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March Ani-Madness By Nathan Cone
Animation lovers have a bounty of choices to pick from this month, as a flurry of new classics have been released on home video. From stop motion foxes and squirrels, to a magical Japanese take on “The Little Mermaid,” Disney’s return to hand-drawn animation, and a high-definition home video release of the first ever computer animated feature, there’s something to please young and old. Fantastic Mr. FoxFrom the very opening of Fantastic Mr. Fox, with its hero standing in an autumnal landscape, listening to “The Ballad of Davy Crockett” on a transistor radio, I was hooked. Wes Anderson has taken Roald Dahl’s original story and added a whole new opening and conclusion, as well as a slew of interesting characters. George Clooney voices the titular Mr. Fox, who has tried to live the straight life as a newspaperman, but finds himself drawn back into the world of chicken stealing, just as the three meanest farmers in the region move into town – Boggis, Bunce, and Bean (“one fat, one short, one lean”). Those three eventually buck horns with Fox, using their considerable arsenal of heavy machinery to dig Fox and his friends out of their house and home, and Fox and friends fight back. Despite my friends’ encouragement to see The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, or Rushmore, Fantastic Mr. Fox is my first brush with Wes Anderson’s work. His characters – at least from what I see here – speak with a certain dry humor and flourish that I suspect works even better with animated animals than it would with humans. Mr. Fox’s son, Ash, has a sullen, slightly self-centered demeanor about him, but he also struggles for his father’s attention. Anderson plays him well against his visiting fox cousin, Kristofferson, a star athlete and brainy kid that spends his free time in meditation. “I can fight my own fights,” Ash says at one point. “No, you can’t,” Kristofferson points out. He’s not only right, but the deadpan delivery of the lines, coupled with the character’s body language, makes the line funnier than sad.
The world Anderson and his team have created in this film is strikingly beautiful. It’s full of rolling hills, sprawling farm compounds, neon-lit supermarkets, and a cider cellar the size of the warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Special features included on the DVD of Fantastic Mr. Fox reveal some of the hard work that went into designing the characters and sets of the film. The fur on the animals sways ever so slightly in the wind, and it’s revealed on the disc that the animators would blow on the puppets ever so slightly to give them the appearance of life even when they aren’t moving. Fantastic Mr. Fox also shines through its musical score, which was justly nominated for an Academy Award (it lost to the equally deserving Michael Giacchino for Up). Anderson had originally planned to go for a big, orchestral sound to accompany his film, but composer Alexandre Desplat convinced the director to think smaller. Desplat uses an ensemble of strings, augmented by celeste, glockenspiel, and other colorful percussion instruments. He even channels Ennio Morricone by whistling one of the themes himself. It’s marvelous fun to listen to, and I highly recommend the film’s soundtrack, which is also populated with eclectic music by Burl Ives, Jarvis Cocker, the Beach Boys, and the Rolling Stones. (For more discussion of the music of Alexandre Desplat, follow this link to my Oscar week discussion with KPAC’s John Clare) Fantastic Mr. Fox is unlike any other animated film I can think of in recent memory. Kids can enjoy it, but adults will “get” the humor. With each viewing, it becomes more and more one of my favorite films from last year. Note the Blu-ray disc edition of Fantastic Mr. Fox comes with several more special features than the standard DVD version. The Princess and the Frog
How quickly we forget! It was only six years ago that Walt Disney released what was at the time their “last” hand-drawn animated feature, Home on the Range. The movie flopped, and from the perspective of many in Disney management, that was the nail in the coffin of 2D animation. But shortly after Disney’s acquisition of Pixar in the mid-2006 (and, coincidentally or not, following former CEO Michael Eisner’s departure from the company), it was announced that Disney would return to hand-drawn animation with The Princess and the Frog. Doubly exciting for many was the fact that the film would feature the first African-American lead characters in a Disney film. Set in New Orleans in the early 20th century, The Princess and the Frog turns the classic Frog Prince story on its head. In this version, the lead character is not a Prince or Princess, but Tiana, a hard-working Crescent City waitress hoping to save enough money to open her own restaurant. Prince Naveen arrives in town to great fanfare, but after a shifty voodoo practitioner gets a hold of him, Tiana and Prince Naveen find themselves both turned into frogs, off on a wild adventure to figure out how to become human again. Do they fall in love, too? Of course. Like Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Princess and the Frog looks beautiful. The animators and artists of the film capture the feel of early New Orleans, if not the exact look. The characters are all likable, although the standout is easily Dr. Facilier, the “Shadow Man” voiced by Keith David. His big production number, “Friends on the Other Side,” is a phantasmagoric extravaganza, like Dumbo’s “Pink Elephants” sequence times ten. Masks, voodoo dolls, and swirling colors build to a psychedelic frenzy. There’s not much else in the film that tops it musically or visually. The other songs, all by Randy Newman, are pleasant enough, but few left me with a lasting memory.
