LOOKING BACK...

Tis the season to make lists, and frankly, I dread it. Everywhere you turn these days—in magazines, on television, and especially on the web—you see those “Top 100” or “Top 10” lists. People love them because they’re guaranteed to arouse a response, most often an argument about what was left off or what shouldn’t be there.

I also chafe at the idea that after a year of moviegoing it should be possible to arbitrarily choose just ten films. Why not eleven, or fourteen, if there are enough worthy candidates?

OK, I’ll stop complaining now.

Here are the films that I found exceptional during the past year. Not all of them are “important” enough to rate awards, but I found them standouts just the same. In no particular order:

Juno

No Country for Old Men

There Will Be Blood

Love in the Time of Cholera

Starting Out in the Evening

Zodiac

The Lookout

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

In the Valley of Elah

In the Shadow of the Moon

Waitress

Once

Into the Wild

Persepolis

The Savages

Charlie Wilson’s War

Enchanted

Crazy Love

The Band’s Visit

Grindhouse

Away from Her

Eastern Promises

Ratatouille

Molière

Michael Clayton

Lars and the Real Girl

You Kill Me

Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Matthew Goode in The Lookout

Some of these films slipped through the cracks almost instantaneously, like The Lookout and You Kill Me. Some had critical support but didn’t attract the audience they deserved, like Zodiac and In the Shadow of the Moon, an extraordinary documentary that somehow didn’t make the short-list of contenders for this year’s Academy Award. One of them—Grindhouse—may never be seen again in its “purest” form, as a three-hour theatrical experience, and that’s a shame. It was great fun, and frankly, I don’t really want to see longer versions of Deathproof and Planet Terror. I liked them just the way they were.

Then there are films that affected me—and no one else—in particular Love in the Time of Cholera. I seem to be all alone in my fondness for that film, but I stand by my opinion; the movie transported me and I’m sorry other critics derided it.

Lauren Ambrose and Frank Langella in Starting Out in the Evening

Keri Russell with Andy Griffith in Waitress

Leslie Mann with Paul Rudd in Knocked Up

Another unfortunate trend in year-end summaries is the tendency to focus on just those performances that are likely to earn Oscar nominations. Naturally, I admire most of those performances, too—from Javier Bardem to Amy Ryan to the unbelievable work by Cate Blanchett as Bob Dylan in I’m Not There. But again, this ignores a lot of superior work during the course of the year, so let me provide an honor roll of the overlooked:

Frank Langella as the aging literary lion in Starting Out in the Evening

Andy Griffith as the cantankerous customer/owner in Waitress

Sigourney Weaver as the insidiously malicious TV executive in The TV Set

Carice van Houten as the Jewish double-agent in Black Book

Margo Martindale as the lonely American tourist in Paris Je T’Aime

Philip Bosco as the aged, angry father in The Savages

Allison Janney and J.K. Simmons as the bemused but loving parents in Juno

Houman Ershadi as the father in The Kite Runner

Leslie Mann as the frustrated wife in Knocked Up

Jake Gyllenhaal and Robert Downey, Jr. as the men whose lives are given over to obsession in Zodiac

I am a voting member of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and while I’m happy with the results of our award roster, I don’t think it’s airing dirty laundry to say that there was far from a consensus in many categories. The same was true when I sat on the jury for this year’s AFI Awards. I’m pretty pleased with the final list, even though some of my pet films didn’t make the cut. But I long since learned that when you vote with a group you can’t expect it to reflect your personal opinion one hundred per cent. That’s why I’m glad I have this soapbox where I can set down my opinions, come what may.

My greatest hope for 2008 is that studios and distributors think twice about saving almost all their award fodder for the end of the year. This year, more than ever, good films collided with one another, even within the ranks of the same distributor, and even professional moviegoers like me found it impossible to keep up with everything. This does no favor to the films, the filmmakers, the critics, or most of all the paying customers.

Why should we suffer through a drought of quality for eight or nine months of the year? It’s silly, and I hope someone out there is willing to break away from the crowd.

Here’s to a safe, healthy, happy new year for us all—with the constant wish of more good movies.

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MORE TREASURES

Eight years ago I was fortunate enough to meet with Dick Cook, President of the Walt Disney Company. Over breakfast I pitched an idea to him for a series of DVDs that would mine the company’s vaults and present Walt Disney’s cartoons and television shows in a way that Disney aficionados would appreciate. He said, “Let’s do it!” It was one of the shortest and most satisfying meetings I’ve ever had.

The series is now in its seventh year, with three new releases: The Chronological Donald, Volume 3, The Adventures of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, and Disneyland: Secrets, Stories & Magic. Although the embossed tin cases are no longer numbered, as they were in the first few years, these are still limited editions. Some early entries are now selling for speculators’ prices, so if you’re at all interested, now is the time to buy.

