Film: 'Frozen Fever'/'Cinderella' (2015)

'Frozen Fever' (2015)

Director: Chris Buck, Jennifer Lee
Story: Chris Buck, Jennifer Lee, Mark E. Smith

Perhaps the most anticipated Disney short of the 21st century, this seemingly inconsequential addition to the extremely well-legged "Classic" (besides Kristoff letting slip his love for Anna) concerns Anna's birthday celebration and Elsa having a cold which manages to magically create miniature snowmen every time she sneezes.  These are eventually taken under the wind of Olaf, who gets to have some of Anna's ice cream birthday cake.  Despite the animation not seeming quite as well done as the premiere feature seemed (maybe a 3D viewing would have proved beneficial) and the vaguely depressing notion that Olaf's overhanging snow cloud that keeps him from melting is essentially life-support machine, this is a charmingly illustrated product.

'Cinderella' (2015)

Director: Kenneth Branagh
Writer: Chris Weitz (based on Disney's Cinderella properties and the fairy tale by Charles Perrault)

*Possible spoilers*

"Product" being the word that is easy to label this new instalment in Disney's cash-in phase - not only does it credit the source being Charles Perrault's fairy tale but also the 1949 film's "properties".  Wow.  Having seemingly done with the run of straight-to-video sequels, the company now visits their Vault with a new method to making money off of the more sacred entries in their animated canon and anyone disappointed by the revisionism of Maleficent (2014) can understandably approach this remake with low expectations.  This time though, the reinventing route of screenwriter Linda Wolverton (Maleficent and 2010's Alice In Wonderland) is put aside in favour of a much more straight-up re-enactment, courtesy of Chris Weitz (and unlike 2007's fantasy flop The Golden Compass, this actually retains the source material's ending).  Here, it is neither a sequel (Alice In Wonderland), nor a revision (Maleficent) but something more akin to a Shakespeare play being performed by the same company via pantomime (and it doesn't get much more pantomime than new fairy godmother Helena Bonham Carter).

The remake largely discarding the original's songs, relegating "Bippity Boppity Boo" (performed by Bonham Carter) and "A Dream Is A Wish Your Heart Makes" (Lily James) to the end credits, much in the manner of "Once Upon a Dream" in Maleficent (after all, Disney does have a soundtrack album to sell).  It also tones down the anthropomorphism of the mice, reducing their sped-up voices to incoherent babbling and taking away their clothes.  The digital work on the mice isn't perfect but it's better than whatever was done to depict Bonham Carter's fairy godmother as a decrepit (it's AWFUL).  Gone also are the Tom & Jerry antics between the mice and pet cat Lucifer.  What we do have is more of a backstory (given in the original as narrated exposition) in which we meet Cinderella's parents prior to her mother's U-rated illness and death.  The creation of Cinderella's original dress (aided by the mice) is now reduced to being part of a montage and the motivation behind it's humiliating tearing is now snobbery rather than because the step sisters recognised elements of their own property being seemingly misappropriated. 

The love story is also much closer to the "meeting of two people in the right circumstances" that was digged at in the original, sixty-four years before Frozen (2013) questioned the marital pairing of people who had only met that night.  Here, our heroine meets her future bae after she runs away from home on a real-life horse and he is out hunting a poorly-rendered stag.  They circle each other on horseback and it's quite obvious she desires congress.

As a singular self-contained entity, it is quite an efficient entertainment with beautiful scenery (a glimpse of what the inevitable live-action Frozen might look like) and an extremely well-detailed palace.  It's a grottier portrayal of the time and place than the original, but not quite as darkly designed as the Cinderella segments of Disney's recent musical fairy tale assembling Into The Woods (2014).  The morbid humour in that film cannot be found here - the step-sisters don't hack off parts of their feet in order to make the glass slipper fit and neither are they blinded by birds.  Also, in this remake, the sisters are "fairer" on the outside than perhaps usually expected of an adaptation while their "ugliness" is internal.  The stepmother is now re-MILFed by Cate Blanchett who - in an interesting tinkering with the third act - tries to use Cinderella's one slipper as a key to gaining power in the kingdom.

