Hello! Thus far, I have very few posts/pages on this blog but I’m starting to get ideas on what I want to blog about. First and foremost, I wanted to blog about my experience on having the longest movie marathon ever: I’m watching every single Disney animated movie ever made. My best friend Bella and I randomly decided to watch all the Disney movies, mostly because I’m starting to convert her into a DisNerd like me! (I took her to Disneyland a couple of months ago and ever since then she’s been gaining an interest in Disney, much to my happiness!) So she and I are embarking on this crazy journey together and I’m very excited about it because I’ve seen nearly every Disney movie and she’s pretty much only seen the “popular” ones (AKA the Disney Renaissance films of the 90’s-00’s and any movie with a princess in it). I’m excited to share my Disney obsession with her.
How We’re Doing It
We are starting with Snow White and ending with the most recent Disney movie to date (which right now is Inside Out but by the time we watch all of them it could be The Good Dinosaur or Zootopia or something). By “Disney” I mean “any animated film produced under a Disney name.” So this also includes Pixar and a few seemingly “non-Disney” ones like Tim Burton’s films (The Nightmare Before Christmas, Frankenweenie), Studio Ghibli (Ponyo, The Secret World of Arrietty), Disney channel animated films (Recess: School’s Out, Doug’s 1st Movie), and movie sequels (The Lion King II, Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch).
Basically, we’re using this list: http://www.disneymovieslist.com/animated-disney-movies.asp
I’m also including a couple of movies that are partially animated: Mary Poppins, James and the Giant Peach, and Enchanted (the reason being I just love these movies and want any excuse to watch them!).
With every movie (or batch of movies) we watch, I’m going to write about my thoughts/reactions regarding the movies and what I liked and disliked about them. I’m hoping you guys will find this interesting or possibly be inspired to go and watch some of these movies yourself. 🙂
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
Starting with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (of course!), Bella and I watched this film along with Pinocchio and Fantasia in one sitting. (**Just a note: I’m italicizing the titles of the movies to make it a little more clearer when I’m talking about the film vs. when I’m talking about a character, etc. In case you were wondering.) I’ll be honest, Snow White was never one of my favorite princesses growing up because she was kind of boring to me. I loved Jasmine and Belle because they were more go-getters than princesses like Snow and Cinderella (and, dare I say it, even Aurora). Despite that, though, I’ve always felt a deep appreciation for Snow White simply because she’s where it all started: Walt Disney probably would never have made all his subsequent animated films if Snow White hadn’t done as well as it did. And I’m thankful for that, because without Snow White there wouldn’t be all his other films or Disneyland! So Snow White does have a special place in my heart, even if she’s not in my list of favorite princesses.
What I am constantly blown away by every single time I watch this film, though, is the animation. Every single frame is hand-drawn and it took several years to make. The process of CGI blows my mind, but hand-drawn animation blows my mind even more. I was lucky enough to visit the Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco last summer and there’s an entire section devoted to Snow White and how they animated it. It fascinates me how they accomplished it because they used static background plates with moving characters doing actions on top of them. How did they match the dialogue to their moving lips, though? How did they so accurately match the sound effects with the movements? I’ve never understood it and I probably never will.
The artistry in the film is simply gorgeous, too: I really noticed the scenery watching it this time around and noticed how detailed the backgrounds were, especially in scenes with intricate settings like the interior of the dwarves’ cottage and the Evil Queen’s lair. The costumes and appearances of the characters are beautiful too because the animators were able to so easily capture the personalities of the characters through their exteriors: Snow is more feminine and beautiful so she has softly drawn features and pale colors. The dwarves, however, are more cartoonish in nature so they have more sharply drawn lines, bright costumes, and disproportioned features. And the animals were supposed to look friendly and cute so they have big eyes, round cheeks, and soft colors of their fur/feathers.
But, I’ll admit, the film gets a little boring for me the more times I watch it. There are some long sequences like the “Bluddle-Uddle-Um-Dum” sequence that are pretty unnecessary for the plot development of the film, but back in the 1930s there was less emphasis place on plot and more on spectacle/artistry. That’s why in a lot of musicals (*cough cough* Mary Poppins) during the Golden Age of Musicals (1940s-1960s) there are long choreographed sequence that are there only to show off the choreography, not further the plot. Snow White does have this and I appreciate these scenes, but in this day and age it’s harder and harder to enjoy long scenes that don’t have a solid purpose for the plot.
