I'm sorry to hear that "Sym-bionic Titan" hasn't been renewed by Cartoon Network. I know a lot of fans of the Genndy Tartakovsky animated series, who are all of the opinion that a single twenty-episode season is simply not enough. Who have been dismayed that the network has bounced the show all over their schedule, and finally stuck it in its current Saturday morning slot. The last episode airs this weekend. And so this puts me in the awkward position of being that person who simply doesn't understand what all the fuss is about. I still enjoy cartoons and action cartoons in particular, but something about "Sym-bionic Titan" just rubbed me the wrong way from the beginning.
I had reservations from the moment I saw the first preview at last year's Comic-Con. "Titan" is Tartakovsky's take on the old 60s and 70s style Japanese giant robot shows, like "Voltron" and "Gigantor." There are three main characters, Ilana (Tara Strong), Lance (Kevin Thoms), and Octus (Brian Posehn), two refugee aliens and a robot from the planet Galaluna. They're forced to hide out on Earth and disguise themselves as humans, in order to evade the evil Mutraddi mutant monsters. When they fight, it's with mecha suits that combine - through the obligatory hokey transformation sequence - to form the superior Sym-bionic Titan of the title. To date I've seen three or four episodes, enough to give me a decent look at the show. It's certainly well-written, the production values are great, and it isn't nearly as formulaic as the premise would suggest. But that said, I still don't get what makes this show so special.
More than anything, I think it's the style of the visuals that are giving me a hard time. I liked Tartakovsky's "Dexter's Lab" as much as anyone else, and I thought his take on the "Star Wars" characters for "Clone Wars" was inspired, much better than the CGI versions currently mucking around on Friday nights. "Samurai Jack," with its spectacular art direction and character designs, is one of my favorite modern animated shows. But I think Tartakovsky dropped the ball with "Sym-bionic Titan." Ilana and Lance look like very simplified versions of Leiji Matsumoto space opera characters, but they're rendered in such different proportions with lines typical of cartoonier Western fare, it's visual culture clash. The evil aliens they fight are just plain ugly, often insectoid, jagged creatures drawn in lurid colors. The mecha designs had the opposite problem. They were all very Japanese and very dull. I can't think of any distinguishing features of the Sym-bionic Titan beyond the fact that it's translucent and the name doesn't roll off the tongue so easy.
The characters? Fun, but typical. Lance is often suspicious, Ilana tries to stay cheerful, and Octus has occasional existential crises. They all have pasts and they all have inner struggles, but nothing particularly original or groundbreaking. Some of the stories are ambitious, sure, and sometimes the images can be very visually striking, but I haven't seen anything on the level of "Samurai Jack" or the Tartakovsky version of "Clone Wars." Ultimately all signs point to "Sym-bionic Titan" being a pretty typical giant robot show, with some high school shenanigans tossed in for humorous purposes. Is there a larger story arc here that I've missed somehow? Did they play all the good episodes at the beginning of the season? The installments I've watched have been those I've been specifically directed to by ardent fans, and this doesn't ping as a serialized adventure where you have to watch every episode in sequence to get the full effect of the story. So what am I not seeing?
I wonder if it's because I've watched the original Japanese shows that "Sym-bionic Titan" references, and so many of the subsequent mecha and robot anime that followed in their wake. I already know how these stories work, and Tartakovsky's not straying very far from the usual formula. Or maybe I'm missing out on some context because I haven't been keeping keeping up with the most recent ones. I certainly don't think I'm getting too old for cartoons - the ones who really love them never do. I'm afraid I just have to conclude that "Sym-bionic Titan" is not to my taste. It seems to have hit all the right marks for a lot of people, but it's just not for me.
But seriously, could someone tell me what's the point of casting Brian Posehn to play a robot who does not sound anything like Brian Posehn?
Friday, April 8, 2011
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Glenn Beck is Going
This week there are a slew of news anchors and presenters who are rumored to be leaving their programs. Katie Couric is probably vacating the anchor chair of the CBS Evening News. Meredith Viera and Matt Lauer might exit from NBC's "Today." Only one move is certain. Over on FOX News yesterday, to the surprise of many, it was announced that Glenn Beck's eponymous political commentary show, is being scuttled later in the year. Beck's more outrageous antics prompted some advertisers to pull their ads from the program in 2009, but his ratings remained high. Well, until recently anyway. His viewership numbers are currently half of what they were a year ago, and are on an apparent downward trajectory.
It's hard to believe that it's only been two years since Beck joined FOX, after a long stint on CNN Headline news. I don't watch FOX News and I don't watch Glenn Beck, but it's been hard to escape his presence in the infotainment world. He's brought up constantly in criticisms of the media, FOX News, and the Tea Party, because he makes for such an easy target. His over-the-top self aggrandizement, increasingly nutty conspiracy theories, paranoid chalkboard diagrams, and commercials for gold retailers have been constantly parodied by late-night comedians. And of course, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert responded to his "Restoring Honor" rally with their own "Rally to Restore Sanity" last year. The more cynical among us long ago concluded that Beck was either a real-life Howard Beale ("I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!") with possible emotional or psychological issues, or that he was putting on an act and knowingly egging on the worst impulses of his audience. Both possibilities have some disturbing implications.
But maybe the picture isn't so bleak when you consider that Beck ultimately couldn't maintain his audience. I'm sure there are people out there who actually take Glenn Beck at face value and believe all his unhinged ranting. Beck is a charismatic man and a good performer, with a long history of attracting attention on his various television and radio shows. But I have to assume from the steep decline in his ratings, that many were only there for the sideshow. Or perhaps Beck went too far with his attacks, and people stopped taking him seriously. Or they just got bored with his act. FOX's ratings fell and CNN's went up in the first part of the year, largely because there was actual news going on - revolutions across Northern Africa and the Middle East, and the earthquake in Japan. When political battles recede from public view, so do the fortunes of those who exploit them.
Glenn Beck seems to work best as a populist instigator, and has often aligned himself with the Tea Party movement. However, the election cycle is currently at a low point, with the midterm races behind us, so he can't build on any Get-Out-the-Vote energy. The closest thing to grassroots political action of much efficacy lately has been in regards to the Wisconsin union controversies, and politically he and FOX News are on the wrong side of that fight. So the timing of Beck's decline and departure makes sense. Any benefits of keeping him in reserve until the 2012 elections, possibly in a less visible timeslot, have probably been outweighed by the fact that Beck has made himself into the network's biggest target for mockery and criticism. And while his controversial nature may be appealing to some viewers, it's also costly in terms of ad revenue and the network's reputation as a serious news operation.
