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Post by Belchic on Apr 3, 2011 18:49:30 GMT -5
Hey there everybody. I was going to make a video series on YouTube where I was going to review each of the Disney Animated Features one by one and give my personal rating on them. However, I decided not to, and for technical reasons. First of all, it would be a lot of effort, and it would be hard to find screenshots. Also, I don't want to take the risk of fanboys of specific Internet icons to call me a rip-off for doing it. So, instead, I'm going to post my reviews here. I'm planning to post one movie review per day so that I can give people a chance to respond to them. Also, you guys can feel free to make your own reviews here as well.
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Post by Belchic on Apr 5, 2011 2:01:38 GMT -5
1. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) Welcome to Disney’s Amazing Animagic where we will review the history and evolution of the Disney Animated Classics! For our first review, let’s go back to the year, 1937, and take a look at the animated classic that started it all: “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”. During the lifetime of Walt Disney, the movies he made were usually based on stories that his grandmother used to read to him. His favorite of these stories was “Snow White”, so why not? The story behind the movie is that an evil queen is desperate to be the fairest in the land, but when she finds out that her stepdaughter, Snow White, is fairer than her, she is determined to kill her. Snow White escapes from her home, befriends some forest creatures, and finds this little cottage that she decides to stay in. This cottage is home to the seven dwarfs who let her stay. Meanwhile, the queen makes another attempt to kill Snow White by transforming herself into an ugly old hag and making a poison apple. There’s also a prince in this movie, who doesn’t play a very big role in it; he’s only shown at the beginning and the end, and that’s pretty much all we see of him. When this movie was released after its 3-year production, everyone was mesmerized. Not only was it Disney’s first animated feature, but it was also the very first animated feature-length film ever released in America, and today, it’s still considered one of the best. If it weren’t for “Snow White”, Disney would suck, and animated movies probably wouldn’t even exist! My Rating: A+
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Post by Belchic on Apr 5, 2011 13:12:59 GMT -5
2. Pinocchio (1940) Welcome to Disney’s Amazing Animagic! We’re still in the early years of Disney, and the success of Disney’s first animated feature, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”, has lead Walt to create a follow-up. The year is 1940, and the movie is “Pinocchio”. This movie begins with an old toy maker named Gepetto. Gepetto longs for a son, and he had just created a marionette that he named Pinocchio. Before going to sleep that night, Gepetto wishes that Pinocchio would be a real boy; this of course sets the tone for the movie’s theme song, which happens to be the most popular Disney song of all time, “When You Wish upon a Star”. While Gepetto slumbers, the Blue Fairy comes and brings Pinocchio to life and tells him that if he proves himself brave, truthful and unselfish, he would become a real boy. Some characters in this movie like Jiminy Cricket and Figaro would appear in other Disney movies and featurettes for years to come. One thing that’s kind of surprising to me about this movie is that they managed to get the voice talent of the legendary Mel Blanc to provide the voices of Figaro, Cleo and Gideon (characters who hardly made any noise in the movie). If you’re a villains fan, then this is a movie for you, for it has about five villains in total, but they sort of come and go. This movie is also very humorous and kid-friendly, most likely to make up for “Snow White” and it’s darker tone, but that's not to say this movie had it's dark moments too. If you think the Disney films are magical now, this is only the beginning. Disney will not stop evolving. My Rating: B+
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Post by Belchic on Apr 7, 2011 0:17:39 GMT -5
3. Fantasia (1940) Welcome back to Disney’s Amazing Animagic. As we continue our history of the Disney Animated Classics, we are now coming up on Walt’s third animated masterpiece, “Fantasia”. The movie was released the same year as “Pinocchio” as a road show, but it was publicly released a year or two later. Basic rundown of “Fantasia” is it basically focuses on a symphony orchestra conducted by Leopold Stokowski performing classical orchestration pieces with Disney animation playing around them. The first segment, “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor”, shows a series of abstract animation, which, believe it or not, was a first for the Disney Company. The second segment is “The Nutcracker Suite”, which shows a personified view of the changes of seasons; in this segment we see fairies, flower pedals, fishes that look like Cleo, Chinese mushrooms, and…Russian flowers? The third segment, “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”, is probably the most popular segment of the movie, as it features Mickey Mouse as the apprentice of a sorcerer named Yensid (I wonder where that name came from). Then we go into “The Rite of Spring”, the movie’s longest segment, which shows basically the natural history of the Earth from the beginning to the extinction of the dinosaurs. The second half of the movie opens with a little segment called “Meet the Soundtrack”, which is slightly humorous in a way. Beethoven’s “Pastoral Symphony” follows that, which shows an ancient Greek type of setting, and it’s kinda cute. We then go into “Dance of the Hours”, which shows these ostriches, hippos, elephants and alligators attempting to perform the ballet but comically making a disaster out of it. Then we go into the movie’s final segment, “A Night on Bald Mountain”; here, we are introduced to the villain of the movie, Chernabog, a giant demon who is summoning souls from their graves but is then driven away by church bells, which leads into a heavenly choir singing “Ave Maria”. This movie led Walt Disney into financial problems because it failed to generate a large commercial audience when it was first released. There are a total of seven musical pieces in this movie, and running at 124 minutes, it’s currently the longest Disney Animated Classic to date. During its theatrical releases, some of the segments were cut from the movie, but all segments were restored for the 1990 video release. It may have been a commercial failure at the time, but I consider “Fantasia” to be a masterpiece of Walt Disney’s. My Rating: A-
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Post by Belchic on Apr 8, 2011 1:29:22 GMT -5
Can't believe nobody else is responding to these.
