Stories for the Season: Prep & Landing

You could definitely argue that the story and traditions surrounding Santa are a modern-day folktale so I think it's appropriate to draw your attention to a new featurette (about 25 minutes) now available online from Disney.

It aired on ABC on December 8th but now you can watch it ('with limited commercial interruption') in HD online.Now: I've known about this for a while and the promo posters and artwork I saw didn't interest me at all BUT I finally saw this yesterday and found this short to be very sweet, full of heart, (lots of great and gentle humor that doesn't try to be too clever (most of the time) and doesn't veer TOO much into the 'self-referential' realm, very Christmas-sy (nodding to more Christmas traditions than you may realize we include in our Holiday celebrations) and, overall, possibly one of the best things to come out of Disney features in a decade.So take a look. It's free to view HERE (and I strongly suggest full screen so you can properly enjoy it).

I'm including a preview below, just in case ABC takes it offline (I know they're planning to air it yearly from now on, so in all likelihood it will disappear sometime soon). It doesn't quite give the sweet feeling that the actual short manages to capture but it explains the premise (not necessary to know to enjoy the short by the way). If you just watch this promo/making of and it still doesn't appeal, give the short a go anyway. I was pleasantly surprised. Maybe you will be too. :)

The Princess and the Frog Featurette: Magic of the Bayou

One more featurette before the big release day tomorrow. This one revives my enthusiasm for seeing the movie (the opening scene with the young Tiana greatly dampened it for a while there).This featurette is called Magic of the Bayou and gives us glimpses of scenes we haven't seen before. I particularly like the way the good magic of Mama Odie (in the movie it's voodoo) balances the bad of Dr. Facilier (also voodoo).Nice use of color palettes for good vs evil, yes? You may notice there's also a strong set of shapes for each set: long, lean and stretched for the baddies, round, earthy and comfortably plump for the good. I've yet to see all the magic effects but the clips I've seen and pics like these show curly, sinuously moving creeping magic for Dr. Facilier while Mama Odie's is strong and ray-like.

Here's the featurette - enjoy!

I sincerely hope the movie does well and revives people's enthusiasm for fairy tales. It's been a while since they've been in popular culture and, despite the Disneyfication of the tales (and this story, while taking inspiration from The Frog Prince and some ideas from the book "The Frog Princess" by E.D. Baker, is really more of a Disney original story than a retelling) there's no doubt we owe Disney a great deal of thanks for keeping fairy tales in the popular consciousness.

Behind-the-Scenes of Vogue's "The Wild Swans"

A sincere thank you to Jordan Scott (a.k.a. J.R.D.S.) for kindly alerting me to the fact that this video was already up (I guess, as Mr. Scott said, they meant November 23rd, not December 23rd).

Here's a real treat: the behind-the-scenes video of the fashion shoot for vogue Korea's 'fairy tale issue for December 2009, specifically the shoot for "The Wild Swans".I'm embedding two versions: one with English subtitles and one without. While both have text on the screen, the English subtitled one does cover some of the images you may be interested in. Interestingly, the models all talk about their impressions of the story and what they think we can learn from it.

Enjoy!

No English subtitles:


With English subtitles:



While I found these on YouTube, the Vogue Korea website Mr. Scott alerted me to with the original video is HERE.

The models for this shoot were the popular 'boy band' members of SHINee and Korean star Seo-hyun.

There are obviously scenes shown in this behind-the-scenes that I haven't found photos of on the web anywhere (I got some poor quality screen caps as examples) so that's another reason to go find this fairy tale themed issue of Vogue Korea (December 2009). Nice stuff!

I should also mention Jordan Scott's fascinating website of little known animated fairy tales from around the world called "The Palace of Animated Drawings". It's worth taking some time to look through properly - there are some real gems there. You can find it HERE.

"Beastly" Movie Teaser Trailer

You probably already know about the book "Beastly" by Alex Flinn, which is a modern retelling of Beauty and the Beast, and that there's a movie coming to us in 2010. (SurLaLune posted on the movie announcement a while back HERE).

Today I have a not-so-new sneak-peek of behind-the-scenes of the film, shown by ET and, finally, the long-awaited trailer.First, the behind-the-scenes look, since that came out a while ago:


And now, the teaser (i.e. short) trailer:


Here's an excerpt from an article about transforming the handsome young actor into something more 'beastly':

Alex Pettyfer in prosthetics as the beast. The makeup includes 67 pieces, and 60 tattoos and individual scars in his whole body. It took 6 hours to apply the full makeup.

Alex Pettyfer once said in an interview that he only looks like his normal self in the film for a few minutes. For the rest of his time frame, he will be wearing a specially designed “grotesque” prop as the beast.Pettyfer’s appearance in the film mostly featured him with his beast prosthetics. As described in the novel, it was supposed to be “hairy” and “gross”, but the film makers did some slight revisions. Pettyfer was delighted with the revision and stated:

I was very happy to know I wasn’t going to be furry. Question is, were you happy I wasn’t furry? Well, I think the audience will be happy. This beast make-up is phenomenal. You’re talking to someone who is a fanatic about it [prosthetics and movie make-up] and I’ve never seen anything that looks remotely similar to this.

