The Little Mermaid... She's Gotta Have It.

With this week's Disney announcement that The Little Mermaid will get 3D rerelease treatment (along with other pictures) that put The Lion King back on everyone's lips, I thought it was time to republish this piece on the classic film...

The Little Mermaid (1989)  | Directed by Ron Clements and John Musker Screenplay by Roger Allers, Ron Clements, and John Musker (very loosely based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale) | Music by Alan Menken Lyrics by Howard Ashman | Starring the Voices of: Jodie Benson, Pat Carroll, Kenneth Mars and Samuel E Wright | Production Company Walt Disney | Released 11/17/1989

American members of Generation Y or Z and beyond may have a good deal of trouble imagining this but it's true: once upon a time, animated movies were considered highly uncool. They were strictly for babies. Teenagers disdained them. Adults took their children under duress. They barely caused a ripple at the box office. The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences ignored them. CGI was not part of the national vernacular. Strange but true.

In a very short window of time, from November 1989 through February 1992, three major events changed modern perceptions of the animated film in a gargantuan way. Let's take them in reverse order: The third big-bang was the moment when Beauty & the Beast (1991) was nominated for six Oscars including Best Picture, the first time that a cartoon had received that pinnacle mainstream honor. The middle part of the three-part revolution was when hipster American audiences began to discover that there was more to the form than Walt Disney. Katsuhiro Ôtomo's Japanese sci-fi spellbinder Akira was the key that opened the door for anime, now very big and influential business in America. But the first key event in animation's rebirth (stateside at least) was the release of Disney's "28th animated classic" The Little Mermaid; an orgasmic reawakening of the most flexible and fantastical of film mediums...

"She's Gotta Have It!"

The heroine of Disney's modern breakthrough film is Ariel, a teenage mermaid. Since this is a fairy tale (and a Disney one at that) she's also a beautiful princess: the youngest daughter of King Triton who rules the ocean. Only trouble is, despite her quick smile and high spirits, she's restless and unhappy... dissatisfied with her life of privilege under the sea. She wants to trade up. Literally. Since this is a late 1980s film (and a Disney one at that) she's also the headstrong entitled type. This princess isn't going to whisper her need. She's no Oliver with his meager allotment of gruel, politely asking for more.

music, sexuality and animated evolution after the jump... 

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Distant Relatives: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Blue Valentine

Robert here with my series Distant Relatives, which explores the connections between one classic and one contemporary film.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Blue Valentine explore the same territory but come at it from entirely different angles. Woolf is deliberately theatrical, full of delightfully big performances, long monologues, and crescendoing clashes. Everything that's wrong with George and Martha's relationship gets said and said again. Blue Valentine is insistently realistic, filled with small moments and quiet regrets. All that's wrong with Dean and Cindy's relationship is encompassed by things gone unsaid. Ultimately though, both are marriages on the brink of collapse, a subject covered many times since the invention of film, or the narrative story itself. What makes Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Blue Valentine interesting companion pieces is that both juxtapose a middle-aged couple with a young couple.

A Tale of Four Couples

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, introduces us to the middle-aged collegiate couple George and Martha (Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, of course) as they're introducing themselves to a younger couple Nick and Honey (George Segal, Sandy Dennis). Nick is a new teacher at the school, filled with ambition. George is not. Honey is a fragile little thing. Martha is not. Over the course of one night filled with lots of booze and BS, both relationship, but particularly George and Martha's, for that's the important one, will be bent to their breaking point. The middle-aged couple in Blue Valentine are Dean and Cindy (Ryan Gosling, Michelle Williams). Dean is a bit of a layabout and treats life as if it were as easy as he wishes it were. This leaves the majority of the work to fall to Cindy who can't really find the time in her schedule for anything resembling fun and at this point has pretty much given up on wanting to. And the young couple in Blue Valentine are the same Dean and Cindy, at the beginning of their life together, filled with love and optimism. It's not a "feel-good picture."

