If you’re a fan of the Peter Pan story or the new Tinker Bell movie series you’ll find a lot to love in the third movie in the series. I’ve been sent a full 8-minutes of the film as a special sneak-peek for The Disney… Read More »Tinker Bell and the Great Fairy Rescue Preview
Like the Harry Potter book series, the DVD based Tinker Bell stories set in the world of Pixie Hollow start simple, easy to get into, and then progress into more and more complex stories and issues. DVD number 3, “Tinker Bell and the Great Fairy Rescue,” follows that tradition presenting a rich story with many more characters and emotions involved.
As the name implies this film features a rescue which implies some action and the directors aim to deliver. It also delivers some important moments in the mythos of the Peter Pan world. I don’t want to give away any spoilers, but in the clips I saw, I spent a lot of time going “oh, that’s cool.”
The third film really shows a progression in quality film making that has occurred since the Pixar brain trust arrived after merging with Disney. The art direction and character animation continue to improve. They’ve moved the characters away from the cartoony feel. The set design is fully realized with lots of rich detail.
Earlier today, I was priviledged to participate in a roundtable Q&A session with Helen Kalafatic and Bradley Raymond, Producer and Director respectively, follow below the jump for the transcript.
A calendar of upcoming and recently released Disney DVDs, both fan created and those released by the Walt Disney Company. Just Released June 8th Star Struck: Extended Edition StarStruck, a music and adventure-filled romp that hits all the right notes for kids and tweens, tells… Read More »Disney DVD Release Schedule
Disney’s billion dollar box office hit and Tim Burton’s epic fantasy adventure, Alice in Wonderland, comes out today on DVD and Blu-Ray disc in either a 3-Disc Blu-ray Combo Pack (Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy), 1-Disc Blu-ray, or 1-Disc DVD. So no matter what… Read More »Alice in Wonderland on DVD/Blu-Ray Today
If there’s one thing Disney is counting on right now its franchises. The search for good franchises comes right from the top, CEO Bob Iger’s office. Hopefully he’s watched this new remastered version of Disney’s Great Mouse Detective DVD, because it’s good the makings of… Read More »Great Mouse Detective returns to DVD
Ponyo is a Studio Ghibli Film from Oscar®-winning director Hayao Miyazaki with dubbing and distribution in the US by Walt Disney Studios. It is becoming increasingly clear that there is one true master when it comes to the art of animation. That person is Hayao Miyazaki. It was Miyazaki’s biggest box office hit with over $200 million world wide and over $15 million here in the US, his best showing in the states so far. His films deserve every bit of attention they get and more. A big thanks to the team at Disney for helping to bring it stateside.
The movie is very loosely based on Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid” and it’s interesting to watch just to see where Miyazaki takes the movie. There is obviously a lot of Japanese mythos that I missed while watching the film, but upon subsequent viewings the richness and depth of the story really grew on me, even if I didn’t know exactly what the reference was.
Of all Miyazaki’s films, Ponyo is the most accessible for kids. My six year old was totally entranced for the whole film, a rarity for him. But there was plenty for adults to absorb as well. The movie works on multiple levels, to say the least.
One of Ponyo’s themes is a very contemporary concern for nature. You’ll be blown away by some of the animation and moved deep in your soul by others. In particular one seen with waves taking the form of fish is literally the most beautiful animation I have seen in my life.
More details about the DVD and its special features below the jump:
John Lasseter is the busiest guy at Disney. He’s the co-founder of Pixar, the history-making computer animation studio, chief creative officer of Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios; and the principal creative advisor to Walt Disney Imagineering, and in demand at film festivals and charity events. Always at the forefront of what can be accomplished within animation, Lasseter is excited for Walt Disney Animation Studio’s upcoming release, The Princess and The Frog, which marks the return of the musical fairytale with a Princess at the center. In this interview we cover everything from the movie to his love of Hawaiian print shirts (a man after my own heart).
Q: John, how did The Princess and The Frog come about?