4. Dumbo (1941) It’s Disney’s Amazing Animagic. As we’ve seen in our history so far, Walt Disney has gotten different responses for his animated movies. “Snow White” was a huge hit, “Pinocchio” was a strong follow-up, and “Fantasia” nearly killed Walt’s career. Now, we’re in the year, 1941, and Walt has now come back to the Walt we all know and love by delivering his fourth animated feature, “Dumbo”. In this movie, a circus elephant named Mrs. Jumbo has just had a baby whom she had named Jumbo Jr. Everyone made fun of him because of his big ears. One elephant called him Dumbo, and that somehow became his new name. Dumbo meets with a mouse named Timothy, who throughout the movie does all he can to make everyone love Dumbo. One thing that’s pretty special about this movie is that it’s the first Disney movie to feature Disney legend, Sterling Holloway. Prior to this movie, Holloway had done some stage acting in the 1920’s, and he was in a lot of movies in the 1930’s. In this movie, he makes his breakthrough performance giving the voice to Mr. Stork. I think I might also add that there are a couple weird things in this movie. For one thing, the ring master is a real jerk. The circus travels around Florida by train; to be more precise, it’s Casey Jr., a train with a personality. Also, other than this movie, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone dance to “Happy Birthday”. Near the end of the movie, Timothy discovers that Dumbo can fly, and that’s what he becomes famous for. Upon the time of its release, Buena Vista insisted that Walt Disney should either make “Dumbo” longer, shorten it to a featurette, or make it a B-movie due to its short length, but Walt refused all three, and the movie we got was the movie he wanted. Even today, “Dumbo” still stands as one of Walt’s most beloved movies. My Rating: B
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Post by Nemo on Apr 8, 2011 12:52:22 GMT -5
Lovin these reviews <3
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Post by Two-Tone on Apr 8, 2011 19:31:20 GMT -5
yup, though I think alot of us are waiting for you to do 101 Dalmatians XP
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Post by Belchic on Apr 9, 2011 1:22:45 GMT -5
@two-Tone: I'm doing them in chronological order, so we've still got a ways to go.
@nemo: At least I know from that that some pups are at least reading these.
5. Bambi (1942) Welcome to my little history of the Disney Animated Classics. It’s Disney’s Amazing Animagic. As we’ve seen, Walt Disney has touched our hearts with some of the most classic animated films, even though it was still just his early years, but this next film is probably one of his most touching films ever, “Bambi”. “Bambi” is considered by many as Walt Disney’s cutest movie ever. The basic story is that Bambi is a little faun who is learning the ways of the forest from his parents and some of his friends so that he could one day become the great prince of the forest. His father is the current great prince of the forest, but his mother is the one he relies the most on. Bambi has two best friends in the forest: Thumper, a rabbit with a wacky personality, and Flower, a bashful skunk. One particular scene in the movie that’s probably the most remembered is about half-way through the movie, Bambi and his mother try to outrun a hunter, Bambi manages to escape, but his mother was sadly shot. Millions of people have cried over this particular scene for over sixty years, and my mom happened to be one of them. In the second half of the movie, Bambi is now an adult and spends most of the movie showing off his ways of being a hero. This half of the movie is darker, more action-packed, and has less dialogue then the first half. This movie was released during World War II, and during the rest of 1940’s, Walt Disney’s animated movies will consist of several short films combined to make feature-length films. These are known as package films. The first of these we’ll talk about next time. My Rating: B-
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Post by Belchic on Apr 9, 2011 20:52:02 GMT -5
6. Saludos Amigos (1942) Thanks for joining me for Disney’s Amazing Animagic, as we go through the history of the Disney Animated Classics. So far in our history, we’ve seen the first five movies in the cannon, all of which rank up as some of the most classic Disney movies of all time; I consider this to be the golden era. In the early 40’s, World War II bestowed upon us, and a new era for the Disney movies was born. These films, known as package films feature several short films combined into one. When the United States entered World War II, Disney was facing some financial problems and losing a lot of his animation team, thus making this a dark age for Disney. The first of these package films was “Saludos Amigos”. This movie was released in Brazil shortly after “Bambi”’s release, but it wasn’t released in America until 1943. Walt Disney was inspired to make this film after a trip he had taken to South America, and the film basically talks about most of the culture that goes on down there. It’s the first feature-length animated Disney film to feature Donald Duck and Goofy, but the movie is also most famous for introducing the character known as Jose Carioca. It received mixed reviews, and while it may be one of the least interesting films in the catalog, it was still popular enough for the company to make a similar film shortly after it, and we’ll get to that one next. My Rating: D
