Soundtracking: "Wall-E"

by Chris Feil

It’s a rare thing for a Disney film to borrow music for a film rather than provide original material, but Pixar’s Wall-E is an even rarer brand of masterpiece. Today, on its tenth anniversary, it is still as sublime an experience for the senses as it ever was.

When the film opens with a musical theatre classic, we are told instantly that we are in for a different kind of science fiction world view. Its nearly dialogue free visual storytelling has been rightly lauded, detailing the a polluted post-evacuation earth through the robots left behind. But one crucial and charming aspect to the silent love story it tells is how swiftly it reveals character through its needle drops...

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Soundtracking: "The Lion King"

by Chris Feil

When The Lion King arrived in 1994, it felt like the first Disney film fully developed in its post-Little Mermaid resurrected era. Whereas the genius of Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin feel like passion projects born of new financial fluidity, this film rings like a triumphant self-actualization of its return to dominance. It’s right there in the in the rising sun and thunderous opening incantation of “Circle of Life” - Disney reclaiming with force what they had lost and owning the cyclical nature of creative power.

It’s arresting stuff on a meta level, but that’s still incomparable to the song’s visceral gut level impact. Paired with the imagery of a convening animal kingdom both too fantastical to be true and rendered with breathtaking reality, “Circle of Life” feels so monumental that even immersive IMAX screens and sound systems can’t do its scale justice...

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Box Office Gets "Incredible" Again

by Nathaniel R

Weekend Box Office Estimates (June 15-17)
W I D E 800+ screens	L I M I T E D excluding prev. wide
Incredibles 2	Gotti
1.🔺 INCREDIBLES 2 $180 *NEW*	1. 🔺 GOTTI $1.6 on 503 screens *NEW*
2. OCEANS 8 $19.5 (cum. $79.1)  CATE'S PROMO SUITS	2. 🔺RACE 3 $1.6 on 315 screens *NEW*
3.🔺TAG $14.6 *NEW*	3. 🔺WON'T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR? $985k on 96 screens (cum. $1.6)
4. SOLO  $9 (cum $192.8) REVIEW, BEHIND THE SCENES	4. RBG $483k on 290 screens (cum. $10.1) REVIEW
5. DEADPOOL 2 $8.8 (cum. $294.6)	5. FIRST REFORMED $329K (cum. $2.4) REVIEW, ETHAN HAWKE

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"Dumbo" Teases

by Nathaniel R

click to enlargePrediction: By 2040 Disney will have remade all of their animated features as "live-action" movies. Well, maybe not Song of the South or The Three Caballeros. Live-action is in quotes because some of the remake titles are basically still half animated -- like The Jungle Book in 2016, or Beauty and the Beast in 2017. Next up in the Disney remakes department is Tim Burton's take on Dumbo. 

The name Tim Burton used to automatically thrill but he lost his mojo at exactly the turn of the century (just after Sleepy Hollow in '99) and hasn't been able to get it back. He's made 10 features since and the only uncompromised / totally satisfying artistic success among them, I'd argue, is the animated features Corpse Bride (2005). And to a lesser extent Frankenweenie (2012) if we're feeling a bit generous...

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YNMS x 2: Mowgli and Christopher Robin

by Nathaniel R

grrrr. oink. hsss. squeak. 'oh bother'. oohoohahah. and other animal noises.

The multiplex has a serious animal infestations coming up with Christopher Robin and yet another adaptation of The Jungle Book called Mowgli coming up in the next handful of months. Have you caught their trailers?

Let's break them down with our Yes No Maybe So™ practice after the jump...

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