#kirk baxter

[sesiondemadrugada]

Gone Girl (David Fincher, 2014).

[finchers-ipad]

AHHH!! Behind the scenes of ‘The Killer’s’ fight scene!!

[genevieveetguy]

. Stick to your plan. Anticipate, don't improvise. Trust no one. Never yield an advantage. Fight only the battle you're paid to fight.

The Killer, David Fincher (2023)

[bob-the-movie-man-film-reviews]

Dumb Money (15): The little guys sticking it to the bankers... almost.

#onemannsmovies #filmreview of "Dumb Money". Real life story of small investers sticking it to nasty bankers. 4/5.

A One Mann’s Movies review of “Dumb Money” (2023). Two of my favourite actors – Paul Dano and Shailene Woodley – as a married couple in the same film. This made “Dumb Money” a must watch in my book. And although not quite living up to the similar style of “The Big Short“, this was an entertaining waltz through very recent history. Bob the Movie Man Rating: Plot Summary: It’s the pandemic year…

[skullislandproductions]

Happy 70th birthday Taz! June 19th, 1954 saw the release of director Robert McKimson’s “Devil May Hare,” the first Tasmanian Devil cartoon.

[elijones94]

🥀 I haven’t drawn Belle in quite a while. Back in 2020, I had drawn her holding Aladdin’s lamp. Quite similarly to what I do when drawing Ariel, whenever I’m drawing Belle, I refer back to drawings and scenes done by her two supervising animators, James Baxter and Mark Henn. Both animators handled Belle differently artistically. Henn mostly animated Belle while he was at Disney’s satellite studio in Florida and did more footage of her than Baxter. Henn’s scenes are of her first encounter with the Beast, her sneaking into the West Wing, the “Something There” sequence, and the Beast’s death and resurrection scene. Baxter depicted Belle as a mature and sophisticated and it proved a perfect balance with Henn’s interpretation of the character as a sweet, warm, and curious girl. 🥀

[jamesbracket]

The matchups have arrived!

This tournament includes 96 characters named James, Jim, Jimmy, and Jay (with some others too), and they will all be competing in 6 brackets of 16, and the winners of those will be participating in two semifinals, and the winners of the semifinals will fight each other in the final finals! (Basically, it’s just how I did it on @blue-character-brawl, but with the amount of participants cut in half.)

Here are the matchups:

Bracket 1

Jim Hopper (Stranger Things) VS. Jim Halpert (The Office)

James “Rhodey” Rhodes (Marvel) VS. James “Bucky” Barnes (Marvel)

James Bonde (Moriarty the Patriot) VS. James Blond (Super Mario Brothers Super Show)

Jim Rockford (The Rockford Files) VS. James Bond (James Bond)

Jimmy Carter (Real Life) VS. James Madison (Hamilton)

James Byrd (@byrdsfly) VS. James Byrd (Spyro the Dragon)

JayMoji (Real Life) VS. James Phryllas (Real Life)

Jimmy Z (Wild Kratts) VS. Jimmy T (WarioWare)

Bracket 2

James Baxter (Adventure Time) VS. James (Adventure Time)

Jamestown, Virginia (Real Life) VS. James Webb Telescope (Real Life)

Jim Henson (Real Life) VS. Jim Davis (Real Life)

Jimmy Olsen (DC Comics) VS. Jim Gordon (DC Comics)

Jay Gatsby (The Great Gatsby) VS. James Henry Trotter (James and the Giant Peach)

Jimmy Neutron (Jimmy Neutron) VS. Shimmy Jimmy (Phineas and Ferb)

James McCloud (Star Fox) VS. Jay Elbird (Ace Attorney)

James (Wii Sports) VS. James (Papa Louie)

Bracket 3

Captain James Hook (Peter Pan) VS. James Norrington (Pirates of the Caribbean)

Jim Hawkins (Treasure Island) VS. Jimmy Hopkins (Bully)

Jamie Waring (Black Swan) VS. James Flint (Black Sails)

Jamie McCrimmon (Doctor Who) VS. King James IV (Doctor Who)

Dr. James Possible (Kim Possible) VS. Jimmy Pesto Jr. (Bob’s Burgers)

Prince James (Once Upon a Time) VS. James (Princess and the Frog)

jim teacher (This TikTok) VS. Nagasaki James (Noonbit Man)

James March (American Horror Story) VS. James Vane (The Picture of Dorian Gray)

Bracket 4

James (Pokémon) VS. James T. Kirk (Star Trek)

James the Red Engine (Thomas and Friends) VS. James P. Sullivan (Monsters, Inc.)