The film also takes advantage of the physically three-dimensional characters by making them more human than their hand-drawn predecessors.  Lily James's (Fast Girls, 2012) Cinderella breaking down (breaking some crockery in the process) elicits genuine sympathy while the stepmother is allowed a tear for the passing of her husband - although whether it's from grief or from fear of financial ruin is unclear.  The stepfamily's poverty is a key point and they are permitted redemption at the end - the sisters seemingly repent while the mother is shown grace.

Digital mice aside (and Bonham Carter's appearance may be sniffed by some as stock casting), it's a fine companion piece and essentially enjoyable by itself (it might have been fruitful to filter out the original's references).  2017's Beauty And The Beast will have some of its own original's fans to convince though.

My Picks of "New" Who Stories (2005-2014)

On 26th March 2005, Doctor Who returned to television as a regular series after a near-absence of nearly sixteen years, barring the 1996 TV movie (a significant point in the show's history as a franchise) and the odd sketch.  Show-run by Russell T. Davies, it starred Christopher Eccleston in the role of the Ninth Doctor for one series before he regenerated into David Tennant and a legend was reborn.  The series has carried on the tradition of occasionally renewing itself and its various features, be they Doctors, companions, theme arrangement, TARDIS control room, Daleks and Cybermen.

Tomorrow, I shall blog on some highlights from across the revival up to the end of 2014 but in the meantime, here are some of my picks of the stories from 2005 onwards.

THE DAY OF THE DOCTOR (2013)

Recently voted the favourite all-time story by readers of Doctor Who Magazine - even beating The Caves Of Androzani (1984) - this is pretty much "New Who"'s own The Five Doctors (1983).  The 1995 Special Edition of 20th anniversary special was my full-on introduction to the series.  It works pretty well as a stand-alone (well enough to convince someone in their pre-teens of the series' value) although the original cut is slightly clunky when watched as part of a broadcast-ordered marathon.

The Day Of The Doctor was a 3D 75-minuter which garnered a theatrical release (winning a place in the UK Box Office Top 10) and pays off an arc that tailed off with the departure of David Tennant (the Time War) and paid off a mystery teased in the Series 7 finale, The Name Of The Doctor (2013) - that of a previously unseen Doctor (John Hurt).  Had there not been a surprise cameo by impending Doctor Peter Capaldi, this would have served as a satisfactory finale to the series as a whole and a good point to end it indefinitely again.  If one watches this at the end of a run through everything since 1963, it might seem like everything had been building up to the scene in which every Doctor returns (albeit thanks to stock-footage and someone impersonating the voice of William Hartnell) to save the day.  It ends on a positive note with an optimistic reversal of the original premise of the Doctor being an intergalactic exile.

Besides the perhaps obvious use of the Daleks (courtesy of the Time War), the special also amusingly revived the Zygons (did Moffat have a hat with some pieces of paper in it?) for a long-non-awaited sequel to Terror Of The Zygons (1976) which seemingly ended in an apparent path to peace with the human race. 

A Doctor-team up had previously occurred in the Children-in-Need skit Time Crash (2007) and, sort-of-but-not-quite in the festive special The Next Doctor (2008) but this is the first instance of "New Who" (a division which I hope to drop this week) has carried on in the tradition of teaming up Doctors during the anniversary year with particular resemblance to The Three Doctors (1972-1973).  It perhaps suggests the best team-ups are at least two at once - Tennant and Smith work well together (it also serves as a bonus David Tennant story) while Hurt is more of a supporting role.  It's a bit of a pity that Eccleston could not join the line-up and than McGann could not have been an alternative fill-in to make the link between "old and new" but Hurt's Doctor works in bringing back some mystery and brought some new mythology not only to the show, but to the Doctor.


THE ANGELS TAKE MANHATTAN (2012)

Some of those who know me probably know about my thing for Karen Gillan and this was the official final episode with Amy Pond (barring a hallucinogenic cameo in Matt Smith's send-off).  The "mid-season" finale ending a set of stand-alone episodes (which had no relation to the Silence arc of Series 6 and set-up the future mystery of Clara Oswald), this is arguably the bleakest episode since The Caves Of Androzani, both in tone and (at one or two points) in the score and has two beloved characters making the ultimate sacrifice in order to defeat New Classic monsters, the Weeping Angels.  Reminiscent of Rose Tyler's departure in Army Of Ghosts/Doomsday (2006), it sends the characters off to an apparent point of no-return, thanks to the power of wibbly-wobbly-timey-whimey (which fans have tried to work their way around).