Pettyfer’s beast makeup was composed of 67 pieces. There are 7 pieces to be put on his head and other 60 tattoos and individual scars applied when he had the full body make up on. To put up the makeup, it took the artists 6 hours to finish. Pettyfer commented on his ‘transformation’:

It really affected me because as soon as I shaved my head it kind of put me in this weird place, the same place [Kyle is in after his transformation] which really helped me with the role a lot. But at the same time, it kind of is a challenge because you are fighting personally with your own problems off set, but then onset you have a great resource to go to.

You can read the rest of the article which has lots more about the film HERE.

I'm hearing good things about the book (it's in my to-read pile but I've yet to get to it) and hope the film will prove to be as well liked.

Disney's The Princess and the Frog - Conjuring the Villain NEW Featurette

Just a little something that popped up today - getting a behind-the-scenes look at what went into creating the villain in the Princess and the Frog.

Have you ever noticed that in fairy tales the greatest villains are the humans? It's not the witches, the Baba Yaga's etc - they're just forces of nature. Dangerous, yes - if you meet a wolf you'd better know how wolves behave in order to survive the encounter - but these individuals are rarely downright evil. It's the humans like Vassilisa's stepmother, scheming to make life miserable (occasionally aiming to kill their family members), that are the truly scary characters in a story. Give these malicious people access to a little magic and, well, let's just say it's a lot harder to escape their clutches.

In Disney's The Princess and the Frog, Dr Facilier is a smooth-talking, scheming, nasty piece of a human, who also happens to be a witch doctor - one who really know his voodoo. Here's a behind-the-scenes look at his creation, courtesy of Cartoon Brew:

"Top Secret" Behind-the-Scenes Peek at Disney's "The Princess and the Frog"

There's been another special behind-the-scenes program, this time by The Disney Channel, in which the hosts get a sneak-peek of many new scenes from the feature.

But before I show you that, another destined-for-DVD-preview aired as well called "The Inside Line". It has directors Ron Clements and John Musker discussing what makes a great fairy tale for Disney to animate.

Here 'tis:

The 'Top Secret" behind-the-scenes program includes almost an entire scene (final and uninterrupted by other visuals), and is the most we've seen of the movie to date.

Check out the movies below:

And if you didn't notice, there are some new images from here for your enjoyment today too. :)Hooked yet? I am!

Disney's The Princess and the Frog - New Behind the Scenes Featurette

In case you don't already know, Disney is releasing their first hand-drawn fairy tale feature animation film in a LONG time during this holiday season - specifically December 11, 2009 (yay!).

It's called "The Princess and the Frog" (you can see the official poster below - click on it for a larger view) and is based on the classic fairy tale "The Frog Prince", also known as "Frog King" (you can read the 'original' text and all about it's history and more at the SurLaLune site).

A new featurette, called "The Return to Hand Drawn Animation" has appeared in the last day or so and has a ton of behind-the-scenes glimpses from the rough and clean-up animation of "The Princess and the Frog" as it was being made. (I'm sure this will be on the DVD eventually).

Enjoy!

As always, there's a lot of controversy surrounding Disney's first 'black princess' story, complicated by being set in New Orleans but rather than rant, I'm choosing to enjoy another fairy tale coming to the screen in the tradition that made Disney great in the first place. Yay for hand-drawn animation! (And that has nothing to do with it being hubby-and-my vocation - OK maybe a little... ;D)

Here's the official website, already with a number of goodies (although the featurette above hasn't made it there yet), including a gallery, some film info and a game so far as well as the trailer.

For those who haven't seen it, or want to see it again with nice definition this time, here's the official trailer:

Film Credits (from IMDB):

Directed by
Ron Clements
John Musker

Writing credits (in alphabetical order)
Ron Clements		writer
Rob Edwards		writer
Greg Erb		writer
Don Hall		story supervisor
John Musker		writer
Jason Oremland		writer

Cast

	John Goodman	...	Eli 'Big Daddy' LaBouff (voice)
	Terrence Howard	...	James (voice)
	Keith David	...	Dr. Facilier (voice)
	Anika Noni Rose	...	Princess Tiana (voice)
	Oprah Winfrey	...	Eudora (voice)
	Jim Cummings	...	Ray (voice)
	Jenifer Lewis	...	Mama Odie (voice)
	Bruno Campos	...	Prince Naveen (voice)
	Jennifer Cody	...	Charlotte LaBouff (voice)
	Elizabeth M. Dampier	...	Young Tiana (voice)
	Breanna Brooks	...	Young Charlotte LaBouff (voice)
	Jerry Kernion	...	Mr. Fenner (voice)
	Michael Colyar	...	Buford

Now, bring on the crazy merchandise!