Disney PR will always make things seem the best as possible, that's the point of company PR.pap64 wrote:Sorry if I am raining down on anyone's parade, but it is getting frustrating trying to figure out what Disney thinks of the film.
, but then when he became the star, 
. It was a great way to end his character. Charlotte was hilarious, as I've heard, and Facilier was dark and imposing. His friends on the other side were dark too, in fact, maybe a little too intense for young eyes? 
The animation was just superb. Where has Disney been all these years? Overall, I'm giving it a 9.5/10. A wonderful film.
The Hillbillies remind me of this scene....or this editorial cartoonDisney Duster wrote:Toonaspie:
1) The hillbillies were not very funny, they were pretty poor comedy. However the mice and Lucifer are funny, doing more clever stuff in how they beat Lucifer, escape Lucifer, how Lucifer takes on different shapes, etc.
2) They were actual important characters to the story, helping Cinderella a lot or hindering Cinderella a lot. They were also in the original fairy tale, provided characters for Cinderella to show her kindness to and be rewarded by, etc.
Capone: What do you remember about auditioning for this? I assume you had to audition in some way for this role.
ANR: Three times actually!
ANR: The first time I went in and I went through the Disney offices and I saw all of the animation from years and years past on the walls as I walked through. I got so teary. I was so moved to even be in there. This has been my lifelong dream to be a Disney voice, not necessarily a princess. I had a meeting with Disney two years prior to this and I didn’t know what the meeting was for, it was just a general meeting. And at that time I had prepared to be a tick. I knew what this tick was going to sound like and what he was going to do when he bit somebody and I knew that was going to be it. I had that waiting in case they needed to hear something other than my voice.
ANR: I had about four scenes that I had to read through. There was no one in the room with me, everyone was on the other side of the glass, and it was dark over there and you would hear, “So Anika, that was lovely, can you do it again from… Let’s try page…” And they said it was going to be jazz era, so I must have brought in like eight songs and I think I sang about five of them, because I was not leaving that room without convincing them that “You’ve got your person. It’s me!” sang something from AIN’T MISBEHAVIN’. I sang “Miss Celie's Blues” from THE COLOR PURPLE. I sang… I can’t remember what else I sang, but I sang several other songs.
I wanted her [Tiana] to have some body on her. I didn’t want her to be a waify little thing that looked like she was going to blow away. The woman is making beignets; I would assume she’s tasted a couple. You know what I mean?
That was important to me, and we really talked about that. I said, “Tiana needs to have a little booty on her. I need to see somebody who looks like she takes part in her profession and is true to her background.” I think that’s wonderful. Her hair has curl to it, it’s not some hair that’s straight and blowing in the wind that kids have to work for come Halloween. She doesn’t look like they took another princess and dunked her in chocolate, and that’s nice.
Capone: I know that you typically record alone, but did you get to meet any other actors that you were in scenes with?
ANR: Bruno! I met Bruno and we did one or two sessions together, just little pieces of sessions, because they wanted some ad-libs and us bouncing off of each other. But it’s funny, because I knew Jenifer Lewis beforehand, I knew Keith [David]. Jennifer [Cody] and I knew of each other, but had never seen each other. Michael-Leon Wooley and I were in DREAMGIRLS together. Terrence [Howard] and I had just finished doing CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF on Broadway in 2008. It’s so random that I did actually know a lot of these people. Did I see them? No.
I think it's normal when first seeing a movie to think the pace goes too fast. I always tend to think this with alot of movies I watch the first time around.Disney's Divinity wrote:I just bought the Blu-ray/DVD combo and I've finally seen TP&TF again. And maybe it was just because I was in a good mood or because seeing it with other people makes things more lively, but none of what bothered me before bothers me now. The hillbillies were actually entertaining to me this time around, and Louis wasn't annoying (I think I have this hate-the-sidekick mentality following Hunchback, Pocahontas, Tarzan, et al, but he actually seemed to be okay except for a scene or two; and, of course, he was very well-voiced). Even Ray's funeral scene worked better--the leaf looked less like a 3D object pushed along. It felt more organic. I also felt Naveen's butler had a decently wrapped up ending. Although Naveen recognizing his on part in leading him to be bad might've been a nice addition, it wasn't necessary. I don't know, I just absolutely loved this movie.
And now more than ever, I still don't understand this "the movie was rushed/the pacing was off" thing. It's just complete nonsense. Facilier and Naveen's intro. actually worked pretty smoothly to me when I watched it this time, and, for the rest of the film, everything seemed nearly too long to me: the middle-of-the-movie frog scenes seemed to stretch on forever before they finally got to Odie. I don't know how anyone can think the movie went too fast.
I think the only thing that still stood out to me was that Facilier needed more screentime--at least one more scene placed right would've made it better, I think. And, yes, the music is still a weak point. Overall though, the movie was fabulous. Maybe not in my top ten, but at least nearby to it.