BLINK (2007)

A fan favourite, this is basically the "Gospel tract" of Doctor Who.  A "Doctor-lite" episode with more supportive appearances from David Tennant and Freema Agyeman as companion Martha Jones, this is very much from the point-of-view of one of the best-companions-never, Sally Sparrow (Cary Mulligan).  Watched again as part of a marathon, it also comes across as a prototype Matt Smith episode (thanks to some music that would be used in an Eleventh Doctor computer game and only recognised on a subsequent viewing).  It has a hint of the future "dark fairy tale" tone that Moffat would use for Smith's first series.  It begins with our heroine breaking into an abandoned house, has her battling against living stone angels and concludes with the implication that the monsters can be found around us in our everyday surroundings.  The go-to episode for winning a convert to the series (at least from the "revived" lot).

LISTEN (2014)

Steven Moffat's second Blink.  It sets up a mystery that turns out to what might be nothing at all, this is one of the best directed episodes of the revival.  Going from a child's bedroom in the past to a lonely time-travelling astronaut at the end of the universe (before concluding in the childhood bedroom of a lonely time-traveller), it has the kind-of "domestic horror" (i.e. bringing it into the home) that I'd like to see more of in the future and can be seen in earlier serials such as Terror Of The Autons (1971) and Survival (1989), whilst also returning to the "dark fairy tale" not seen for about four years.  If Blink has a monster at the end of the garden, this has the monster under the bed.

Film (Home viewing catchup): Pudsey The Dog: The Movie (2014)

Director: Nick Moore
Screenwriter: Paul Rose

The Pudsey act is perhaps tolerable for a 2-3 minute YouTube video but isn't anything worth not changing the channel over and had any feature-length cash-in had a story, been adequately-shot and enough amusement to pass the time innocuously, this might have been vaguely passable as something for the Children's Film Foundation.  But we don't get that.  What we do get is plod rather than plot, a TV talent show star seemingly channelling the voice of one of his judges (and, with his farm animal co-stars, occasionally aided by rubbish digital mouth work which is so below the standard set by Babe), badly-shot slapstick and a seemingly 'U' rating-friendly cumshot gag, which even Michael Bay might have thought would be a bit much in a children's film.  There isn't even that much of Pudsey walking on his hind legs.

Film: Chappie (2015)

Starts out as Robocop with dog-ears (or K9 meets Pudsey/any dog that can walk on its hind legs). Essentially about an amnesiac police officer being raised by a gang, it is both too sweary and graphic for anyone under the age of 15 yet has preschool-level moralising (a children's book on the story of a black sheep provides an oh-so subtle analogy). Good cinematography and synthy scoring and Blomkamp's continued throwback to more adult SF action fare indicates quite capable hands for the next 'Alien' instalment.

Film: 'Fifty Shades of Grey' (2015)

TITLE: Fifty Shades Of Grey
YEAR: 2015
STUDIO: Universal
DIRECTOR: Sam Taylor-Wood
SCREENWRITER: Kelly Marcel (based on the novel by E.L. James)


On the same day I watched this film, my parents came home from a little holiday and had bought me some cheese, the package of which promised a hint of blue.  Anyone going into this film hoping for some cheese will be disappointed but there is at least a hint of blue in it.


Based on the vastly popular bestseller by E.L. James and adapted by the writer of the vastly superior Saving Mr Banks (2013), perhaps the film-makers should have learned a lesson from that film and followed Disney's lead in how they chose to adapt the source material despite the author's protestations.  If the film-makers had indeed tried to adjust the story due to questionable material (hands-up right now, this author has only merely scantly glanced at the source material), they have come up with something that seems both compromised and at the same time nothing that members of the kink community should be protesting about.  Compromised because they may well have tried to "improve" on the source text, ethically speaking, but also having to be saddled with the two leads giving monotonous readings for the duration.