Beck won't be going away entirely of course. He'll still have his radio shows, his speaking tours, his website, and his books. He'll no doubt still show up on other FOX shows once in a while as a guest commentator. He's such a recognizable name, the media will still gladly pass along his most outrageous pronouncements for us to gawk at. And the extremists, of course, will still seek him out and use him as validation for their own warped views. However, I can't see his departure as anything but a good thing. Insightful political commentators can be valuable, but someone like Glenn Beck just muddles this discourse and derails meaningful dialogue. It's wishful thinking that this move may indicate FOX News is turning a corner - they can always give Beck's timeslot to someone worse - but I hope this will at least prompt them to reign in some of the shock jock tactics before they get out of hand in such spectacular fashion again.
As for those who wish to follow Glenn Beck's career path to infamy, if the current state of his career isn't enough to dissuade, I suggest renting "Network" and getting an eyeful of the ultimate fate of Howard Beale.
It's hard to believe that it's only been two years since Beck joined FOX, after a long stint on CNN Headline news. I don't watch FOX News and I don't watch Glenn Beck, but it's been hard to escape his presence in the infotainment world. He's brought up constantly in criticisms of the media, FOX News, and the Tea Party, because he makes for such an easy target. His over-the-top self aggrandizement, increasingly nutty conspiracy theories, paranoid chalkboard diagrams, and commercials for gold retailers have been constantly parodied by late-night comedians. And of course, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert responded to his "Restoring Honor" rally with their own "Rally to Restore Sanity" last year. The more cynical among us long ago concluded that Beck was either a real-life Howard Beale ("I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!") with possible emotional or psychological issues, or that he was putting on an act and knowingly egging on the worst impulses of his audience. Both possibilities have some disturbing implications.
But maybe the picture isn't so bleak when you consider that Beck ultimately couldn't maintain his audience. I'm sure there are people out there who actually take Glenn Beck at face value and believe all his unhinged ranting. Beck is a charismatic man and a good performer, with a long history of attracting attention on his various television and radio shows. But I have to assume from the steep decline in his ratings, that many were only there for the sideshow. Or perhaps Beck went too far with his attacks, and people stopped taking him seriously. Or they just got bored with his act. FOX's ratings fell and CNN's went up in the first part of the year, largely because there was actual news going on - revolutions across Northern Africa and the Middle East, and the earthquake in Japan. When political battles recede from public view, so do the fortunes of those who exploit them.
Glenn Beck seems to work best as a populist instigator, and has often aligned himself with the Tea Party movement. However, the election cycle is currently at a low point, with the midterm races behind us, so he can't build on any Get-Out-the-Vote energy. The closest thing to grassroots political action of much efficacy lately has been in regards to the Wisconsin union controversies, and politically he and FOX News are on the wrong side of that fight. So the timing of Beck's decline and departure makes sense. Any benefits of keeping him in reserve until the 2012 elections, possibly in a less visible timeslot, have probably been outweighed by the fact that Beck has made himself into the network's biggest target for mockery and criticism. And while his controversial nature may be appealing to some viewers, it's also costly in terms of ad revenue and the network's reputation as a serious news operation.
Beck won't be going away entirely of course. He'll still have his radio shows, his speaking tours, his website, and his books. He'll no doubt still show up on other FOX shows once in a while as a guest commentator. He's such a recognizable name, the media will still gladly pass along his most outrageous pronouncements for us to gawk at. And the extremists, of course, will still seek him out and use him as validation for their own warped views. However, I can't see his departure as anything but a good thing. Insightful political commentators can be valuable, but someone like Glenn Beck just muddles this discourse and derails meaningful dialogue. It's wishful thinking that this move may indicate FOX News is turning a corner - they can always give Beck's timeslot to someone worse - but I hope this will at least prompt them to reign in some of the shock jock tactics before they get out of hand in such spectacular fashion again.
As for those who wish to follow Glenn Beck's career path to infamy, if the current state of his career isn't enough to dissuade, I suggest renting "Network" and getting an eyeful of the ultimate fate of Howard Beale.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
How Much of That Documentary Was Real?
I finished "Catfish" last night, which means I've now seen all three of the 2010 documentaries that drew a lot of attention for featuring events that might have been partially or completely fabricated. The other two are "Exit Through the Gift Shop" and "I'm Still Here," and in the latter case the filmmakers already have fessed up that nearly everything the audience saw in the film was staged or planned well in advance. Thus, "I'm Still Here" cannot rightly be called a documentary proper, but rather must be classified as a faux documentary, or a film done in a documentary style. Those involved with "Catfish" and "Exit" have managed to keep a lid on the truth, though the "Catfish" creators have a lawsuit pending against them involving music licensing fees, which may hinge on whether the film is really a documentary or not.
All three of these films tackle the heady subject matter of false perceptions and distorted reality. "Catfish" charts the course of an online relationship where one of the participants may be misleading the other. "Exit Through the Gift Shop" starts out purporting to be a documentary about street artists and the guerrilla tactics they employ, and then takes a hard left turn into possible fiction when the documentarian decides he wants in on the action. Finally, the most publicized of the three was "I'm Still Here," where Joaquin Phoenix spent well over a year doing his best to convince the world that he was giving up acting to pursue an ill-advised career as a rap artist, and had the results filmed. Staging a personal meltdown as a piece of performance art was a keen idea, but the execution was lacking. In light of recent events with Charlie Sheen, however, "I'm Still Here" now feels bizarrely prescient.
So it's fitting that the filmmakers wound up blurring the lines between fact and fiction in their depiction of these stories. What we see onscreen in "Catfish" and "Exit Through the Gift Shop" seems plausible, but there's the nagging sense that the filmmakers must have staged certain scenes or recreated events that are being passed off as more genuine and spontaneous than they actually are. Could they have really set up some of those shots in "Catfish" so perfectly, and gotten such quality audio on the fly? Was Thierry Guetta's transformation from amateur documentary maker to amateur street artist entirely his own idea? I'm with the skeptics personally. While I can buy that everything in "Catfish" actually happened, and that all the people we see onscreen are the real people who were involved, there are some events in the early going that feel reenacted for the benefit of the audience, perhaps also condensed or altered to fit the narrative. As for Thierry Guetta, the sequence of events in "Exit Through the Gift Shop" makes it very difficult to believe they weren't scripted, or at least outlined.