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Post by Belchic on Apr 10, 2011 18:40:43 GMT -5
7. The Three Caballeros (1944) It’s Disney’s Amazing Animagic. We’re now in the year, 1944. The success of “Saludos Amigos” led the Disney Company to make a follow-up movie known as “The Three Caballeros”. As far as Disney Animated Classics go, most people consider this to be one of the worst, and that’s mainly due to the fact that it’s often considered to be a sequel to “Saludos Amigos”, and Walt hated sequels. This movie is about Donald Duck, who has received a pack of birthday presents from his friends in Latin America. His first present is a movie projector that plays a movie about strange birds from Latin American countries. His second present is a pop-up book about Brazil; Jose Carioca returns to take Donald on a journey through the Brazilian state of Bahia. The animation team on this movie did a pretty good job in combining live action with the animation, and that kind of makes me wonder why “Song of the South” isn’t one of the Disney Animated Classics. The third and final present of Donald’s is a big pack of stuff from Mexico including a new character known as Panchito Pistoles. Together, the three of them become the Three Caballeros. Panchito takes Donald and Jose on a tour through Mexico City to show them some of the traditions from around the city. The last ten minutes of the movie are a little strange. Donald falls in love with a woman played by Aurora Miranda who sings, “You Belong to My Heart”. In fact, he falls so in love with her that he goes into this weird daydream sequence. Just goes to show you that love can be a drug. Overall, “The Three Caballeros” is not a masterpiece among masterpieces, but it’s still an ok film; it’s better than “Saludos Amigos”, that’s for sure, and despite the weird ending, it’s still an entertaining movie. Ole! My Rating: C
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Post by Belchic on Apr 12, 2011 16:54:51 GMT -5
8. Make Mine Music (1946) Welcome back to Disney’s Amazing Animagic. Right now, we’re in the year, 1946, Disney is in the midst of producing its series of package films, but this next one is a bit different from the previous two. “Make Mine Music” is set up of ten segments, which are all musical numbers. It’s kinda like “Fantasia”, except the songs are all original songs performed by some of the biggest pop artists of the day. The first segment was originally “The Martins and the Coys”, which told the story of two hillbillies from different families who were in love with each other; this segment was, however, removed for the movie’s video release due to the amount of comical gunplay it had. Today, the movie opens with the second segment, “Blue Bayou”, which had animation of these majestic storks that was intended originally for “Fantasia”. The third segment, “All the Cats Join In”, features 1940’s teens being swept away by pop music; the music in this segment was performed by Benny Goodman. The fourth segment, “Without You”, is a dreary ballad sung by Andy Russell about a lost love. In the fifth segment, “Casey at the Bat”, Jerry Colonna recites a famous poem about a famous baseball player whose cockiness was his undoing; this is one of the movie’s best segments featuring some kookiness of the cartoons from Warner Brothers. The sixth segment, “Two Silhouettes”, is a song sung by Dinah Shore as two live-action silhouettes of ballet dancers dance along with animation playing around them. In the seventh segment, Sterling Holloway narrates Sergei Prokofiev’s famous “Peter and the Wolf”, and this is probably one of the most popular segments of the movie. The eighth segment is another Benny Goodman number, “After You’ve Gone”. Now, the ninth segment is probably my favorite segment of the movie; in “Johnny Fedora and Alice Bluebonnet”, performed by the Andrews Sisters, these two hats meet in a department store window, fall in love with each other, but then, they get separated, and Johnny tries to get the two of them back together. The final segment is “The Whale Who Wanted to Sing at the Met”, which is about a sperm whale named Willie who can sing opera, but a guy named Tetti-Tatti thinks Willie swallowed an opera singer and is determined to harpoon him. In this segment, Nelson Eddy provides the vocals of every single character. Despite the bittersweet ending, “Make Mine Music” is still a great film, but it sucks that Disney didn’t make too many other films like this. My Rating: B
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Post by Belchic on Apr 12, 2011 16:56:33 GMT -5
