Author: Robert Greenberger

Disney’s fortunes with their animated fare had fallen fairly far by the 1980s.  The sheer expense of hand animation made the films difficult to mount and then changing audience tastes always seem to stay a step or two ahead of Disney.  In the past, Disney films were the tastemakers, introducing pop songs and icons but those days more or less ended in 1968 with the [[[Jungle Book]]].

The arrival of [[[Oliver and Company]]] in 1988 signaled a step in the right direction.  The studio experimented tepidly with computer animation using the technology for backgrounds on [[[The Great Mouse Detective]]] just prior to this film.  Now, they used it for more backgrounds and actual character animation, allowing them to focus more on story, song, and characterization.

In keeping with Walt Disney’s habit, the film is based on a public domain tale, Charles Dickens’ [[[Oliver Twist]]], but totally reconfigured in contemporary terms.  The notion of an orphaned cat taken in by a pack of dogs has potential but the characters are all surface and charming, rather than edgy or anything other than charming. The lack of shading to any of the characters is disappointing, something that doomed the film. Notice you don’t see a lot of Oliver costumes at Disneyland.

Oliver is one of the first in the Disney canon to go out of its way to go for celebrity voices and Bette Midler, Cheech Marin, and Billy Joel head the cast.  All do admirable jobs but the material is limited. The mix of songwriters adds some nice variety and you see some early work from Alan Mencken, a foreshadowing of better times ahead.

In fact, this is the film that essentially transitioned Disney from being an also ran to being king once more since this taught them everything they needed to know to begin a new era of supremacy with the following year’s [[[Little Mermaid]]].

The 20th anniversary disc, released Tuesday, offers very little in the way of anything new from the previous editions. The picture looks fine, the sound is fine.

Extras are taken from the previous disc and include a five minute, particularly uninformative making of featurette (which could have been cleaned up for this edition). Then there’s The History of Animals in Disney Films, which is a great topic but given short shrift in just two minutes.

There are the trailers and some sketchbook material which is nice to look at.

The Oscar-winning “[[[Lend a Paw]]]” and “[[[Puss Café]]]”, two classic Disney shorts with Pluto and Mickey, make return appearances.

New to the disc are a few activities and a game, Oliver’s Big City Challenge.

Over all, the film is pleasant enough and a good addition for families but it pales in comparison with the features that followed.

As new anniversary editions or Blu-ray releases of classic films continue to arrive, the question has to be asked each time: is it worth the upgrade?

In most cases, as with Paramount Home Video’s centennial series, the answer is always yes because the restoration work done to the film plus the extras make for a fine package.  I wish the same could be said for one of my all time favorite films, [[[Mary Poppins]]].

The 45th anniversary set comes out on Tuesday and is a two-disc celebration of Disney’s great musical. The 139 minute feature film continues to delight and enchant and is a must have for any serious movie collector or parent. But, coming five years after the last anniversary collection the answer has to be, if you have the 40th, you don’t need the 45th.

The film itself is technically the same.  Pristine in look, the film is at the original 1.66:1 aspect ratio and the color remains terrific. The audio remains available in Dolby Digital 2.0 or 5.1 surround sound and still sounds swell

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When [[[Superman]]] whet readers’ appetite for costumed champions, comic book publishers responded and for the next decade, hundreds of characters arrived.  A handful survived through the changes in publishing and most of the others were consigned to the second hand shops and the vault of memory.  As a result, many fell into public domain, allowing anyone to dust them off and bring them back into print.

As a result, the notion that Alex Ross was going to spruce up dozens of heroes and sidekicks for his pal Nick Barrucci is certainly an exciting one.  Ross partnered once more with writer Jim Krueger to figure out what to do with them all.  The resulting series, Project Superpowers, debuted amidst much fanfare last year and the first storyline was collected in December by Dynamite Entertainment in hardcover.

What do you do with an army of heroes whose powers and abilities are currently familiar to generations of readers?  You could go in several directions and the creators chose a tried and true concept: the heroes of World War II vanished, the world changed for the worse, and now they’re back and realize how needed they are.

The Fighting Yank is led by his guiding spirit to capture his allies in a magical urn otherwise things in the years following World War II would get darker. Suddenly, the heroes and their sidekicks are taken without permission and trapped.  In the intervening years, America becomes a despotic country, casting an ominous shadow over the rest of the world. An aging Fighting Yank is enticed by the Spirit of America, a disembodied American Flag, to find the urn and release its contents.  This puts him in direct conflict with Dynamic Man, who, with his family, seem to be ruling America.

When the heroes are released, they are scattered around a world they do not recognize and their powers are altered.  The remaining story shows what happens next.