The leads in question being Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) - a virginal English Literature student with an annoying name, and 27-year-old-but-looks-12 billionaire Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan), who is clearly an alien or a robot, based on the evidence of Dornan's performance.  They are introduced to each other when Steele comes to his office for an interview for the student magazine and she makes a very contrived trip onto the floor.  For some reason, she is soon taken with him and for some reason, he starts demonstrating stalker tendencies.  Early warning signs include when he informs her that he won't touch her without her written consent but pretty much a minute later changes his mind in a lift and says "Fuck the paperwork!" before cornering her for a snog.  At another point Ana phones him while drunk on a night out and he comes over to rescue her from a friend coming onto her (and no, not in that way).  Ana swoons and regains consciousness in a bedroom and in a new set of clothes with an 'Alice in Wonderland' plot device at her bedside - a bottle of something that says "Drink me" and something the says "Eat me".  So, like any idiot, she does.  Apparently Christian redressed her and slept at her side but nothing further - "Necrophilia is not my thing", he claims.  Dude, that's not the word for what it would have been - this is the first of two instances where the film-makers tread around that particular subject like it was an eggshell.  The other is when it turns out Grey was seduced at the age of 15 by his own "Mrs. Robinson".  Mrs. Robinson wasn't a paedophile though, although Ana's refers to the seductress as a "child abuser" for some reason.


Grey also gifts Ana with old books, a new computer, and a car, and soon she is taken to his place.  He claims he doesn't do romance but he does show what he does do - he has a "play room" (yeah, he's into that sort of thing).  Ana reveals that she's a virgin and he decides that's something that needs rectifying.  Wanker.  What follows is the first of a few sex scenes that reminds us that this is a film for "adults" (through the eyes of mums that were technically too old for Twilight).  It's vaguely surprising to see a mainstream Hollywood film have this kind of frank nudity on display but it's not particularly onanistic stuff.  If anything, Steve McQueen's Shame (2011) could serve as a palette cleanser and the quasi-religious flogging scene (accompanied by Church choir courtesy of Danny Elfman's score) serves as a reminder to go back and re-watch Ken Russell's The Devils (1971).  Even the seemingly stop-motion animated subliminal "flash" (oh, I see what they did there) of a close-up of Dornan's crotch as he unzips just brings to mind the dancing penis from Bruno (2009).


One can detect the Twilight roots with regards to the Grey character - he's a protective guy who at one point saves our heroine from being knocked down and likes to play the piano.  So it seems Grey's way of doing things is to set up a contract if Ana is to be his submissive (hardly an appealing selling point for the lifestyle) and she proposes a business meeting so they can negotiate (zzzzzzz).  At this meeting, she declares that there is to be no anal fisting (you'd think at this point, the film-makers were sniggering behind the camera like the audience would be while E.L. James gives them the evils).  Perhaps unfortunately, this wasn't directed by Paul Verhoeven nor written by Joe Eszterhas, although the nearest to Eszerthasan it gets is when Grey declares "I don't make love.  I fuck.  Hard."  Still, Showgirls (1995) it ain't.


Ana is reluctant to sign the contract and seems to prefer a "normal" relationship.  She asks Grey at one point why he's trying to change her, and he tells her it's the other way round.  There's no real evidence of this except when he's persuaded to stay in bed with her the whole night and actually smiles (sorta) in a newspaper photo taken of the two of them together.  We don't actually really care about these characters although by the end of the film, perhaps through its sheer length, we at least feel like we've known them and have been in their company and any "nostalgia" felt when seeing them in subsequent sequels would be like seeing Bella and Edward in a new Twilight film even if you weren't a fan of the previous ones.
 
To be fair, even if the kink lifestyle isn't given a fair hearing in this film, it is possible that the film (I can't comment on the novel) can be seen as a cautionary tale on how not to live it.  Anyone curious about the lifestyle could be either attracted to it even more or turned away from it.  And unlike the Twilight movies, this adaptation refrains from using a voice-over by the protagonist, thus creating an objective view of the proceedings and letting the audience decide for themselves.  Rather than a "love story", it's more of an "anti-love story" where the two leads don't end up together.  What would have made it more interesting would be if the film-makers provided a commentary on a seemingly "vanilla" (i.e. "normal") equivalent of a dominant/submissive relationship, such as that in which the woman is regarded and treated as a "princess".  Here, they could even have added an anti-monarchy agenda.


