DVDizzy Forum

I'd never even heard of The Brave Frog, but yikes! Right from the get-go we watch a family of frogs fleeing a predator as most of their baby tadpoles get eaten alive.

You can find clips on youtube and there's even a DVD available (somehow I'd assumed it wasn't ever released beyond the VHS era).

SillySymphony wrote:and it's also not entirely good to just watch cheesy-happy-sunshine movies.

What movies are these?

go to a video store and witness the horrors of the kids section.

Disney Duster wrote:

SillySymphony wrote:and it's also not entirely good to just watch cheesy-happy-sunshine movies.

What movies are these?

Examples of movies that bring me to tears with all their cheesy-happiness: My Little Pony, Strawberry Shortcake, the recent Barbie movies, Air/Snow/Space Buddies...

SillySymphony wrote:

Disney Duster wrote: What movies are these?

Examples of movies that bring me to tears with all their cheesy-happiness: My Little Pony, Strawberry Shortcake, the recent Barbie movies, Air/Snow/Space Buddies...

The very first MLP half-hour special was quite dark for a little girls' cartoon and had the scariest villain of the franchise. The next half-hour special was less edgy and had a wonderful villainess that kept everybody on their toes. After those specials, the TV series and movies really got cheesy-happy and most villains and villainesses acted goofy with silly designs and weren't real threats like the franchise's first two villains were.

Santa Buddies was too sweet, even for me. It had some conflict, but it was easily solved, there was no darkness, no desperation, it was all very shallow.

I mean, even Snow Buddies had very tense scenes, like the one where the dogs fall down the water while the owner just walks away.

See? Even the sweet stuff can have grave moments of drama.

SillySymphony wrote:

Disney Duster wrote: What movies are these?

Examples of movies that bring me to tears with all their cheesy-happiness: My Little Pony, Strawberry Shortcake, the recent Barbie movies, Air/Snow/Space Buddies...

Kelvin's going to hate me...

Meet Me in St. Louis
Pollyanna



albert

non-disney like doogle or impys island or brer rabbit

What about the Dutch animated tv series Alfred J. Quack? (It's been dubbed and aired in English, too.) In the second episode, young Alfred's father, mother and six siblings get run over by a limousine. I vividly remember the scene where the young duckling is standing in the puring rain and asks: "Where's daddy? Where's mommy?"

Goliath wrote:What about the Dutch animated tv series Alfred J. Quack? (It's been dubbed and aired in English, too.) In the second episode, young Alfred's father, mother and six siblings get run over by a limousine. I vividly remember the scene where the young duckling is standing in the puring rain and asks: "Where's daddy? Where's mommy?"

Yeah I rememeber that episode as well... I was shocked and stared at the TV for a while and felt so sad for Alfred!
The mole that took him in, I never liked him!

Night before last, I watched The Brave Frog movie in its entirety on YT. Wow, what a depressing movie. I loved how at the end the title character and narrator try to erase all the murder, beatings, and probably at least 20 emotional breakdowns characters suffered in the last hour and twenty-five minutes with "Things are sure looking up for Rainbow Pond, la la la la" and "Doing good and loving folks. Making friends and telling jokes. This is what our lives are for." Yet whenever a character did any of that stuff, they're soon struck with a traumatic situation. When they recover from the situation and finally have fun again, boom! traumatic situation. It goes on, and on, and on. Being happy is a curse on Rainbow Pond!

The Brave Frog is actually a japanese animated series that stuck all the episodes together into a movie. I guess they thought only the bad parts were dramatic enough to put in. Seriously, not a right a movie by all these accounts. And the animation sucks.

ajmrowland wrote:non-disney like doogle or impys island or brer rabbit

You mean Doogal, right? I was going to mention that too, but I never saw the whole movie.

Just something funny I found:

What it would be like if Disney Princesses had mums
http://www.cosmopolitan.co.uk/entertain ... -had-mums/

Page 161, The Art of Mulan (Jeff Kurtti, (c) 2020, Disney Enterprises, Inc.):

With two parents, unless they support the hero in different ways, they essentially perform the same story function. However, assigning different story functions to each parent can suggest a disagreement between them that may distract from the story's focus. In addition, animation being extremely expensive, it doesn't make sense to have two characters who do the same thing.

(In regards to Mulan:

Without her mother to represent what was expected of her, Mulan's dilemma and its ultimate resolution would not have been quite so clear.

)

That makes sense. Fa Li is very docile and obedient, much more than the Grandmother. I don't think she even speaks when Fa Zhou is around? I need to re-watch, but I can only remember her having a couple of lines before "Honor to Us All" chastising Mulan for being late and the markings on her wrist--when there are only fellow women around. Her being silent so often in the presence of the "man of the house" makes Mulan's outburst at the dinner table seem more out-of-place for sure.

Tbh, I always thought perhaps her only reason for existing was--since wanting to spare her father is the heroine's primary goal in this story--because it allowed them to animate that shot of the parents in shadow where the mother reveals her unhappiness in private / silence, to highlight all the ways the father character dying in war would be tragic to both Mulan and the audience. Never seeing his wife / the heroine's mother again would be a big one. Fa Li and Fa Zhou's interaction in the window was always very striking to me, probably for most viewers.

^ Fa Li also told Fa Zhou to go after Mulan or she'll be killed (& he says if she's exposed she will be killed).

