Category: Movies

In Walt Disney’s Disneyland Youth Could “Savor the Challenge and Promise of the Future”

(p. 12) President Dwight D. Eisenhower once praised Walt Disney for his “genius as a creator of folklore.” When Disney died in 1966, the line made it into his obituary, evidence of its accuracy. Folklore, defined broadly, is an oral tradition that stretches across generations. It tells people who they are, how they got here and how they should live in the future. The company Disney created appointed itself keeper of these traditions for Americans, spinning up fresh tales and (more often) deftly repackaging old ones to appeal to a new century.

It started with Mickey Mouse, but as his company turns 100, Disney’s legacy — advanced in hundreds of films and shorts and shows, mass-produced tie-in merchandise, marvelous technical advancements, gargantuan theme parks around the world — was the production of a modern shared language, a set of reference points instantly recognizable to almost everyone, and an encouragement to dream out loud about a utopian future. Walt Disney was a man who gazed backward and forward: speaking at the opening of Disneyland in 1955, he proclaimed: “Here age relives fond memories of the past, and here youth may savor the challenge and promise of the future.”  . . .

Disney told stories of folk heroes (Davy Crockett, Paul Bunyan), princes and princesses, and even, occasionally, a mouse, all while leading the pack on ever-shifting technologies. (He was, among other things, the first major movie producer to make a TV show.) A sense of optimism ruled Disney’s ethos, built on homemade mythologies. The lessons of his stories were simple, uplifting and distinctly American: believe in yourself, believe in your dreams, don’t let anyone make you feel bad for being you, be your own hero and, most of all, don’t be afraid to wish upon a star. Fairy tales and legends are often disquieting, but once cast in a Disney light they became soft and sweet, their darker and less comforting lessons re-engineered to fit the Disney ideal. It was a distinctly postwar vision of the world.

And we ate it up, and we exported it, and we wanted to be part of it, too.

For the full commentary see:

Alissa Wilkinson. “The Wonderful World of Disney?” The New York Times, Arts&Leisure Section (Sunday, December 17, 2023): 12 & 14.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary was updated Dec. 18, 2023, and has the title “Disney Is a Language. Do We Still Speak It?”)

“Fiennes Is Superb” as “Calmly Eccentric Self-Taught Scholar”

(p. A13) Every now and then a film comes along—not a great one, necessarily—that makes you deeply glad. It’s how I feel about “The Dig.”

. . .

The dig in question has come to be called Sutton Hoo, after its site on the banks of a tidal river in Suffolk. The film, directed by Simon Stone and adapted by Moira Buffini from a John Preston novel about the discovery, plunges us into the adventure by following an unassuming gent named Basil Brown (Ralph Fiennes) as he bicycles his way to the fairly imposing house of Edith Pretty (Carey Mulligan), a widow eager to investigate a mysterious group of mounds on her property. The project calls for an archaeologist—not Indiana Jones, necessarily, but someone with more extensive training than Basil, who was, in real life, the man who made the discovery, and who describes himself here with with laconic pride as a lifelong excavator. Yet the nation is preparing for war, no archaeologists are available and Basil will have to do.

Thus does “The Dig” deftly address issues of class—Basil knows more about the history and texture of Suffolk’s soil than any credentialed expert a museum might have sent—while giving us a prime example of an archetype dear to English films, the calmly eccentric self-taught scholar (who of course smokes a pipe). Mr. Fiennes is superb in the role—you’ll be glad to watch him digging away with his shovel, and you’ll be thrilled, as I was, when, after digging for a good while, he shows up at Edith’s door and says, his voice quivering with emotion, “I think you’d better come and see.” (The emotional spectrum of the cinematography, by Mike Eley, ranges from solemn to ecstatic.)

For the full review see:

Joe Morgenstern. “Unearthing a Glittering Tale.” The Wall Street Journal (Friday, Jan. 29, 2021 [sic]): A13.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the review has the date January 28, 2021 [sic], and has the title “‘The Dig’: Unearthing a Glittering Tale.”)

Oliver Stone’s “Nuclear Now” Is “a Vital Rejoinder” to “An Inconvenient Truth”

(p. C9) Given Oliver Stone’s track record of diving into political controversies with his work (“Platoon,” “JFK,” “Snowden”), it is perhaps surprising how staid his approach is to his new documentary, All the more surprising is that the film’s measured tone is what lends it its visceral power. With his straightforward proposal — that nuclear energy has been the solution to climate change all along — Stone looks past politics, providing an antidote to the climate doomerism that many viewers have probably felt over the last several years.