Regardless, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is still a film I very much enjoy. My favorite scene is the “Whistle While you Work” sequence because I love watching all the cute little animals cleaning the house. 🙂
Pinocchio (1940)
Pinocchio is…hmm…Well, it’s definitely not one of my favorites. It never really has been and I think the reason for that is, frankly, it’s kind of boring. I know, I know! It’s travesty to say such a thing! But…that’s just how I feel. I definitely appreciate it (like Snow White) but it isn’t a Disney movie I feel very excited about. Although, one of my all-time favorite Disney songs is “When You Wish Upon a Star” which originated from Pinocchio so I love the film for that song.
Re-watching Pinocchio again made me notice how the story is actually pretty crazy. A little wooden boy goes off and (gasp) becomes an ACTOR? And then he gets KIDNAPPED and taken to a place that lets boys go CRAZY and DRINK and SMOKE and FIGHT? And then they get turned into DONKEYS??? And then he gets swallowed by a big mean WHALE? This film does have a happy ending, but still…(Also, I didn’t really appreciate the anti-actor sentiments in the film, thank you very much. ACTORS ARE COOL…..even if we don’t make money. Like ever.) But seriously, it’s surprising how much inappropriate stuff they put in those kids movies back then.
And yet…it’s not all that surprising to be honest. I was lucky enough to audit a film class on Disney at my university and my professor talked about Pinocchio as well as how fairy tales have changed throughout time. He mentioned how throughout human history, parents have become way more concerned about their children’s physical/mental safety than they were in the past. During the middle ages, for example, parents had their children start working at very early ages and didn’t really care about exposing them to “real life” because there was no “children are innocent” mantra. That didn’t come until fairly recently (about the 18th or 19th centuries I believe) where parents began shielding their children from horrors because innocence was starting to become a sought-after virtue for children. And in today’s world, with everything having to be “politically correct” and “appropriate”, parents’ anxieties are stronger now than they ever have been because they are constantly worried about the exposure from the world that their children are getting.
So my point is that seventy years ago, when Pinocchio was made, parents were more lax about exposing their children to things that we now deem “inappropriate” such as smoking and alcohol because politically correctness is rather a recent concept. Especially since we were on the brink of war in 1940 so exposure to horrifying events was pretty much unavoidable.
But yeah…I don’t have much else to say on Pinocchio. It’s a classic and I’ll never completely dislike it, but it’s kind of hard for me to give my full attention to it these days. I’d rather watch Tangled.
Fantasia (1940)
Now Fantasia I can get on board with. As someone in the arts I have a deep appreciation for music (my brother is a music major too so I’ve been exposed to different forms of music for years) as well as animation so combining those two is magic for me. I hadn’t seen Fantasia in a really, really long time (I was very young when I watched it last so I didn’t remember most of it) so watching it felt like I was watching it for the very first time. And I was blown away by it.
Now, granted, I knew a couple of the famous Fantasia scenes including “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” and “Night on Bald Mountain”, the latter of which being my FAVORITE sequence (gives me chills every time). But the other sequences I was unfamiliar with; watching them mesmerized me because I didn’t know what was going to happen. Too often I leisurely watch Disney movies since I’m so familiar with the plots down to the exact words of each line, so watching a Disney film I’m unfamiliar with was a new experience for me. I especially loved the Pastoral Symphony because it was very whimsical and fun. I also like Greek mythology (I’m a drama major, hellooo) so it was cool to see the gods/goddesses that I’ve learned about be animated in this sequence.
But again, I go back to how on earth did they sync the characters’ movements to the music??? Did they have some sort of system where they knew that every ___ frames their lips moved to say “___”? Something like, “it takes three frames for lips to form the letter “O”? That’s something I need to do some research on because I cannot for the life of me understand how they did it. MAGIC, that’s how!
I’d also like to throw in a shout-out to “Night on Bald Mountain.” That sequence is sooo cool. It always reminds me of Halloween and I used to be so scared of it as a kid, but even now I get goosebumps when I watch it! The music is hauntingly beautiful and Chernabog is a creepy mofo. That’s all I have to say about that.
Stay tuned for Part 2 of my musings on the Disney Animated Movie Marathon 2k15!
❤ The DisNerd Girl
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