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.

The Big Skinny: How I Changed My Fattitude
By Carol Lay
Villard, January 2009, $18.00

In the wake of [[[Perseopolis]]] and similar works, graphic novels have become ever more popular for acquisition editors at the major trade publishing houses. But, just as the direct market twists products in the direction of its own obsessions – spandex, punches, and chivalry twisted through at least two axes, these days – those mainstream publishers have their own market trends and forces, and they’re looking for particular things themselves. To be blunt, all of the big-publisher GNs seem to be memoirs of one sort or another. Some of them are “here’s my life in numbing detail” books, like David Heatley’s [[[My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down]]], and some are small stories of particular moments and times, like Lucy Knisley’s [[[French Milk]]] – but they all are personal stories of one kind or another.

Carol Lay, surprisingly, hasn’t written a book-length illustrated work before; she’s had several collections published – mostly of her weekly [[[WayLay]]] strip – but [[[The Big Skinny]]] is the first time she created a graphic work purely for book publication. And, since it’s from Villard, one piece of the huge Random House book conglomerate, you’d be pretty safe betting that it’s a memoir of some kind. And it is. But The Big Skinny isn’t just a memoir – it’s some more unusual for comics, though it fits into a pretty common prose format.

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Nathan Fillion, star of Joss Whedon’s “Firefly” and “Serenity,” will do double duty this March as the voice of Steve Trevor in Wonder Woman, the next entry in the series of DC Universe animated original PG-13 movies due on March 3, 2009, with a preview showing at the New York Comic Con, and is also taking the title role in “Castle”, premiering on March 7th on ABC, which features Fillion as a hugely popular mystery/horror writer who helps police solve crimes– think "Murder She Wrote" with Stephen King, but nowhere near as stiff.

Fillion, a fan favorite as Captain Mal Reynolds, as well as Captain Hammer in “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog,” found time away from the grasp of DC Voice Director Andrea Romano (right) and his unrelenting Halo addiction to chat.

QUESTION: Can you describe the challenges of bringing Steve Trevor to life?

NATHAN FILLION: The challenge I find is just trying to use my natural voice and trying not to put on too much of a voice.  I tried to just keep it nice and easy and relaxed. He’s a little bit wry, he’s a little bit dry. I can do that. And a couple of times I actually slipped in a little bit of a southern accent. 

Steve Trevor is not a complex guy.  He’s got a façade up, he’s got a defense up, but he drops it a little bit because he does care about Diana.  I like that he’s got a bit of an arc, he’s got something to learn.  I think that’s what makes a good character and a good story.

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