The film, a vital rejoinder to the 2006 documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” considers both the past and future of nuclear power and, by laying out the simple facts of the ever-worsening state of climate change, makes a compelling case for it as the energy source that can most reasonably and realistically help us face the crisis.

For the full review see:

Brandon Yu. “Nuclear Now.” The New York Times (Friday, April 28, 2023 [sic]): C9.

(Note: the online version of the review has the date April 27, 2023 [sic], and has the title “‘Nuclear Now’ Review: Oliver Stone Makes the Case for Power Plants.”)

Black American Woman Professor of Cinema Says “You Can Love” Gone with the Wind

(p. C5) The handsome Tudor Revival mansion set on a shaded lot in the bustling heart of Atlanta has long been known as the Margaret Mitchell House. Yet, in truth, Mitchell’s time there — a span of seven years, during which she wrote “Gone With the Wind” — was confined to a 650-square-foot first-floor apartment she so lovingly named “The Dump.”

Over time, Mitchell and the property she never owned would become inextricable. Visitors wanted to step into the cramped quarters where Mitchell, an unemployed former newspaper reporter, created a sprawling saga that came to define the antebellum South in the popular imagination.

. . .

“We’re not trying to label her,” said Sheffield Hale, the president and chief executive of Atlanta History Center, the museum and research center that has overseen operations of the house since 2004. “We’re not trying to praise or denigrate her. There’s a whole lot of non-Confederate gray in this exhibit.”

. . .

. . ., the director John Ridley, the screenwriter behind the 2013 Oscar-winning film “12 Years a Slave,” wrote an essay in The Los Angeles Times in which he urged the streamer HBO Max to remove the film from its platform before reintroducing it with more context for viewers.

“The movie had the very best talents in Hollywood at that time working together to sentimentalize a history that never was,” he wrote.

HBO acquiesced, pulling the film and then restoring it with a four-minute introduction that outlined its value and its flaws, and an explanation of why suppressing the film was not the right solution.

. . .

The book, published in 1936, was a critical and commercial success, winning a Pulitzer Prize and selling nearly a million copies within six months. Readers were enthralled with the travails of the protagonist, Scarlett O’Hara, from the start of the Civil War through the turmoil of Reconstruction.

“People had been dealing with really hard times,” Haley said, referring to the Great Depression. She added, “The story is about redemption and it’s about a character going through a war and coming out on the other side and ‘Never be hungry again.’”

. . .

. . . for all of the reappraising, visitors may come away with the sense that both the pride and the pain the story inspired were justified, said Stephane Dunn, a professor of cinema, television and emerging media studies at Morehouse College in Atlanta, who advised the exhibit’s curators.

“You can love it,” Dunn said.

She still does.

“I mean, I am a Black American woman, right?” she said. “I did not think slavery was romantic, but I found Scarlett fascinating. I found the costumes fascinating. I found in Mammy her strength, and she was not invisible in any scene she was in.”

“Gone With the Wind” has waned in popularity as an understanding of American history has evolved. But by the time visitors reach the end of the exhibit, organizers said, the hope is that they will understand how the story came to be and why it resonated.

“Because that helps us look at the stories we’re telling today,” Haley said, “to see if there are areas where we could stand to expand our perspectives.”

For the full story see:

Rick Rojas. “Pride and Pain Under One Roof.” The New York Times (Saturday, July 13, 2024): C5.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date July 12, 2024, and has the title “At Margaret Mitchell’s House, ‘Gone With the Wind’ Gets a Rewrite.”)

The book is:

Mitchell, Margaret. Gone with the Wind. New York: Vintage Classics, 2020 (1st ed. 1936).

“Funny, Obsessed Weirdos . . . Taking Children’s Entertainment . . . Seriously”

(p. C4) . . . to everyone other than Muppet obsessives, Henson the artist is still a bit shadowy. Good news: Now we have “Jim Henson Idea Man” (on Disney+), a tribute to the artist and a treasure trove of archival footage and interviews about his work and life.  . . .

The film, directed by Ron Howard, starts with Henson and two of his Muppet friends, Fozzie Bear and Kermit the Frog — Henson’s alter ego — being interviewed on TV by none other than Orson Welles.

. . .

. . . what struck me especially was that Howard has made a movie that every young artist should watch (and older ones, too), whether they’re making puppets, paintings, music, movies or anything that requires creative labor.