9. Fun and Fancy Free (1947) It’s Disney’s Amazing Animagic. It is now 1947, and the next Disney Animated Classic is being released, which is probably one of the most underrated Disney films of all time. The movie is called “Fun and Fancy Free”. The reason it’s called that is because that’s the movie’s theme and theme song. The movie is made up of two segments which are connected with Jiminy Cricket talking about life being all fancy free and stuff. The first real segment of the movie is a musical story known as “Bongo”. This segment was narrated by Dinah Shore. It’s about a circus bear that’s a big star, but he doesn’t like how he’s being treated, so he escapes and decides to live out in the wild. While there, Bongo falls in love with a girl bear named Lulubelle and gets in a battle with her jealous boyfriend, a big tough grizzly named Lump Jaw. It’s just a typical everyday love story. After the story, Jiminy comes across this invitation that was addressed to Luana Patten. She had been invited to a party hosted by genius puppeteer, Edgar Bergen. At the party, Edgar tells Luana a story, which is the movie’s second segment, “Mickey and the Beanstalk”. Most people are more familiar with this segment of the movie than they are of the other segment. It stars Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy as three peasants who live in Happy Valley, which is now a miserable place since the disappearance of the magic harp. The three of them climb a beanstalk that somehow grew out one night into a castle in the sky and outsmart a humorous giant to try to return the magic harp. The movie itself is entertaining because if you know Edgar Bergen, he’s usually with his two dummies, Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd. During the “Mickey and the Beanstalk” segment, as Edgar tries to narrate, Charlie keeps throwing in these sarcastic riffs. It makes the movie funny and more entertaining to watch. A sad thing about this film is that it’s the last film where Walt Disney would provide the voice of Mickey Mouse, and he will only be with us for twenty more years. Overall, “Fun and Fancy Free” is not one of the best movies in the Disney library, but it’s not one of the worst. My Rating: C+
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Post by Belchic on Apr 13, 2011 18:56:57 GMT -5
Keep those comments coming, guys!
10. Melody Time (1948) It’s Disney’s Amazing Animagic! This next movie in our history is a film known as “Melody Time”. This movie was similar to “Make Mine Music”, and it featured seven brand new songs broken up into segments. Unlike “Make Mine Music”, “Melody Time” has some narration in between the numbers done by singer, Buddy Clark. In the movie’s first segment, “Once upon a Wintertime”, a couple goes on a sleigh ride and goes ice skating, then after making a fool out of his fiancé, the boy rescues her from a thin ice accident with some help from some random oddball animals. The second segment, “Bumble Boogie”, is basically a rearranged version of Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumble Bee” performed by the Freddy Martin Orchestra, which is basically about a bee having a nightmare. The third segment is kinda long, but still one of the movie’s best segments, telling the story of American tall tale legend, Johnny Appleseed in a musical fashion with a little humor mixed in. The fourth segment has the Andrews Sisters back singing a story about Little Toot, a mischievous little tug boat who causes some kind of problem in a harbor but turns out to be a hero in the end. Now, the fifth segment is a good time for you to take a bathroom break. The segment is called “Trees”, which is a dreary song performed by Fred Waring, which is based on a poem by Joyce Kilmer. The sixth segment is “Blame It On the Samba”. In this segment, we see Donald Duck and Jose Carioca who are down in the dumps, and they suddenly run into the Aroquan bird that puts them into the Samba. This kinda brings you back to “The Three Caballeros” in some ways, since it has this live-action lady mixed into it. The movie’s last segment tells the story of another American tall tale. This time, it’s on the legendary cowboy, Pecos Bill. This segment was sang and narrated by legendary country singer, Roy Rogers, and clocking in at 22 minutes, it’s the longest segment of the movie. On a whole, “Melody Time” is not quite as memorable as “Make Mine Music”, but it still has its charm. After this film, Walt Disney will come back to his senses and make more heartwarming films. My Rating: C
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Post by Belchic on Apr 15, 2011 1:16:08 GMT -5