Jamie Fraser (Outlander) VS. James Sunderland (Silent Hill 2)

James Ironwood (RWBY) VS. Private Jimmy (Red vs Blue)

James Rallison (Real Life) VS. James Huckle (The Search for Santa Paws)

Jay Walker (Ninjago) VS. Jimmy McGill (Better Call Saul)

Jaime Lannister (Game of Thrones) VS. Jimmy Novak (Supernatural)

Jem Carstairs (The Infernal Devices) VS. James Herondale (The Last Hours)

Bracket 5

James Wilson (House MD) VS. Jamie Tartt (Ted Lasso)

Jim Lake Jr. (Trollhunters) VS. James Hunter (Animal Ark)

James (The Walking Dead) VS. Jimmy (Scott Pilgrim)

James-Roman Grilfalinas (@artificialkids-2k23-official) VS. Jimmy Lightning (Peggle)

Jamie Wellerstein (The Last Five Years) VS. Jamie Winter (Midsomer Murders)

James Holden (The Expanse) VS. James Ford (Lost)

James Garrett (Zoey 101) VS. James Amber (Life is Strange)

Jay Merrick (Marble Hornets) VS. Meanie Jim (Junie B. Jones)

Bracket 6

Jim Moriarty (Sherlock Holmes) VS. James Maguire (Derry Girls)

James Black (Detective Conan) VS. James Gunn (Real Life)

James the Cat (James the Cat) VS. Jimmy the Robot (The Aquabats)

Jimmy King (Emmerdale) VS. Jim Johnman (Monster Factory)

Jame Palrose (Terror Island) VS. Jimmy (Johnny the Homicidal Maniac)

James Diamond (Big Time Rush) VS. James Herriot (All Creatures Great and Small)

James West (The Wild Wild West) VS. James Maxwell (We Happy Few)

Jimmy Campbell (Bandstand) VS. James E. Negatus (Yonderland)

Round 1 of Brackets 1 and 2 will be going up on Saturday, May 20!

[kristenswig]

Best Film Editing 2023

Winner

All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt - Lee Chatametikool

Nominees

The Killer - Kirk Baxter Reality - Ron Dulin and Jennifer Vecchiarello Theater Camp - Jon Philpot Tótem - Omar Guzmán The Zone of Interest - Paul Watts

Best Original Score 2023

Winner

The Zone of Interest - Mica Levi

Nominees

The Killer - Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross Killers of the Flower Moon - Robbie Robertson Other People's Children - Robin Coudert & Gael Rakotondrabe Pacifiction - Joe Robinson and Marc Verdaguer Trenque Lauquen - Gabriel Chwojnik

Best Sound Editing 2023

Winner

The Zone of Interest - Johnnie Burn

Nominees

Enys Men - Mark Jenkin and Barney Oram Evil Dead Rise - Peter Albrechtsen The Killer - Ren Klyce No One Will Save You - Will Files and Chris Terhune

Best Sound Mixing 2023

Winner

The Zone of Interest - Johnnie Burn and Tarn Willers

Nominees

All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt - Nicolas de Poulpiquet Infinity Pool - Rob Bertola and Alex Bullick The Killer - Ren Klyce and Stephen Urata Leave the World Behind - Jason King, Beau Borders, John W. Cook Pacifiction - Jordi Ribas and Bruno Tarrière

Best Visual Effects 2023

Winner

Evil Dead Rise

Nominees

Beau is Afraid No One Will Save You

[kylesvariouslistsandstuff]

Thoughts: Joel Crawford Is *Not* Directing KUNG FU PANDA 4

Not too long ago, a Swiss Universal movie slate was making the rounds... KUNG FU PANDA 4 was on there, as the movie is - and has been - scheduled for release on March 8, 2024. The slate curiously listed Crawford, who directed PUSS IN BOOTS: THE LAST WISH and THE CROODS: A NEW AGE, as director.

He is not directing KUNG FU PANDA 4, per a recent interview with him and LAST WISH co-director Januel Mercado... Perhaps whoever made that slate up in Switzerland made a little mistake. It happens, we're all human.

This seemed somewhat fitting, though... Crawford took over both the CROODS and PUSS IN BOOTS sequels, and him being handed the torch for KUNG FU PANDA seemed right.

THE CROODS: A NEW AGE was originally set to be directed by Chris Sanders and Kirk DeMicco, who wrote and directed the first film that came all out the way back in 2013. We're actually inching right towards its 10th anniversary, which makes me wonder... Where does the time go? And, #2, will we get some sort of CROODS 3 announcement to commemorate? Their CROODS 2 was set for various fourth-quarter 2017 release dates for a good while, until DreamWorks had their rough week in January of 2015... When they - in response to the box office performances of several movies released over the previous few years - shut down a whole studio (Pacific Data Images), rearranged their slate, and cancelled multiple in-development movies. THE CROODS 2 managed to hang on... But then... The Comcast acquisition happened a year later. Changing heads, changing administrations, projects killed in transition... THE CROODS 2, a sequel to a movie that made nearly $600m at the worldwide box office, was *surprisingly* one of those movies... It was on the grounds that, supposedly, the crew just wasn't feeling it.