That’s because the film shows that Henson’s work was rooted in an unquenchable drive for exploration. One interviewee notes that he was lured into working on “Sesame Street” by the promise that he could make the kind of short experimental films he loved — and suddenly I realized that my taste for unhinged abstraction in film had been partly shaped when I was 4 and plopped in front of PBS.

. . .

The immense delight in “Jim Henson Idea Man” comes with simply watching funny, obsessed weirdos like Henson and his friends doing something nobody else was doing, something few people do anymore: taking children’s entertainment (and later adult entertainment) seriously as craft. I’ve heard naysayers argue that it’s silly to ask children’s movies to be any good, since they’re just for kids. But Henson knew better: Every opportunity to make something was a chance to explore with the audience. There’s a reason, then, that his work lasts.

For the full review see:

Alissa Wilkinson. “CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK; Took Kid Stuff Seriously.” The New York Times (Wednesday, June 5, 2024): C4.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the review has the dated May 31, 2024, and has the title “CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK; ‘Jim Henson Idea Man’: In a Joyful Weirdo, Lessons for Young Artists.”)

Movie Entrepreneurs Often Self-Finance Their Projects

(p. C4) The essential tragedy of movies is that they are wildly expensive to make and release. That’s one reason that filmmakers, especially those who want to control the means of production, have funneled their own money into their projects as long as movies have been around. Charlie Chaplin invested in his own work, as did John Wayne and Spike Lee. In 1979, when Coppola’s partly self-financed war film, “Apocalypse Now,” opened, he told The Times, “If I ever get the bucks that, say, George Lucas got from ‘Star Wars,’ I’d put every penny into changing the rules.” Lucas, who had invested his own money to help make “Star Wars,” used profits from that film to continue the series.

. . .

Weeks later, . . . all I could think about was something [Coppola] said in 1982. “It’s so silly in life not to pursue the highest possible thing you can imagine, even if you run the risk of losing it all,” he said. “You can’t be an artist and be safe.”

For the full story see:

Manohla Dargis. “Willing To Risk It All For Art.” The New York Times (Friday, June 8, 2024): C1 & C4.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed name, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date June 6, 2024, and has the title “Francis Ford Coppola: ‘You Can’t Be an Artist and Be Safe’.” In the last quoted paragraph, I quote the numbers from the print version. The online version, as of the time I checked, had numbers from June 10, 2024.)

“Tiana’s Bayou Blunder” Checks Woke Boxes But Lacks “Dramatical Tension and Stakes”

(p. A18) In the summer of 2020, as a reckoning on racial justice swept the country, Disney said it would rip out Splash Mountain, a wildly popular flume ride with a racist back story.

Some people cheered, saying the move was long overdue: After 31 years at Disneyland in California and 28 at Walt Disney World in Florida, the attraction — with its animal minstrels from “Song of the South,” the radioactive 1946 movie — had to go.

But Disney also faced blowback. Last year, when Splash Mountain finally closed, someone started a makeshift memorial near its entrance — the kind that pops up at scenes of horrific crimes. Distraught fans spirited away jars of the water. More than 100,000 fans signed a petition calling on Disney to reverse its “absurd” decision.

. . .

This month, Disney posted a nine-minute video tour of the new Tiana attraction on the internet. As of Wednesday [June 12, 2024], it had been viewed 663,000 times, with 10,000 people giving it a thumbs up and 41,000 a thumbs down. The ride “seems to lack dramatical tension and stakes,” Jim Shull, a retired Disney parks designer, wrote on X, based on the video. A smattering of Splash Mountain die-hards nicknamed the new ride Tiana’s Bayou Blunder.

For the full story see:

Brooks Barnes and Todd Anderson. “Splash Mountain’s Bayou Overhaul.” The New York Times (Friday, June 14, 2024): A18.

(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed year, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated June 13, 2024, and has the title “Black Disney Princess Ride Replaces Splash Mountain and Its Racist History.” In the last quoted paragraph, I quote the numbers from the print version. The online version, as of the time I checked, had numbers from June 10, 2024.)

For a refutation of The New York Times claim that Splash Mountain had “a racist back story”, see:

Diamond, Arthur. “Remember Brer Rabbit.” Inside Sources (Weds., July 8, 2020).

(Note: a version of Diamond’s commentary was published in: Diamond, Arthur M., Jr. “Disney Should Rethink Removing Brer Rabbit from Splash Mountain.” The Orlando Sentinel (Tues., July 7, 2020): 9A.)