(Just as a additional comment, my mother's reaction after it was over: "That was better than Up." Without my prodding. Glad I'm not the only one who felt that way.)
Q: I understand from John Lasseter that you guys were let go from the Studio.
JOHN MUSKER: We were banished, actually. [LAUGHTER] It was very fairy tale, yeah.
RON CLEMENTS: We had reached the end of our contracts—
JM: No, we were fired.
RC: Well, yeah, but it was the end of our contract. But we actually ended up being gone for only about six months, although at the time that we left, we didn’t really picture coming back.
JM: Disney had changed around us, somewhat, and the Disney we were leaving wasn’t the Disney we had been raised up by. It was heading in this direction we weren’t so crazy about.
Q: How did you feel when you got the telephone call to come back?
JM: It was hearing the news that we never anticipated. Pixar was estranged from Disney and we thought, ‘Well, they’ll probably make up somehow. It makes too much sense.’
RC: It just felt wrong.
JM: I hadn’t anticipated that they would put John Lasseter in charge here. And that was a whole new wrinkle, and suddenly, there was a possibility we could come back. And then when John called us and asked, ‘Hey, would you guys like to make another movie here?’—
RC: We were close to actually signing a deal to do a movie at another studio.
JM: John just said, ‘There’s all this stuff going on. I can’t talk to you in any great length, but just trust me. Don’t sign with somebody else.’ So we said to our lawyer, ‘We can’t do this. Don’t sign this piece of paper.’
RC: And a few weeks after that, the announcement was made, and we were very happy about that.
JM: And in terms of the character design—I drew the first sketch of the Prince way back when, and I did my drawings based on Cary Grant. But then, as Randy Haycock took it over and we really invented this country of Maldonia, we got pictures of handsome men from many cultures around the world, and we brought women in to look at these pictures. And we asked them to flag the ones they found most handsome. And we even did that with the English-language voice of the Prince, Bruno Campos. We had a taste test. We had three finalists for the Prince’s voice, and we didn’t say who they were, just A, B and C. And we brought some women in and asked them, ‘Which voice engaged you most?’ We wanted him to be both funny and a leading man, and dare I say it, sexy? Attractive. And the women chose Bruno. They all responded to him so much.
RC: And with Tiana, there were boards with pictures of African-American women, and we used them to evolve her design.
JM: We had a character design retreat. We actually went to Ojai, which is a city not far from here, very pretty city, with all the supervising animators, Mark Henn and Bruce Smith and all. We all got together and we put all the drawings of the characters together and different animators would take a drawing. Bruce might take a drawing of Tiana that Mark had done, and he would do some refinement. So there was a lot of cross-pollination, to try and fit the animator with the character, to find the artist that produced the appeal, the dimensionality that we were going for. It was not an instant process.
RC: John actually did the original designs of all the characters, which I still remember. For our original pitch of the movie to John Lasseter in March of 2006, we had drawings of all the characters that John had done, along with photographs of settings from New Orleans.
JM: Certainly, the actors affect the design. Anika Noni Rose, the English-language Tiana, she has these dimples that Mark Henn included. Keith David has this split in his teeth that Bruce Smith gave to Dr. Facilier, our villain. And I think Naveen was pretty much designed before we got Bruno, so that design didn’t change too much with Bruno, they’re both really handsome.
JM: Randy Haycock did an early exercise, and he animated Prince Naveen saying a line from Johnny Depp in Don Juan de Marco—“I give women pleasure,” or something like that. And he did it very saucy, coming from this dreamboat, handsome guy. And then he did the same animation with Naveen as a frog, and tried to keep the same come-hither look on his face and the same attitude
JM: The first drawing I did of Ray, I drew him like [the musician] Dr. John. I gave him a little beret and a mustache and all these things. And that went away.
JM: Bill Schwab, a visual development artist who was a character designer, he took the drawings of Ray that had been done and he really refined them, so the design that you see is really a combination of Bill Schwab and Mike Surrey, who ultimately designed the character.
Q: Do you know what’s next?
JM: No, we had a few ideas that we pitched to John a while ago that we’re going to look back at, but we haven’t zeroed in on one yet.
IagoZazu wrote:I don't understand peoples' pacing problem as well. I thought it went together fairly well. It just might have seemed quick when you're in a theater with a big screen and sound system. I also liked how "Down in New Orleans" introduced Facilier and Naveen. The introduction was pretty good.
Me neither. The pacing seems fine to me. The movie didn't seem rushed at all. The only thing is that I think they should have given Facilier a little more screen time.IagoZazu wrote:I don't understand peoples' pacing problem as well. I thought it went together fairly well. It just might have seemed quick when you're in a theater with a big screen and sound system. I also liked how "Down in New Orleans" introduced Facilier and Naveen. The introduction was pretty good.
