Ah, the Disney Princess franchise. The whole shebang was started in the early 2000's by Disney Consumer Products chairman Andy Mooney after -this is true- a trip to a Disney on Ice show where he saw little girls wearing unlicensed Disney character costumes and immediately saw dollar signs an untapped market. And let me emphasize that this in itself was not a bad idea. In fact, it was pretty awesome in theory. After all, there are very few older films that either sport a female main character or are primarily directed at young girls that are still being marketed today (the only other one I can think of is "Wizard of OZ").
The problem is the specific way in which the Princesses are marketed. They're completely divorced from their films, making them folklore-based characters who've found themselves without stories. There are no happy endings to earn, no conflicts to resolve, just creepily vacant stares and sparkles.
And that is worthy of criticism, but unfortunately many vocal critics have equated the Princess Franchise versions of the characters with their very different film counterparts. It's almost impressive how often critics are blatantly wrong about what actually happens in the films. (Honestly, everyone gets the sequence of events in "The Little Mermaid" wrong.)
As a lover of animation, and a Disney fan, I wanted to help set the record straight when it came to the Disney Princess characters themselves. The simplest way to do this, it seemed, was to go right to the source: rewatch each of the films in which the Princesses first appear and keep track of certain things they've come under heavy criticism for. (It turns out that watching all these films in order is also an efficient "Speed Run" version of the history of Walt Disney Feature Animation I got during the Chronological Disney Animated Canon project years ago.)
I was originally planning on watching each film and writing an analysis, but doing live Tweet-commentaries -Tweetmentaries, if you will- on them turned out to be more fun. It also brought in an element of audience participation. And I wound up reconsidering some of the films (as we shall see, there is one film where my opinion was almost completely flipped).
* - "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs"
* - "Cinderella"
* - "Sleeping Beauty"
* - "The Little Mermaid"
* - "Beauty and the Beast"
* - "Pocahontas"
* - "Mulan"
* - "The Princess and the Frog"
* - "Tangled"
* - "Brave"
* - "Aladdin"
* - "Frozen"
* - "Moana"
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More Animation Marathons
* - The Chronological Disney Animated Canon
* - Don Bluth Month
* - Dreamworks' "Tradigitals"
* - The Short Animation Blogathon
* - My Summer of Sequels
* - Random 90's Animation
Showing posts with label Tangled. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tangled. Show all posts
Saturday, April 12, 2014
Monday, April 7, 2014
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
"You should know that this is the strangest thing I have EVER DONE!" - Thoughts on "Tangled"
But first, happy Towel Day!
And second, "Green With Envy" "Green With Envy" "Green With Envy"!!!!????!!!!
Hooray, another Disney Animated Canon post! It's been too long. Ideally, we'll get two this week; I watched Disney movies while recovering from my cold and I now feel like approximately $990,988..
Movie #62: "Tangled"
2010 was a year full of amazing animated features. "The Illusionist" and "Legend of the Guardians" and "Tales From EarthSea" were very nice, I loved "Toy Story 3" and "Despicable Me" and "How to Train Your Dragon", and both "Secret of Kells" and "Sita Sings the Blues" knocked my socks off for entirely different reasons.
So I hope nobody takes it as *too* much of a criticism when I say that "Tangled" wasn't as good as some of these other films, OK? I am saying it isn't as good as "Toy Story 3", for goodness sake, and what recent movies are? (I am a little anxious about this because I got a few comments that implied that readers thought my saying, "'Alice in Wonderland' didn't suck as much as I thought it would" meant "Holy sh*t, this movie was amazing!" instead of, "Literally the best thing I can say for this movie is that it didn't entirely suck.")
"Tangled" is very good and well worth a watch (it pains me that some of you may have a hard time being convinced of this but we'll get to that in a minute). Overall, comparing it to other recent D.A.C. films, I didn't like it as much as "The Princess and the Frog". (Tangent: In particular, the songs aren't nearly as good. Alan Menken is working with a new lyricist and the lyrics are... Menken needs to get Joss Whedon on the phone.) But it is a damn sight better than "Bolt". The CGI is far better and more confident than in any of the previous CGI Disney films, and it is SO pretty. Only criticism here is that you have never noticed until now that some of Glen Keane's human characters' faces are, like, 40% eyeball.
Lastly, Disney needs to get a new marketing division like woah. As with "Frog", they've done a capital job of making the movie look like exactly what it isn't (I nailed it earlier last year when I called the "Tangled" ads a "Scott Pilgrim" level of misaimed marketing). Just how worried were they about the supposed "boys think princesses are icky" thing? This little-seen trailer, on the other hand, makes me want Disney to have a copy of my portfolio to review yesterday:
For more posts in this ongoing series, go here, or click the Chronological Disney Animated Canon tag below.
