Welcome to “Friday Favorites” which highlight some of my favorite movie-related things.
I’ve seen Beauty and the Beast more times than I could possibly remember, and have listened to the soundtrack even more frequently. It’s one of my favorite song scores for film, particularly as its structure and styling is very reminiscent of traditional Broadway musicals, filled with reprises and cast cues that feel very familiar to those on the stage. (It also helps that the songs for the film were largely recorded live with the orchestra, helping it to feel more like a Broadway cast album rather than a studio recording.) Perhaps that’s one of the reasons its stage version was so successful. However, until just this week I had never picked up on one of the most clever aspects of the song score.
During the opening number, “Belle”, we’re introduced to the film’s protagonist, who is viewed by the villagers as too dreamy and bookish for their tastes despite her beauty. Continue reading
Beauty and the Beast was nominated for Best Picture at the 64th Academy Awards, in a moment that changed the face of the animated film landscape forever. It signaled that the Disney Renaissance that began two years earlier with The Little Mermaid (or perhaps even earlier with Oliver & Company) was not just a fluke and was destined to continue on. It showed that animation is just as important as other types of film, and that they could be just as artistic and meaningful. And while it eventually lost to The Silence of the Lambs, it still stood as the moment when animation as an industry and a media announced itself as an equal to the rest of Hollywood. And while it was a number of years before feature length animation received its own category in the awards (2001) and even longer before another animated film would be nominated for best picture (2009’s Up), the fact that animated films are now consistently among the highest grossing films each year and are often the most popular and longest lived of new releases owes a lot to Beauty and the Beast.
The Love Pirate 