The Princess and the Frog Tagged Articles at Cinematical

In spite of what some internet pundits and self-righteous types would have you believe, being a film critic and entertainment journalist does not mean you're handed the keys to Hollywood along with your W-9. Attending screenings and junkets, transcribing interviews, and spending the vast majority of every single day (all day) sitting in front of a computer is far more exhausting than one might expect. In which case, the rare and unique opportunity to have fun and see some truly exclusive stuff is always welcome.

About two weeks ago Disney invited Cinematical to join a small group of print and online journalists for a press day in conjunction with their upcoming return to hand-drawn animation, The Princess and the Frog. In addition to conducting interviews with Ron Clements and John Musker, the guys not only responsible for Princess, but The Little Mermaid as well, our group took a tour of Disney's storied Animation Research Library, and even spent a little time at Disneyland itself on an exclusive behind the scenes tour.

Up in the Air
Juno director Jason Reitman adapts Walter Kim's novel about a human resources administrator (George Clooney) who has just met the woman of his dreams. The trailer is a bit vague, showing a string of unexplained scenes as Clooney's character delivers a corporate speech, but Reitman's presence has grabbed my attention. Watch for this one on December 4.

The House of the Devil
An old school creep-fest influenced by movies from the 1970s. A college student takes a babysitting job to earn cash for a deposit on an apartment, but once she arrives at a creepy house in the middle of the woods she's told there is no baby and that night just happens to coincide with a lunar eclipse. I want to see this one right now. This will be out just in time for Halloween.

Disney launched their inaugural D23 (D for Disney, 23 for 1923 ... when the studio started) fan expo today in Anaheim, and the opening remarks from Bob Iger covered all of the facets the company is involved in, ranging from movies to music to ... home furnishings. He barely mentioned Marvel in passing, probably since the ink's still drying on that deal, but he did say that the Marvel characters "transcend gender, age, and geographical location." They plan on using the Disney brand name to "extend and increase" the Marvel brand, so brace yourself for that.

The capper for the keynote was when they surprised the audience by showing 30 minutes worth of The Princess and The Frog, DIsney's return to 2-D hand drawn animation five years after they said the art form was dead and planned to only do CGI films following Home on the Range. Thankfully, with the purchase of Pixar and the installation of John Lasseter as head of animation, they've returned to the old school way of doing things.

The latest trailer for Disney's The Princess and the Frog is out, and it has me feeling all sorts of confused. It's pretty, and it looks kind of cute, but there are several aspects of it that make me distinctly uncomfortable. And I'm not the only one.

There have been a lot of switcheroos behind the scenes to make Princess more PC, but the rumble in my tummy says that the (mostly white) critics will be picking it apart scene by scene. So far just the trailers are getting people talking. I agree with /Film's Brendon Connelly that the character of the firefly, who seems to be obsessed with his big, glowing butt, is one of the more troublesome characters. Movieline is concerned about Mama Odie the witch doctor, while Katey Rich over at Cinemablend "is tempted to give it a pass." And Jezebel has quite a few discussions about the movie, like why it took so long for Disney to make a black princess, why she spends most of the movie as a frog, and many other dialogue-generating questions.

Let's not even begin to discuss the questionable video game that lets girls "play & move to music, cook New Orleans cuisine, and try on multiple outfits with Tiana & her friends," and "collect Mardi Gras beads to trade for new dresses, fabrics, ingredients and recipes." Sigh.

Plenty of talented black actresses were gunning for the part of Disney's first leading lady of color (the role eventually went to Anika Noni Rose, who was nominated for both a Grammy and a SAG Award for her work in Dreamgirls). And Oprah, that arbiter of all things good that makes Middle America's white middle-aged ladies feel okay about voting for Obama and reading The Color Purple, is in it. I can just see some Disney exec chomping on a cigar and thumping his fist on his desk, red-faced, yelling, "But Oprah is in it! Oprah!"

After Warner Brothers premiered footage from six of their upcoming film projects, including Jonah Hex, The Book of Eli and Where the Wild Things Are, Disney's John Lasseter took the stage to introduce footage and filmmakers from several of the studio's upcoming animated projects.

Among the movies covered:

• Toy Story and Toy Story 2 in 3-D -- Screening the opening, Star Wars-influenced sequence from Toy Story 2, Lasseter demonstrated the footage conversion and indicated that both films would look just as good as before, if not better, with that third dimension added.
• Toy Story 3 -- No footage from the film was screened, but director Lee Unkrich announced that Michael Keaton was cast as Ken, Barbie's longtime companion, and he showed fans a short "vintage '70s" featurette called "Groovin' With Ken."
  

The Princess and the Frog
Disney returns to old school 2-D animation (is that still legal?) with this feature about Princess Tiana who lives in New Orleans during the Jazz age. If I'm not mistaken, this character represents the first African-American addition to the Disney Princess line. I'm not quite in the right age group here, but this is what Disney does best so I'm betting the kids will love it. The amphibious lovin' commences on November 25.

Nine
Chicago director Rob Marshall helms this film based on the Tony Award-winning 1982 musical. A film director suffers from both creative and personal crises while balancing the the many women in his life. I can enjoy a well produced stage musical, but they rarely work for me onscreen. Watch for it on November 25.