This allowed Chris and Kirk to move on to other things, namely the 20th Century-released THE CALL OF THE WILD for the former (it's actually a pretty solid old school adventure movie worth checking out, even if the dog being CGI is a bit iffy for you), and Sony Animation's VIVO for the latter. (I dug VIVO as well.) THE CROODS: A NEW AGE was confirmed to be back in development in September of 2020, with Crawford taking over directing duties, making his feature directorial debut. Crawford had no involvement with the first CROODS, but was a story artist on all three KUNG FU PANDA movies, and was also a story artist on SHREK FOREVER AFTER... So he had some SHREK in his resume when being given the PUSS IN BOOTS assignment. More on that in a few...

Crawford worked off of a story from Sanders and DeMicco, though, and it seems like it was more or less the one they were developing for their 2017 CROODS 2, just with some changes here and there. There was a pencil test for the movie done by none other than James Baxter that leaked online about a few weeks before DreamWorks announced the revised CROODS sequel was back on track, and it seems like it was more or less what we got... Just a little different. The girl in the pencil test is presumably an earlier version of Dawn Betterman, she is a lot more modern-looking. It's as if the Crood family had stumbled upon a family in the 1950s. The duo were quite involved, all things considered, but just didn't direct. If anything, Crawford kind-of semi-rebooted THE CROODS... A franchise that was only one movie and a 2D-animated Netflix TV series at the time. This gave the caveman family comedy a fresh coat of paint, if you will, and it really worked out. Crawford's approach was noticeably different from Sanders and DeMicco's. Those who were onboard with Sanders/DeMicco missed that touch, those who weren't all that fond of the first film found the sequel to be a significant improvement. I personally really like both for those reasons, they both bring something of their own to this very base-level concept.

So that brings us to PUSS IN BOOTS: THE LAST WISH. Previously, that was set to be a much different film, a sequel titled PUSS IN BOOTS 2: NINE LIVES & 40 THIEVES. An Arabian Nights adventure, it was to be directed by the first PUSS IN BOOTS' director, Chris Miller. He also directed SHREK THE THIRD alongside Raman Hui. In early 2014, DreamWorks had it pegged for a holiday 2018 release, until that bad week in January happened. It got removed entirely from the release schedule, but was still in the works per Antonio Banderas in an interview months later. The Arabian Nights movie got thrown out along the way, and after the Comcast acquisition of DreamWorks, Illumination founder Chris Meledandri started to get involved with the SHREK franchise and would have a hand in determined its future. There's something kind of amusing about that, by the way. Melendandri, prior to founding Illumination in 2007, was an executive producer on the first few Blue Sky films, of course that includes ICE AGE. I was rewatching ICE AGE a little while ago, and am watching the sequels for the first time (I'm over a decade late!), and that first ICE AGE is very similar to SHREK. In that, it's a big, annoyed, cynical guy with an itch to scratch, and an annoying smaller critter being a pain in the ass for most of the journey. Even as a kid back in March 2002, sitting in the theater, I caught that right away, like "Hey, this is a lot like SHREK." There's a similar vibe in Disney Animation's BROTHER BEAR, to go off on a tangent: Big teen bear Kenai, annoying little bear cub Koda... It's also set at the end of the Ice Age. There are mammoths in it. Coincidence is such a funny thing.

Anyways, where was I going with that? Oh yeah, ICE AGE. Similar to SHREK. Chris Meledandri was exec producer of ICE AGE, and went on to exec produce the next three Blue Sky movies (ROBOTS, ICE AGE: THE MELTDOWN, HORTON HEARS A WHO!) before setting up Illumination... Chris Meledandri, after Comcast's acquisition of DreamWorks, becomes more involved with the SHREK franchise in particular and not DreamWorks as a whole. PUSS IN BOOTS Dos was announced once again in early 2019, with Bob Persichetti attached as director. This was *hot* off of SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE, which he was one of three directors on. Persichetti, appropriately, was head of story on the first PUSS IN BOOTS. Seemed liked the best choice possible, but he appears to have had no part in THE LAST WISH, only a - presumably - archival recording of him voicing the "Oooh" cat, who makes a brief cameo in Mama Luna's place. I wouldn't be surprised if the film embracing a more SPIDER-VERSE-inspired stylized look and feel was his idea, coming off of that very film.

