Tag: animation

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Children Drew Movies

Disney Project 2014: The Rescuers Down Under

Movie: The Rescuers Down Under

Release year: 1990

My reaction: This is, I believe, the only sequel on the list. And I think it deserves to be there. I would say Down Under is better than the original Rescuers. Even though the perspective is all over the place, and it’s hard to keep track of how big these mice actually are. One second they’re riding fireflies, the next second they’re like opening cage doors. And when Cody gets free of McLeach, the first place he goes is to check on the eagle eggs…even though HIS MOM THINKS HE’S DEAD. I’m like GO HOME IMMEDIATELY. His poor mom. =(

Drew says: “I don’t think Bianca likes Bernard the way he likes her.” I agree.

Also, this is the first Disney movie we’ve gotten to that we don’t already own. Luckily…streaming on Netflix!

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Being a girl Children Drew Love Movies Sentiment

Disney Project 2014: The Little Mermaid

FINALLY!

Movie: The Little Mermaid

Release year: 1989

My reaction: I probably don’t need to explain myself to any girls born from 1980-1985. This is one of the best. Movies. Ever. I love every frame, every weird facial expression, every little quirk in this movie. It’s so good.

We were in Tahoe last weekend with two of my best girlfriends – fun fact, the three of us went to see a sing-along version of The Little Mermaid for a bachelorette party a couple years ago. So this was actually a pretty special coincidence, that it was the next movie in our line-up.

We ended up watching it twice last weekend: once on Saturday night, and then again on Sunday morning. I loved it each time. I would love it every time. I’m just saying.

To everyone who has little “But why don’t they just? But why doesn’t she? But she should just?” I say HUSH. This is the epitome of princess movies, to me. Ariel’s voice is THE Disney princess voice. It’s all wonderful. I’ve been waiting a long time to get to this one. =D

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Children Drew Movies

Disney Project 2014: Oliver & Company

Movie: Oliver & Company

Release year: 1988

My reaction: This is the second time I’ve ever seen this movie. And I’ll be honest with you, I watched maybe 10 minutes of it. I mean, it was playing and everything but we spent a lot of time chasing B around the house.

I think I got the gist though. It’s based on Dickens’ Oliver Twist, with music by Billy Joel. Very 1988. I’m not sure where Jenny’s parents are – maybe they went into that backstory but I missed it. It’s a decent Disney movie, but I get why this is the second time I’ve seen it.

We missed a couple weeks, due to some travel. But we’re ready to jump back into the second half of the year and watch some of the best Disney movies there are.

Seriously though, B was in time out like five times during this one. I guess he just wasn’t in a movie mood.

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Children Drew Movies

Disney Project 2014: The Great Mouse Detective

Movie: The Great Mouse Detective

Release year: 1986

My reaction: I don’t think of this as being one of my standard Disney favorite movies, but I really like it. Maybe partly because I love Sherlock Holmes, so I enjoy all the little references. But this is just a great movie.

It does have some of the scariest moments of all the later Disney movies – Fidget is responsible for most of them, from being illuminated by a flash of lightning in the window, to bursting out of a doll’s cradle, to dressing up as Olivia. He’s terrifying. BUT, he’s also goofy.

So is Ratigan, the villain, played by Vincent Price. I mean, he’s scary, and he has a giant pet cat to whom he feeds everyone who irritates him. But he also has plenty of little moments where he’s flawed, fickle, and funny. If The Black Cauldron felt like Disney starting to figure out what the next couple decades was going to look like, then The Great Mouse Detective is Disney feeling confidently along that path.

Drew theorizes that the reason that this movie didn’t become a huge hit is that it came out the same year as An American Tail. Which EVERYONE saw. Right? Can you sing me at least three songs from An American Tail? I bet you can. Can you name a single song from The Great Mouse Detective? Oh well.

The awesome thing about today is that it’s June 30 – halfway through 2014. And with The Great Mouse Detective, we have officially watched half of the Disney movie list!

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Children Drew Movies

Disney Project 2014: The Black Cauldron

Movie: The Black Cauldron

Release year: 1985

My reaction: Have you seen this movie? Chances are good you haven’t. I don’t know why no one has seen it. The Black Cauldron is starting to feel like the Disney movies of my childhood (which I would say start with The Little Mermaid). The animation looks familiar and the story arcs feel familiar. It’s all there.

This one is kind of a weird mishmash, though. They are constantly introducing new characters, but I’m not sure to what end. To be fair, it’s not like we’re sitting down and quietly watching these movies from start to finish. We miss big chunks of them, when B needs to drag us into another room and show us something, etc. He seems to especially need things during the ends of the movies. Mostly that’s okay, because we are super familiar with the movies. But with The Black Cauldron, there was a lot of “Wait, who are those fairies?” “Wait, why is that sword magical?” “Wait, what happened to Hen Wen?”

Also, this one is surprisingly scary. The villain – the Horned King – is purely evil, there’s nothing funny about him. He has no snarky sidekicks or charming one-liners, like most Disney villains have. There’s  moment early on when the main character, a young man named Taran, is knocked to the ground by some dragons. When he gets up, his mouth is bleeding. You wouldn’t see that in Tangled, just saying.

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The best part about watching The Black Cauldron was the series of selfies I took of the two of us, as I tried to get a good picture for this post. He was in a really smiley mood yesterday.