Gamer
This one will have you looking at your XBox 360 in a whole new way. In the not too distant future, convicted felons serve as player characters in a real life video game and the survivor gets to go free. The influences of The Running Man and the recent Death Race seem pretty obvious. Gerard Butler and Dexter's Michael C. Hall star so this may be worth a look come September 4.

Click the image below to view entire poster

Cinematical has just received this beautiful exclusive teaser poster for Disney's The Princess and the Frog, which marks the studio's triumphant return to 2D hand-drawn animation. Featuring the voices of Anika Noni Rose (as Princess Tiana), Oprah Winfrey, Keith David, Jim Cummings, John Goodman, Jenifer Lewis, Bruno Campos, Michael-Leon Wooley, Peter Bartlett and Terrence Howard, The Princess and the Frog is based on E.D. Baker's classic novel The Frog Princess, except this film -- written and directed by the filmmaking duo of John Musker and Ron Clements (The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Hercules) -- is set in New Orleans, stars a singing crocodile and features Disney's first African-American princess. Famed songwriter/composer Randy Newman (Toy Story, Monsters, Inc.) lent his familiar voice to the soundtrack, which I'm sure will carve out its special place alongside Disney's long list of memorable tracks.

The first trailer for The Princess and the Frog was also just released on Apple (watch it there or after the jump), and folks will have a chance to see the film when it hits theaters in New York and LA on November 25th before expanding wide on December 11th. Click the image below to view entire poster -- does this look like vintage Disney, or what?

Curious about what's been happening at WonderCon in San Francisco this weekend? Me too! Let's see what the Internet says.

Cloverfield Sequel? J.J. Abrams acknowledged that ideas for a sequel "or at least a follow-up" to last year's big-grossing, doc-style monster movie Cloverfield are being kicked around. Insisting that a sequel "better not be a business decision," Abrams said: "We have an idea for something that's pretty cool ... It's something that would be related to Cloverfield and hopefully we'll do something sooner than later, because the idea's pretty sweet." Abrams appeared at WonderCon to premiere a new trailer for some space movie thingy. [Daniel Fienberg at HitFix.]

Terminator for Teens? Director McG continued to play the guessing game about the rating for Terminator: Salvation. Are they aiming for PG-13 or R? At a panel, he teased the audience with the prospect of a topless scene by Moon Bloodgood. (Alas, the new trailer does not include that scene.) Later, McG claimed that T:S was made without giving a thought to rating, while also referencing the Kate Winslet posing scene in the PG-13 rated Titanic. For her part, Ms. Bloodgood said: "I'm a woman, I have boobs, it's a beautiful shot." [Edward Douglas at Coming Soon.]

Green Lantern Goes Russian? Anton Yelchin, the Russian-born actor who has prominent supporting roles in both Star Trek and Terminator: Salvation, denied a rumor that he was being considered to play Hal Jordan in Green Lantern. "No one has said anything to me. I imagine I'm just too young. I mean, it's a great character but I don't know anything about it." Yelchin will turn 20 next week. [IESB.net]

After the jump: News on Disney's hand-drawn The Princess and the Frog.

After the first teaser trailer showed up recently for The Princess and the Frog, Disney's return to traditional hand-drawn-style animation, a lot of the blogosphere was labeling the film potentially racist. Hopefully the political correctness circles have died down a bit, though (or are at least concentrating too hard on Tropic Thunder), and we can appreciate some beautiful new artwork from the film without wondering how it might be reflective of stereotypes and whatnot. Over at DisneyAnimation.com, there is a gallery of "visual development" images that give us more of the background depicting 1920s New Orleans and its vicinity. For someone like me, who just recently revisited the Big Easy, the artwork is enough to get me excited about the movie, which unfortunately I must wait for until Christmas 2009.

The Princess and the Frog is a jazzy musical fairy tale based on the classic story "The Frog Princess" and features the first ever African American Disney princess (voiced by Anika Noni Rose). Other characters include a trumpet-playing alligator and a love-sick Cajun firefly. And clearly, from what these new images show us, it's set in New Orleans' French Quarter, as well as the Garden District (or maybe the mansion in this image is further outside the city) and on the bayou, where apparently someone lives in a shipwrecked boat, Swiss Family Robison style. Hopefully, since the story takes place during Prohibition, we'll get to see some swamp-set bootlegging going on.

Be sure to also visit the other project pages on DisneyAnimation.com, for minor info on 2010's Rapunzel and the Phillip K. Dick adaptation King of the Elves, set for a 2012 release. I'm sure there will be more artwork added for those titles in the future, so keep the site bookmarked.

I'm as big a fan of Pixar movies as anyone, but I honestly miss the old-fashioned 2-D style animation from Walt Disney. I think there's definitely room for both hand-drawn and computer animated films, because as brilliant as movies like Toy Story, Ratatouille and Wall-E may be, they're a completely separate kind of filmmaking from the traditional Disney films. They shouldn't be compared to nor should they replace the kind of beloved fairy tale classics we've enjoyed from the Mouse House for 70 years. So, before commenting on the new teaser trailer for The Princess and the Frog (available here if the YouTube version is removed), let me just say, welcome back, 2-D!

OK, so what do I think? Well, upon seeing the New Orleans setting, my first response was unfortunately one of fear: what if Disney one-ups its Hunchback of Notre Dame pole-dance debacle with a scene involving Mardi Gras beads? Well, obviously Disney knows better than to be so blatantly naughty, though I wouldn't doubt that animators will find some way to slip in a hint of Big Easy-style debauchery.