But I sense a pattern here, of sorts. Crawford breathed, with the help of his crews, a new life and zest into both THE CROODS and SHREK. It looked like he could've done that for KUNG FU PANDA 4... But, he said in that recent interview that he's not directing, and he's interested in playing around in the world of SHREK some more, which *could* imply that he is directing the fifth SHREK movie, whatever they decide to call it. He's not working on anything at the moment, that there are original ideas to pursue (his resume is currently two feature sequels, it'd be cool if he pitched a wild and fun original movie of his own, but he was also being quite vague.

KUNG FU PANDA 4 has at least one director, but for whatever reason, we don't know who that is just yet. The movie has got to be deep in production if it is coming out next spring. Sometimes with animated movies, we know who is directing. Right off the bat. But some studios, or their distributors, just say "So-and-so, coming out sometime in 2024!" That's basically all we heard about KUNG FU PANDA 4 since last year... It was a tweet that the movie was happening, an image of Po, and a release date of March 8, 2024. Keep in mind, this date sandwiches the movie in-between ELIO (a Pixar film, 3/1/2024) and SPIDER-MAN: BEYOND THE SPIDER-VERSE. (3/29/2024)

Does Jennifer Yuh Nelson, director of KUNG FU PANDA 2 and 3, return to helm the sequel? She has been supervising director on Netflix's LOVE, DEATH & ROBOTS, so I'd imagine she's been busy. Her last feature film, as director, was a live-action flick called THE DARKEST MINDS. Without googling, I think it was a Y-A movie? Hey, you wanna know something funny about Jennifer Yuh Nelson? She got her start as an assistant animator on... Various Golden Films/Jetlag animated fare. You know, those movies based on public domain stories that were cranked out in the early '90s to capitalize on the Disney adaptations? Yeah! She's credited on things like Jetlag's 1994 CINDERELLA and their 1995 ALICE IN WONDERLAND movie. She later graduated to TV shows such as SPICY CITY and SPAWN, was a storyboard artist on the film DARK CITY, and then started her DreamWorks tenure as a storyboard artist on SPIRIT: STALLION OF THE CIMARRON. Her first assignments being in Golden Films "fool the granny at the dollar store" movies goes to show... You gotta start **somewhere**!

KUNG FU PANDA 3's co-director, Alessandro Carloni, could be a candidate. Already heavily involved with the first two films, and several other DreamWorks hits, was director of the ill-fated ME AND MY SHADOW... He'd be great, but what's he up to now? Directing THE FOURTEENTH GOLDFISH for Skydance Animation, apparently. He was supposed to direct their debut film LUCK, but John Lasseter apparently - true to form - kicked him off the movie; or changed it up so much that Carloni decided to walk away from it. But yeah, that's apparently what he's up to, so I think that rules out KUNG FU PANDA 4 for him...

Maybe, on the off chance, the directors of the first movie came back. Or at least one of them. Mark Osborne, John Stevenson... Osborne previously worked on THE LITTLE PRINCE. He was - as far as I know - directing ESCAPE FROM HAT for Netflix. Previously a Blue Sky project, it entered production in 2018. Not a peep since... Was this a casualty of Netflix's ongoing animation purge? Stevenson recently worked on a short called MIDDLE WATCH, and is helming a picture called THE ANT AND THE AARDVARK, for - apparently - a 2024 release. So he's out of the question.

Who else could it be? One look at KUNG FU PANDA 3's story credits could give one a rough idea. I see that a lot of the time in animation, folks who were involved with films on the story artist/storyboarding level get graduated to director for the sequels. Barring Crawford, it could be any of these people...

Or someone whom we would not expect whatsoever... I wonder why they're quiet on this... And also that RUBY GILLMAN: TEENAGE KRAKEN movie that's supposed to open 3 1/2 months from now... And whatnot. DreamWorks is like super-secretive with what's coming, these days, to the point where you don't officially hear a thing until... Maybe 3-4 months before the movie in question releases! I like that, though. Kinda. It's like guessing games. It reminds me of the early 2000s when you only knew what maybe the next 1-2 Pixar movies were when a new one was around the corner.

All I know is, I was quite shocked when KUNG FU PANDA 4 was announced a while ago. I know that the third movie collected over $540 million at the worldwide box office, and that in the world of American feature animation, it's never really over. SHREK 5 is coming, TOY STORY 5 is coming, FROZEN III is coming, ZOOTOPIA 2 is coming, there's a third LEGO MOVIE in the works despite the 2nd mainline movie flopping at the box office. It never ends, and if it ends in a way where a sequel absolutely *can't* be made without some serious retconning? Like HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON: THE HIDDEN WORLD? Oh, easy, do a streaming series set in the modern day that's well past Toothless' passing... Or do a goddamn live-action remake then. Anyways, yeah, these things don't end, but with the way KUNG FU PANDA 3 wrapped things up... I didn't know where it could go from there, though that new series - THE DRAGON KNIGHT - exists. I haven't watched it, I don't have Peacock. Is it any good?