The story moves along briskly but that’s the problem.  At no time do the creators properly introduce us to the dozen-plus heroes, establishing who they are and what they can do before telling us their old powers are changed.  Nor are we really given an understanding of how America’s power is perceived around the world.  Are there allies?  What about the Communists in China and Russia? Also, how does the change in politics affect society and commerce?  No clues are really provided.

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There’s little left to be said about Jeff Smith’s superlative Bone.  If that’s the case, then why write anything at all?  Because today, Scholastic’s Graphix imprint has released Crown of Horns, the ninth and final volume in their color collection. Coming six months after Treasure Hunters, this is a longer book, 212 pages, but with no change in cover price which is a treat for the buyer.

With Crown of Horns, the entire saga is now in a uniform color set, aimed at school children.  The first volume was released in 2004 and we’re finally here at the conclusion.  Readers new to the adventures of Bone and his cousins now have two choices: the 1300 page black and white saga for about $40 or, the nine color volumes which all together would cost about $90.

What’s lovely is to see Jeff’s work take color so well, especially in the capable hands of Steve Hamaker. The color enhances the atmosphere and story telling, never overpowering the characters or settings.  It’s one of the finest jobs I’ve seen in quite some time.

One thing the color volumes also have going for them is that Smith’s spelling errors are corrected, making it the cleanest version of the story yet, entirely appropriate for Scholastic’s market.

When first meeting the characters, as I did in 1991, you have little idea of their species or nature but quickly they become distinct, memorable characters and you realize you don’t care about their genetics.  Instead, they exist in their little village until they set out into the great world and discover adventure, war, love, humor, and new insights.

Home, in this case Boneville, is a theme, much like in Lord of the Rings, and the theme is a major point in the final volume. And like Tolkien’s world, the Bone-people find themselves co-existing with humans, dragons, and other creatures.  No explanation necessary, just a delight in seeing the interactions.

Smith spent 1300 pages with these characters and continually revealed new tidbits about them without seeming contrived.  The storyline holds together nicely and each of the nine Scholastic volumes works with beginning and ending.

If the volumes could benefit from anything, it would be either a recap of the previous books to this point or a character key to help the readers.  Of course, you sit and read them repeatedly; they get committed to memory so maybe that’s why they’re missing.

Bone is recommended reading for comic book and graphic novel fans of all ages and essential reading for those just discovering the artform and are curious as to what’s out there.
 

Paramount Pictures’ Centennial Collection chugs along, mining the 1950s and Audrey Hepburn again with the release on Tuesday of Funny Face. The musical, with Fred Astaire and Kay Thompson, unlike the earlier offerings in the series, has not aged well despite the loving restoration of the visuals.

Pop culture in the 1950s certainly centered on glamorous celebrities like Hepburn and the films were experimenting with visual techniques to combat the rise of television habits but sometimes their subjects were treated outlandishly.

Maggie Prescott (Thompson) is the force of nature that edits [[[Glamour]]], er, [[[Mode]]], er, [[[Quality]]] magazine.  The magazine wants to shoot on location, to lend a patina of intellectual sheen to the usually vapid model who seems more interesting in exaggerated poses than anything natural. She and top fashion photographer Dick Avery (Astaire) spontaneously decide on a “sinister” looking bookstore in Greenwich Village, hail a few cabs, and go in search. They find a dark, dusty shop with a young bookseller, Jo Stockton (Hepburn) as the sole occupant.  They storm in, take over the joint and include her in one picture then lock her out of the store since she was objecting to their disruption of the place.

Later, Avery latches on to the notion that she could be the fresh face a new campaign could be built around. He convinces her that by agreeing to model, she could be taken to Paris where she could be exposed to the great philosophical thinkers, including Prof. Emile Flostre (Michel Auclaire), who influenced the naïve girl. She accepts and is whisked to Paris where she at first indulges her intellect then gives in to her beauty.  The rest of the film chronicles her struggle to find herself as she straddles two worlds, neither very well.

Adapted from the 1927 stage musical, the update retained but four songs, two of which are memorable standards.  The rest are entirely forgettable including the signature opener, “Think Pink”.

As a story, it mocks the Beat Generation on two continents and treats Flostre as a great thinker, but his mind appears to be on one subject which is getting in to Hepburn’s pants. The rest of the script is breathless but you keep stopping to wonder about the absurdity of booking everyone into separate hotels or no one giving Stockton a schedule so she would know what was expected from her. Also, Stockton seems to suddenly give up on her interest in philosophy in favor of being a famous model when she could do both, it never had to be an either/or situation.

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