Posts
I have not been posting nearly enough this year and I want to steer back
from that. To that end I have found a 30-day blog challenge and
fluffed it out to 31 entries (since December has 31 days). I have
done a 30-day
challenge before for movies, though that one was poorly executed (I started
it in the middle of a month, at one point I posted 2 entries on one day, it is
a mess). I did another one just this year in August on Video
Games, that one was better, go read it after this
one, all of it. Or don’t, no pressure.
Today is
day 22 and the topic is “Favorite Classic Movie”.
“Classic”
Classic means pre-1980 in my mind. I do realize that while that predates my
existence on Earth by some years there are many people who remember the good
old days of… Not having cell phones, personal computers, GPS, and the trillions
of technological conveniences that we have now?
Whatever.
Point is, I have to set some
arbitrary barrier on what I am looking at because Disney is in the business of
making instant classics. Classics that
will still be selling copies of holo-disks or VR simulations or whatever else
format will be used in the dystopian future we are all marching toward just a
little bit faster now. That is why the
concept of the Disney Vault allowed them to sell lots of VHS copies of
“Pinocchio” and “Bambie” in the 90’s.
To say that “Toy Story” or
“Tangled” are not classics would be silly, so how far do you go back? I went with the idea of, “Anything before the
decade I was born, that way there is less chance I saw it even on tape.”
My Pick
“Alice in Wonderland” (1951) is perhaps my
favorite “classic” by Disney. An
adaptation of two of the best books ever written in English, “Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking-Glass” both penned by noted
creepy pervert, Lewis Carroll as part of wooing a little girl he had fallen in
love with.
That is all true. Perhaps the creepy origins are why the simple
tale of a young girl drinking a mysterious liquid and then journeying thru a
world of trippy imagery and great poetry adapts so well into twisted and
macabre settings and somehow terribly by Tim Burton—everyone makes mistakes.
Disney takes segments from each of
the two books—thankfully dropping the indestructible baby scene which I find
disturbing—and putting them altogether in a long chain of random, “And then this
happened” nonsense. I don’t like
everything about it and kind of wish that Disney would give it the live action
treatment it did with “Cinderella” (which I didn’t like much) and “The Jungle
Book” (which I liked a great deal).
There are things that could be “fixed” or improved on.
This probably won’t get a strong
live action redo because of the Burton version being so fresh on the market and
with Disney logos all over it. There
were things I liked about Burton’s version, but overall it didn’t hold up. And it serves poorly as a sequel to the
animated rendition.
 |
| It looked pretty. |
I have spent a lot of time talking
around the movie and not giving specifics.
It’s pretty good, a movie that has layers which make it as interesting
to grownups as it is confusing to children.
Whatever.
Share your
own thoughts on this in the comments. I
know I am not the only person out there who is nostalgic for Disney products,
and I am sure many people disagree with my selection for today’s entry.
I have spent a lot of time talking
around the movie and not giving specifics.
It’s pretty good, a movie that has layers which make it as interesting
to grownups as it is confusing to children.
Whatever. If you would like a
video detailing a more detailed look at the differences between the book and
the movie, go here.
______________________________
No comments:
Post a Comment