I love the KUNG FU PANDA movies, personally. The first one is particularly resonant for me, because I see a lot of my autistic self and my life in Po himself, and the second film always makes me an emotional mess. I wrote extensively about that elsewhere. I was initially kind of ho-hum on KUNG FU PANDA 3, but the more the first two clicked with me, the more I found a lot to love in the third movie, even if it is a little uneven to me... But a fourth one? I love this world, the characters, the kinetic action that came with each movie, and everything else. If DreamWorks' artists really push the stylization we saw in the third film and beyond, we could be in for a real treat. Bring it on, I say!

Who do you think could direct KUNG FU PANDA 4?

[sesiondemadrugada]

The Killer (David Fincher, 2023).

[finchers-ipad]

Behind the scenes of ‘The Killer’: Editing!

[scotianostra]

March 14th 1900 saw the birth of Scottish lawyer, Dame Margaret Kidd in Bo’ness. 

Today, there are around 130 practising female advocates in Scotland. Before 1923 there had been none; then along came Margaret Henderson Kidd.  

Margaret was brought up in Carriden, and that over the decade the Kidd family grew.; Margaret lived with her parents and now had five brothers and three sisters.

She educated at Linlithgow Academy, Kidd later studied law at the University of Edinburgh, graduating with an MA and LLB in 1922. Her early training was conducted with Mitchell and Baxter, writers to the signet, in Edinburgh. Although her first choice of career was the Foreign Office, the then Permanent Secretary, Mr Eyre Crowe, ‘was opposed to women’, so instead Kidd decided to follow her father and go into law. 

In 1923, Kidd was called to the Faculty of Advocates and became the first female with the right to plead in the Court of Session, the highest civil court in Scotland. The event attracted great interest from members of the faculty and the legal profession, as well as the media. The Scotsman newspaper, as was typical of press coverage of women in the news, took special interest in Margaret’s outfit, reporting that she wore a ‘coat frock of black crepe morocain, a soft white collar with a narrow white bow tie, and a straw hat trimmed with velvet.’ Later in the day she donned the wig and gown as she formally entered her new role.

Between 1923 and 1948 she remained the only lady advocate. Kidd was the first lady advocate to appear before the House of Lords and before a parliamentary select committee. Kidd also had the distinction of becoming the first woman KC in Britain, preceding Helena Normanton and Rose Helibron who were appointed KC in England and Wales in 1949.

While Kidd appears to have downplayed the significance of her role and career in interviews – “I don’t know what they made all the fuss about” - it is clear that others, including her alma mater, were aware of and followed her progress. In the University of Edinburgh’s records of graduations, Kidd’s entry includes several newspaper clippings tracking parts of her career and life.

In 1930 Margaret married Donald Somerled MacDonald in Carriden Parish Church. Donald was a Writer to the Signet and member of the firm Scott and Glover, Hill Street, Edinburgh. . The couple went on to have one daughter, Anne.

During the Second World War, Margaret played a prominent part in organising Christmas treats and functions for the wives and dependants of men serving with the 14th Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment, and particularly the 39th Battery, of which her brother Col. J. T. Kidd was then in command.

Margaret’s professional life also led her to sit on the committee of Representatives of Poor Persons in Scotland as a referee under the Widows and Orphans and Old Age Contributions Pensions Act, and to undertake the Assistantship in the class of Public Law at Edinburgh University.

Margaret Kidd spent much of her life in India Street, Edinburgh. Donald had died in 1957, leaving Margaret a widow for over 30 years until her death on 22 March 1989 in Cambridge. A funeral service was held at the Canongate Kirk, Edinburgh. A eulogy by Lord Hope of Craighead echoed what had been printed about her 41 years earlier by the Scotsman:

‘Her success was won by strength of character, courage and integrity and is a mark of her true qualities that, despite what might seem to be the revolutionary nature of her achievements, she always held the affection and respect of others.’ 

[disneytva]

Walt Disney Studios Sets One Little Spark With Figment Movie With Seth Rogen’s Point Grey Pictures And Detective Pikachu Writters.

A Disney film is in the works featuring the character Figment,a small purple dragon who serves as the mascot of Epcot’s Imagination Pavilion in Orlando.

The feature film helms from Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s company Point Grey Pictures (The Boys,Invincible,American Pickle) Dan Hernandez and Benji Samit (Detective Pikachu) are set to writte the feature film.

This is Seth Rogen’s and Evan Goldberg’s second Disney project besides it’s upcoming Darkwing Duck Reboot at Disney+.