So, the first quote in my last post, about what the Mulan book said about Disney parents, really interested me, so I went through some of my other Disney books this morning to get information about Disney parents. I went through a lot of books and came out with only a little information, but some of it's pretty interesting.

***
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: The Creation of a Classic (2012-2013, The Walt Disney Family Museum)

p. 30: "Again, the first step was to simplify the story. Walt and his writers ruthlessly pruned away unimportant details, producing an opening exposition even more spare than the Grimms' version. The film contains nothing about Snow White's birth, her mother's death, or her father's remarriage, all of which had figured in the Grimms' and other traditional versions of the tale. (These elements did reappear in some of the licensed children's books published upon the film's release."
***
Tale As Old As Time: The Art and Making of Beauty and the Beast (Charles Solomon, (c) 2017, Disney Enterprises, Inc., Disney Editions)

p.52: "The story unfolds at a stolid pace, with the narrator and Aunt Marguerite propelling the action. Deja says, "Another reason why this version didn't go through was beacuse the setup with the aunt pushed the father into the background and made the story too close to Cinderella."
"We had business for her aunt, her little sister, her cat, her father --everybody but Belle, which is usually symptomatic of not knowing what to do with the main character," says Don."
***
Treasure Planet: A Voyage of Discovery ((c) 2002, Disney Editions)
(This book actually has a lot of backstory on Jim's dad that I didn't type...)

p. 112: "Consequently, the filmmakers decided to all but extract the character of Jim's father from the story line, leaving Leland Hawkins to appear only in flashbacks, unlike the character in the original novel. This then allowed them to introduce the theme of Jim's search for a missing piece. "I think this change allowed us to have Jim grow a little more in the course of the story," Clements continues, "and made the Silver/Jim relationship more focused. Jim ends up discovering not just an obvious treasure; he discovers an inner treasure. He discovers what he can do, who he is, and what he can be.""
***
Chicken Little: From Henhouse to Hollywood (Monique Peterson, (c) 2005, Disney Enterprises, Inc., Disney Editions)

p.50: "In earlier versions of the film, Chicken Little's mother, Chloe, had a role, but it turned out she played her part too well. "Mothers are too good at making things work," Randy notes. "They are good mediators and they smooth out the rough edges." To make the story interesting, Mark and Randy wanted to preserve those rough edges. And so, Buck needed to arrive at a way to relate to his son without simply doing what his wife told him to do...Her presence is still felt, especially when Buck looks at her picture and says, 'If you were here, you'd know what to do.' In the end, her absence provides opportunities for the two characters to grow."
***
The Art of The Princess and the Frog (Jeff Kurtti, (c) 2009, Disney Enterprises/Walt Disney Animation Studios, Chronicle Books)

p. 42: "Tiana's relationships with her father, James, and her mother, Eudora, motivate her life."

p. 48: "...development of Tiana's father, James, and the idea of tying her dream of owning a restaurant to his."

p. 51: "The idea of James giving the illustration to Tiana was something that John Lasseter added...John thought that maybe we should have James actually write Tiana's name on it, and give it to her when she's a little girl and say, 'This is my dream and it can be our dream,' so it's a symbol throughout the rest of the movie of her dad's dream and love.""
***
The Art of Tangled (Jeff Kurtti, (c) 2010, Disney Enterprises/Walt Disney Animation Studios, Chronicle Books)

p. 72: "By story logic, Gothel had to appear as a safe and maternal figure to Rapunzel, otherwise Rapunzel would seem oddly unaware and dense-- unappealing traits for a lead character."
***
The Art of Brave (Jenny Lerew, (c) 2010, Disney Enterprises, Inc./Pixar, Chronicle Books)

p. 73: "Her temperament is more like her father's than her mother's."

p. 77: "Fergus lives somewhat in the past, because he's interested in the stories of exploits that happened before. Merida is a teenager and, like all kids, lives in the now. Elinor lives in the future-- Merida's future and her plans for the kingdom. So you have three sides of a perfect triangle: past, present, and future. Merida is stuck right in the middle. Elinor doesn't really comprehend that. So when she's a bear, she sees her daughter for the first time outside the context of, 'What's my daughter going to be?' And she realizes, 'I'm missing my daughter's life. I'm totally missing her." --Mark Andrews, director"

p. 84: "Fergus sees Merida for who she is, but at the same time he knows it's more Elinor's decision to plan his daughter's future. He knows that Elinor understands the political workings of the kingdom, and she bases her diplomatic decisions on tradition. He respects his queen for the peace she has helped to keep all this time. So even though he may see other possibilities for his daughter, he doesn't want to step on his wife's toes. --Brenda Chapman, director"

***

(Can Aurora, Hercules, Rapunzel, Anna & Elsa have two parents because they're not on screen much (besides King Stephan & Zeus)? Judy probably gets two parents because haha bunnies reproduce. And Sina gives Moana permission, really, to voyage, so she's a contrast to Tui, kind of like Elinor/Fergus. Should I not take what was in the Mulan book to heart, that usually there's only one parent due to streamlining the story/reducing cost?

Yeah, I think saving costs is a bigger reason. Besides, having two characters do something where one alone will suffice probably feels redundant to the creators / animators of most films.

I might try to buy that Treasure Planet book, since you say it has more information cut from the film. I'm not a PIXAR fan, but that excerpt on Elinor being the future, Merida the present, and Fergus the past was interest. What an interesting way to define those characters.

I own the book & I do recommend it, but since it's out of print, there are some people online who have uploaded things from the book. I'd say just do a Google Image search!