Friday, March 23, 2012

Glen End...

I wish him well, but I wish he'd stay...






Well, we told you over a year ago here that it might happen...

Glen Keane has made it official and here is his letter to WDAS:

March 23, 2012

Dear Colleagues and Friends of the Walt Disney Animation Studio,

After long and thoughtful consideration, I have decided to leave Disney Animation.

I am convinced that animation really is the ultimate art form of our time with endless new territories to explore. I can’t resist it’s siren call to step out and discover them.

Disney has been my artistic home since September 9,1974. I owe so much to those great animators who mentored me—Eric Larson, Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston—as well as to the many other wonderful people at Disney whom I have been fortunate to work with in the past nearly 38 years.

Over these four decades I have seen so many changes, but the one thing that remains the same is that we all do this because we love it.

I am humbled and deeply honored to have worked side by side so many artists, producers and directors during my career here at Disney, and I am tremendously proud of the films which together we have created. I will deeply miss working with you.

With my most sincere and heartfelt good wishes for your and Disney’s continued artistic growth and success,

Glen

Monday, March 12, 2012

Get Carter...

Get Marketing...



Along time ago in a galaxy not so far away...

Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote a great sci-fi adventure story called A Princess of Mars that would become one of the most influential science fiction fantasy stories of the 20th century inspiring George Lucas to make the epic Star Wars franchise nearly 60 years after it. It has taken a full century for Burroughs' imaginative epic fantasy to come to life on the big screen but John Carter has arrived in theaters DOA thanks to a series of costly marketing blunders by Disney of equally epic proportions.

Despite its numerous failures to attract an audience, director Andrew Stanton has delivered a first class epic fantasy film that brings the pages of Burroughs' highly imaginative world of Barsoom to life in living, breathing color with vibrant special effects and computer animation that could easily have become the Mouse's Star Wars franchise with the proper marketing muscle behind it. Unfortunately we will probably never see the further adventures of John Carter in The Gods of Mars or Warlords of Mars or any of the other chronicles in Burroughs' classic pulp series because the audience for whom the film was targeted has no idea just who John Carter is and is far more excited to see this summer's Hunger Games, also based on a popular series of teenage literary novels, than a hundred year-old character from a book they've never even heard of.

Perhaps the biggest tragedy is the over-simplified title changed by Stanton himself. Who is John Carter? Why should anyone care about him?

Well, he's Taylor Kitsch who played Gambit from X-Men Origins: Wolverine and his co-star Lynn Collins from the same film is ideally cast as the beautiful Princess Dejah Thoris of Helium. John Carter is a confederate captain from Virginia who travels to Arizona to find gold, only to find himself astrally transported to Mars after being fatally shot by Apache Indians. There are plenty of metaphors here between the natives of both worlds that evoke Dances With Wolves and Avatar as John Carter becomes the propheseid hero and savior of Barsoom which the native Tharks call their red planet. With an inspired cast of supporting actors with Willem Dafoe as the voice of Tars Tarkas, a nine foot tall, four armed green Martian, Dafoe sounds exactly as I would have always imagined the voice of Tars Tarkas to sound like and brings the character to life with his impassioned performance. Other inspired casting choices include terrific supporting performances by Ciaran Hinds and James Purefoy who are reunited again from working together in HBO's excellent series Rome and Tardos Mors and Kantos Kan respectively. Dominic West from HBO's The Wire also rounds out the inspired casting as the villanous Sab Than seeking the hand of the Princess of Helium to unite a planetary civil war and become its ruler.

John Carter is filled with action, adventure, special effects, animation, heroes, villains, monsters and a princess, it has all the fundamental ingredients of a classic Disney film and is a faithful adaptation of Burroughs' novel, and Disney and Stanton have delivered a spectacular film that has fallen flat on its face as a $250 million box office disaster that is being critically compared to 1995's sci-fi flop Waterworld. It must make over $400 million just to break even, another unrealistic expectation reminiscent of 2010's Tron Legacy by the foolish suits at Disney who clearly have no clue how to run the studio nor do they know anything about what they have on their hands or how to mass market their product and for that heads should roll and Disney's marketing department all deserve the grim fate that awaits them.

As for the fate of John Carter, who knows, but all indications so far seem to imply that we may never return to the red planet on the big screen again. Fortunately the written pages of Burroughs will last forever for those of us that still remember them...

Long live John Carter of Mars!

Saturday, March 10, 2012

Lost In Marketing, Found On Blu-Ray...

The film was great, the marketing was deplorable...





Well, I've seen "John Carter (of Mars)" now...

And if there is any justice in this world, heads will roll in the Mouse's marketing department. My friends and I sat there watching the film and kept shaking our heads. With all that is in this film, they couldn't pull together a decent trailer? A decent poster? Banner? Why couldn't they have focused on the romance in the film? That might have brought in more female viewers who aren't into the action aspect. Because really, the film is a romance, or a love story that happens to have a lot of action. How about a banner showing John Carter and the Princess in a romantic embrace? How about a poster that is more like the wonderful Frank Frazetta posters. There is a scene in the film that is shown a bit in the trailers. Carter jumps right into the swarm of oncoming Tharks and does battle. How about that as a poster? There are so many obvious choices and the marketing department dropped the ball.

The likelihood that a sequel will happen is a very long shot right now, but there are bright spots. The foreign market opened almost double what it did here domestically. And with good word of mouth and hopefully, brisk sales of DVD/Blu-Rays then the Mouse might take another look at it. But the said truth is a great film was handled very badly. The audience won't get to enjoy a charmingly, old fashioned film that is a throwback to the epics we would see as a kid, or even our fathers and grandfathers would have seen. John Carter (of Mars) deserves better than it got. And the Suits in marketing had eight to nine months more to figure it out since the film was delayed from last summer.

Perhaps Andrew Stanton is feeling a bit the way Brad Bird did after the release of "The Iron Giant" right now...

Thursday, March 8, 2012

The Dark Fairy Flies...

She's a beauty...









So the "Sleeping Beauty" reinterpretation goes forward...

"Maleficent" starring Angelina Jolie will be before cameras as Maleficent in June in London.

Robert Stromberg (the production designer on Avatar, Alice in Wonderland) makes his directorial debut bringing the dark fairy to life in this revisionist tale of "Sleeping Beauty".

Linda Woolverton, who did the script for "Alice in Wonderland" (Not a sign of confidence with that) scripted the tale and the pivotal roll of Aurora is being rumored to be going to Elle Fanning.
I'll be interested in seeing what this film turns out to look like. Will it be great, horrible, or something in between?

Time will tell...