D52 Week 8: Make Mine Music!

Oh, look, it's another musical package film! Huzzah?

It's odd to ponder the differences in circumstances between Fantasia and Make Mine Music. After all, both are essentially an attempt to say "Hey, isn't music neat?" via the medium of animation. Yet, whereas Fantasia was a misguided and overblown high-budget labour of love from a thriving animation tycoon, Make Mine Music is very much the opposite: a desperately (relatively) low-budget salvaging of leftover story ideas by a studio just scraping to get by. Fantasia was a collection of short films by well thought out design; Make Mine Music is a collection of short films because anything longer was literally infeasible. In the end, neither was a success when released, of course. While Fantasia ended up becoming a beloved classic over time, Make Mine Music is one of the least remembered films in Disney's entire animated features canon. Now, don't get me wrong, Fantasia is, by far, the superior film; but its weird little cousin who doesn't leave its own house very often actually has a little goodness to offer, too, buried beneath all the forgettableness of course.

D52 Week 7: The Three Caballeros!

It's really hard for me to talk about The Three Caballeros without repeating what I said about Saludos Amigos last week. Several weeks down the line, I just might find myself struggling to remember which bits were in which film. (The fact that package films are rarely able to find their own voice in the first place certainly doesn't help matters!) The 1940s for Disney were definitely more interesting behind-the-scenes than on the big screen, being turned into a propaganda machine, followed by a string of odd compilations cobbled together in a desperate attempt to gradually become profitable again. A film about that period in Disney history could be easily more interesting than the films from that period in Disney history.

D52 Week 6: Saludos Amigos!

It's always kind of a miserable experience to wade through WWII-era entertainment, which is usually maybe not so very good, to say the least. Of course, I realise that there were more pressing issues at the time than the arts, many of those issues involving Fox News alumnus Adolf Hitler (who is so loathed that Firefox's spellchecker refuses to even acknowledge his given name). In Disney's case, this caused a shaky financial situation that lead to them only being able to produce "package films" consisting of several shorts strung together, which - unlike the beautifully crafted shorts comprising the not-at-all cheap Fantasia - were (relatively) simply animated and not terribly distinguishable from Disney's theatrical shorts. Yes, Disney's theatrical shorts weren't bad-looking or anything, but they're a far cry from the visual craftsmanship of Disney's features, and that's especially disappointing coming off the sheer gorgeousness of Bambi. Did I mention that Saludos Amigos is only 42 minutes long? Yeah, everything about this particular "feature" sounds like a very underwhelming experience. But, the original theatrical poster promises that this was Walt Disney's "gayest musical Technicolor feature". So...here's hoping for some hardcore twink action?

Adapting Evanovich: Even Morons Deserve a Little Better Sometimes

I swear, there's nothing I hate more than being able to talk about this like some sort of knowledgeable expert or something! You see, last week, mom dragged me with her to see something she's been anticipating for years now: the film adaptation of Janet Evanovich's best-selling novel, One for the Money, her immortal tale of awful lady stereotypes poised as some sort of bold feminism. (Can you believe it? This chick knows nothing beyond the world of lingerie, and yet she's trying to be a bounty hunter to make ends meet, like a man! Isn't that adorable-slash-empowering???) Of course, my first exposure to Evanovich's oeuvre came back in August, where I quickly surmised that Janet Evanovich and/or her sweatshop team of ghostwriters are no-talent hacks and you really should not read the things that they do, ever. Yet, it wasn't that difficult to convince me to go. For one thing, movie theatres are the only place around here where you can get one of the most fuckably awesome sodas ever: Mr. Pibb. And also, the film sounded like a bloody trainwreck waiting to happen and, honestly, aren't trainwrecks fun to watch, too?

D52 Week 5: Bambi!

Most Montanans are heartless monsters who like murdering things with guns. That's a fact. Hunting's really big here. There's something about wide open spaces filled with adorable animals that seems to make people want to shoot all of them, repeatedly. I can't say I'm sure why. During my public schooling days, I knew a kid who actually rooted for The Man. When Bambi's mom got shot, he cheered! "I wanna shoot Bambi", he declared proudly! (Last I checked, that kid grew up into a meth addict - something else wide open spaces seem to make people do.) It always seemed unsettling to me that anyone in existence could react to that infamous scene - a scene whose inherent childhood trauma value was regarded as significant enough for the film to land on Time's "Top 25 Horror Movies of All Time" list, of all places - not with shock or even indifference, but with sadistic glee. When I went to rewatch it for this little project, I hadn't even seen Bambi in over a decade. I'd forgotten just about every detail of the storyline, but that scene I could still remember in vivid detail. Was that because the rest of the movie was genuinely uninteresting? Or was it just that nothing, no matter how good, could possibly be as memorable in the shadow of one of the most childhood-traumalicious of Disney's many childhood traumas?

