Since its release in 1991, Beauty and the Beast has been one of the crown jewels of Disney animation. Until 2009′s Up, it was the only animated film to be nominated for best picture, and showed that The Little Mermaid was no fluke. It signaled the great 90′s renaissance of the studio, leading to Aladdin and The Lion King. Now it’s hitting theaters in a 3-D edition. And here’s what you need to know.
After the success of The Lion King 3-D, Disney announced they were going to dimensionalize some of the older films, and first up is Beauty and the Beast, the 1991 Academy Award Best Picture nominee. It’s going to hit theaters January 13, 2012, with a Tangled short film attached, Tangled Ever After. Not a bad package. Check out the trailer…
D23, named after the year the Walt Disney Company was founded, was started as fan service. For most people, Disney is the films they grew up with and watched with their parents, and watch with their children – or even by themselves – and Disneyland (especially if you don’t live in California) is a place to go to once, maybe twice. For the D23 crowd, Walt Disney and its various products are a lifestyle choice. The hardcore run the gamut. From babies to the very old, from the physically fit to the couch potato, being at D23 means you probably have a season pass to Disneyland.
I’m often inclined to give family movies a pass (as evidenced by my favorable review of Mr. Popper’s Penguins), if only because sometimes you’ve got to drag the family to a movie theater just to get them all to shut up for 2 hours. Don’t worry, I sympathize here for you. If you needed this critic’s permission to pack up the family and go to the multiplex, here it is: Cars 2 is the ticket to buy this weekend. It’s a big, colorful, noisy spectacle that will please broad audiences looking for a good time, especially small children.
But this is a Pixar film! They’ve made some of the most emotionally resonant films of the last decade! It’s impossible not to compare Cars 2 to the rest of their catalogue, and as soon as you begin to, it breaks down. Read the rest of the review (and more car puns!), after the jump…
Disney and Pixar have really revved up the publicity for this week’s release of Cars 2! Did you see what I did back there, by the way? That was a hilarious car pun. Listen, I’m just trying to appeal to the Cars crowd here. It seemed to work for those studios, at least. Do you have any idea how popular this franchise is?! $2 Billion dollars a year in merchandise and licensing! I’m just trying to follow the formula here. Anyway, director John Lasseter (pictured above) gathered with the film’s stars, Michael Caine, Owen Wilson, Larry the Cable Guy, Emily Mortimer, and Eddie Izzard, to discuss the new film with members of the press. Check out some highlights of what was said, after the jump…
Mickey Mouse fans, get this: did you know that the 80-something icon, despite having been featured in a bevy of short films, cameo roles, cartoons, straight-to-video releases, and video games, has never actually starred in his own theatrical feature?
That is, until now. Maybe.
Well, this could get interesting—turns out that a U.K. screenwriter, Jake Mandeville-Anthony, is suing Disney and Pixar for allegedly basing Cars and its upcoming sequel, the cleverly-titled Cars 2, on his original scripts that were written and submitted in the 1990s. Reminds me of the time Michael Bay totally swiped my original filmscript, A Bunch of Lights Flash Before Some Noises Go Off and Then a Hot Chick Does Something Hot Chick-ish Near a Sports Car and Then End Credits, and turned it into a career-long series of adaptations. Not cool, Bay!
Walt Disney has confirmed a report that director Marc Forster is in talks to helm their new sci-fi property, The Runner. Over at Deadline, that got word that the studio acquired a pitch for the film that also has super producer Brian Grazer attached. With the power of Disney, the business savvy of Grazer, and the creative vision of Forster, they might be on to something.
Over on MSN, Disney-Pixar has released a new theatrical trailer for Cars 2. The film is a follow up to the 2006 movie that centers on, you guessed it, a group of cars and their adventures in a small town. This time, they’ll be new vehicles, new adventures, and an international location. Lighting McQueen and Mater are going overseas! Check out the trailer…