As with Jupiter Ascending (2014), it's a bit of a shame this film presumably wasn't edited by the makers of the film's trailer - the one that showcased Beyoncé's theme song "Haunted", and succeeded in making the film look like a fragrance advert.

Film: Project Almanac (2014)

In which a bunch of young people build a time machine based on plans left behind by the lead's dead father after seeing the lead on a home movie of his ten-year-younger self's birthday.  The screenwriting debut of writers Jason Pagan and Andrew Deutschman as well as the feature debut of director Dean Israelite - the cousin of Jonathan Liebesman, he who directed Platinum Dunes' The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (2006) - this sits alongside The Purge (2013) in the Non-Franchise Science Fiction section of Platinum Dunes' output.  A found-footage movie (which ends with the footage being found), it's USP is that the footage concerns its characters travelling through time and capturing on the camera both the time travelling and the effects the characters' actions have on the timeline (including a Back To The Future-esque fade-out variation of the Blinovitch Limitation Effect).  As the characters make mistakes and travel back again and again to fix things, it makes a verbal reference to Groundhog Day (1992) as well as Looper (2012) (marking a character in the past and witnessing its effects on them in the present) and - in what is perhaps the most flaccid "geeky" reference imaginable - Doctor Who.

As with slasher movies, its leads aren't people that we particularly care about, the blonde girl barely registers, the central lead Jonny Weston is clearly more than ten years older than his past self but Sam Lerner does seem a suitable, if not better, replacement for Shia LaBeouf if they ever consider bringing Sam Witwicky back to the Transformers movies.  This is more of a film where you don't character about the characters but you're more interested in what happens to them.  The plot fairly aimlessly wanders once they have figured out how the time travel works and use it to their own ends, such as winning the lottery (and using it to help the lead's mum), getting back at a high school bully and a teacher as well as - albeit with questionable ethics - getting the girl (cf. About Time, 2013).  The found-footage motif is really only justified by the time travel angle but as with Cloverfield (2007), the filming and editing techniques might be put to interesting use outside of the 'found-footage' genre.  Also, Imagine Dragons' Radioactive gets performed at a gig, the usage of which in any film might be enough to bump up a star rating.

Film Brief: 'Big Hero 6' (2014)

TITLE: Big Hero 6
DIRECTOR: Don Hall, Chris Williams
SCREENWRITERS: Jordan Roberts, Daniel Gerson, Robert L. Baird (based on the characters created by Duncan Rouleau and Steven T. Seagle) (Heads of Story: Paul Briggs, Joseph Mateo)

IN BRIEF(ish):
After plundering fairy tales for stories to integrate into what would become the "canon" of Animated Classics (the most recent example being the seemingly immortalised Frozen), Disney more "modern mythologies", such as video games in 2012's Wreck-It-Ralph and now Marvel comics in Big Hero 6.  And indeed, after the Marvel Cinematic Universe turned going to the movies into homework assignments (the biggest chore being 2013's Thor: The Dark World), Big Hero 6 is one of the best looking of the latest Marvel offers.  The design of San Fransokyo makes this Disney's Blade Runner and it makes a great case for the good that CGI can be put to as well as what depth to CG animation that 3D can bring.  It is also one of the most fun so far.  On my so-far initial viewing of Guardians Of The Galaxy (2014), I could not get into it and dismissed it as a Saturday morning cartoon on a similar par to DC's flop Green Lantern (2011), although admittedly it may have been as much to do with the environment in which I was watching it and will give it another chance soon.  But Big Hero 6 is proper good fun and a real treat to take kids to see as a Saturday matinee.  It is funny, even if not quite in the same way as Wreck-It-Ralph's near-Aardman-esque humour, isn't entirely clean-cut when it comes to deciding it's heroes and villains (even the protagonist makes a not particularly heroic choice) and it has a likeable USP character in inflatable robot Baymax.  It does somewhat suffer a common problem from Disney animations in that it isn't easy to get emotionally invested in its CG humans (Frozen perhaps comes close) and one set piece gag about Baymax getting inebriated as a result of running low on batteries is simply a one-off and is never paid off in a way one would expect in the film's climax.