But does this have any impact on quality? In both cases, I think the tactics end up strengthening the films and their messages. "Exit Through the Gift Shop" pokes fun at the art world, where money and acknowledgment are enough to turn even the most artistically bankrupt individual into a superstar. It's the perception that a certain art style or trend is valuable that gives it legitimacy, and the film offers up the example of Thierry Guetta's alter ego, Mr. Brainwash, as someone who takes advantage of this. Whether Mr. Brainwash is real, or perhaps an amalgam of others, he's a perfect embodiment of what "Exit" views as the worst kind of artist, an unoriginal, derivative leech who profits from hype instead of originality. So while Mr. Brainwash and the events surrounding him may not be entirely authentic, they're certainly representative of an underlying truth. The approach itself can be seen as a teasing poke at the documentary art form and its oft stated aspirations of objectivity.
"Catfish" is a more straightforward, cautionary tale about the anonymity afforded by the internet, but also makes a case that sometimes that anonymity can be beneficial too. After spending eighty-odd minutes making the case for fictions sometimes being as important as truths, it would be hypocritical to begrudge the filmmakers a few tweaks of their own to reality. "Catfish" is undeniably gimmicky, ran a misleading marketing campaign, and the filmmakers come off very amateurish and none too sympathetic at times. And yet ultimately the film turned out to be such an even-handed, gentle exploration of the kind of bad situation we always see mined for its most salacious elements by the media. I found "Catfish" far more subversive and interesting than it billed itself to be, and though horror fans may have been bereft of the anticipated gore and splatter, perhaps not all of them left unmoved.
I liked both films, and after wrestling with it for a while, I respect what Joaquin Phoenix was trying to do in "I'm Still Here," even though it was terrible. We're in an interesting age of filmmaking, where the concept of reality has gotten more fluid and ambiguous. But I wonder if these new line-blurring tactics are really that much more harmful than the misleading editing and poorly supported arguments that other documentaries have offered in the past. I guess I'm not so concerned with what's real in these documentaries as much as I am with what is true.
All three of these films tackle the heady subject matter of false perceptions and distorted reality. "Catfish" charts the course of an online relationship where one of the participants may be misleading the other. "Exit Through the Gift Shop" starts out purporting to be a documentary about street artists and the guerrilla tactics they employ, and then takes a hard left turn into possible fiction when the documentarian decides he wants in on the action. Finally, the most publicized of the three was "I'm Still Here," where Joaquin Phoenix spent well over a year doing his best to convince the world that he was giving up acting to pursue an ill-advised career as a rap artist, and had the results filmed. Staging a personal meltdown as a piece of performance art was a keen idea, but the execution was lacking. In light of recent events with Charlie Sheen, however, "I'm Still Here" now feels bizarrely prescient.
So it's fitting that the filmmakers wound up blurring the lines between fact and fiction in their depiction of these stories. What we see onscreen in "Catfish" and "Exit Through the Gift Shop" seems plausible, but there's the nagging sense that the filmmakers must have staged certain scenes or recreated events that are being passed off as more genuine and spontaneous than they actually are. Could they have really set up some of those shots in "Catfish" so perfectly, and gotten such quality audio on the fly? Was Thierry Guetta's transformation from amateur documentary maker to amateur street artist entirely his own idea? I'm with the skeptics personally. While I can buy that everything in "Catfish" actually happened, and that all the people we see onscreen are the real people who were involved, there are some events in the early going that feel reenacted for the benefit of the audience, perhaps also condensed or altered to fit the narrative. As for Thierry Guetta, the sequence of events in "Exit Through the Gift Shop" makes it very difficult to believe they weren't scripted, or at least outlined.
But does this have any impact on quality? In both cases, I think the tactics end up strengthening the films and their messages. "Exit Through the Gift Shop" pokes fun at the art world, where money and acknowledgment are enough to turn even the most artistically bankrupt individual into a superstar. It's the perception that a certain art style or trend is valuable that gives it legitimacy, and the film offers up the example of Thierry Guetta's alter ego, Mr. Brainwash, as someone who takes advantage of this. Whether Mr. Brainwash is real, or perhaps an amalgam of others, he's a perfect embodiment of what "Exit" views as the worst kind of artist, an unoriginal, derivative leech who profits from hype instead of originality. So while Mr. Brainwash and the events surrounding him may not be entirely authentic, they're certainly representative of an underlying truth. The approach itself can be seen as a teasing poke at the documentary art form and its oft stated aspirations of objectivity.
"Catfish" is a more straightforward, cautionary tale about the anonymity afforded by the internet, but also makes a case that sometimes that anonymity can be beneficial too. After spending eighty-odd minutes making the case for fictions sometimes being as important as truths, it would be hypocritical to begrudge the filmmakers a few tweaks of their own to reality. "Catfish" is undeniably gimmicky, ran a misleading marketing campaign, and the filmmakers come off very amateurish and none too sympathetic at times. And yet ultimately the film turned out to be such an even-handed, gentle exploration of the kind of bad situation we always see mined for its most salacious elements by the media. I found "Catfish" far more subversive and interesting than it billed itself to be, and though horror fans may have been bereft of the anticipated gore and splatter, perhaps not all of them left unmoved.
I liked both films, and after wrestling with it for a while, I respect what Joaquin Phoenix was trying to do in "I'm Still Here," even though it was terrible. We're in an interesting age of filmmaking, where the concept of reality has gotten more fluid and ambiguous. But I wonder if these new line-blurring tactics are really that much more harmful than the misleading editing and poorly supported arguments that other documentaries have offered in the past. I guess I'm not so concerned with what's real in these documentaries as much as I am with what is true.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
"Community" and the Joys of Meta
I know, I know. I'm so late. The "Critical Film Studies" episode of "Community" aired nearly two weeks ago, but it's taken me a couple of viewings to process my thoughts about it, and I'm going to get into heavy spoilers here, so I figured that it was safer to hold off until everyone who wanted to see it got a chance to.
So to quickly summarize, this was the episode of "Community" widely billed to be a "Pulp Fiction" spoof, with all the commercials and press material getting lots of mileage out of the cast dressed up as Jules and Vincent, Pumpkin and Honey Bunny, Butch, Mia, and the Gimp. Jeff (Joel McHale) had the bright idea to throw a surprise "Pulp Fiction" themed birthday party for Abed (Danny Pudi), you see, Abed being the study group's resident media obsessive who prefers to communicate through pop culture references. Except that when Jeff comes to collect Abed for the party, Abed appears to be a changed man, suddenly wanting nothing more to have a nice meal in a fancy restaurant and have a "real conversation" for his birthday. Jeff takes him at his word, not realizing until after several courses and some serious oversharing that Abed and the entire episode have been spoofing another movie, the obscure 1980 art film "My Dinner With Andre," the whole time.