“America Is Where Everything Is Possible”

(p. 23) Remo Saraceni, a sculptor, toy inventor and technological fantasist best known for creating the Walking Piano that Tom Hanks and Robert Loggia danced on in a beloved scene of the hit 1988 movie “Big,” died on June 3 [2024] in Swarthmore, Pa. He was 89.

. . .

Remo Saraceni was born on Jan. 15, 1935, in Fossacesia, a city on the southern coast of Italy. His father, Giuseppe, worked with relatives to make shoes and other leather goods, and his mother, Filomena Carulli, managed the home.

Remo began inventing as a boy. His father got into trouble, he told The Chestnut Hill Local, when Remo turned a poster of Mussolini into a kite.

He took classes in electronics in Milan and worked as a radar specialist in the Italian military, but as a civilian he worked as a television repairman. He also started his own brand of large portable suitcase-like turntables. He came to the United States in 1964 for the World’s Fair and to seek a better livelihood — even though he spoke no English and had no American friends and no savings.

He again found work as a TV repairman and affixed a note to his bathroom mirror: “America is where everything is possible.”

For the full obituary see:

Alex Traub. “Remo Saraceni, 89; Invented Walking Piano in ‘Big’.” The New York Times, First Section (Sunday, June 16, 2024): 23.

(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed year, added.)

(Note: the online version of the obituary has the date June 14, 2024, and has the title “Remo Saraceni, 89, Dies; Inventor of the Walking Piano Seen in ‘Big’.”)

“He Lived as a Free Man and Died as a Free Man”

(p. A1) Thousands of people crowded a neighborhood on Moscow’s outskirts on Friday [March 1, 2024] — some bearing flowers and chanting, “No to war!” — as they tried to catch a glimpse of the funeral for Aleksei A. Navalny. The outpouring turned the opposition leader’s last rites into a striking display of dissent in Russia at a time of deep repression.

. . .

After a procession to the cemetery, Mr. Navalny’s coffin was placed next to his freshly dug grave. Video live streamed from the site showed his family members and then other mourners kissing him goodbye for the last time. Then his face was covered with a white cloth and the coffin was lowered to the Frank Sinatra song “My Way” and then the final song from “Terminator 2,” which Mr. Navalny considered “the best film on Earth.” Mourners slowly passed by, each taking a handful of dirt and tossing it into the grave.

. . .

Outside the church, people chanted, “Thank you, Aleksei” and “Love is stronger than fear,” according to videos from the scene. As they gathered next to the cemetery, mourners cried out, “peace for Ukraine — freedom for Russia!”

. . .

(p. A8) Some people traveled from far away to attend the funeral. Anastasia, 19, had flown in from Novosibirsk, 1,800 miles from Moscow, to be present.

“I came here because this is a historic event,” she said in a voice message from the neighborhood where the church service was held. “I think that he is a freer man than all of us,” she said of Mr. Navalny. “He lived as a free man and died as a free man.”

In Russia, it is considered bad luck to give living people an even number of flowers in a bouquet — those are reserved for funerals. But Anastasia said that many mourners carried bouquets with an odd number, “because for them, Navalny lives on.”

For the full story, see:

Valerie Hopkins. “Crowds Flood Moscow Streets Over Navalny.” The New York Times (Saturday, March 2, 2024): A1 & A8.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date March 1, 2024, and has the title “Thousands Turn Out for Navalny’s Funeral in Moscow.”)

3.7 Million Russians “Flocked” to Film Satirizing “Tyranny and Censorship”

(p. C1) By all appearances, the movie adaptation of Mikhail Bulgakov’s cult favorite novel “The Master and Margarita,” in Russian theaters this winter, shouldn’t be thriving in President Vladimir Putin’s wartime Russia.

The director is American. One of the stars is German. The celebrated Stalin-era satire, unpublished in its time, is partly a subversive sendup of state tyranny and censorship — forces bedeviling Russia once again today.

. . .

“I had an internal belief that the movie would have to come out somehow,” the director, Michael Lockshin, said in a video interview from his home in California. “I still thought it was a miracle when it did come out. As for the response, it’s hard to expect a (p. C2) response like this.”

More than 3.7 million people have flocked to see the film in Russian theaters since its Jan. 25 [2024] premiere, according to Russia’s national film fund.

. . .

State networks didn’t promote the movie the way they normally would for a government-funded picture. And the state film fund, under pressure after the release, removed the movie’s production company from its list of preferred vendors.

