“I wish.” These are the first words of Into the Woods, Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s timeless 1987 musical production, and the last. Dangerous, familiar words that, in the real world, can strain our relationships with our dreams, our loved ones, and ourselves, and set us up for situations in which we can never truly…
Why settle on re-imaging one fairy tale at a time (“Jack The Giant Slayer,” “Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters,” “Snow White and the Huntsman”) when a host of them can be combined and kneaded into a single movie? With Into the Woods, Walt Disney Pictures does just that, threading elements of Cinderella, Little Red Riding…
Everyone’s invited to Disney’s PG pity-party Maleficent. Directed in the cadence of a Lana Del Rey song (who, coincidentally, shows up during the credits with a closing track), this live-action re-imagining of the 1959 animated classic “Sleeping Beauty” has enough gothic romance, leather gowns, and teen gloominess to attract a substantial summer audience. Surprisingly, however,…
In a world of ice, Disney finds great warmth. It’s the sort of cutesy irony that sounds like it should be coated in sugar, but with Frozen, Disney takes the sweet concept and transforms it into their most poignant and powerful picture in over a decade. Or nearly even two decades if you consider that…
Disney has unveiled the first trailer for Maleficent, their prequel of sorts to “Sleeping Beauty” that tells the tale of how the wicked queen came to be. In it, Angelina Jolie, as Maleficent, slinks around the periphery between light and dark while the lovely Aurora (Elle Fanning) frolics and plays with fairies and other woodland…
I suppose every new animated feature has to have a comic relief side-kick that follows in the footsteps of Scrat of “Ice Age” fame. In Walt Disney Studio’s Frozen that sidekick appears to be a snowman named Olaf. His purpose is unclear (other than to make the kids laugh) but from the synopsis of the…
The newest “fairy tale epic” production, Jack the Giant Slayer, when compared to others of its genre, fits neatly beneath “The Brothers Grimm,” above “Snow White and the Huntsman (thanks to the presence of British actors and the absence of Kristin Stewart) and FAR above last month’s travesty, “Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters.” It is…