Usually I dislike misleading marketing tactics, but this was such a great example of a show using typical overhyping to its advantage. I was spoiled for the "My Dinner With Andre" references in advance, but I didn't expect it to keep going beyond the first scene. And going. And going. By the time Jeff (along with much of the audience) had the rug pulled out from under him, I had to marvel at how well we'd been tricked. There were some fun moments with the "Pulp Fiction" props, and the ending saw some quick reenactments that would make any Tarantino fan happy, but the bulk of the episode was taken up by "My Dinner With Andre." What's more, the writers used the scenario for some good character development. In the original film, Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn simply sit down to dinner for two hours and have a long, rambling conversation about life and art and other weighty subjects. Here, Jeff and Abed get to talk about their friendship and personal fears. Even without the layers of meta, the material is surprisingly funny and affecting.
There has been some grumbling that the "Andre" reference was too obscure for a general audience, but that was the point - Jeff didn't realize he was in the middle of another movie spoof and we weren't meant to either. I suspect the episode probably works better if you haven't seen "My Dinner With Andre." I have, because I happen to be that pretentious, and it was neat to see Danny Pudi's Andre Gregory impression and all the little in-jokes, but I didn't get to enjoy the confusion and the disbelief at Abed's sudden changes in behavior. I didn't get to have the big epiphany with Jeff and the rest of the audience when the jig was up. It's much more enjoyable to fall for an act that it is to spot one from the start. Ironically I gathered that viewers probably were supposed to get the multiple references to "Cougartown" Abed incorporated into his monologues, a show that I have no familiarity with whatsoever.
Despite its reputation for them, "Community" doesn't do these full blown parody episodes all that often, and rarely anything that hews as closely to its source material as "Critical Film Studies." I get the sense that the show has reached a point where it's poking fun at itself, and at the very act of making pop culture references. This may be getting too meta for some, but the reason I appreciate "Community" is because it's so ambitious and not scared of being smart. A full "Pulp Fiction" spoof would have been a lot of fun, (Would Abed have been Marsellus Wallace? Captain Koons? The Wolf?) but it almost would have been too easy. I've found that the better installments this year haven't been the splashier ones like the zombie episode or the astronaut episode or the Christmas special, but rather the ones that have adopted and critiqued various different narrative techniques, like the documentary episode, the bottle episode, and now the bait-and-switch parody episode.
Then again, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't gleefully anticipating the upcoming sequel to last year's "Modern Warfare" paintball episode. It's going to be a two-parter. And the season finale. And Josh Holloway will guest star.
Damn, I love this show.
So to quickly summarize, this was the episode of "Community" widely billed to be a "Pulp Fiction" spoof, with all the commercials and press material getting lots of mileage out of the cast dressed up as Jules and Vincent, Pumpkin and Honey Bunny, Butch, Mia, and the Gimp. Jeff (Joel McHale) had the bright idea to throw a surprise "Pulp Fiction" themed birthday party for Abed (Danny Pudi), you see, Abed being the study group's resident media obsessive who prefers to communicate through pop culture references. Except that when Jeff comes to collect Abed for the party, Abed appears to be a changed man, suddenly wanting nothing more to have a nice meal in a fancy restaurant and have a "real conversation" for his birthday. Jeff takes him at his word, not realizing until after several courses and some serious oversharing that Abed and the entire episode have been spoofing another movie, the obscure 1980 art film "My Dinner With Andre," the whole time.
Usually I dislike misleading marketing tactics, but this was such a great example of a show using typical overhyping to its advantage. I was spoiled for the "My Dinner With Andre" references in advance, but I didn't expect it to keep going beyond the first scene. And going. And going. By the time Jeff (along with much of the audience) had the rug pulled out from under him, I had to marvel at how well we'd been tricked. There were some fun moments with the "Pulp Fiction" props, and the ending saw some quick reenactments that would make any Tarantino fan happy, but the bulk of the episode was taken up by "My Dinner With Andre." What's more, the writers used the scenario for some good character development. In the original film, Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn simply sit down to dinner for two hours and have a long, rambling conversation about life and art and other weighty subjects. Here, Jeff and Abed get to talk about their friendship and personal fears. Even without the layers of meta, the material is surprisingly funny and affecting.
There has been some grumbling that the "Andre" reference was too obscure for a general audience, but that was the point - Jeff didn't realize he was in the middle of another movie spoof and we weren't meant to either. I suspect the episode probably works better if you haven't seen "My Dinner With Andre." I have, because I happen to be that pretentious, and it was neat to see Danny Pudi's Andre Gregory impression and all the little in-jokes, but I didn't get to enjoy the confusion and the disbelief at Abed's sudden changes in behavior. I didn't get to have the big epiphany with Jeff and the rest of the audience when the jig was up. It's much more enjoyable to fall for an act that it is to spot one from the start. Ironically I gathered that viewers probably were supposed to get the multiple references to "Cougartown" Abed incorporated into his monologues, a show that I have no familiarity with whatsoever.
Despite its reputation for them, "Community" doesn't do these full blown parody episodes all that often, and rarely anything that hews as closely to its source material as "Critical Film Studies." I get the sense that the show has reached a point where it's poking fun at itself, and at the very act of making pop culture references. This may be getting too meta for some, but the reason I appreciate "Community" is because it's so ambitious and not scared of being smart. A full "Pulp Fiction" spoof would have been a lot of fun, (Would Abed have been Marsellus Wallace? Captain Koons? The Wolf?) but it almost would have been too easy. I've found that the better installments this year haven't been the splashier ones like the zombie episode or the astronaut episode or the Christmas special, but rather the ones that have adopted and critiqued various different narrative techniques, like the documentary episode, the bottle episode, and now the bait-and-switch parody episode.
Then again, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't gleefully anticipating the upcoming sequel to last year's "Modern Warfare" paintball episode. It's going to be a two-parter. And the season finale. And Josh Holloway will guest star.
Damn, I love this show.
Monday, April 4, 2011
So... "Sucker Punch"
I think I'd have felt more kindly toward "Sucker Punch" if it weren't so desperately trying to sell itself as a female empowerment story. Clearly, the primary concern here is not female empowerment - it's male titillation. Hence the petite, scantily clad female characters who are all of age but visually read as adolescents. Hence the fetish costuming, the sickly-sweet nicknames, and the fantasy sequences full of common video game tropes. A period heroine like Baby Doll would have no frame of reference for an inner fantasy world full of seedy bordellos, killer robots, and samurai warriors. Instead, if I had to guess, the inside of her head would probably look more like Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland," a film with a far more female-friendly fantasy aesthetic that much of the target audience of "Sucker Punch" reviled on principle.