The antics spurred a new wave of moviegoers, who rushed to theaters fearing the film was about to be banned.

“The film amazingly coincided with the historical moment that Russia is experiencing, with the restoration of Stalinism, with the persecution of the intelligentsia,” said the Russian film critic Anton Dolin, who has been branded a “foreign agent” and fled the country.

. . .

“The movie is about the freedom of an artist in an unfree world,” Lockshin said, “and what that freedom entails — about not losing your belief in the power of art, even when everything around you is punishing you for making it.”

. . .

When Putin launched his invasion two years ago, Lockshin opposed the war on social media from the United States and called on his friends to support Ukraine. Back in Russia, that put the movie’s release at risk.

“My position was that I wouldn’t censor myself in any way for the movie,” he said. “The movie itself is about censorship.”

. . .

The film’s verisimilitude was unmistakable for many moviegoers.

Yevgeny Gindilis, a Russian film producer, said that he had crowded into a Moscow theater near the Kremlin to watch it, and sensed some discomfort in the hall. At the end, he said, about a third of the audience erupted in applause.

“I think the clapping,” Gindilis said, “is about the fact that people are happy they are able to experience and watch this film that has this clear, anti-totalitarian and anti-repressive state message, in a situation when the state is really trying to oppress everything that has an independent voice.”

Gindilis recounted how one of the most uncomfortable scenes for people to watch in Moscow was the final revenge sequence, when the devil’s mischievous talking cat repels a secret police squad that has come to apprehend the Master, leading to a fire that ultimately engulfs all of Moscow.

The Master and Margarita, alongside the devil, played by the German actor August Diehl, gaze out over the burning city, watching a system that ruined their lives go up in flames.

“Today the whole country is unable to take revenge or even respond to the persecution, restrictions and censorship,” Dolin, the film critic, said. But the protagonists of the film, having made a deal with the devil, manage to get even.

The film flashes to the Master and Margarita in the afterlife, reunited and free. “Listen,” she says to him. “Listen and enjoy that which they never gave you in life — peace.”

For the full story, see:

Paul Sonne. “Poking The Bear Right In His Den.” The New York Times (Monday, February 19, 2024): C1-C2.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Feb. 16, 2024 and has the title “Life Imitates Art as a ‘Master and Margarita’ Movie Stirs Russia.”)

Navalny to Russian People: “Not Give Up”

(p. C1) In the opening moments of “Navalny,” the Oscar-winning 2022 documentary about the Russian opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny, the director Daniel Roher asks his subject a dark question.

“If you are killed — if this does happen — what message do you leave behind to the Russian people?” the voice asks from behind the camera.

Navalny’s ice-blue eyes narrow just a little, and he sighs. “Oh, come on, Daniel,” he says in heavily accented English. “No. No way. It’s like you’re making a movie for the case of my death.” He pauses, then continues. “I’m ready to answer your question, but please let it be another movie, Movie No. 2. Let’s make a thriller out of this movie.”

. . .

(p. C8) But if “Navalny” wasn’t intended as a postmortem, it’s chilling to watch it after reports of his death. He knows what might happen but doesn’t seem scared, just determined. The day of his return to Moscow, he appears nervy and intent, but with fellow plane passengers, he makes jokes about the weather, accepts their well wishes and watches “Rick and Morty” as they descend. This is, you realize, a resolutely unflappable man.

At the end of the film, Roher once again asks Navalny what message he would leave for the Russian people if he was imprisoned or even killed. Answering in English, Navalny responds, “My message for the situation when I am killed is very simple: Not give up.” Recognizing there’s more to the sentiment, Roher asks him to repeat his answer in Russian.

“Listen, I’ve got something very obvious to tell you,” Navalny says rapidly and fluidly in Russian, according to the subtitles. He’s looking straight into the camera and picking up steam as he goes. “You’re not allowed to give up. If they decide to kill me, it means that we are incredibly strong. We need to utilize this power to not give up, to remember we are a huge power that is being oppressed by these bad dudes. We don’t realize how strong we actually are.”

. . .

Navalny takes a breath, then continues. “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing. So don’t be inactive.” He stares sternly into the camera, steel in his eyes.

And then his face cracks into a wide, joyful grin.

For the full review, see:

Alissa Wilkinson. “More Chilling, Posthumously.” The New York Times (Tuesday, February 20, 2024): C1 & C8.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the review was updated Feb. 18, 2024, and has the title “The Documentary Aleksei Navalny Knew We’d Watch After His Death.”)