It’s unknow if the film will aim for a theatrical release or a Disney+ release however i bet it could be the latter.

Figment was created by Walt Disney Imagineers Tony Baxter and Steve Kirk, among other collaborators, in 1983, the same year it made its debut in the Epcot ride Journey Into Imagination. Figment is the embodiment of the imagining process— a figment of your imagination.Although one Disney’s more obscure characters,

 Figment has a devoted fanbase that has ensured his role at the park is never diminished. Various attempts to remove the ride or decrease his presence have been met with loud protests.

[byneddiedingo]

Michael Fassbender in The Killer (David Fincher, 2023)

Cast: Michael Fassbender, Tilda Swinton, Charles Parnell, Arliss Howard, Kerry O'Malley, Sophie Charlotte, Emiliana Pernia, Gabriel Polanco, Sala Baker, Monique Ganderton, Daran Norris, Jack Kesy. Screenplay: Andrew Kevin Walker, based on a graphic novel series by Alexis Nolent and Luc Jacamon. Cinematography: Erik Messerschmidt. Production design: Donald Graham Burt. Film editing: Kirk Baxter. Music: Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross. 

In essence, The Killer is a routine thriller about a hit man who screws up and then has to undo the consequences of his screwup. But director David Fincher, screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker, and actor Michael Fassbender make it seem fresh and novel, not by departing from formula but by creating characters and giving them something clever to say. Fassbender is The Killer (most of the dramatis personae are given labels rather than names), a lean, mean killing machine who rises above that cliché by a variety of quirks, including an addiction to maxims and mottoes that we hear from him constantly in voiceover: "Stick to your plan. Anticipate, don't improvise. Trust no one. Never yield to an advantage. Fight only the battle you're paid to fight." Even by itself that constant voiceover could be annoying, except that Fassbender makes it amusing by intoning it in a flat American accent, and by occasionally failing to follow his own advice. Fincher spends a long time on the setup to the first kill, which makes it even more startling when the suspense is broken by the Killer's mistake. There's some swift action as he gets rid of the equipment used in the shoot, then boards a plane (using one of his many passports and credit cards, all carrying fake names borrowed from TV characters) for his home in the Dominican Republic, where he finds that he still has to keep running, eliminating not only those pursuing him, but also everybody else who knows his true identity. These incidents introduce us to a variety of characters, wittily played by, among others, Charles Parnell (The Lawyer, aka Hodges, who is a middle man between The Killer and his targets), Tilda Swinton (The Expert, a fellow assassin who knows his identity), and Arliss Howard (The Client, one of the few people The Killer manages to intimidate but not kill). All of this nonsense -- which is praise, not criticism -- is set to a variety of songs, mostly by the Smiths, whose dark humor perfectly complements the style of the movie. I could quibble about this being one of those films in which the big fight scene takes place in the dark, so you're never quite sure who's beating whom, but then moral ambiguity is the whole point of the movie. 

[spiderdreamer-blog]

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996)

As observed in the last post, when the Disney Renaissance period "ends" isn't always entirely clear. Even after the high water mark of The Lion King, the animated films were still making money (esp. on the merchandising end) and getting good reviews, just somewhat less effusive ones depending on the film. Perhaps no film during this period was regarded with more curiosity and suspicion than their attempt at adapting Victor Hugo's classic French novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame (though if you want to get technical, that's the title of most adaptations, whereas the original French title is Notre Dame de Paris). The story of Quasimodo is often a dark one, after all, full of themes like religious hypocrisy and discrimination against minorities. Could Disney handle that, critics seemed to ask, or should they even TRY? Well, they ultimately did, and we have the film in front of us to judge. Let's dig in.

(Quick note: the film uses the outdated g-slur to refer to Roma characters throughout. I will not be doing so for sensitivity purposes.)

We open in 15th century Paris, as Clopin (Paul Kandel), leader of the city's Roma begins to narrate a story, "a tale of a man...and a monster." Twenty years ago, Judge Claude Frollo (Tony Jay) murdered a Roma woman when pursuing her for a presumed theft. The cargo turns out to be her son, who Frollo classifies as a monster for his hunchbacked deformities, and he nearly murders him to boot. But the Archdeacon of Notre Dame (David Ogden Stiers) stops him, warning that the "eyes" of Notre Dame, and possibly God Himself, will witness this crime. A shaken Frollo agrees to raise Quasimodo (Tom Hulce), but shuts him away in the bell tower. As the present day opens, Quasimodo yearns to join the outside world, with his gargoyle friends Hugo (Jason Alexander), Victor (Charles Kimbrough), and Laverne (Mary Wickes, in her final film role) as his only companions. But Frollo insists they would never accept him, and Quasimodo nearly seems ready to accept that lonely lot in life, so much has he internalized this abuse. His friends, however, encourage him to sneak out to the yearly Feast of Fools, just for one day. He works up the courage to do so, only to encounter the beautiful Roma Esmeralda (Demi Moore) and be crowned the King of Fools. After the crowd turns on him, Esmeralda comes to his rescue, only to be pursued by Frollo and the goodhearted captain Phoebus (Kevin Kline), who convinces her to take sanctuary in the church. Things quickly become a waiting game as Quasimodo and Esmeralda begin to bond over sharing an outsider status, and he begins to consider a potential life "out there", as Frollo's anger begins to twist into hatred...and lust.