Honestly, I don't mind a fanservice-heavy film like this on a fundamental level. Guys have no reason to be ashamed of what they enjoy (within legal limits), and lord knows, girls have their own fantasy kinks that anyone familiar with the "Twilight" series can attest to. It's the laziness of the story and the hypocrisy of the sales pitch that drives me crazy. Nobody involved with the film seems to be able to admit that "Sucker Punch" is just a shiny, explode-y, campy burlesque show to make the fanboys happy. Zack Snyder's insistence on grafting a heavy moralistic message to the works feels like a desperate attempt to justify all the excess that has gone before. It's not necessary. It makes things worse.
What really surprised me was how badly the film's narrative is constructed. The story presents us with three levels of reality. In the first, we have a young woman of twenty (Emily Mortimer), who is framed for the murder of her sister by a loathsome stepfather, and shipped off to an insane asylum. The stepfather slips money to an orderly (Oscar Isaac) to forge the signature of a doctor (Carla Gugino) and ensure the girl is lobotomized. She has five days to escape before the lobotomist (Jon Hamm) arrives. Doesn't sound like a bad setup so far, does it?
The trouble is that all this happens in the opening five minutes, and we don't get to see any of the events between the girl's arrival at the asylum and the trip to the lobotomy chair. Instead, right before Don Draper is about to pound a spike into her brain, the film takes us into the girl's fantasy world, where the asylum is a brothel, and all the patients are imprisoned burlesque performers. In this world, the girl's name is Baby Doll, the orderly is the sadistic brothel owner, Blue, the doctor is a dancing instructor, Madame Gorski, and the lobotomist is a mysterious High Roller, coming in five days to deflower Baby. She plots her escape, with the help of fellow captives Sweet Pea (Abby Cornish), Rocket (Jena Malone), Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens), and Amber (Jamie Chung).
The third level of reality comes into play when it is discovered that Baby Doll's dancing hypnotizes and distracts any man who watches her. The girls take advantage of this by collecting items - a map, a knife, a lighter - for their escape during Baby's performances. But the audience never gets to see the dancing or anything else that's going on, because every time Baby dances, we switch to a highly stylized fantasy sequence where she and the other girls are heavily armed combatants fighting dragons and robots and steampunk zombie Nazis. Baby Doll also gets the help of a mysterious guru figure (Scott Glenn), who gives out fortune cookie wisdoms with the parameters of each mission.
These multiple levels of reality are badly tied together and end up undercutting each other. None of the heroines are well defined, and their attitudes and behaviors vary from level to level, so it's not clear how much of the truth we're actually seeing through these fantasy filters. No time is spent on characterization in the combat level. And since we only get abstract representations of what's really going on during many tense moments in the brothel, that story feels disjointed and missing key material. The pacing is terrible, falling into a predictable pattern of hyperkinetic action followed by increasingly unpleasant scenes of subjugation and abuse in the brothel. And of course, since the entire brothel fantasy is itself taking place in the mind of the real, nameless girl in the mental hospital, there's always a sense that none of these other characters are real or worth caring about.
I give Zack Snyder full credit for presenting some fancy visuals here, especially in the fighting scenes, but that's about all that works. The script is a mess, crammed full of every possible kind of nerd-bait with little rhyme or reason as to why it's being included. The characters are barely more than repurposed stock types from video games and exploitation flicks. I like many of the actors that appear, and I have to say it's gratifying to see Jena Malone not playing some troubled teenage boy's winsome love interest for once, but this feels like such a waste of their potential. Vanessa Hudgens and Carla Gugino are usually quite attractive, but you could hardly find them under the bad wigs and thick mascara. Malone and Abbie Cornish, who was so wonderful in "Bright Star," manage to occasionally pretend that they're in another, much better movie. As for Emily Browning, Baby Doll is such a collection of common fetish tropes, it feels like the costume designer and makeup artists deserve more credit for the character than the actress.
I haven't even gotten into the multiple contradictory messages about female sexuality and gender politics, but plenty of other bloggers have been taking those elements apart, and I think I've made my point that "Sucker Punch" was never really about girl power in the first place. It acknowledges the problems with the portrayals of women in these kinds of films, and gets meta about it a few times, but does little beyond that. I suppose that admitting your faults is the first step to correcting them, but the movie is a long way from being as progressive as Snyder thinks it is. If he hadn't hijacked the empowerment narrative and indulged in so much heavy-handed moralizing, I don't think "Sucker Punch" would have been a better film, but it wouldn't be in the middle of the critical firestorm it's weathering now.
Because if you're going to make a fanboy film, which "Sucker Punch" undeniably is from start to finish, there's no point in feeling guilty about it or pretending that it's anything else.
Honestly, I don't mind a fanservice-heavy film like this on a fundamental level. Guys have no reason to be ashamed of what they enjoy (within legal limits), and lord knows, girls have their own fantasy kinks that anyone familiar with the "Twilight" series can attest to. It's the laziness of the story and the hypocrisy of the sales pitch that drives me crazy. Nobody involved with the film seems to be able to admit that "Sucker Punch" is just a shiny, explode-y, campy burlesque show to make the fanboys happy. Zack Snyder's insistence on grafting a heavy moralistic message to the works feels like a desperate attempt to justify all the excess that has gone before. It's not necessary. It makes things worse.
What really surprised me was how badly the film's narrative is constructed. The story presents us with three levels of reality. In the first, we have a young woman of twenty (Emily Mortimer), who is framed for the murder of her sister by a loathsome stepfather, and shipped off to an insane asylum. The stepfather slips money to an orderly (Oscar Isaac) to forge the signature of a doctor (Carla Gugino) and ensure the girl is lobotomized. She has five days to escape before the lobotomist (Jon Hamm) arrives. Doesn't sound like a bad setup so far, does it?
The trouble is that all this happens in the opening five minutes, and we don't get to see any of the events between the girl's arrival at the asylum and the trip to the lobotomy chair. Instead, right before Don Draper is about to pound a spike into her brain, the film takes us into the girl's fantasy world, where the asylum is a brothel, and all the patients are imprisoned burlesque performers. In this world, the girl's name is Baby Doll, the orderly is the sadistic brothel owner, Blue, the doctor is a dancing instructor, Madame Gorski, and the lobotomist is a mysterious High Roller, coming in five days to deflower Baby. She plots her escape, with the help of fellow captives Sweet Pea (Abby Cornish), Rocket (Jena Malone), Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens), and Amber (Jamie Chung).