D52 Week 4: Dumbo!

Last week, we covered Disney's first real financial failure; this week, I get to take a look at the outcome. After neither Pinocchio or Fantasia were an immediate success (thanks a lot, Hitler), Dumbo was thrown together as a quick way to recoup some of those losses. Not only is it really short (64 minutes, which is still slightly longer than 2011's Winnie the Pooh, I think), but the animation is noticeably a lot simpler than the lavish detail and, sometimes, outright beauty of the previous three Disney films. Given that, at times, the only thing those films had going for them was gorgeous visual craftsmanship, this might not bode well for Dumbo, which shows a similar disinterest in any sort of significant plotting. To compensate for this lack of visual endowment, though, Disney has clearly opted to stuff the metaphorical trousers of this film with the metaphorical sock of increased gag output. Did it work? Well, most critics seem to regard Dumbo as a charmingly crafted little movie in its own right, so...maybe?

D52 Week 3: Fantasia!

A Word From The Future: If you're reading through this blog in chronological order (and if you are, congratulations for being one of a very elite group of people, "elite" in this case meaning "small and insignificant" - and don't know what this is all about, let my acquaintances Kevin and Amanda, explain the what and the why and perhaps some other W word you're seeking. Basically, for each week of 2012, we watch one of Disney's 52 canonical theatrically released animated features, and post our thoughts. For the first two weeks, I just limited my thoughts to comments on their blog posts, which were so long and unwieldy that everyone involved thought I should just do it on my own. Those two movies will probably receive retroactive "official" write-ups, eventually, before the year is through - but, for now, here's the first piece I wrote for the project. (Oh, and also, my super-cool girlfriend also takes part in this. Give her a read too.)

Here I am, only three weeks into this silly thing, and already I've reached a film that I haven't seen before. It's hardly surprising, of course. Children rarely go out of their way to listen to classical music, and I suppose I was no exception. But, with age comes a more open mind, and perhaps it's for the best that I waited to experience Fantasia until I was ready for it (i.e. not a terrible child). Seeing the high esteem in which this odd highbrow experiment seems to be held, I found myself wondering whether this could truly hold up, or if it would just end up being a glorified Melody Time. (The question of whether or not my memories of Melody Time as being sort of terrible are still accurate will have to wait several weeks.)

Okay, maybe THIS will be the year where everything bets betterish!

A Word From The Future: I'll surely recap my New Years Resolution progress at some point later in the year, but......Jesus, if only I had known...

As always, the start of a new year means that people everywhere make promises to themselves, usually involving weight loss, that they probably have no real intention of actually keeping, to be perfectly honest. It's almost as grand a tradition as making films about how not believing in fictional characters is just plain wrong around Christmas, or having the President pardon a turkey that has been wrongly convicted of the heinous crime of being a turkey around Thanksgiving!

Pride and Prejudice (and Jesses)

If you've spent any amount of time on the Internet, you've either participated in, or at least been an uncomfortable witness to, unwinnable arguments with mindless bigots. Mindless prejudice is, after all, among the many things the web has greatly simplified. Never before has it been easier to anonymously tell the world about how whichever minority/religion/gender/sexual orientation/phase of the moon is destroying the world! And, if you've spent any amount of time on the Internet, undoubtedly you've noticed that these arguments are unwinnable because every mindless bigot in the universe has the same irrefutable argument against anyone who might question their prejudices.

"You people are all awful awful hypocrites because you're prejudiced against people with prejudices!"

Wait, did I say "irrefutable"? Of course, I meant "completely invalid and illogical and silly". It's like criticising someone who's being shot at for fighting back against their attacker because it makes them every bit as violent and immoral.

Jesse vs. Plumbor, Master of the Shower Underworld!

"Support local businesses", they always say! After all, small businesses are the real America or, um, something. It's a stance I can usually understand, unless you live in a small, particularly rural town, where small businesses are usually run by morons incapable of properly owning a gerbil, let alone an entire business. Absarokee, as a whole, is locally sort of infamous for this. I've lost count of how many times some local twit decided to start a restaurant, rented commercial property, made up some surprisingly professional signage, and maybe even backed it up with some decent sandwiches, only to quickly lose interest in the completely gross idea of actually having to be there and have the doors unlocked so customers can come in. Despite actually having a local customer base more than willing to give them money, a mere month or two after starting up their shiny new business, they'd give up and shut their doors, forever, due to laziness. Meanwhile - and this is something that seems to happen more in Columbus - plenty of thoroughly awful local businesses manage to keep going, despite having no discernible positive traits, I suppose because it's far easier in the long-term to commit oneself to less-than-half-assed work. In no case in recent memory has this been more obvious to me than in an extended kerfuffle involving the only plumber in town apparently.