The film’s other problem lies in its most basic premise. Tiana—the first African-American Disney princess—spends half or more of the movie as a frog. The filmmakers do their best to give her frog persona the same characteristics as the human Tiana, but I still wished I could have spent a little more time connecting with Tiana as a human, and less as an amphibian. Yet I enjoyed The Princess and the Frog overall. It has a well-constructed story, and an entertaining supporting cast, including Tiana’s friend Charlotte, a hyper-realized southern belle. I am very happy to see Disney return to classic, hand-drawn animation. Apparently, a lot of the Disney staffers are, too, judging from the gushing talking heads that populate the extra features on the DVD and Blu-ray of the film. Years from now, few people will remember Home on the Range, or the computer-animated Chicken Little, and Meet the Robinsons, but I suspect The Princess and the Frog will find its way into kids’ hearts for a long time. Ponyo
Last year was an uncommonly good year for animated features, but when the nominations for the 82nd annual Academy Awards were announced in late January, 2010, many were left scratching their heads about the inclusion of The Secret of Kells over the magical Ponyo. Ponyo, directed by the master of Japanese animation, Hayao Miyazaki, is a riff on Hans Christian Andersen’s story “The Little Mermaid.” Here, a little fish, named Brunhilda by her father, longs to be a human and live on land after befriending a young boy, Sōsuke. Sōsuke names his new friend Ponyo; the little fish loves her new name, which drives her father crazy. Ponyo uses her father’s magic to turn herself human, but by doing so, she also sends the ocean into a frenzy. The resulting typhoon is an incredible animated sequence, with rainstorms, rushing waters, and huge waves with eyes that crash over each other like whales. Soon Ponyo’s mother, the Goddess of Mercy, gets wind of what’s been going on, and like all good wives, implores her husband to calm down while lending an open ear to her daughter and newfound friend. She tells Sōsuke that if he and Ponyo can pass a test, she will become human. Sōsuke and Ponyo set off on their quest, and the film ends happily with order restored to the natural world. Ponyo gets extra points for subtly raising ecological issues in the film, as well as promoting respect for the elderly. One of Sōsuke’s duties in the film is to help his mother, Lisa, at the local nursing home. The elderly women there are treated with kindness and respect by the workers there, and especially by five-year-old Sōsuke. And on a musical note, the film’s score by Joe Hisaishi, is lush and romantic, and gets in a very clever musical in-joke when Hisaishi uses an inverted melody from Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” as Ponyo/Brunhilda scampers along the waves of the aforementioned typhoon (Props to my cousin, Jennifer, for pointing this out). Miyazaki notes in an interview included on the DVD of Ponyo that this movie was aimed at five-year-olds. “Life is mysterious,” Sōsuke’s mother tells him at one point. Ponyo may help you recapture some of that feeling yourself. More Animated Treasures Released This Month
Also on DVD and Blu-ray this month are reissues of the first two Toy Story films. The Blu-ray marks the first time these movies have been made available in high-definition, and naturally, they look amazing. I remember seeing Toy Story on the big screen in 1995, and I was not only amazed by the visuals, but by the terrific buddy story. The premise of the film – what happens to the toys when kids leave the room – was genius, and so was the execution of the idea. But it almost didn’t happen. Director John Lasseter explains with candor on the DVD that Disney almost scrapped the project entirely when they saw the early storyboards. Two weeks later, they turned it around and were given the green light to move forward. Toy Story is the only Pixar film (so far) to have spawned a successful sequel. Toy Story 2 was released in 1999, and Toy Story 3 arrives in theaters this summer. If you liked Ponyo, you’ll probably want to check out three other titles from Hayao Miyazaki and his animation house, Studio Ghibli. Kiki’s Delivery Service is about a young girl in witch training, Castle in the Sky follows a pair of kids as they search for the titular castle, and My Neighbor Totoro finds a pair of young siblings befriended by a gigantic friendly forest monster. Totoro, like Ponyo, also has an insanely catchy theme song.
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