The third level of reality comes into play when it is discovered that Baby Doll's dancing hypnotizes and distracts any man who watches her. The girls take advantage of this by collecting items - a map, a knife, a lighter - for their escape during Baby's performances. But the audience never gets to see the dancing or anything else that's going on, because every time Baby dances, we switch to a highly stylized fantasy sequence where she and the other girls are heavily armed combatants fighting dragons and robots and steampunk zombie Nazis. Baby Doll also gets the help of a mysterious guru figure (Scott Glenn), who gives out fortune cookie wisdoms with the parameters of each mission.
These multiple levels of reality are badly tied together and end up undercutting each other. None of the heroines are well defined, and their attitudes and behaviors vary from level to level, so it's not clear how much of the truth we're actually seeing through these fantasy filters. No time is spent on characterization in the combat level. And since we only get abstract representations of what's really going on during many tense moments in the brothel, that story feels disjointed and missing key material. The pacing is terrible, falling into a predictable pattern of hyperkinetic action followed by increasingly unpleasant scenes of subjugation and abuse in the brothel. And of course, since the entire brothel fantasy is itself taking place in the mind of the real, nameless girl in the mental hospital, there's always a sense that none of these other characters are real or worth caring about.
I give Zack Snyder full credit for presenting some fancy visuals here, especially in the fighting scenes, but that's about all that works. The script is a mess, crammed full of every possible kind of nerd-bait with little rhyme or reason as to why it's being included. The characters are barely more than repurposed stock types from video games and exploitation flicks. I like many of the actors that appear, and I have to say it's gratifying to see Jena Malone not playing some troubled teenage boy's winsome love interest for once, but this feels like such a waste of their potential. Vanessa Hudgens and Carla Gugino are usually quite attractive, but you could hardly find them under the bad wigs and thick mascara. Malone and Abbie Cornish, who was so wonderful in "Bright Star," manage to occasionally pretend that they're in another, much better movie. As for Emily Browning, Baby Doll is such a collection of common fetish tropes, it feels like the costume designer and makeup artists deserve more credit for the character than the actress.
I haven't even gotten into the multiple contradictory messages about female sexuality and gender politics, but plenty of other bloggers have been taking those elements apart, and I think I've made my point that "Sucker Punch" was never really about girl power in the first place. It acknowledges the problems with the portrayals of women in these kinds of films, and gets meta about it a few times, but does little beyond that. I suppose that admitting your faults is the first step to correcting them, but the movie is a long way from being as progressive as Snyder thinks it is. If he hadn't hijacked the empowerment narrative and indulged in so much heavy-handed moralizing, I don't think "Sucker Punch" would have been a better film, but it wouldn't be in the middle of the critical firestorm it's weathering now.
Because if you're going to make a fanboy film, which "Sucker Punch" undeniably is from start to finish, there's no point in feeling guilty about it or pretending that it's anything else.
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Anticipating Summer Movie Season? I Wish I Was
It's April, which means that summer blockbuster season is just around the corner. It seems to come a little earlier every year, with many big action pictures now crowding the first weeks of May, where they were once expected to wait for Memorial Day weekend, and a few like the fifth "Fast and Furious" movie even braving the tail-end of April. I was all set to write up a list of films I was excited for, but I'll tell you the truth. I'm not really feeling it this year. Maybe it's because I'm getting toward the outer reaches of the age range for the target audience for most of these films. Maybe it's because the inundation of sequels and reboots and retreads is getting me down. Maybe I've just gotten immune to the hype, or I haven't gotten over the endless string of disappointments that characterized last year.
There are a handful of movies that look promising. JJ Abrams' "Super 8," Jon Favreau's "Cowboys & Aliens," the Guillermo Del Toro scripted "Don't be Afraid of the Dark," and the "Fright Night" remake should be fun genre popcorn flicks. Festival favorite "Another Earth" could be interesting. Some of the August counterprogramming, like dramas "The Help" and "The Debt" sound all right, but information about them is scarce. I'm rooting for "Winnie the Pooh" with all my might. And if they can keep the juvenile toilet humor in check, I might be convinced to give "Mr. Popper's Penguins" a shot. However there are only three movies that I can say I'm really anticipating, two of them sequels - the final "Harry Potter" and the second "Kung Fu Panda" movie. In both cases, these are films following strong previous installments and doen't feel extraneous or unnecessary, unlike the bulk of the sequels coming out this year. Just looking at the list of upcoming second, third, fourth, or fifth franchise entries is depressing.
Was PIXAR's "Cars" good enough to warrant a sequel? Did we need another "Pirates of the Caribbean"? I guess "Transformers 3" and "The Hangover 2" were inevitable, but who exactly was clamoring for another "Spy Kids"? Or "Final Destination"? Or "Johnny English"? Or "Journey to the Center of the Earth"? Why have prequels for "X-men" and "Planet of the Apes"? Does anyone under the age of thirty even know what "Planet of the Apes" is? Thankfully reboots are scarcer this year, but we're still going to have to put up with advertisements for "The Smurfs" for a couple of months. And I would dearly love for the "Conan the Barbarian" reboot to be wonderful, or even just a good cheesy romp. But it's being directed by Marcus Nispel, whose filmography consists almost entirely of poorly regarded horror movie reboots like the 2003 "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and the 2009 "Friday the 13th." So I await "Conan" with growing dread.
But wait, I hear you cry. This is the summer of the great superhero showdown, when DC/Warner Brothers and Marvel/Paramount will sending "The Green Lantern," "Thor," and "Captain America" to the multiplexes for the first time to do battle. You love superhero movies! And indeed I do, but my anticipation for all of these titles has taken a dive since last year. The biggest culprit was really "Iron Man 2," which was severely diminished by being rushed into production and used to set up the 2012 "Avengers" movie. "Thor" and "Captain America" may still turn out to be wonderful films, but I worry that their plots will be compromised, and the origin stories of these new superheroes will end up playing more like prequels to "Avengers." As for "Green Lantern," it's still the one that I think is the most promising, but the delays in getting marketing materials out - note the conspicuous lack of a Superbowl ad - is worrying. I haven't seen the new Wondercon footage yet, so I still hold out hope it will come out better than the bad buzz suggests. Oh, and I'd be remiss in forgetting to mention "Priest," another comic book adaptation with Paul Bettany, which looks like a low-rent, monochrome "Judge Dredd."
