Tale as old as time, song as old as rhyme, beauty and the beast. Yes, friends, just in time for its 20th anniversary, Josh takes a look back at the pinnacle of the Disney Renaissance, 1991's Beauty and the Beast! After the last couple of weeks, and with the holidays right around the corner, nothing could be better than revisiting this old-fashioned classic. But you might find a few surprises here, such as a discussion of the alternate 18-minute opening or Josh wondering about the origins of the Beast. You'll have to check out the new Mousterpiece Cinema, though; just make sure you don't go into the West Wing!
Had to comment. First of all, kids are not the ones who say -oh, Angelina Jolie is doing the voice of whoever, I have to see this movie. Kids may pick up on voices once they are watching the movie, but they want to see them no matter who is voicing. I think stunt casting for voices is for the adults benefit. Second, Angela Lansbury had done plenty of big name movies in addition to Murder, She Wrote. National Velvet and Bedknobs & Broomsticks to name a couple. So saying her name wasn't big enough to attract people to a movie is not fair. In my opinion.
ReplyDeleteJust wanted a follow-up comment since I just managed to catch the 3D version of the film.
ReplyDeleteThe movie is still great (no surprise there) and the 3D has some nice dimensional effects but it's almost like it's putting you inside a multiplane camera - the 3D effect seems to be pulling apart all the layers and putting space between them. This works pretty well for the framing shots and landscapes/towns. One unintended consequence is a shot of the village that makes it look like a small city - not exactly provincial!
Where the 3D fails badly is with the characters, there are far too many shots where the flatness of the character drawings are impossible to ignore, and I think it pulls you out of the story. Not a good thing.
I also confirmed the whole weird timing of the curse - Beast was indeed 11 when he was cursed, as the opening sequence says he must break the spell by the time he is 21. In "Be Our Guest", Lumiere specifically says they have been suffering under the curse for 10 years. Dunno why they had to do that, and I suspect someone mucked with the opening dialogue because they could have just said that he had 10 years to break the curse without mentioning how old he would be.