Tag Archives: Film

Trailer Tuesday: Frozen

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Welcome to “Trailer Tuesday” where I talk about trailers for upcoming movies.

We’ve been given a third trailer for Frozen, at the end of which all fans of musicals shout, “Hallelujah.”  Or, maybe we sing “Hallelujah,” since we’re talking about music.  Feel free to choose your favorite musical instance of the word, whether it’s Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” or Handel’s “Hallelujah” Chorus.  But regardless of your chosen form of angelic singing, celebration is in order because Disney is finally marketing Frozen as a musical.  Before I get too far ahead of myself, take a look below at the new trailer, which features many scenes we’ve seen before but is also full of new goodies:

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What if there was a Best Voice Performance Oscar? – 1994

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(Note: This is a fictional creative writing exercise, inspired by hours of contemplation of which animated performances have been most worthy of attention over the years.  This feature imagines that a Best Voice Performance category was added to the Oscars following Beauty and the Beast’s nomination for Best Picture at the 64th Academy Awards.  Each week I’ll cover the hypothetical nominees and winner from one year of animated performances.)

After a disappointing slate of nominees at the 66th Academy Awards, the speculation was that another year of mediocre nominees would doom the category once and for all.  Fortunately, there was a savior on the horizon, in the form of another big release from Disney, The Lion King.  It was even speculated that the film could take all five of the nomination slots, given the strength of its casting, its popularity and yet another dearth of competition.  Even if The Lion King ended up with all of the nominations, it was already predicted that the film’s mere presence would be enough to grant the category a stay of execution for at least another year. Continue reading →

Friday Favorites: Favorite Songwriting – Beauty and the Beast

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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 →

Trailer Tuesday: Grudge Match

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Welcome to “Trailer Tuesday” where I talk about trailers for upcoming movies, since I’ve always found them to be endlessly fascinating.

I’m a big fan of the Rocky film series.  The first one is nearly perfect, the next three are all good fun (the less said about the 5th one, the better) and I absolutely love Rocky Balboa, the 6th film in the series which was released in 2006 and featured an aged Rocky returning to the ring to face a young champion based on an ESPN computer simulation.  I also happen to like Raging Bull, the Jake LaMotta biopic by Scorsese which featured a tour de force performance by Robert De Niro.  However, I had no desire to see the two films combine into the travesty of a trailer that I was presented with at the theater this weekend.  Take a look and read on for my comments:

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Review: Machete Kills

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Machete Kills is in many ways inferior to its 2010 predecessor, Machete, which was itself based on a fake trailer from the Rodriguez/Tarantino double feature Grindhouse.  It lacks that film’s madcap energy, its strong ties into Mexican culture, and its emphatic political message.  The sequel heads things much more in the direction of a James Bond parody, which robs it of some of the unique spirit that made the first film feel so fresh.  It even tones back the gore, if you care about such things, though that was never what brought my interest to the series.  But despite all that, Machete Kills does some very creative and interesting things that allow it to stand out in an era of bland action movies full of computer generated destruction. Continue reading →

What if there was a Best Voice Performance Oscar? – 1993

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(Note: This is a fictional creative writing exercise, inspired by hours of contemplation of which animated performances have been most worthy of attention over the years.  This feature imagines that a Best Voice Performance category was added to the Oscars following Beauty and the Beast’s nomination for Best Picture at the 64th Academy Awards.  Each week I’ll cover the hypothetical nominees and winner from one year of animated performances.)

Following Robin Williams’ win of the first ever Best Voice Performance Oscar for his role as The Genie inAladdin, industry experts began looking ahead at 1993’s slate of animated films, trying to anticipate who the next winner might be.  Both the experts and the Academy were more than a little dismayed to find that not only was Disney not releasing a classically styled animated films along the lines of Beauty and the Beastand Aladdin, but that there were very few animated films lined up for the year at all.  There were calls from opponents to drop the category entirely, while even some supporters of the award thought it might be best to hold the award back and only bring it out on years with better prospects.  Nevertheless, the Academy decided to press on with the award as an accepted part of the ceremony, not knowing exactly what the nominations would bring. Continue reading →

Friday Favorites: Favorite Scene – Beetlejuice

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Welcome to “Friday Favorites” which highlight some of my favorite movie-related things.

Whenever Halloween approaches, I always think of Beetlejuice.  Maybe it’s because I dressed up as the title character one year for Halloween, or because the movie fits in with the season so well.  And whenever I think of Beetlejuice, my mind immediately jumps to one particular scene.  It’s the scene, for me, that perfectly captures the essence of the film’s spirit, despite the fact that features none of the 3 lead actors of the film.  Take a look, and read on for my thoughts:

What scene did you think I was going to pick? Continue reading →

Review: Gravity

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Gravity, despite pulling aspects from a variety of familiar film styles, is a movie that feels unique, which is something with great appeal to me these days. It has much in common with Open Water, the 2003 film about a couple who are left behind while scuba diving, but it also borrows heavily from a variety of disaster movies where people are trapped or stranded and have to improvise a way to survive. And of course, it has a lot in common with Apollo 13, including the use of Ed Harris as the voice of mission control. (It even blatantly steals and idea from WALL-E and contains obvious references to Star Wars and Alien.) But its tone is drastically different from all of those films. Where those movies have a frantic aspect to them, with every moment devoted to the heroes solving the next problem or overcoming the next obstacle, Gravity has a peacefulness to it that sets it apart. And while there are moments of terror and suspense, the calm peaceful moments are what will stick with you after you’ve left the theater. Continue reading →

Trailer Tuesday: The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

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Welcome to “Trailer Tuesday” where I talk about trailers for upcoming movies.

I’ve always felt like the second full trailer is always the hardest one for a film to pull off.  Teaser trailers are pretty easy, offering just a glimpse to get people talking, while the first full trailer is generally full of entirely new footage that will excite audiences.  But the second trailer often reuses much of the footage from the first trailer, hitting the same story beats as its predecessor with little new to add.  Often a second trailer will feature a few, specific revelations, trying to keep interest in the film high and promote continued discussion.  We saw the first trailer for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug a while back, and now we’re presented with the second.  Take a look below and read on for my thoughts:

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What if there was a Best Voice Performance Oscar? – 1992

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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.

But what if Beauty and the Beast had done even more for animation?  Continue reading →