Outside Addresses: Sexy, Dopey, Nostalgic and Weird

What others were saying this week about the many worlds of Disney entertainment:

"Still, it seems unlikely that the money-strapped Playboy would risk the ire of Disney unless they got some kind of go ahead. The general theory right now is that Disney, a company that used to shuffle any movie even slightly controversial to one of their other wings like Touchstone, is looking for any extra way to market a movie that has been rumored to cost more than $300 million and so decided to just let this slide as long as their name was nowhere near it.  If the pictorial doesn’t vanish and Disney doesn’t make a comment, we might have to assume that to be the case."

Jon Bershad
Mediaite

"In Scandinavian countries, it was once common to bury a fish until it rotted, then dig it up and eat it.  Most Americans would say they'd never do anything so unhygienic. But the Walt Disney Co., possessed of an overstuffed pop-culture pantry, has done something almost as gamy: It's excavated a 28-year-old flop, Tron, and is offering it as a Christmastime delicacy. To be fair, Disney isn't simply reheating leftovers. It's concocted a sequel, with the curious title of Tron: Legacy. ("Legacy," ironically, being a high-tech euphemism for "obsolete.") Everything in the long-delayed follow-up is said to be brand new, except the dopey premise and the likelihood that it'll lose a bundle."

Mark Jenkins
NPR

"It's an extremely fun bit of entertainment, with some surprises, loads of nostalgic pandering to the sort of person who saw the original Tron as a kid (such as me), and some interesting commercial notes."

Cory Doctorow

Boing Boing

     "A half-century ago,  well-known Disney theme-park creators Rolly Crump and Claude Coats designed the Museum of the Weird with the idea of spotlighting a parade of ghostly organists, magic carts, talking chairs and other surreal exhibits. Walt Disney wanted to use the museum as an adjunct to the Haunted Mansion, complete with its own restaurant. But the museum was never built, though some of the more ambitious pieces were incorporated into the mansion itself.

     Disney is in discussions for a movie based on the museum with screenwriter Ahmet Zappa, according to a source close to the project. (Zappa, son of Frank, is also developing a movie for Disney that may or may not be inspired by its Enchanted Tiki Room attraction.)

     Under its new leadership, Disney seems to be taking a two-pronged approach to movies. It's getting into business with top-tier filmmakers (add David Fincher and Tim Burton to Del Toro and Favreau) even as it's putting chips down on seemingly as many theme-park attractions as possible, and trying to merchandise more than ever. The net effect: a studio slate that's a strange combination of stubbornly visionary and explicitly marketing-driven."

Steven Zeitchik

Los Angeles Times

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Outside Addresses: Annies, Oscars--But No Cause for Celebration

What others were saying this week about the many worlds of Disney entertainment:

   "Membership in ASIFA is open to anyone who pays a yearly fee, and nominations are voted by members who have been approved by an ASIFA committee. According to reports, DreamWorks Animation automatically buys a membership for every employee, and may employ as much as 40 percent of the total ASIFA membership.
   "Annies results caused something of a scandal in 2009, when DreamWorks' "Kung Fu Panda" won 10 awards while Pixar's "Wall-E," the eventual Oscar winner and consensus choice for one of the best films of the year, was completely shut out."

Steve Pond
The Wrap
Commenting on Disney/Pixar's disassociation with ASIFA and the Annie Awards

"But even if [Toy Story 3] does win, the directors of animated films have a way to go in attaining top Hollywood status. Unkrich's name does not leap to people's lips the way Christopher Nolan or David Fincher do. The online version of Time's story misspelled Unkrich's name as "Les Unkrich." The print magazine spelled it right, and it was corrected online, but it's evidence of how obscure even the most eminent animation directors are. Unkrich has won three Annie Awards for directing (for Finding Nemo, shared with Andrew Stanton; Monsters, Inc., shared with Pete Docter and David Silverman; and Toy Story 2, shared with Pixar top dog John Lasseter and Ash Brannon). When animation finally wins respect in the best picture category, the next step will be to give these guys their due in best director."

Tom Appelo
The Hollywood Reporter

"It does have a unique flavor or flair that isn't found in a lot of places, (but) it's not like living at Disney World. It's a real town, (with) real issues."

Celebration resident Chris Stellwag

From a CNN news report.

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Outside Addresses: Oscar Politics, Tron Prospects, Depp on Sparrow

What others were saying this week about the many worlds of Disney entertainment:

"When it comes to best-picture glory, Pixar has gotten the shaft over and over again. But spending millions of dollars buying clever Oscar ads isn’t going to make a difference, although it will surely inspire wonderers to wonder about the whole pay-to-play aspect of the Oscar game. The only way an animated film will win a best picture Oscar is if the academy changes its mind-set about what represents a great film. For now, if you’re Pixar, you’ve earned our eternal cinematic gratitude for making movies that appeal to our childlike sense of wonder, sorrow and delight. But you still haven’t earned the right to be taken seriously by the motion picture academy."

Patrick Goldstein
Los Angeles Times

"With some high-profile holiday movies starting to hit Hollywood's prerelease tracking services, it appears first-weekend prospects for Disney's Tron: Legacy are significantly below where the studio needs to be with its pricey tentpole.  The 3D sci-fi film has been marketed heavily for months en route to its Dec. 17 bow, and many have been suggesting a big opening and leggy theatrical run based on built-in interest from the cult base of its 1982 predecessor. But at this point, tracking suggests Tron: Legacy with as little as $35 million.  Technically a sequel, Tron: Legacy references characters and events from the original Tron in a tale that occurs years later. But its $200 million production heft alone puts the 3D romp squarely in the category of movie reboot -- the first picture cost just $17 million to produce -- and an opening well north of $50 million would seem necessary to put the picture on a path to profitability."

Carl DiOrio
Hollywood Reporter

"We went up there for a day, showed it to their key people, had a nice two-hour roundtable where we told them what we wanted to improve, and they had some suggestions. Little nips, tucks, tweaks. We incorporated some of their ideas into the shoot we did in June and even though it only amounts to a couple minutes of stuff, it's those little adjustments that I think help bring the story to the next level."

Tron: Legacy Director Joseph Kosinski, from an interview on NYMAG.com, speaking about screening footage from the film at Pixar Studios 

"Clearly with Mickey Mouse, I mean, the guy is on everyone's paycheck so there are lines you just don't cross. I'm a big believer in pushing things too far and forcing people to pull you back. I put together a folder of Mickey smoking and drinking and abusing farm animals and, you know, shooting em and skewering em. Mickey did a lot of bad stuff back in the day but it doesn't matter that he used to do it. It doesn't matter that he used to do that because I don't even want to do that with Mickey, but I just wanted test where the line was. You'd be surprised at how far they've let me go."

Game designer Warren Spector, discussing his handling of the iconic character in the new Epic Mickey video game

“They couldn’t stand him. They just couldn’t stand him.  I think it was Michael Eisner, the head of Disney at the time, who was quoted as saying, ‘He’s ruining the movie.’... Upper-echelon Disney-ites, going, What’s wrong with him? Is he, you know, like some kind of weird simpleton? Is he drunk? By the way, is he gay?… And so I actually told this woman who was the Disney-ite… ‘But didn’t you know that all my characters are gay?’ Which really made her nervous.”

Johnny Depp, from an interview in Vanity Fair

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