Movies – Page 11 – artdiamondblog.com

Roy E. Disney as a “Real-life Jiminy Cricket”

“Roy E. Disney, shown in 1996, was considered a tough and outspoken critic of top executives at the Walt Disney Company.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. B18) LOS ANGELES — Roy E. Disney, who helped revitalize the famed animation division of the company founded by his uncle, Walt Disney, and who at times publicly feuded with top Disney executives, died on Wednesday in Newport Beach, Calif. He was 79.

His death, at Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian, was caused by stomach cancer, a spokeswoman for the Walt Disney Company said. Mr. Disney, who had homes in Newport Beach and the Toluca Lake district of Los Angeles, was the last member of the Disney family to work at the entertainment conglomerate built by his uncle and his father, Roy O. Disney.
As a boy the younger Roy would play in the halls of his uncle’s studio, where animators often used him as a test audience as they toiled on movies like “Pinocchio.” As an adult he helped bring the animation studio back from the brink, overseeing a creative renaissance that led to “The Little Mermaid,” “Beauty and the Beast” and “The Lion King.”
But the soft-spoken Mr. Disney was primarily known for a willingness to question the company’s top managers, aggressively and publicly, when he felt they were mishandling the family empire. Some people in the company referred to him as its real-life Jiminy Cricket: a living conscience who was at times intensely disliked by management for speaking out.
. . .
Returning to the company in 1984, Mr. Disney set about revitalizing the floundering animation division. He obtained financing, for instance, for a computerized postproduction facility, helping to make possible the revolving ballroom scene in “Beauty and the Beast.”

For the full obituary, see:
BROOKS BARNES. “Roy E. Disney Dies at 79; Rejuvenated Animation.” The New York Times (Thurs., December 17, 2009): B18.
(Note: ellipsis added.)

The Story of Spielberg’s “World-Changing Movies” Deserves “a Detailed, Impassioned and Insightful Telling”

(p. 20) . . . , LaPorte combines tabloid celebrity worship with an older oddity: the incongruous fact that a free market also produces resentment, especially when a competitor like Spielberg demonstrates leadership, superior achievement and undeniable success. He’s one of the few filmmakers still committed to exploring the human condition — and in popular terms. This is what sets him apart and makes him admired, envied and even inscrutable to those who think only in craven terms of business and royalty.

. . .
So it’s a tabloid book. We can only hope it doesn’t become the historical record. LaPorte undermines her research with a headachy repetition of anonymous informants (“one insider,” “one former executive,” “one source”). She concludes that “inherent in all of it was hubris.” But a story this significant, about world-changing movies, doesn’t need homilies. It needs a detailed, impassioned and insightful telling, one that would help us better appreciate a frequently misunderstood, underinterpreted pop artist whose work connects with the public, defines the complexities of human experience and dwarfs most of contemporary Hollywood’s output. DreamWorks calls for a sensitive sociologist — a Tom Wolfe or a Norman Mailer or a Pauline Kael — who can discern the deep, divided heart of Hollywood.

For the full review, see:
ARMOND WHITE. “The Big Picture.” The New York Times Book Review (Sun., July 11, 2010): 20.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review is dated July 9, 2010.)

The book White credibly pans is:
LaPorte, Nicole. The Men Who Would Be King; an Almost Epic Tale of Moguls, Movies, and a Company Called Dreamworks. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010.

UFT “Trying to Deny Poor Parents Choice for Their Children”

Madeleine Sackler. Source of image: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. A13) ‘What’s funny,” says Madeleine Sackler, “is that I’m not really a political person.” Yet the petite 27-year-old is the force behind “The Lottery”–an explosive new documentary about the battle over the future of public education opening nationwide this Tuesday.

In the spring of 2008, Ms. Sackler, then a freelance film editor, caught a segment on the local news about New York’s biggest lottery. It wasn’t the Powerball. It was a chance for 475 lucky kids to get into one of the city’s best charter schools (publicly funded schools that aren’t subject to union rules).

“I was blown away by the number of parents that were there,” Ms. Sackler tells me over coffee on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, recalling the thousands of people packed into the Harlem Armory that day for the drawing. “I wanted to know why so many parents were entering their kids into the lottery and what it would mean for them.” And so Ms. Sackler did what any aspiring filmmaker would do: She grabbed her camera.
. . .
But on the way to making the film she imagined, she “stumbled on this political mayhem–really like a turf war about the future of public education.” Or more accurately, she happened upon a raucous protest outside of a failing public school in which Harlem Success, already filled to capacity, had requested space.
“We drove by that protest,” Ms. Sackler recalls. “We were on our way to another interview and we jumped out of the van and started filming.” There she discovered that the majority of those protesting the proliferation of charter schools were not even from the neighborhood. They’d come from the Bronx and Queens.
“They all said ‘We’re not allowed to talk to you. We’re just here to support the parents.'” But there were only two parents there, says Ms. Sackler, and both were members of Acorn. And so, “after not a lot of digging,” she discovered that the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) had paid Acorn, the controversial community organizing group, “half a million dollars for the year.” (It cost less to make the film.)
Finding out that the teachers union had hired a rent-a-mob to protest on its behalf was “the turn for us in the process.” That story–of self-interested adults trying to deny poor parents choice for their children–provided an answer to Ms. Sackler’s fundamental question: “If there are these high-performing schools that are closing the achievement gap, why aren’t there more of them?”