Ed Catmull and I, the day I returned to the Walt Disney Animation Studios, said that we wanted to bring back John Musker and Ron Clements. So, once we brought them back, I empowered them to come up with their own project. I mentioned to them one idea that I had, just a nugget of an idea at Pixar. I love the story of “The Frog Prince,” and I love New Orleans. And I thought that it would be a great place to set a story like that…and that’s all I mentioned to them. We always ask for the directors to come back to us with not just one idea, but three ideas…and they came back with nine ideas. These guys were so prolific, they’re fantastic. And one of them was The Princess and The Frog—they had this wonderful twist on the story, where the main character, Tiana, kisses the frog, but she’s not a real princess, she gets turned into a frog as well. That was their clever twist on it. They wanted it to be a musical, set in New Orleans, and they wanted Randy Newman to write the music which, of course, I loved, because I’ve worked with Randy Newman on all of the movies that I’ve directed. Randy grew up in both New Orleans and Los Angeles. He would go every summer to New Orleans, so he knows the city and its music. It’s like he was born with it. It’s in his DNA, and so I think he was a phenomenal choice for it.
Q: Why the return to fairy tale animation now?
I’ve always loved animation it’s the reason why I do what I do for a living – the films of Walt Disney. This art form is so spectacular and beautiful. And I never quite understood the feeling amongst animation studios that audiences today only wanted to see computer animation. It’s never about the medium that a film is made in, it’s about the story. It’s about how good the movie is. And so one of the first things that I did when I came back to the Walt Disney Animation Studios was to ask John Musker and Ron Clements to come back to the studio and just empowered them to say, “Come up with a movie that you really want to tell.” And The Princess and The Frog was born. In glorious Disney fairy tale animation. It’s just spectacular.
Q: How is The Princess and The Frog a continuation of this incredibly rich legacy that is Disney Animation?
You know, what’s exciting about The Princess and The Frog, is that it’s the return to the sincere fairy tale. It’s a return to the musical, which hasn’t been done in quite a while. You know, it’s so classically Disney in every way, yet it’s brand new, it’s something you’ve never seen before. And that’s what’s so exciting about this. When you sit and watch The Princess and The Frog, I mean, I helped make the movie, but I sit there and I watch it and I think, “I forgot how much I love this!” It’s all those things combined, the animation, the sincere fairy tale, the musical, the great characters, the talking animals, the princess, the prince, all these things combined, it’s so classically Disney yet it’s so completely original.
Q: Tell me a little bit more about the story of The Princess and The Frog
The story of The Princess and The Frog is about a fantastic character named Tiana. She is such a strong character. She’s a waitress, but she wants to own her own restaurant. It was her father’s dream that she’s carried on, and she works double, triple shifts to raise money to buy this old sugar mill that she thought would make a great great restaurant right in New Orleans. And on the verge of getting her restaurant, someone buys it out from under her and her entire dream is just pulled out from under her.
So at this moment, she does what she said she would never do, she wishes on the evening star, which is what her best friend Charlotte always does, because Charlotte only wants to marry a prince—Tiana is more practical—but she finally does wish upon an evening star. And then, she looks down and sees a frog and thinks, “Oh great, a practical joker,” you know. And she’s at a masquerade ball and she’s dressed as a princess. She looks down and she says, “I take it you want a kiss now,” and the frog answers, [IN A FRENCH ACCENT] “Kissing would be nice, yes?”
And it freaks her out because this frog is talking, and she finds out this is a frog that claims he’s actually a prince. So he cons her into kissing her. But instead of the frog turning into a prince, she actually turns into a frog, because she’s not a real princess, it was a costume party. So now here’s a prince, and here’s Tiana as a frog, and they have to travel the Bayou to turn this spell around, they have to find this voodoo fairy godmother named Mama Odie to reverse the spell that Dr. Facilier, the evil voodoo practitioner, has put on the prince, and now, Tiana.
Along the way they meet this fantastic alligator named Louis, who’s a jazz trumpet-playing alligator, and he’s hilarious, he’s fantastic. And they also meet a firefly, a Cajun firefly named Ray. And these two become close friends with Tiana and Prince Naveen. And it turns into this fantastic journey for them to become human again. And along the way, they might fall in love. I don’t want to give away the ending. And I’m not gonna say anymore than that.