This isn't to say that the young Dean and Cindy are directly equatable to Nick and Honey or that the older Dean and Cindy are the same as George and Martha... (more after the jump)

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Yes, No, Maybe So: "My Week With Marilyn"

Visual information was a long time coming with My Week With Marilyn, but now at last the trailer for the film has arrived giving us a peek at Michelle Williams as Hollywood's most famous blonde bombshell and the story of a diversion with a reporter during the filming of The Prince and the Showgirl.

Dougray Scott and Michelle Williams as Mr & Mrs Arthur Miller

In the trailer we see lots of Michelle as Marilyn and a pissy Sir Kenneth Branagh as Sir Laurence Olivier. Judi Dench seems starstruck, Dominic Cooper annoyed, and Eddie Redmayne appropriately in over his head as the young man she takes up with.  Let's break it down. Do we wanna see it and why?

Breakdown and full trailer after the jump.

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Interiority vs Exteriority. Olsen vs. Knightley

Anecdote / Conjecture time. I finally caught the Sundance hit Martha Marcy May Marlene (thoughts forthcoming but definitely in the "must-see!" division) which is the star-making, or at least actress-making, debut of 22 year-old Elizabeth Olsen who is the younger sister of the famous/infamous Olsen Twins.

Critics screenings at the New York Film Festival often end with a mini press-conference and the writer/director Sean Durkin and Olsen (who seems to go by "Lizzy") were on hand today to answer questions. If you've ever been to a Q&A you'll know that most people preface their question with some sort of comment about their own feelings for the movie -- usually ass-kissing praise since the stars are present and stars have wondrous heinies.

One reporter, justifiably thrilled by Olsen's work as Martha says this to Lizzy:

I wanted to compliment you on the interiority of your characterization. You didn't externalize it the way some people do by being "insane" visually and that interiority was very engulfing and very convincing in comparison to some of the performances we've seen... it was a relief, actually. 

LOL. I wonder who on earth she could be dissing... 

MORE AFTER THE JUMP

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RIP "The Playboy Club" (Sept 2011- Oct 2011)

The peacock network brings us the TV season's first cancellation. And whaddya know? It's their new show with the brightest plumage, "The Playboy Club". I've been soaking up the general response to this show and "Pan Am" with some interest since they're the two shows that Mad Men spawned, imitation being the sincerest form of flattery and the most flattering form of theft.

It's unkind to speak ill of the dead so I want to thank The Playboy Club for shining such a bright spotlight on Broadway babe Laura Benanti as she sang onstage and bitched backstage. She was the show's indisputable MVP for its very short run so some other series would be smart to snatch her up. I normally don't wish "series regular" status on Broadway's headlining musical stars because it makes them vanish from the stage but my friends and I have held a comic grudge against Benanti for years since it took us four times of paying for her shows to actually see her perform. Maybe we had terrible luck but... well, let's just say it seems like her understudies go on... A LOT.

[Updated Editor's Note: There's a reasonable explanation in reader comments as to why Benanti was absent from shows so much in the Aughts. Terrible injury.]

Though Pan Am is appreciably better as reviews suggested, the emphatically polarized 'two thumbs up/all thumbs down' greeting is something I couldn't really get behind as they have/had some of the same strengths and weaknesses.

Strengths: Great, sexy, and showy choice of milieu in that it's a potentially fine breeding ground for multiple stories and visual pizazz, a sassy leading brunette that's fun to watch (Laura Benanti / Christina Ricci), and super attractive men in suits.
Weaknesses: Period setting plays all cosmetic with no soul, depth, or nuance (don't get me started on the dialogue in either show... way too modern), beautiful leading blonde who is dull to watch (Amber Heard / Margot Robbie ... is the actress just not bringing it or are these characters too blank) and uneven acting.

So what's the decisive factor in one show winning instant fans and the other a speedy cancellation? I'm thinking confidence, both behind-the-scenes (who knows what executives are thinking) and onscreen. Pan Am struts through its airport like it owns the world and that dead bunny had something of a nervous twitching tail. Confidence in your own voice, even if you're still finding it, goes a long long way towards being heard.