If I sound like a huckster, please forgive me, but I have my reasons. The folks at Walt Disney Home Entertainment have been wonderfully supportive, but they still tend to think of the Treasures as having a limited audience—limited to aging baby-boomers like me who constitute the lifelong Disney faithful.

I disagree. I wish I could count how many parents have told me their young children are hooked on the Silly Symphonies, or how many have discovered the appeal of the Mouseketeers because of these DVDs. (The Disney Channel stopped showing vintage Disney shows a while ago, sorry to say.) That’s why I have no compunctions about promoting our series.

Bringing Oswald to DVD marks a milestone in Disney history, the first time the company has ever been able to reissue these late 1920s cartoons since Walt lost the rights to his own character in 1928. You may have read the stories about the company’s remarkable transaction several years back, when sportscaster Al Michaels was traded to NBC in return for that company (which is affiliated with Universal Pictures) giving Disney back its rights to Oswald. This was the doing of Disney CEO Bob Iger, who made it a priority on his agenda.

The only problem was acquiring the films themselves. Fortunately, Universal reissued a number of the Disney Oswalds in the early 1930s (after Walter Lantz took over production of the series) with music and sound effects tracks. Because of this, there were excellent 35mm negatives available, although the films were slightly edited and scenes reordered from their original release.

Other copies came from film archives around the world, and some were in need of extensive restoration. I think viewers will be happy with the results, especially since Disney commissioned Robert Israel to compose and perform new music scores for all thirteen cartoons in the collection. Disney historian David Gerstein also made invaluable contributions to this project.

A second disc offers Leslie Iwerks’ feature-length documentary about her grandfather, The Hand Behind the Mouse: The Ub Iwerks Story, and a handful of cartoons that Iwerks animated just before and after Oswald: three entries from the Alice series, plus Plane Crazy, Steamboat Willie, and Skeleton Dance. (Leslie also produced a featurette about Oswald’s return to the Disney fold that appears on Disc One.)

From the early buzz I’m hearing, some people are impressed with the Oswald cartoons. They may be primitive but for their time they’re fairly fluid, packed with gags, and never stop to take a breath. Animation experts Mark Kausler and Jerry Beck join me on a handful of commentary tracks to discuss the shorts, and Mark is amazing in his ability to identify the work of specific animators, from Hugh Harman to “Ham” Hamilton.

The Chronological Donald picks up that Technicolor series in the late 1940s and includes some of the irascible duck’s funniest outings, including the unforgettable Donald’s Dilemma, in which a conk on the head turns him into a Sinatra-like crooner—much to Daisy Duck’s displeasure.

Jerry Beck, Mark Kausler, and Donald’s current voice artist Tony Anselmo weigh in on the duck’s feature-film and television career in a lively featurette, and ten of Donald’s memorable opening gags from The Mickey Mouse Club are scattered throughout the two discs. I’m also fond of a video feature in which we observe master sculptor (and longtime animator) Ruben Procopio showing—and telling—us how he transforms the two-dimensional character into a vivid three-dimensional clay sculpture.

The centerpiece of the Disneyland disc is a new feature-length documentary by Bob O. Garner called Disneyland: Stories, Secrets & Magic. It’s an excellent overview of how the park came into existence, told by many of Walt Disney’s colleagues past and present. I daresay even Disneyland diehards may learn a thing or two.

Then there is a beautifully restored copy of the 1956 CinemaScope People and Places featurette Disneyland USA, a perfect time-capsule of the park as it looked half a century ago. Longtime Imagineer Tony Baxter joins me on a commentary track to put every shot into perspective, and there’s no one who knows more than Tony about the park’s history (and future).

Tony also joins archivists Ed Hobelman and Walter Magnuson to explain what you’re seeing on Disc Two: never-before-shown time-lapse footage of Disneyland under construction. Fragments of this material have made their way into various documentaries, but there are many hours’ worth, from which we chose highlights—all date-stamped at the top of the frame—to show just how every aspect of Disneyland came into being. There’s even a shot from the hood of a car driving to the Anaheim location through orange and walnut groves!

I’m especially excited to present a 14-minute film that former studio archivist Scott MacQueen unearthed a decade ago. It’s called Operation Disneyland, it was never meant to be seen by the public: it was sent out via closed-circuit to ABC Television Network affiliates to show them the Herculean effort required to prepare a 90-minute live broadcast of Disneyland’s opening day on July 17, 1955. Here is an emblematic look at the challenges and capabilities of television fifty-two years ago.