For the full interview, see:
BARI WEISS. “THE WEEKEND INTERVIEW; Storming the School Barricades; A new documentary by a 27-year-old filmmaker could change the national debate about public education.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., JUNE 5, 2010): A13.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the first paragraph quoted above has slightly different wording in the online version than the print version; the second paragraph quoted is the same in both.)

Arne Duncan on “Waiting for Superman” and Teachers’ Unions

Arne Duncan. Source of photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. 26) Have you seen the new film “Waiting for Superman,” a documentary opening this week that makes public education in this country seem totally dysfunctional?
I did. I think it’s going to help the country to understand the tremendous sense of urgency that I feel. We have parents who know their child is getting a subpar education. That is devastating to them and ultimately it’s devastating to our country.
The film blames teachers’ unions for the failure of public schools because the unions have made it almost impossible to fire lazy teachers. Are you against teachers’ unions?
Of course not. I’m a big fan of Randi’s.

Randi Weingarten, of the American Federation of Teachers? The film depicts her as a villain.
I think Randi is providing some courageous leadership and is actually taking some heat internally in the union because she said publicly that the union shouldn’t be protecting bad teachers.

For the full interview, see:
DEBORAH SOLOMON. “Questions for Arne Duncan; The School of Hard Drives.” The New York Times, Magazine Section (Sun., September 17, 2010): 26.
(Note: the online version of the article is dated September 16, 2010.)

“Intimidation, Threats and Violence Against the White Farmers” in Zimbabwe

“A man tries to force a white Zimbabwean farmer off of his land in “Mugabe and the White African.”” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. C9) Lucy Bailey and Andrew Thompson’s “Mugabe and the White African” is a documentary account of the efforts of Mike Campbell and his son-in-law, Ben Freeth, to hold onto their farm. It tracks their precedent-setting lawsuit against Robert Mugabe, the authoritarian Zimbabwean president, in a regional African court, as well as events on the ground in Zimbabwe: intimidation, threats and violence against the white farmers still holding out after a decade of land seizures by the government.

Many viewers will leave “Mugabe and the White African” thinking that they have seen few, if any, documentaries as wrenching, sad and infuriating, and those feelings will be justified. What has happened (and continues to happen) to the Campbells, the Freeths and some of their white neighbors is not only unjust but also a horrifying, slow-motion nightmare. That sensation is reinforced by the movie’s political-thriller style, partly a result of the covert filming methods necessary in a country where practicing journalism can get you thrown in jail.

For the full movie review, see:

MIKE HALE. “Fighting His Country to Keep His Farmland.” The New York Times (Fri., July 23, 2010): C9.
(Note: the online version of the article is dated July 22, 2010.)

Russell Crowe as a Libertarian Robin Hood Fighting High Taxes

“Mr. Crowe as Robin Hood.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT review quoted and cited below.

Ridley Scott has directed some entertaining movies (Blade Runner and Alien to name two) and he also directed one of the most famous tech ads of all time: upstart Apple smashing the uptight corporate conformity of IBM.
And now he brings us what we could use about now: a libertarian Robin Hood who defends property rights and fights high taxes.
When all is said and done, liberal NYT reviewer A.O. Scott doesn’t much like the movie in the full review that is briefly quoted below. (But I want to see the movie anyway.)

(p. C1) You may have heard that Robin Hood stole from the rich and gave to the poor, but that was just liberal media propaganda. This Robin is no socialist bandit practicing freelance wealth redistribution, but rather a manly libertarian rebel striking out against high taxes and a big government scheme to trample the ancient liberties of property owners and provincial nobles. Don’t tread on him!

For the full review, see:

A. O. SCOTT. “Rob the Rich? Give to the Poor? Oh, Puh-leeze.” The New York Times (Fri., May 14, 2010): C1 & C14.
(Note: the italics in the title of Scott’s NYT review, appeared in the print, but not the online, version of the review.)

Profits on Economics Documentary May Not Be Dismal

(p. B6) If Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, the authors of “Freakonomics,” were to examine the movie business, they might ask: Why do documentary filmmakers keep doing it?

It can’t be the money, because the world is awash in documentaries that make little at the box office or are not distributed at all. Occasionally, though, a documentary makes a buck for those involved — and the new documentary based on “Freakonomics” could do just that.
Magnolia Pictures is expected to announce on Monday that it has acquired domestic distribution rights to the film, which was produced by the Green Film Company and directed, in parts, by a series of well-known documentarians. Those include Alex Gibney (“Taxi to the Dark Side”), Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing (“Jesus Camp”), Morgan Spurlock (“Super Size Me”), Eugene Jarecki (“Why We Fight”) and Seth Gordon (“The King of Kong”).
“Freakonomics,” the film, got started when Chad Troutwine, a producer who worked on an earlier multidirector movie, “Paris, Je T’aime,” became interested in the best-selling book, which looks into matters like the socioeconomic implications of baby naming.

