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Entries in Aladdin (29)

Tuesday
May282019

What did you see over Memorial Day?

What did you see over the long weekend? Yours truly had a visitor in town so we were doing the touristy things and Aladdin was the movie of choice (not ours!)

Four Day Holiday Weekend Box Office
May 24th-27th
🔺 = new or expanded theater counts / ★ = highly recommended
W I D E
PLATFORM / LIMITED
1 🔺 Aladdin $116.8 on 4476 screens *new* 1992 RETRO
1 🔺 Biggest Little Farm $679k on 181 screens (cum. $1.2)

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Wednesday
May222019

Aladdin Pt 3: Free at last! A 'Whole New World' awaits.

In Part 1 Ben introduced us to the romantic heroes and their evil nemesis. In Part 2 of our re-watch of Disney's Aladdin (1992) Timothy took us into the Cave of Wonders where our 'diamond in the rough' met the whirlwind vocal performance of Robin Williams as the Genie. He discussed stylistic, color palette, and comic choices in the storytelling on the fantastical journey. We return to the film just as Aladdin has dropped his pompous prince pretenses and admitted that the Princess is not a prize to be won and promptly jumps off her balcony just as she requested.

Part 3 by Nathaniel R

- Startled by his sudden humility and agreement, as well as the not so mundane matter of magical carpets, Jasmine drops her own defenses and becomes curious about this new prince. She can't shake the feeling that she knows him.

- Does Jasmine have facial blindness that she can't remember the only man she ever almost kissed in her life? The one from the day before no less!

-Aladdin moves at quite a clip but we know it's been no more than two days due to the plot business because she has only three days to get married by the laws of both Agrabah and childlike-attention-spans-of-target audiences. 

- Tim spoke of Aladdin's intuition and it is a beautifully realized aspect of his character. He's not aware of it, per se, the way he is in regards to his other physical and mental skills, so he's more of an idiot savant when it comes to emotional intelligence. He instinctively gets the Genie's pride / Jafar's competitiveness / and Jasmine's need to roam. He harnesses all three in the course of the plot, the latter not to manipulate her like the other two but to free her spiritually/romantically though he isn't thinking of all this when he asks...

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Tuesday
May212019

Aladdin Pt 2: Manic Magical Improv, Sight Gags, and "Prince Ali"

In Part 1 of our re-watch of Disney's Aladdin (the proper one, from 1992, not the live-action thing coming out this weekend) Ben got us through the introductions to good-hearted "street rat" Aladdin, frustrated princess Jasmine, and up to the mouth of the Cave of Wonders. We enter as Aladdin takes his first step into a whole new world…

 

Part 2 by Tim Brayton

0:28:04 – Let's take just a minute to appreciate the atmospheric concision of this descent into the cave. First, we had a shot of Aladdin stepping over the tiger-god's teeth, dissolving into this beautiful wide shot of him (below) at the top of an impossible flight of stairs, a tiny bright dot in the overall gloom that shifts from cold blue to hot, threatening red as our eye glides down the lines of the composition.

Then another dissolve takes us to the foot of stairs, with Aladdin about to step into the heart of the cave. It's a swift, visually-driven way of taking us down into… Hell? It's hard to say just yet, but it creates a terrific sense of mystery, both promising and foreboding...

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Monday
May202019

Aladdin Pt 1: The 'street rat' and the princess with an edge

Three-Part Mini-Series
Occasionally we'll take a movie and baton pass it around the team and really dive in. If you missed past installments we've gone long and deep on RebeccaSilence of the LambsThelma & LouiseWho's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, A League of Their Own, and Rosemary's Baby in the past.  -Editor


Part 1 by Ben Miller

Welcome to Team Film Experience's Aladdin Retrospective.  This film was a big part of my childhood and I’m proud to join in on the fun to revisit it with you before the live-action remake hits.  Disney in the 1990s might have been the animated studio's peak.  They were coming off the surprise success of The Little Mermaid in 1989 follwed by the monster hit and then-historic Best Picture nominee of Beauty and the Beast in 1991.  The massive success of Aladdin the very next year felt like a commercial/critical apex (at least until The Lion King arrived two years later).

0:00:26 – Alan Menken probably does not get enough credit for the score he put together.  Yes, he won an Oscar for it, but it doesn’t get put into the conversation enough for GREAT animated scores.

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Monday
May202019

Beauty vs Beast: Still I Think He's Rather Tasty

Jason Adams from MNPP, fully ready to admit that if you get me drunk enough and put me in front of a karaoke microphone I could sing to you any one of the songs from 1992's Aladdin without having to look at the words on the screen once. I don't know if that's what Disney had in mind but it is what it is and it is how I spent a hefty amount of my time, when I should have been studying, in college. I might not remember anything from that Geology class I was forced to take at nine in the morning but get outta the way when "A Whole New World" comes on. Anyway with Guy Ritchie's live-action version out this Friday, and a retrospective from Team Experience beginning tonight, what better time to "Beauty vs Beast" the original -- I'm shocked we haven't done this before honestly, since Aladdin's got one of Disney's greatest villains...

 

PREVIOUSLY A week ago we wished Sofia Coppola a happy birthday by looking back upon her last film Beguiled, and today we're minded what a fool's errand it is for us to ever face anybody off with Nicole Kidman -- even Colin Farrell's hotness couldn't muster up more than 29% against the queen Kidman. Said Ben:

"Miss Farnsworth is the only one who thinks primarily with her head instead of her heart. That's why the only logical thing to do was to cut off his leg, then kill him. Makes sense to me!"