The first thing that has to be said about Hunchback is that it's one of the best-looking films the studio ever made. Like Tarzan after it, CGI techniques were heavily used to give Notre Dame a real sense of place and atmosphere previously though unachievable. You truly FEEL the vastness of the cathedral and Paris, occasionally feeling just a bit of awe in the process, but thankfully directors Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise (Beauty and the Beast, Atlantis: The Lost Empire) never let them overwhelm the characters and their emotions. Some of this hasn't aged gracefully (the CGI crowds are definitely a little ropey when you look close), but the overall effect remains outstanding.

So too does the character animation, which is remarkable in its complexity. Quasimodo alone would be a challenge for most animators, but James Baxter is not most animators, and he gives the hunchback a genuine soulfulness in addition to making that seemingly impossible body move with pencils. Kathy Zielinski, meanwhile, takes what could have felt like a caricature in Frollo and makes him into a real, terrifying person. You feel his pain...and gape in horror at his cruelty. Tony Fucile's Esmeralda is vivacious and vibrant, Russ Edmonds makes Phoebus a little rougher than most handsome Disney leading men even with his good heart, and Mike Surrey grants Clopin an intriguing ambiguity; right up until the end, you're never totally sure what he's after.

The story is just as good as the visuals. I will admit upfront that it probably bites off more than it can chew. There is a LOT to cover here in terms of the intersections of racism, religious hypocrisy, and othering of people deemed "monsters" because of their disabilities. Especially since smarter people than me have pointed out this was NOT wholly Victor Hugo's original intent, but that the story transformed into a parable about discrimination thanks to Hollywood and other adaptations. It's possible that anyone could balk at it, much less the largely-compositionally-white Disney animation studio of the 1990s. Yet it has to be said that a genuine, earnest effort is made here even with some fumbles (which we'll get to later).

A useful comparison point is the previous year's Pocahontas. I can genuinely say I kind of hate that film outside of a few caveats, and one big reason why is that the characters feel so flat in their assigned roles. Nobody surprises or does anything unexpected, there's no nuance in the colors of the wind there, and even the characters you think could have affecting arcs are unbearably stiff. Not so here. Quasimodo is an excellent lead, for starters; even if he's gentler and less outright antisocial than other adaptations or the source material, he's allowed to be flawed in terms of parroting assumptions about Roma planted in him by Frollo and initially feeling entitled to Esmeralda's love because she was kind to him. He rises to heroism instead of having it be assumed. Frollo, too, is more complex than most Disney villains. Not sympathetic, precisely, but you get the sense that he really is just a miserable person at the end of the day, directing that misery outward as the contradictions between his religious piety, his racism, and his lust tear him up inside. Esmeralda is a little sexualized, it's true, and perhaps a little more noble than she might truly be in the situation, but she's a passionate, driven adult with a sense of humor. Which feels rare even now in animated kid's movies. The triangle that develops between her, Quasimodo, and Phoebus is intriguing because we can see it going either way, rather than having Phoebus be an obvious bad egg. I like his arc, too, as the Roma gain a human face and he grows increasingly uncomfortable with his complicity.

The voice cast helps with this considerably, giving stellar performances across the board. Helping is that they have one of the best soundtracks in the Disney canon backing them up, with Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz giving us banger after banger. "The Bells of Notre Dame" stands out especially for getting across a ton of story and character notes as elegantly as the likes of "Belle", "Circle of Life", and "The Family Madrigal." (Credit to Kandel, too, for hitting that insane high D note at the end of both it and the final reprise) Plus, I'm always a sucker for Badass Ominous Latin Chanting, and that's all over this score. We also get TWO "I Want" songs for the price of one, with "Out There" and "God Help The Outcasts" being excellent mission statements for Quasimodo and Esmeralda. "Hellfire" is the most chilling Villain Song in the entire canon, taking us down a road of darkness and flame. And "Topsy Turvy" feels underrated as a comedy song, feeling almost like something you could hear in another Hugo-derived musical, Les Miserables, in the clever rhyming and archaic word usage. (I'm also partial to "The Court of Miracles", which is short, but has a nicely sinister bounce)