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Children Drew Movies

Disney Project 2014: The Fox and the Hound

Movie: The Fox and the Hound

Release year: 1981

My reaction: This is yet another one of those Disney movies that I’ve seen maybe once. So I was very emotionally involved in, say, the opening credits, where Tod’s mother sacrifices herself for him right off the bat. Awww! I was also surprised later at the ferocity with which Copper vows to get revenge on Tod for Chief’s injuries. It wasn’t his fault! Just be friends, guys!

I just had to look up The Fox and the Hound 2, which I assumed would be like Lady and the Tramp 2, and focus on the offspring on the first movie’s main characters. But it actually takes place during Tod and Copper’s childhood together (which I thought was only like a week long), during which Copper is “tempted to join a band of singing stray dogs.” LOL, “direct to video” indeed.

Fun fact: Did you know that the name Tod (or Todd) originates from Middle English and means “fox”? Widow Tweed, the lonely crazy old woman who adopts baby Tod and is basically the cause of all this trouble because she doesn’t know that foxes aren’t tame, says she names him Tod because he’s “such a toddler.” But I think that Disney probably used the name because of its origins. They’re clever like that.

Drew says: I don’t think that puppy [Copper] is cute. I don’t like that his eyes are all sunken in.

And here is it. The best picture we could get.

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Children Drew Movies

Disney Project 2014: The Rescuers

Movie: The Rescuers

Release year: 1977

My reaction: I don’t think I’ve seen this movie more than once or twice. In case you don’t know the plot, Miss Bianca and Bernard are two mice who are sent out from New York to rescue Penny, a little girl who’s being held captive in the bayou by Madame Medusa, a crazed jewel thief. Medusa is obsessed with finding the Devil’s Eye, a huge diamond that is hidden somewhere in a creepy cave that fills with water at high tide. Bianca and Bernard are assisted by some critter sidekicks.

Madame Medusa is a pretty scary villain. I mean, she is willing to drown Penny in order to find this diamond. Her alligators are named Brutus and Nero, which I think is clever. The critter characters are very “Cajun” – one of them just keeps giving people moonshine. That wouldn’t happen anymore. The animation is so 70s (in a good way). The music is so 70s (in a 70s way). I got a little misty when Penny got adopted at the end. I mean, that’s all she wanted in life. Isn’t that nice?

I have to admit it though…I think that I might prefer The Rescuers Down Under. We’ll find out for sure when we get there, I guess! (1990 – only 13 more years to go.)

Drew says: I think Miss Bianca might be kind of an idiot. Her reason for not wearing her seat belt on an open-air albatross that goes upside down, is that she doesn’t want to wrinkle her dress.

 

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Children Drew Movies Uncategorized

Disney Project 2014: The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh

Movie: The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh

Release year: 1977

My thoughts: I guess it wasn’t until recently that I realized this was a full-length movie. I have seen the Little Black Raincloud section and the Pooh-gets-stuck-in-Rabbit’s-front-door sections many, many times. And I had the Heffalumps and Woozles song in a Halloween compilation VHS. But I don’t think I’ve seen the other stories before. Well, we did recently catch the end of the one where Rabbit tries to get Tigger to stop bouncing for good, on the Disney channel. (We often watch the Disney channel now. It’s fun.)

Winnie the Pooh is not my favorite. I mean, yeah, I definitely had t-shirts with the characters on them, but didn’t we all, in middle school?

Omg. Hold the phone. I JUST got the joke where Gopher keeps saying “I’m not in the book!” That went right over my head. Oy.

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Children Drew Movies

Disney Project 2014: Robin Hood

Movie: Robin Hood

Release year: 1973

My reaction: I love this one. If I took a poll of 3o-year-old girls, I bet many of them would say they had a childhood crush on Robin Hood. I know he’s a fox (no, literally, the woodland creature). But I would also bet that Drew thinks Maid Marian is a babe. In fact…


I love the Robin Hood legend in general. The 1938 movie (The Adventures of Robin Hood, starring Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland) is near and dear to my heart. Who doesn’t love the handsome, roguish protagonist who is an expert marksman, outwits the bad guys, and wins the girl? All while wearing tights??

But I digress. The fox version is very good too. And I’ve grown fond of Phil Harris, who we’ve now seen in The Jungle Book (Baloo), The Aristocats (Thomas O’Malley), and Robin Hood (Little John). I like his voice. Good music in this one. Lots of memorable moments and lines.

We tried for a double header this weekend, The Aristocats on Saturday and Robin Hood on Sunday, but we didn’t quite make it through the latter. So we watched the last half hour on Tuesday, which split it up weirdly. I won’t push it like that again. Just trying to catch us up by the end of this month, which is halfway through the year!

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Categories
Children Drew Movies

Disney Project 2014: The Aristocats

Movie: The Aristocats

Release year: 1970

My reaction: There are a handful of lines from this movie I know REALLY well, because they were part of a preview on a tape I had of another Disney movie. Lines like, “You’re not a lady, you’re nothing but a sister,” “Scandalous,” “QUIET!!” and others. But I never had this movie growing up so it’s not one I’m super familiar with. This was probably the third time I’ve ever watched it. I think I vaguely remember watching it at the Ruffcorns’ house while babysitting their kids…

It’s cute, but I can see why it didn’t catch on. It just doesn’t have the spark that so many of the other movies do. I wonder if they were just trying out cats because 101 Dalmatians went well? It’s fun to see some of the repeated animation sequences – where they use the same molds but put the new characters in. An all-around pleasant morning.

Aaaaand as usual, this is the least blurry photo we could get. =)

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