For the full story, see:
MICHAEL CIEPLY. “‘Freakonomics’ Documentary May Be a Rarity: Profitable.” The New York Times (Mon., April 5, 2010): B6.
(Note: the online version of the story is dated April 4, 2010.)

The source information on the revised edition of the Freakonomics book is:
Levitt, Steven D., and Stephen J. Dubner. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. Revised and Expanded ed. New York: William Morrow, 2006.

Light in “Meet Me in St. Louis”

Source of photo: http://www.thejudyroom.com/louis/pictures/mmisldvd%23674.html

As Brad DeLong has noted, we take for granted the spectacular technological advances of the last 200, and especially, the last 100 years. One of the more notable of these, the spread of electricity that allowed electric illumination, occurred around the year 1900.
We forget how electric illumination made cities safer, and increased our freedom to choose the timing of work and leisure activities.
The awe inspired by electric lights also usually has been forgotten, but is occasionally recalled. One good source is a segment of a documentary produced by UNO television in 1998, to mark the centennial of Omaha’s long-forgotten Trans-Mississippi Exposition.
I recently ran across another in viewing the closing scenes of the Judy Garland classic “Meet Me in St. Louis.” In the final scene, the family finally makes it to the St. Louis Fair, and observes the display of electric lights.

For DeLong’s comment, peruse the early pages of his marvelous draft:
DeLong, J. Bradford. “Cornucopia: The Pace of Economic Growth in the Twentieth Century.” NBER Working Paper w7602, March 2000.

The UNO documentary had the unfortunate title “Westward the Empire: Omaha’s World Fair of 1898.”

Source of photo: http://www.thejudyroom.com/louis/pictures/judytomlarge.html

Walt Disney, Like Brer Rabbit, “Constantly Wriggling Out of the Snares Set for Him”

(p. 325) The real Disney may yet elude his most fervent admirers’ and detractors’ suffocating grasp. When he was young, he was a sort of human Brer Rabbit, constantly wriggling out of the snares set for him by the likes of Charles Mintz and Pat Powers (not to mention Laugh-O-gram’s creditors). He emerged finally, and unexpectedly, as the creator of a new art form, one whose potential has still scarcely been tapped, by him or anyone else. It is hard to imagine that man–the passionate young artist, the intense “coordinator,” the man who scrutinized every frame of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with a lover’s zeal–trapped forever in anyone’s briar patch.

Source:
Barrier, Michael. The Animated Man: A Life of Walt Disney. 1 ed. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007.
(Note: italics in original.)

Walt Disney: “I Don’t Care About Critics”

(p. 286) “He is shy with reporters.” Edith Efron wrote for TV Guide in 1965. “His eyes are dull and preoccupied, his affability mechanical and heavy-handed. He gabs away slowly and randomly in inarticulate, Midwestern speech that would be appropriate to a rural general store. His shirt is open, his tie crooked. One almost expects to see over-all straps on his shoulders and wisps of hay in his hair. . . . If one has the patience to persist, however, tossing questions like yellow flares into the folksy fog, the fog lifts, a remote twinkle appears in the preoccupied eves, and the man emerges.”

Here again, as in other interviews from the 1960s, Disney permitted himself to sound bitter and resentful when he said anything of substance: “These avant-garde artists are adolescents. It’s only a little noisy element that’s going that way, that’s creating this sick art. . . . There is no cynicism in me and there is none allowed in our work. . . . I don’t like snobs. You find some of intelligentsia, they become snobs. They think they’re above everybody else. They’re not. More education doesn’t mean more common sense. These ideas they have about art are crazy. . . . I don’t care about critics. Critics take themselves too seriously. They think the only way to be noticed and to be the smart guy is to pick and find fault with things. It’s the public I’m making pictures for.”

Source:
Barrier, Michael. The Animated Man: A Life of Walt Disney. 1 ed. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007.
(Note: ellipses and italics in original.)

“The Animated Man” is a Useful Account of the Life of an Important Entrepreneur

Source of book image: http://www.michaelspornanimation.com/splog/wp-content/e/a336.jpg

I have always believed, and recently increasingly believe, that Walt Disney was one of the most important entrepreneurs of our time.
One of the most favorably reviewed biographies of Disney is Michael Barrier’s The Animated Man. (At some point in the future, I will briefly discuss an alternative biography of Disney by Gabler.)
I have not thoroughly read The Animated Man, but have thoroughly skimmed it. It appears to be a very useful account of Walt Disney’s life.
I did not want to wait until I had fully read it, in order to highlight a few passages that I think may be of special interest. I will do so in the next few weeks.

Reference to the book discussed:
Barrier, Michael. The Animated Man: A Life of Walt Disney. 1 ed. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007.