fantasia Tagged Articles at Cinematical
Nicolas Cage to Play Mickey Mouse?
Filed under: Animation », Music & Musicals », Sci-Fi & Fantasy », Casting », Deals », Disney », Remakes and Sequels »
Disney is awfully good at depreciating the value of its animated classics. Sometimes it makes useless sequels to films, as in Bambi II and The Lion King 1½. Other times it produces live-action remakes, such as 101 Dalmatians. Now, it is going a little too far. Not only will there be a live-action version of The Sorcerer's Apprentice, but it may well star Nicolas Cage, who is so far only confirmed as a producer.Of course, The Sorcerer's Apprentice is much older than the segment of Disney's Fantasia. The story goes back 210 years to a poem by Goethe called Der Zauberlehrling. But most people these days are more familiar with the Mickey Mouse version set to Paul Dukas' symphonic poem L'apprenti-sorcier (itself an adaptation of the Goethe). The animated sequence is so popular that it was even reused for the sorta-sequel Fantasia 2000. Obviously most viewers of this new film are going to be thinking about Mickey while watching Cage. That can't be good.
To make matters even worse, it is difficult to imagine the story -- a lazy sorcerer's apprentice misuses his magic by giving life to a broomstick -- being enough to fill a feature-length film. Apparently Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal have completed a script, but none of its details have yet been revealed. Anyway, it must be possible because a straight-to-video version of Goethe's tale was made in 2002 with Kelly LeBrock (interestingly enough, Weird Science has some of the same themes).
Premiere Gets Brave: Knocks 20 Classics as "Overrated"
Filed under: Classics », Fandom », Newsstand », Lists »
I haven't picked up an issue of Premiere Magazine in quite some time, but a friend of mine recently recommended I visit the publication's newly refurbished website. So I did. Pretty solid content across the board, I'm happy to opine -- but one particular article caught my eye, tickled my fancy, and squatted in my brain long enough to recommend it here.Basically, a bunch of the Premiere writers were asked to come up with their picks for Most Overrated Film of All Time -- and while most of the sacred cows slaughtered here are pretty darn obvious ones, the opinions and explanations as to why each film was chosen, well, I thought they were fairly compelling. Frankly, I'm thrilled to see someone call Field of Dreams "just too on the nose," because it absolutely is.
Fully prepared for the onslaught of How Dare YE!! hate mail, the Premiere posse has wisely decided to add an equally pithy rebuttal in defense of each movie. So when someone has the audacity to impugn The Wizard of Oz, we sane people have a defender who'll say Dude, Please. I've placed the 20 titles under the jump, just to help spark discussion, but do not let that stop you from reading through the whole article. It might make you think a little differently about some of those Unquestioned Classics that everyone's afraid to admit they don't really dig. (Yep, 2001: A Space Odyssey is overrated; I said it and I'm proud.)
The next Pixar project?
Filed under: Animation », Comedy », Drama », Music & Musicals », Noir », RumorMonger », Newsstand »
Based on a new article in Time Magazine, it
looks as if the people at Pixar are finally talking about their follow-up to this summer's Cars
- and the movies they're discussing are so packed with potential (and vague enough to avoid disappointing) that they're
going to send fans of the company into a frenzy of anticipation. The films being discussed are Ratatouille
(which has been in the IMDB for at least 3 years), about "a rat who lives in a fancy French restaurant";
something noirish from The
Incredibles writer/director Brad Bird, possibly based on
The Spirit, a 1940s comic; or a return to 2D animation by John
Lasseter, maybe in the form of the long-discussed world music Fantasia
spin-off.WHEW. Personally, I'm freaking out at the thought of The Spirit on screen, especially in Bird's hands, but all of those ideas are exciting. It's enough to leave you just thanking to the sweet Lord that Pixar exists.
Jeremy Renner Wants To Be An Avenger
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Indie Roundup: 'Sweetgrass,' 'Clarkworld,' 'Broken Embraces'
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Watch: Famous 'Matrix' Scene Re-Created with LEGOs
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