Finally, there are three choice episodes of Walt Disney’s weekly television show: The Golden Horseshoe Revue, capturing for all time the live stage show that was one of Walt’s favorite attractions (with guest stars Annette Funicello, Ed Wynn and vaudevillian Gene Sheldon), Disneyland Goes to the World’s Fair, detailing the forward-thinking attractions that Walt’s Imagineers devised for the 1964-65 New York event, and Disneyland Around the Seasons, which features the park’s many holiday traditions—and footage of Walt toward the end of his life, as enthusiastic as ever about his dream-come-true. The program aired just two days before his death in 1966.

I am grateful to everyone who helped to make these DVDs a reality, and I hope Disney fans support them, so we can continue issuing more Treasures for many years to come.

Two sidebars relating to Disney. Reader Michael D. Jackson of New York recently sent this interesting e-mail: “In the Fantasia documentary you mention that The Nutcracker was a Christmas tradition being done in every high school auditorium... and very familiar to everyone. I saw The Nutcracker last night at Lincoln Center and the very detailed program notes say that it was Walt Disney who introduced America to The Nutcracker music with Fantasia and that outside of a 1944 San Francisco production, The Nutcracker as a Christmas tradition did not take hold in America until after George Balanchine's famous production of 1954 in New York... It seems that the American public's image of The Nutcracker, at least until 1954 was Fantasia.” I love learning things I didn’t know before.

Another reader, identified only as Josh M, offers an interesting assessment of Enchanted. He writes, “This film seems to introduce a new type of princess to the Disney animated feature cannon. Where the early, Walt-driven pics featured girls/princesses overcoming out-and-out villains to win the love of a prince, and the second wave of Disney princess flicks (from The Little Mermaid to The Hunchback of Notre Dame) featured girls/princesses overcoming the expectations of society and/or family to win the love of a prince, Enchanted offers a whole new slant: a girl/princess who must overcome her own expectations of what her prince will/should be. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems as if Giselle's own immaturity and superficiality are the real 'roadblocks' that the character must get past before finding true love--much more so than the villainous machinations of Susan Sarandon's wicked stepmother character, anyway.”

Incidentally, if you still haven’t seen Enchanted, you really should.

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ONLY AT DISNEYLAND

You're surrounded by Snow White artwork at the new exhibit in Disney's California Adventure theme park.

Disneyland is many things to many people, but I don’t think anyone has ever considered it a museum. Nevertheless, it is now home to an impressive display of artwork from Walt Disney’s landmark feature Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Although the studio maintains the highly-prized Animation Research Library (or ARL, as it’s known to insiders) there was always a gap in the crucial area of Snow White art. That situation was remedied when Disney CEO Bob Iger attended the grand opening of a museum exhibit in Paris and met Steve Ison, whose Snow White Collection is legendary. Iger asked Ison about the possibility of acquiring his collection, numbering some five hundred (!) pieces and Ison decided the time was right to pass on his holdings to the Disney company. (Never fear: he’s still a bona fide collector, but his latest passion is Fantasia concept art.)

Because hand-inked and -painted cells of that vintage are extremely brittle—and the building housing them for this exhibit isn’t properly climate-controlled—the versions on display in the Animation Pavilion at Disney’s California Adventure are reproductions, but all of the stunning concept art, animation drawings, backgrounds, layouts, etc. are the real McCoy. They are presented with great care and imagination. As you walk through the impromptu gallery, you can look up and see projections of other Snow White artwork on a series of overhead screens. You are immersed in this glorious artwork.

Pixar guru John Lasseter poses with Marge Champion at the Disneyland event celebrating Snow White's 70th anniversary.

The opening night of the exhibit in November was part of a gala event for hard-core Disney fans and collectors timed to the 70 th anniversary of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. I was pleased to be part of a panel that evening with Roy Disney, John Lasseter, animator Glen Keane, long-time Disney producer Don Hahn, and Marge Champion. When Marge was barely 14 years old she was hired to pose for the animators at the Walt Disney studio, wearing rudimentary costumes, so they could photograph and study her movements. As we watched some of that raw black & white footage she spoke of her experiences with a clarity that was absolutely dazzling. The calendar may say she’s 87 years old, but I’m not sure I believe it.

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The next day my wife and I followed John Lasseter’s advice and went to see a wonderful new display in the Animation Pavilion at Disney’s California Adventure—just footsteps away from the Snow White exhibition—a three-dimensional zoetrope featuring the characters from Toy Story. It looks like a carousel arrangement featuring maquettes of all the familiar characters from the film, lined up in a succession of poses. It’s attractive enough to admire as a set piece; then it starts to move and a strobe light comes on. The effect is wondrous. You’d swear these figures were all moving in a clever cycle of animation. I watched it twice, and I can’t wait to go back and see it again.

We also took in the Disneyland Christmas Parade, which is always fun. There is something magical about musicians in costume as wooden soldiers actually playing their trumpets. Only at Disneyland …