December, 2006
HO HO HO
I don’t know if there’s such a thing as Film Critics Anonymous, but if there were, I’d be attending meetings around the third week of December every year. I don’t know what it will take for studios and distributors to alter their year-end game plan, but the current model is in serious need of overhauling. I’m told that there are 66 movies in the year-end derby for 2006 as opposed to 58 last year—and even that was too many. No one can see, let alone digest, so many films all at once.
Why do I say “too many?” Because with this many prestige movies (read: adult entertainment) saturating the marketplace all at once it’s inevitable that some of them will be overlooked, if not ignored. What’s more, films that open for one week in December, just to qualify for Oscars, squander their national opening-day publicity at a time when most people can’t go to see them. Then, when they actually open in January and February, they tend to be off the media radar.
I can only hope that good movies like Breaking and Entering, The Painted Veil and Miss Potter will manage to find their audiences in spite of this folderol.
The ultimate joke is on moviegoers, not critics. Where are the good films in March, April, or May? If a decent film were to open in one of those months it could own the marketplace. Instead, everything of value is crammed into the fall and winter season. That does no favors for the films or filmmakers, not to mention those of us who crave good movies every month of the year.
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The DVD market is also flooded at this time of year, and with gift-giving opportunities one can understand the desire to release a lot of A-list titles and gift packages.
But this year I have a personal stake in the matter: the sixth annual installment of my Walt Disney Treasures DVD sets are going on sale on December 19, and I hope some people take notice. My producing partner Eric Young of Sparkhill and I have worked to make these four releases as good as they can be. I’m very proud of them, so I hope you’ll indulge me if I do a pitch for them here.
More Silly Symphonies, Vol. 2 presents Walt Disney’s rarest cartoon shorts, some of which have not been easy to see in any form (let alone uncut and uncensored) for decades. While most of the canonized classics of this series appeared in Volume One, I must tell you how much I’ve come to like—and admire—this series as a whole. The early, primitive entries in black & white have a wonderful energy and naiveté, and I’m a sucker for their music tracks, which draw on all sorts of songs and classical themes that audiences would have known and recognized in the early 1930s. If you watch the series’ evolution through the mid-1930s, you’ll see how Disney pushed his team to explore ambitious new ideas in artwork and storytelling, as well as music.
Because these shorts are so significant, and rare, I thought it would be worthwhile to ask a handful of animation (and film music) experts to contribute commentary tracks, and I’m very pleased with the results. Jerry Beck, Daniel Goldmark (author of Tunes for Toons), Ross Care, JB Kaufman (whose terrific new book on Silly Symphonies, written with Russell Merritt, is just off the press), David Gerstein (who compiled the wonderful Mickey and the Gang volume), and Oscar-winning Disney composer Richard Sherman all appear on those tracks, and in a featurette tracing the history of this landmark series. I even chime in on a handful of commentaries.
The Complete Pluto, Volume 2 completes the run of the famous pooch’s starring cartoons from the late 1940s and early 1950s. We’ve added the three shorts starring Figaro the Cat, who made her debut in Pinocchio, and there are several special features. Animators (and animation buffs) Andreas Deja and Randy Cartwright screen Pluto classics and show us how the Disney artists created great moments of animation, in some cases examining action one frame at a time. We also present a complete version of Pluto’s Judgment Day in pencil-test form, integrating other components of the original artwork with the finished film, so we can all appreciate the work that went into one “simple” cartoon short.
The Mickey Mouse Club presents The Hardy Boys opens with the complete, one-hour episode of Walt Disney’s popular daily TV show that kicked off its second season on October 1, 1956. In it you’ll see a preview of the show’s newest serial, The Hardy Boys in The Mystery of the Applegate Treasure. If you’re old enough to remember this daily feature, as I am, you’ll have great fun revisiting it here. (I think it holds up quite well.) A short documentary tells the story of Franklin W. Dixon, the pseudonymous creator of The Hardy Boys, and best of all, the stars of the serial, Tim Considine and Tommy Kirk, join me for a warm and candid conversation that we recorded on Stage 2 at the Disney studio, where they filmed the show fifty years ago!
Finally, Your Host, Walt Disney presents a handful of programs in which Walt was personally involved more than merely filming an on-camera introduction. Where Do the Stories Come From? Includes home-movie footage of Walt’s backyard train setup, and those of his star animators Ward Kimball and Ollie Johnston. The Fourth Anniversary Show celebrates Walt’s TV productions with the eager participation of the Mouseketeers. The Tenth Anniversary Show has Walt introducing us to his Imagineers—including such legendary figures as Marc Davis, John Hench, and Mary Blair—as they work on such new attractions as It’s a Small World, The Haunted Mansion, and Pirates of the Caribbean. Backstage Party is a giant plug for the Disney features Babes in Toyland, but it also includes a tour of the studio backlot, and personal greetings from Walt. And I Captured the King of the Leprechauns offers something unique: the only show in which Walt appeared from start to finish, playing the part of himself—Walt Disney, traveling to Ireland to meet King Brian of the Leprechauns to convince him to appear in Darby O’Gill and the Little People. Walt was never more endearing.
The set also features a show that the Disney studio considered lost for several decades: it’s a kinescope of a live, 90-minute broadcast called Kodak Presents Disneyland ’59, a rededication of the Anaheim park four years after its opening. There are dignitaries, parades, and guest stars galore, who range from TV stars of the period (including Irish McCalla, aka Sheena, Queen of the Jungle) and such future stars as Dennis Hopper and Clint Eastwood! Meredith Willson leads seventy-six trombones on Main Street and Richard Nixon and his daughters attempt to cut the ribbon to open the Monorail. Disney archivist Ed Hobelman even located the original black & white negatives of the filmed segments prepared for this show, and spliced them into the kinescope for our DVD presentation. It was also Ed who uncovered an amazing piece of film that Walt shot, in CinemaScope and color, for one-time use at Radio City Music Hall in the early 1960s.
This set includes two interview segments of which I’m particularly proud, a conversation with Diane Disney Miller about her father and a tribute to Walt from young performers who worked for him, including Marge Champion, Tommy Sands, Tommy Kirk, Tim Considine and Mouseketeers Cheryl Holdridge, Don Grady, Tommy Cole, and Bobby Burgess.
I’ll go quietly now, officer, but I would be remiss if I didn’t announce the arrival of these DVDs to the world. They were made for diehard Disney fans by diehard Disney fans... and judging from the response I get from parents, this series still has the ability to captivate children today.
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