And then there's the comedic genre, which I have never have much luck with. "Something Borrowed," "Friends with Benefits," "Bad Teacher" "Bridesmaids," "Horrible Bosses" "Zookeeper," "30 Minutes or Less," and "The Change-Up" aren't doing anything for me so far. "Crazy Stupid Love" has the benefit of Steve Carrell and Julianne Moore, while "Larry Crowne" with Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts looks cute, but these hardly ping as an event movies. Finally, the art house offers some possible reprieves. Woody Allen's latest, "Midnight in Paris," has a stellar cast that hopefully won't go to waste. The long awaited "The Beaver" with Mel Gibson is also en route and the buzz has been pretty decent - well, if you can stop cringing at the mention of Mel Gibson.
But what's the last summer film I'm really anticipating? Terence Malick's "The Tree of Life," which is getting a limited release at the end of May, and could steal some attention away from bigger movies. No matter how you slice it, this one's going to be an event, since pretentious cineastes have been waiting for the film for what feels like ages. Something as artsy as "The Tree of Life" may seem an odd choice for summer viewing, but in a year like this it stands out above the crowd and I'll take what I can get.
This is not to say I'm rooting for any of these movies to fail. I hope that I'm completely wrong about the majority of these titles, that my expectations will be exceeded, and we get a great summer at the movies. I don't want to see a repeat of last year, which left the whole industry miserable. There's only so much schadenfreude a girl should indulge in. But if worse comes to worst, well, there are a lot of films in the fall and winter that I'm looking forward to. And there's always next year, which is already shaping up to be a monster. But those are posts for another time.
There are a handful of movies that look promising. JJ Abrams' "Super 8," Jon Favreau's "Cowboys & Aliens," the Guillermo Del Toro scripted "Don't be Afraid of the Dark," and the "Fright Night" remake should be fun genre popcorn flicks. Festival favorite "Another Earth" could be interesting. Some of the August counterprogramming, like dramas "The Help" and "The Debt" sound all right, but information about them is scarce. I'm rooting for "Winnie the Pooh" with all my might. And if they can keep the juvenile toilet humor in check, I might be convinced to give "Mr. Popper's Penguins" a shot. However there are only three movies that I can say I'm really anticipating, two of them sequels - the final "Harry Potter" and the second "Kung Fu Panda" movie. In both cases, these are films following strong previous installments and doen't feel extraneous or unnecessary, unlike the bulk of the sequels coming out this year. Just looking at the list of upcoming second, third, fourth, or fifth franchise entries is depressing.
Was PIXAR's "Cars" good enough to warrant a sequel? Did we need another "Pirates of the Caribbean"? I guess "Transformers 3" and "The Hangover 2" were inevitable, but who exactly was clamoring for another "Spy Kids"? Or "Final Destination"? Or "Johnny English"? Or "Journey to the Center of the Earth"? Why have prequels for "X-men" and "Planet of the Apes"? Does anyone under the age of thirty even know what "Planet of the Apes" is? Thankfully reboots are scarcer this year, but we're still going to have to put up with advertisements for "The Smurfs" for a couple of months. And I would dearly love for the "Conan the Barbarian" reboot to be wonderful, or even just a good cheesy romp. But it's being directed by Marcus Nispel, whose filmography consists almost entirely of poorly regarded horror movie reboots like the 2003 "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and the 2009 "Friday the 13th." So I await "Conan" with growing dread.
But wait, I hear you cry. This is the summer of the great superhero showdown, when DC/Warner Brothers and Marvel/Paramount will sending "The Green Lantern," "Thor," and "Captain America" to the multiplexes for the first time to do battle. You love superhero movies! And indeed I do, but my anticipation for all of these titles has taken a dive since last year. The biggest culprit was really "Iron Man 2," which was severely diminished by being rushed into production and used to set up the 2012 "Avengers" movie. "Thor" and "Captain America" may still turn out to be wonderful films, but I worry that their plots will be compromised, and the origin stories of these new superheroes will end up playing more like prequels to "Avengers." As for "Green Lantern," it's still the one that I think is the most promising, but the delays in getting marketing materials out - note the conspicuous lack of a Superbowl ad - is worrying. I haven't seen the new Wondercon footage yet, so I still hold out hope it will come out better than the bad buzz suggests. Oh, and I'd be remiss in forgetting to mention "Priest," another comic book adaptation with Paul Bettany, which looks like a low-rent, monochrome "Judge Dredd."
And then there's the comedic genre, which I have never have much luck with. "Something Borrowed," "Friends with Benefits," "Bad Teacher" "Bridesmaids," "Horrible Bosses" "Zookeeper," "30 Minutes or Less," and "The Change-Up" aren't doing anything for me so far. "Crazy Stupid Love" has the benefit of Steve Carrell and Julianne Moore, while "Larry Crowne" with Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts looks cute, but these hardly ping as an event movies. Finally, the art house offers some possible reprieves. Woody Allen's latest, "Midnight in Paris," has a stellar cast that hopefully won't go to waste. The long awaited "The Beaver" with Mel Gibson is also en route and the buzz has been pretty decent - well, if you can stop cringing at the mention of Mel Gibson.
But what's the last summer film I'm really anticipating? Terence Malick's "The Tree of Life," which is getting a limited release at the end of May, and could steal some attention away from bigger movies. No matter how you slice it, this one's going to be an event, since pretentious cineastes have been waiting for the film for what feels like ages. Something as artsy as "The Tree of Life" may seem an odd choice for summer viewing, but in a year like this it stands out above the crowd and I'll take what I can get.
This is not to say I'm rooting for any of these movies to fail. I hope that I'm completely wrong about the majority of these titles, that my expectations will be exceeded, and we get a great summer at the movies. I don't want to see a repeat of last year, which left the whole industry miserable. There's only so much schadenfreude a girl should indulge in. But if worse comes to worst, well, there are a lot of films in the fall and winter that I'm looking forward to. And there's always next year, which is already shaping up to be a monster. But those are posts for another time.
Saturday, April 2, 2011
Disney Dreams and "Waking Sleeping Beauty"
When I was younger, I went to a school dance with a group of friends and had a great time. It was only later in the evening, as we were all going our separate ways, that my best friend pulled me aside and explained that there had been drama going on all night between two of my other girlfriends who were fighting over the same boy. I'd been totally oblivious that anything like that was happening, and felt sheepish and little embarrassed. Some of the same feelings came up while watching "Waking Sleeping Beauty," a documentary that chronicles the Disney animation renaissance, from the early 80s up to the release of "The Lion King" in 1994.
