March 30, 2004

The battles at Disney are far from over… even if the media frenzy is over for a while. Of course, the media will continue to act more like a bunch of frenzied rubes than professionals with editorial perspective, forgetting to look at the studio’s product in the perspective of the year, instead obsessing on each release.

How did they end up spending over $100 million on a horse movie with no star who has ever opened a movie? Why did they invest over $75 million in a historical drama, again, with no movie star to open the picture? These are valid questions. But they miss the point. No movie is an island and no one bad call defines a studio’s year. And you have to know that no one is going to write about the upswing at the studio this summer, as they release Garry Marshall’s Raising Helen, Jerry Bruckheimer’s King Arthur, Phil Anchutz’s Around The World in 80 Days, The Princess Diaries sequel and M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village.

But before we get to the real summer, Disney gets an early start with the aforementioned The Alamo and a “traditionally” animated film that has had been the subject of a lot of negative buzz as it slowly limped to the marketplace.

But here’s the punchline…

Home on the Range is an absolute joy of a movie. It is old fashioned, silly, anthropomorphic, non-digital and the only way it will not leave you grinning is if the stick sticking out of your ass is distracting you.

In many ways, it is more reminiscent of a Warner Bros. animation film than any Disney film that’s come before. One gets the feeling from the original title, Sweatin’ Bullets, that it was more Yosemite Sam-my in the past. But whatever the process that brought us to this final product, the movie has that feel of something you could watch over and over and over. And given that the movie has eight weekends as the only real kids film in the marketplace between this weekend and Shrek 2, that is, I suspect, exactly what will happen. Home on The Range is not Finding Nemo or even Lilo & Stitch. It is breaking old ground, not new. But it is a joy from start to finish and does, with just a few songs, what Disney has been trying to do for a few years… make country music a commercial viability in the family arena.

Roseanne Barr is the Ellen Degeneres of this film, though she is not quite as shocking a breakthrough. But one is reminded of why she became a national phenom before she got distracted by her own success. Jennifer Tilly is perfectly cast and gives a pitch perfect performance, even when shattering glass with her tone deafness. And Cuba Gooding, Jr. does his best Eddie Murphy.

But it is the number of characters and ideas that really make this movie special. Every animal has a purpose in the storytelling. The humans are gently iconic. And for all of the comedic violence, the tone is endlessly sweet.

The plot is so simple that it’s barely worth mentioning, though it does take some fun surprising (and some not so surprising) twists along the way. Think of it as Easy Rider with cows… and that’s less facetious a characterization than you would imagine. (You’ll know when you see the movie.)

The last smaller Disney animated feature that seemed to take a turn during production was The Emperor’s New Groove, which I also liked. But that film had a lot of holes that audience members were kind of left to navigate. I was willing. But this film required no such effort. It was a real pleasure.

Also, there is a cameo from a major indie actor that breaks modern Disney tradition, serving as a perfect animated caricature and not just a character that picks up on some of the voice talent’s facial highlights and physicality. He is in maybe 10 shots and I found myself laughing pretty much every one of those times he turned up on screen.

The boys will like Home on The Range, but they are going to love Hellboy. A week later, Ella Enchanted gives the pre-teen and teen girls something on which to focus. A week later, the adult toychest opens with Kill Bill, Vol. 2, The Punisher and the gay-themed comedy, Connie & Carla, followed a week later by Denzel in Man On Fire. And that doesn’t even get to 13 Going On 30 and The Girl Next Door, which could become romantic comedy sleepers.

INTERESTING: Sony Home Entertainment is selling Something’s Gotta Give without any mention of Diane Keaton’s Oscar nomination. Hmmmm…

BERMUDA: The Seventh Annual Bermuda International Film Festival has come and gone and the countdown to the eighth fest has started. My shorts will remain packed and ready to go at a moment’s notice.

Zana Briski and Ross Kaufman’s powerful Born Into Brothels won Best Documentary and the audience award, beating out such mainstream films for the latter as In America, Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind and The Triplets of Belleville. Brothels, as you may recall, was one of my very favorite films at Sundance this year and the HBO production is still looking for a theatrical window. Fine Line, which has a feature output deal with HBO, may jump on board. Or perhaps one of the smaller companies will step up. This movie is a moving personal experience for most viewers and the theatrical release would have to be very heavily supported by promotions and publicity, more so than marketing. Zana and Ross travel with a gallery of photos by the kids in the movie… a wonderful addition that could surely be reproduced for dozens of theaters around the country, where patrons would surely be inspired to support Zana and Ross’ efforts by buying these images to keep in their homes. (Sales in Bermuda were in the thousands of dollars.)