Q: Could you talk about the filmmakers?
It was really exciting to get John Musker and Ron Clements to come back to the Studio. I went to College with John Musker, so we’ve known each other for a long, long time. I think they are Disney. When you think about the movies they made, especially THE LITTLE MERMAID and ALADDIN, I mean, those are two of the great Disney animated films. And I think that it was so exciting to get them to come back to the Disney Studios.
In the end, when they came back, we just wanted them back at the Studio, because they belong at the Disney Studios. So when they came back, I said, I want you to do a movie that you really want to do, something from your heart. And so we had talked about a bunch of ideas and there was just a nugget of an idea that I have had up at Pixar, which is to do a retelling of “The Frog Prince” set in New Orleans, and that’s all I had.
And so I just mentioned that to them and they took it and created the most original and fresh twist to the story, and they came up with The Princess and The Frog. And they wanted it set in New Orleans and they wanted it to be a Musical. So it was so exciting. I think John Musker and Ron Clements are just phenomenal in their leadership, their storytelling, their creativity, their knowledge of animation, their knowledge of filmmaking, it’s just fantastic.
When we heard that Walt Disney Animation Studios had decided that hand-drawn animation should not have died with the poorly received “Home On The Range” and that they were reviving the the Princess genre as well, with the first African American Princess to boot, too say that expectation were high is an understatement. The Princess and The Frog may have failed to meet those expectations, but it’s a solid effort on the road back for the mouse.
Disney called back a lot of the animators they had let go, rebuilt a whole new slew of animators desks, this time with a special new computer program that makes hand-drawn animation more efficient, and placed John Lasseter on notice – something magical had better happen.
Well there was magic, but not at the box office. I think a combination of a bad release date (it should have been a holiday offering) and poor marketing choices by Disney, led to some of the poor results. But it still brought in over $240 million at the world wide box office before it was pulled to make way for the DVD.
We all wanted the The Princess and the Frog to be a great film. Instead we got a movie that was slow in places, and with a story that lacked focus. But the animation was great, the music quality, and the characters are memorable enough to be featured in the parks for years to come.
Upon watching the film again I think it’s a big step over the films we had been seeing from Walt Disney Animation (although “Meet the Robinsons” is an underlooked gem if you ask me). I definitely see the foundation for more great films to come from Disney. They’re not back to “Beauty and the Beast” quality yet, but they’ll get there.
Bonus Features
The single disc DVD comes with these exciting bonus features:
• Deleted Scenes
• Audio Commentary by John Musker and Ron Clements (co-writers and directors) and Peter Del Vecho (producer)
• “Never Knew I Needed”- Music video by Ne-Yo
Games and Activities
• What Do You See: Princess Portraits — A bayou-style quiz tests viewers’ knowledge of all of Disney’s beautiful princesses. Ray’s firefly family creates twinkling portraits of each princess and if
the player correctly identifies her, they can enjoy a tongue-cheek mini re-telling of that character’s story.
The Blu-ray Combo Pack edition comes with additional bonus features, including:
Backstage Disney
• Magic In The Bayou: The Making of A Princess — Co-writers and directors John Musker and Ron Clements take a freewheeling, behind-the-scenes look at the making of Disney’s newest animated film as it grows from an initial concept to a lavish animated film set in the enchanting world of New Orleans and the surrounding bayous.
• The Return To Hand Drawn Animation
• The Disney Legacy
• Disney’s Newest Princess
• The Princess and the Animator
• Conjuring The Villain
• A Return To The Animated Musical
• Bringing Life to Animation with an introduction by John Musker and Ron Clements.
• Deleted Scenes introduced by the filmmakers
• Art Galleries — A collection of storyboard art traces the visual development of The Princess and the Frog’s rich gallery of
characters and settings.
The Princess and the Frog on Blu-ray Blu-ray Combo Pack is priced at $44.99 SRP (US) and $51.99SRP (Canada), and the Single Disc DVD is priced at $29.99 SRP (US) and $35.99 SRP (Canada).
The DVD hits the shelves on March 16th, but you can pre-order it today.
A couple video previews of the special features on the DVD below the cut. Also some fun facts from the movie