As I've mentioned before in many of these blog posts, I was a Disney kid. I was exactly the right age at exactly the right time to be utterly swept up in Disney animation's return to glory in the 80s and 90s, and so became something of a life-long Disney obsessive. I'd read some of the literature about what was going on behind the scenes, and knew that the sugar-coated studio version of events was all a front, but most of the negativity involved the public sparring between Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg that went on during 1994. As far as I knew, everything had been going fine up until that point. So it was jarring to see how bumpy that preceding decade really was for the studio, all the blood, sweat, and tears that went into pushing feature animation up to those towering creative highs, and the personal tensions that were apparent between the three men who were so often the public face of Disney during that period - Eisner, Katzenberg, and Roy Disney.
"Waking Sleeping Beauty" was directed by Don Hahn and produced by Peter Schneider, who have credits on many familiar Disney features. The documentary is made up entirely of archival footage, a good mix of the animators' home movies, still photos, marketing material, news footage, and period interviews. Disney fans will also be gratified to see clips from in-progress versions of the films, recording sessions, and dropped musical sequences. Hahn provides much of the narration himself, but also turns the microphone over to many of the other players involved in order to let everybody have their say, even putting some of the unused audio on the commentary track. Because of the notorious lengths that Disney goes to in order to protect its public image and intellectual property, this is the first time that many of these stories have come to light, and there's still a sense of walking on eggshells at certain points. Perhaps the filmmakers were too close to their subject matter, as they do have a tendency to sentimentalize events and the nostalgia is awfully thick. Notably, Hahn only alludes to the larger fallout from Katzenberg's departure and the painful reversal of fortune for Disney animation that would occur over the next ten years.
But at its heart, this is the best look behind the scenes of Disney animation that I've ever seen, and finally helps to humanize many familiar names. It makes so much difference to actually be able to watch video of lyricist Howard Ashman, often described as one of the driving creative forces behind "The Little Mermaid," "Beauty and the Beast," and "Aladdin." He's showered with praise and affection by everyone in the film, but I appreciated the inclusion of some of the not-so-nice incidents too, like Ashman blowing up at "Beauty and the Beast" director Kirk Wise, cheerfully rendered in a series of caricature drawings. The film is also very good at providing important context and little details to many events in the studio's history, such as the failure of "The Black Cauldron" in 1985 being especially bitter because they were trumped at the box office by Nelvana's "Care Bears Movie." And when the animators get kicked off the Disney lot and relocated to Glendale, we're treated to video of them working out their frustrations by re-enacting "Apocalypse Now."
I urge you to see this film on DVD if possible, for the additional supplemental materials. There's at least a good hour of deleted sequences and full versions of certain clips. An encounter with a young Tim Burton, for instance, is absolutely hysterical when you see the whole thing. If I have any beef with the film it's that I wish we could have seen more of the animators. The only people we follow through those ten years, start to finish, are the executives. The narrative would have been strengthened by following one of the artists - possibly Don Hahn himself - through that time period too. Also for anyone who isn't a Disney nut, it's difficult to keep track of everyone in the film. I honestly wondered a few times if someone had mislaid some captions somewhere.
But these are minor quibbles. "Waking Sleeping Beauty" is a rare, candid look at what was really going on in the Magic Kingdom while the world was falling back in love with Disney. Some of it was magic, but a lot of it was shrewd executive brinksmanship, a changed corporate culture, and a small group of people working very, very hard for a a very long time. It's about time we got to see their side of the story.
As I've mentioned before in many of these blog posts, I was a Disney kid. I was exactly the right age at exactly the right time to be utterly swept up in Disney animation's return to glory in the 80s and 90s, and so became something of a life-long Disney obsessive. I'd read some of the literature about what was going on behind the scenes, and knew that the sugar-coated studio version of events was all a front, but most of the negativity involved the public sparring between Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg that went on during 1994. As far as I knew, everything had been going fine up until that point. So it was jarring to see how bumpy that preceding decade really was for the studio, all the blood, sweat, and tears that went into pushing feature animation up to those towering creative highs, and the personal tensions that were apparent between the three men who were so often the public face of Disney during that period - Eisner, Katzenberg, and Roy Disney.
"Waking Sleeping Beauty" was directed by Don Hahn and produced by Peter Schneider, who have credits on many familiar Disney features. The documentary is made up entirely of archival footage, a good mix of the animators' home movies, still photos, marketing material, news footage, and period interviews. Disney fans will also be gratified to see clips from in-progress versions of the films, recording sessions, and dropped musical sequences. Hahn provides much of the narration himself, but also turns the microphone over to many of the other players involved in order to let everybody have their say, even putting some of the unused audio on the commentary track. Because of the notorious lengths that Disney goes to in order to protect its public image and intellectual property, this is the first time that many of these stories have come to light, and there's still a sense of walking on eggshells at certain points. Perhaps the filmmakers were too close to their subject matter, as they do have a tendency to sentimentalize events and the nostalgia is awfully thick. Notably, Hahn only alludes to the larger fallout from Katzenberg's departure and the painful reversal of fortune for Disney animation that would occur over the next ten years.
But at its heart, this is the best look behind the scenes of Disney animation that I've ever seen, and finally helps to humanize many familiar names. It makes so much difference to actually be able to watch video of lyricist Howard Ashman, often described as one of the driving creative forces behind "The Little Mermaid," "Beauty and the Beast," and "Aladdin." He's showered with praise and affection by everyone in the film, but I appreciated the inclusion of some of the not-so-nice incidents too, like Ashman blowing up at "Beauty and the Beast" director Kirk Wise, cheerfully rendered in a series of caricature drawings. The film is also very good at providing important context and little details to many events in the studio's history, such as the failure of "The Black Cauldron" in 1985 being especially bitter because they were trumped at the box office by Nelvana's "Care Bears Movie." And when the animators get kicked off the Disney lot and relocated to Glendale, we're treated to video of them working out their frustrations by re-enacting "Apocalypse Now."
I urge you to see this film on DVD if possible, for the additional supplemental materials. There's at least a good hour of deleted sequences and full versions of certain clips. An encounter with a young Tim Burton, for instance, is absolutely hysterical when you see the whole thing. If I have any beef with the film it's that I wish we could have seen more of the animators. The only people we follow through those ten years, start to finish, are the executives. The narrative would have been strengthened by following one of the artists - possibly Don Hahn himself - through that time period too. Also for anyone who isn't a Disney nut, it's difficult to keep track of everyone in the film. I honestly wondered a few times if someone had mislaid some captions somewhere.
But these are minor quibbles. "Waking Sleeping Beauty" is a rare, candid look at what was really going on in the Magic Kingdom while the world was falling back in love with Disney. Some of it was magic, but a lot of it was shrewd executive brinksmanship, a changed corporate culture, and a small group of people working very, very hard for a a very long time. It's about time we got to see their side of the story.
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