Miranda and her husband Steve (David Eigenberg) struggle with burnout and trust issues. Samantha, in Los Angeles with her boyfriend of five years, the hunky Smith (Jason Lewis), having helped him become a big star , misses New York, her friends, and her polyamorous lifestyle, wonders if she can continue to compromise.

The screenplay is uneven and it tilts too far on the side of retail therapy. That is a function of the realities of modern-day feature film financing — who could have imagined a day that movies would end up more commercial than television? All the more credit for HBO’s commitment to artistic integrity for avoiding the endless recitation of labels and designers, which gets a little intrusive.

But it all goes down as easy as that third Cosmo thanks to the eye candy, our affection for the characters, and the skill of all involved. The slight deepening of the issues and characters works well. As has been remarked before, as in many multi-character sagas, it is intriguing to think of Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte, and Samantha as different aspects of one single personality — id, supergo, ego, and libido.

All of the returning stars look sensational and they each know their characters and their fellow performers so well that the chemistry sizzles and the timing purrs. Jennifer Hudson (“Dreamgirls”) is a welcome addition as Carrie’s new assistant, her warmth and sparkle providing Carrie with a fresh opportunity to show something we almost never saw from her in the series, generosity of spirit and consideration. There are at least three dazzling fashion shows (something of a throwback to old movie classics like The Women, which, in the pre-Internet, pre-television days, served a dual purpose by alerting the women in the audience to the current styles. There are little detail goodies for serious fans (the iconic tutu that gets splashed in the series’ opening sequence and enough going on to entertain casual viewers. It is far from a great movie, but it is a thoroughly enjoyable one and does justice to the aspirations of the series and to its devoted fans.

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