In terms OF the actors, Tom Hulce is honestly an interesting choice for Quasimodo given that his best-known performance otherwise is as Mozart in Amadeus. A great film, and great acting, but Mozart is a markedly different character in that he is cheerfully obnoxious even whilst remaining in our sympathies. Here, Hulce finds a wistful quality in his tones, childlike without ever being childish, which is a hard balance to strike. And he knocks "Out There" out of the park, as it were. Tony Jay, meanwhile, gives the performance of his lifetime as Frollo, mining every scrap of loathsome humanity he can without ever losing the reality of the man. His rendition of "Hellfire" always leaves me awestruck. Moore has a distinct, smoky tone that aids Esmeralda spectacularly even if we can question the ethics of casting a white woman as a dark-skinned Roma in retrospect, and Kline matches her well in terms of being funny and down-to-Earth, making us believe in Phoebus' turn.

(Also, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Stiers' cameo at least a little bit. He was a good luck charm for Disney in this period, and he gives the Archdeacon genuine warmth to contrast Frollo's bigotry, a necessary one given how brutal that becomes)

Now there are some fumbles, even if they don't blemish the film overmuch for me. The first is the depiction of the Roma, which can run a little inconsistently. It's laudable that the movie is sympathetic to their plight and doesn't make any mealy-mouthed both-sides statements about it the way Pocahontas tries to run with an ill-defined "hatred" as the Aesop. Frollo is just straight-up racist and that's how we're doing this. But they also get played as comic relief and we don't get much internal dialogue on them outside of Esmeralda and Clopin (though as said, I appreciate that he has purposeful ambiguity in seeming like a gleeful jester one moment, then a tough street boss the next).

The second is the gargoyles, who you may have noticed haven't been mentioned much up to now. That's because I'm of two minds about them. On the one hand, I don't think they're bad characters. The animation on them is as good as the rest of the film, and you could tell the animators had fun figuring out how to move stone figures around. Alexander, Kimbrough, and Wickes all give excellent comedic performances, and especially in the early part of the film, they serve a useful function as keeping the mood light and confidants for Quasimodo. There are much worse Disney sidekicks purely on the merits (fuck you, Gurgi, go to hell). Nor do I object to comic relief on its face. I adore comedy-as-characterization, and Disney sidekicks can often be a useful counterbalance.

What I dispute is the usage here. To me, there's an obvious arc of Quasimodo shedding his comfort levels as he grows up and decides to engage in the outside world. But the gargoyles...keep showing up past a point where it feels necessary. You get the sense the filmmakers were nervous about just HOW dark and adult the rest of the film was, and were hedging their bets. This is best exemplified in their song "A Guy Like You." On its face, it's a funny, catchy number that the actors sing the hell out of. And the dramatic purpose (building Quasimodo's confidence about his romance before learning that Esmeralda has fallen for Phoebus) is solid. But it's just...too much. These guys aren't the Genie or Timon and Pumbaa, and they shouldn't be. Also between them and Esmeralda's pet goat Dhjali, who's also Fine mechanically, and Clopin already being funny in cleverer ways, it begins to feel a smidge crowded.

One quibble I DON'T have is with the ending. This remains the most criticized part of the film, given that the book ends tragically with Frollo, Quasimodo, and Esmeralda all dead, and some variation on this tends to stick for a lot of adaptations (in fact, both Disney's later German and English-language stage adaptations hewed closer to the novel, if not exactly in terms of circumstances). By contrast, here we get an uplifting ending where not only is Frollo the only casualty (and with a bitchin' variation on the Disney Villain Death to boot), Quasimodo is accepted by the citizens of Paris. Unrealistic? Maybe. Does my heart melt every time that little girl comes up to feel Quasimodo's face? Absolutely. Look, I'm not someone who thinks we need to treat minorities/disadvantaged people like glass dolls in narratives. We can have bad things happen to them without it being Le Problematique. But given the history, is it really so terrible to give a hunchback a happy ending on occasion? I think not, and for this version of the story, they absolutely arrive at the correct decision.

The mood around the film was slightly more muted upon its release. It made money, the critical reception was generally positive-even in France!-and some critics like Roger Ebert gave it effusive reviews. But it was usually agreed that Disney had done its usual thing of simplifying a popular narrative for mass consumption the way they did for fairy tales and such. Hard to totally argue against that point, but I would posit that, as said, the story had already mutated into a very different form thanks to various other adaptations. You'd hardly think Les Miserables would be a good crowd-pleasing musical either at first glance. Even if it totally doesn't stick the landing, this remains one of my favorite Disney films because it TRIED, damn it. It's imperfect, but beautiful.

Could say that about our hunchback, couldn't we?