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Sketch of the Day!
I like water monsters. You like water monsters. We all like water monsters, so I did a digital painting of that water monster sketch from an earlier post:
And second, "Green With Envy" "Green With Envy" "Green With Envy"!!!!????!!!!
Hooray, another Disney Animated Canon post! It's been too long. Ideally, we'll get two this week; I watched Disney movies while recovering from my cold and I now feel like approximately $990,988..
Movie #62: "Tangled"
2010 was a year full of amazing animated features. "The Illusionist" and "Legend of the Guardians" and "Tales From EarthSea" were very nice, I loved "Toy Story 3" and "Despicable Me" and "How to Train Your Dragon", and both "Secret of Kells" and "Sita Sings the Blues" knocked my socks off for entirely different reasons.
So I hope nobody takes it as *too* much of a criticism when I say that "Tangled" wasn't as good as some of these other films, OK? I am saying it isn't as good as "Toy Story 3", for goodness sake, and what recent movies are? (I am a little anxious about this because I got a few comments that implied that readers thought my saying, "'Alice in Wonderland' didn't suck as much as I thought it would" meant "Holy sh*t, this movie was amazing!" instead of, "Literally the best thing I can say for this movie is that it didn't entirely suck.")
"Tangled" is very good and well worth a watch (it pains me that some of you may have a hard time being convinced of this but we'll get to that in a minute). Overall, comparing it to other recent D.A.C. films, I didn't like it as much as "The Princess and the Frog". (Tangent: In particular, the songs aren't nearly as good. Alan Menken is working with a new lyricist and the lyrics are... Menken needs to get Joss Whedon on the phone.) But it is a damn sight better than "Bolt". The CGI is far better and more confident than in any of the previous CGI Disney films, and it is SO pretty. Only criticism here is that you have never noticed until now that some of Glen Keane's human characters' faces are, like, 40% eyeball.
Lastly, Disney needs to get a new marketing division like woah. As with "Frog", they've done a capital job of making the movie look like exactly what it isn't (I nailed it earlier last year when I called the "Tangled" ads a "Scott Pilgrim" level of misaimed marketing). Just how worried were they about the supposed "boys think princesses are icky" thing? This little-seen trailer, on the other hand, makes me want Disney to have a copy of my portfolio to review yesterday:
For more posts in this ongoing series, go here, or click the Chronological Disney Animated Canon tag below.
----
Sketch of the Day!
I like water monsters. You like water monsters. We all like water monsters, so I did a digital painting of that water monster sketch from an earlier post:
Friday, September 10, 2010
It's Hummingbird Migration Time!
A few days ago, I had a teeny tiny flight-capable maniraptor with a beak sized and shaped very like an embroidery needle who subsists on a diet of straight-up sugar water hovering and feeding just a few inches from my squishy, easily-injured big clumsy primate eyeballs.
It looked like this:
(I apologize for the blurriness, but it's a wonder I got this photograph at all. If you look close, you can see the very beginnings of the namesake sparkly red throat feathers, meaning this little guy is a young male.)
Yes, the Ruby-Throated Hummingbirds are showing up en mass at my feeders. I had just one up during much of the summer, but I now have three, of varying sizes and shapes. They're all the standard kind you can get for under ten bucks at Evil Big Box Store, but honestly they work quite well. They seem to enjoy the little feeder that looks similar to this design best (mine has many more feeding ports). But the Opus Oriole Feeder (which the Orioles have staunchly ignored, go figure) is gaining in popularity, especially after I made smaller hummer-friendly perches with garden wires as seen here:
I never know what the consensus is on store-bought nectar mixes. Every spring it seems as though we get a warning not to use red dyed food, even though I've never heard any circumstantial reports that such food is dangerous. But I stopped using store-bought food last summer just in case -- and also because homebrew nectar mix is so ridiculously easy. Here's what you do:
1) Put three and a half to four cups of water in a teapot (the less water you use, the sweeter the mixture will be; my hummers seem to like the 3.5 cups best). Bring this to a boil.
2) Put one cup of sugar in a heatproof container. A large-ish saucepan works well, just as long as it can contain the water you are currently boiling.
3) When the water is boiled, remove it from the heat, then pour it in with the sugar and mix it together. Set it aside to cool and fully dissolve for a while, then refrigerate it in a pitcher or repurposed iced tea bottle. And you're done!