11. The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949) Welcome back to Disney’s Amazing Animagic! With World War II out of the way, the Disney Company was now able to focus more on their films. We’re now at the end of the 1940’s, and Disney had two stories they were planning to make into feature-length films: “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “The Wind and the Willows”. Unfortunately, both of them ended up being too short to make actual features but too long to be featurettes, so the two of them were combined into one to make a film called, “The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad”. Judging by the title, I think they should have swapped those names because the “Wind and the Willows” segment was played first. Anyway, the “Wind and the Willows” segment is narrated by British actor, Basil Rathborne. The story is about Mr. Toad, a jolly good fellow who rides around England with his steed, Cyril, but ends up causing chaos all over the country. Toad’s three best friends, Mr. Rat, Mr. Mole and Angus MacBadger, try to put an end to Toad’s chaos. Meanwhile, Toad develops an obsession over motor cars, ends up stealing one and is sent to court. Toad is found guilty, and Toad Hall has now been taken over by the bartender he stole the car from, Mr. Winky. One thing that really pissed me off about this movie was that when it was shown on the Disney Channel back in the 90’s, there were a couple scenes cut out, and that’s because they all involved guns. I just hope it’s not like that on the DVD like they did to “Make Mine Music”. Now, the second segment, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”, tells the story of American legend, Ichabod Crane. This was kind of a musical story, and it was narrated by famous American crooner, Bing Crosby. In fact, just about every male character in this portion of the movie was voiced by Bing Crosby. There’s really not much to the story, except that Ichabod is trying to win the heart of a woman known as Katrina, and unfortunately so is this brute named Brom Bones. While “Wind and the Willows” had some fairly random humor, “Sleepy Hollow”’s humor is more slapstick. Then, of course, how can we leave this part out? By the end of the movie, Ichabod gets spooked away by the infamous Headless Horseman. Overall, this movie gives us two good features for the price of one. My Rating: B+
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Post by Belchic on Apr 18, 2011 13:43:03 GMT -5
I guess it's been a while since I've done any of these. I guess I'll go ahead and post a bunch of them. I decided that I'm going to do the ones from the 50's today, then sometime a little later, I'll do the 60's, then the 70's, etc. Hope you guys will be alright with that.
12. Cinderella (1950) Welcome back to Disney’s Amazing Animagic. In our history of the Disney Animated Classics, we’ve touched up on some of Walt Disney’s earliest work. We started with the golden era from the late 30’s and early 40’s, and then we touched up on the package films from the rest of the 40’s. We’re now starting into the 1950’s to see a new era of the Disney movies. This era was referred to by some as “The Magic Era”, and the reason behind this is because the Disney company was at the peak of its popularity during this time, and most of Disney’s films from this era rank up as some of the most classic. The first film of this era was “Cinderella”. The story is about a girl who lived with a single parent. Thinking her daughter was in need of a mother’s care, he married a woman named Lady Tremainne (voiced by Eleanor Audley), who had two daughters of her own. However, when Cinderella’s father died, her stepmother revealed her true colors by being mean to Cinderella and making her the slave of the house; this reveals that she is the villain of the movie. Despite the meanness of the other three, Cinderella was still a kind girl, yet she had a dream of her own. The character, Cinderella is voiced by Ilene Woods, who to the best of my knowledge has only worked on this movie as far as Disney films go. The movie also has some animal characters that always do their best to help Cinderella…well, except for the cat. The animals can be loved by anybody. Anyway, there’s a king of this kingdom who wants his son to get married so that he could see his grandchildren before he passes away, so he decides to hold a ball at his castle inviting every eligible maiden in the kingdom. The mice and birds make a dress for Cinderella to wear to the ball, but then at the last minute, her stepsisters tear it apart leaving her at the house. This is when we’re introduced to Cinderella’s fairy godmother. The godmother is voiced by Verna Felton, and with some memorable magic words, Cinderella is now ready to go to the ball in style. One of the movie’s most memorable scenes was when the fairy godmother transformed Cinderella’s old rags into a big white dress; back in those days, that was incredible animation. The scene with Cinderella dancing with Prince Charming is definitely the highlight of the movie. When midnight draws, Cinderella runs away but leaves behind one of her glass slippers. The king tells his grand duke to fit the slipper on every maiden in the kingdom. The Stepmother finds out about this and eventually finds out that Cinderella was the girl with the slipper and does everything she can to make sure she doesn’t get to wear the slipper. Unlike the original story, this one had kind of a twist ending. I’m sure most of you have seen it already, but for those who haven’t, I’ll probably let you see it to find out for yourself how it ends. Overall, the movie’s not one of my all time favorites, but it’s always been my mom’s favorite, and it probably should always stand as one of Disney’s best movies. My Rating: A-
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