Srdjan Vuletic’s Summer in the Golden Valley won Best Feature at the festival. The film, about the dark side of Sarajevo, was described by jury chair Willem Dafoe as, “very lyrical, but also very tough. It is poetic but not sentimental. Even though the genre is familiar to us, the story is told in a very fresh, character-driven way that undermines and toys with our expectations and normal patterns of empathy."

Playing out of competition, at its first festival appearance, was DFK 6498, the late Cameron Duncan’s sad and singular short. Cameron was the inspiration for the Oscar-winning lyric of “Into The West.” The film will appear at two more festivals in the U.S. this month and is available for more bookings. If you have a fest and you want to take a look, let me know and I will try to hook you up. The short, which was shown only once in Bermuda, was one of the festival’s most discussed events, leaving its mark on everyone who was fortunate enough to see it.

There were more terrific moments at this year’s festival. Buddies and boy geniuses Guillermo Arriaga and Carlos Cuaron were on hand with their families and were endlessly charming… a lot more Y Tu Mama Tambien than 21 Grams. The star of the week was Jim Sheridan, who left a trail of admiring folks, male and female, young and old, in the wake of his wit, insight and bravura storytelling. Michael Douglas even stopped by for a drink.

Of course, there were non-celebrity names and filmmakers on hand, all of whom brought their own spice to the seafood chowder. I learned about girl genius Lisa Rosman of The Brooklyn Rail and Flavorpill.com. Bermudian Lucy Spurling presented her local doc to five sold-out shows as she starts work on her next film. 2003 winners Helen Lee and Patricia Flynn were back and ready to create more. Marlene Smit made her first festival appearance. And Jessica Gorter’s Piter was a Dutch treat.

There were some guys there too.

One stroke of good fortune for me was a third look at Michel Gondry’s film of Charlie Kaufman’s screenplay, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The film, which you may remember I had some issues with, relaxed a little for me. I would still love to see a less hyper production of this brilliant script. I think that it would be a truly great movie. But what there is a moving and messy romantic scrapbook that reminds us, as all of Kaufman’s films do, that we must make the choice to allow ourselves to love.

It also forced me to reflect on my ability to remain completely objective in my subjective job as a critic in the face of silly and unfortunate missteps by a studio releasing a film or by publicists for same. Somehow, they found ways to piss me off on my way to see this film over and over again. I tend to get pissed off like that just a couple of times each year. And it was utterly unnecessary, perhaps degrading some long building friendships. But more importantly, it made it very hard for me to be in the right frame of mind going in to see the film. And while I pride myself on my professionalism, sometimes when we touch, the honesty’s too much.

Anyway…

This was my fifth year in Bermuda for the festival and it has been a joy to watch the event grow each an every year. The festival remains a curious incubator for festival ideas at a time when the massive numbers of festivals are choking on one another’s exhaust. But Bermuda has one thing that no one else will ever have… Bermuda.

Now excuse me while I get a ginger beer and a fish sandwich…

READER OF THE DAY: SMOKEY ROOM writes: “I'm going to have to disagree with you when it comes to the recent Jim Carrey and Tom Hanks films. They both look and smell like art films and opened in about 1300-1500 theaters. To have them perform as well as they did is kind of shocking to me. Jim Carrey can only get people into the theaters when he's being funny--and nothing about this film looked funny to me.

Tom Hanks has had his greatest box office success with big budget, great looking films like Castaway, Saving Private Ryan, and Forrest Gump. Note that not a one of those was a comedy. Ladykillers is a feathered fish. It looks like one of the hardest to market films all year. Tom Hanks plays Colonel Sanders in the Deep South. Ahem.

Then the plot was similar to Welcome to Collinwood. Remember how well that did? Contrast that with Intolerable's great looking Clooney and Jones on about 1200 more screens and I'd say Tom did all right for himself. (Or at least better than Jim.)

Also, how did Scooby Doo Too outdoo (fun to say) the tracking? I've been reading tracking for a loooong time and that statement sounds like someone who only looks at the General Audience numbers. Tsk, tsk. The family tracking was huge. It looked like it was a lock for over 25mil for sure.”

E ME: I was out of town and reading menus. Apologies are doo. But I still must disagree with the big point. What makes Hanks and Carrey superstars is that they can open a bag of hammers to $25 million. Yes, tough sells for big openings. But Tom Hank's first film short of $100 million in a decade… someone has to enjoy some heat. Heat… hmm… I think I’ll go sit out…