Some notes: No, it isn't dangerous for humans if they accidentally drink this; it's just sugar water. Yes, you must use sugar, not honey and certainly not fake sugar/Splenda/Sweet-N-Low/whatever. Nor shall you use brown sugar, confectioners sugar, or powdered sugar. Just ordinary table sugar will do. My rule of thumb: if I wouldn't put it in my coffee, I wouldn't make the Hummingbirds drink it either.
Wikkid Important Edit: Sheri Williamson of the lovely "Life, Birds, and Everything" blog commends my use of homemade sugar water because the dyes and preservatives used in store-bought nectar mixes are linked "with DNA damage (oh God, WHAT?), abnormal behavior, abnormal sperm, reduced reproductive success, reduced body and brain weight, and... increased hyperactivity symptoms." The idea of a hummingbird suffering from increased hyperactivity is going to be tonight's nightmare fuel.
And please brew some nectar and set up a feeder. It's been an unusually dry summer and these little guys have a hell of a lousy trip ahead of them.
-----
Sketch of the Day!
You haven't had enough of Hummingbirds have you?
----
There's a new teaser trailer for"Tangled" "Rapunzel" out and...
I've said before that if you go back and watch old trailers for the Disney classics, NONE of them inspire confidence. But this... this is like a "Scott Pilgrim" level of boneheaded advertising (and I say this because if "Rapunzel" bombs, it'll be for the same reason "Pilgrim" did: the wildly misaimed and utterly baffling marketing campaign.) Between this and the loathed "BLAM!!!" -uh- things, this is why you can't have nice things, Disney.
It looked like this:
(I apologize for the blurriness, but it's a wonder I got this photograph at all. If you look close, you can see the very beginnings of the namesake sparkly red throat feathers, meaning this little guy is a young male.)
Yes, the Ruby-Throated Hummingbirds are showing up en mass at my feeders. I had just one up during much of the summer, but I now have three, of varying sizes and shapes. They're all the standard kind you can get for under ten bucks at Evil Big Box Store, but honestly they work quite well. They seem to enjoy the little feeder that looks similar to this design best (mine has many more feeding ports). But the Opus Oriole Feeder (which the Orioles have staunchly ignored, go figure) is gaining in popularity, especially after I made smaller hummer-friendly perches with garden wires as seen here:
I never know what the consensus is on store-bought nectar mixes. Every spring it seems as though we get a warning not to use red dyed food, even though I've never heard any circumstantial reports that such food is dangerous. But I stopped using store-bought food last summer just in case -- and also because homebrew nectar mix is so ridiculously easy. Here's what you do:
1) Put three and a half to four cups of water in a teapot (the less water you use, the sweeter the mixture will be; my hummers seem to like the 3.5 cups best). Bring this to a boil.
2) Put one cup of sugar in a heatproof container. A large-ish saucepan works well, just as long as it can contain the water you are currently boiling.
3) When the water is boiled, remove it from the heat, then pour it in with the sugar and mix it together. Set it aside to cool and fully dissolve for a while, then refrigerate it in a pitcher or repurposed iced tea bottle. And you're done!
Some notes: No, it isn't dangerous for humans if they accidentally drink this; it's just sugar water. Yes, you must use sugar, not honey and certainly not fake sugar/Splenda/Sweet-N-Low/whatever. Nor shall you use brown sugar, confectioners sugar, or powdered sugar. Just ordinary table sugar will do. My rule of thumb: if I wouldn't put it in my coffee, I wouldn't make the Hummingbirds drink it either.
Wikkid Important Edit: Sheri Williamson of the lovely "Life, Birds, and Everything" blog commends my use of homemade sugar water because the dyes and preservatives used in store-bought nectar mixes are linked "with DNA damage (oh God, WHAT?), abnormal behavior, abnormal sperm, reduced reproductive success, reduced body and brain weight, and... increased hyperactivity symptoms." The idea of a hummingbird suffering from increased hyperactivity is going to be tonight's nightmare fuel.
And please brew some nectar and set up a feeder. It's been an unusually dry summer and these little guys have a hell of a lousy trip ahead of them.
-----
Sketch of the Day!
You haven't had enough of Hummingbirds have you?
----
There's a new teaser trailer for
I've said before that if you go back and watch old trailers for the Disney classics, NONE of them inspire confidence. But this... this is like a "Scott Pilgrim" level of boneheaded advertising (and I say this because if "Rapunzel" bombs, it'll be for the same reason "Pilgrim" did: the wildly misaimed and utterly baffling marketing campaign.) Between this and the loathed "BLAM!!!" -uh- things, this is why you can't have nice things, Disney.
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