BEFORE: The day after Easter is, in one sense, even a greater holiday, because it's the day that Easter candy goes on sale at the drugstore, usually at 50% off. Last year the pandemic hit during Easter season, and it looked like I was going to miss Easter candy completely, but then when I returned to work in Manhattan in early June, I found a bunch still being sold, because nearly everybody went into lockdown and stayed home before buying any, and the stores didn't have to clear the shelves to make room for Mother's Day candy, or Memorial Day candy, because there's no such thing. So I scored big time last June. This past week, I noticed much smaller selection at area drug-stores, probably because the buyers didn't want to get burned again, and be left holding a bunch of Peeps and Cadbury Creme eggs that didn't sell. I got nearly everything I wanted last Friday, except for these Russell Stover medium-sized chocolate eggs that have different killer fillings, like Maple Creme or Raspberry Whip or Coconut Caramel - but today I tried a different drug-store and got a whole bunch of them at 50% off, or about 34 cents an egg. At that price, I don't care, I'll buy as many as I can - it'll be 11 months until Easter candy's available again, after all. (Jesus has risen, but the candy prices are dropping...)
The voice of Chiwetel Ejiofor carries over from "Mary Magdalene", and this is the remake of "The Lion King", which was released in theaters in 2019, aka the before-times, back when movies got released in theaters before appearing on your computers via streaming services. That wasn't THAT long ago, and maybe it's because of the pandemic, but it sure FEELS like this film has been on my list for five years - that's just not possible. I had it way on the bottom of my list for a long while, because I didn't want it to get lost in the vast middle of the list, and I was so sure that I'd find a way to link to it right away, when I'd move it closer to the top. Well, it took over a year to get to it, that's for sure, but I finally got there.
I watched the most recent episode of "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier" right before this, and one actress from that Disney+ show is in "The Lion King" - only I don't count that as a link. Another actor from this film was also in the Marvel movies, playing the father of Black Panther. Marvel/Disney really has the whole African-themed movie thing sort of sewn up, don't they?
Before proceeding, let's take a peek at the line-up for Day 6 of TCM's "31 Days of Oscar". On Tuesday, April 6 you can watch:
6:00 am "For Me and My Gal" (1942)
7:45 am "Forbidden Planet" (1956) - SEEN IT
9:30 am "Foreign Correspondent" (1940) - SEEN IT
11:45 am "The Fortune Cookie" (1966) - SEEN IT
2:00 pm "42nd Street" (1933)
3:45 pm "Four Days in November" (1964)
6:00 pm "The Four Feathers" (1939)
8:00 pm "The 400 Blows" (1959)
10:00 pm "Four Weddings and a Funeral" (1994) - SEEN IT
12:15 am "From Here to Eternity" (1953) - SEEN IT
2:30 am "Funny Girl" (1968) - SEEN IT
5:15 am "Fury" (1936)
Wow, a lot of "F" words today - I approve of the way they worked in the films beginning with numbers, they just treated them as if the numbers were written out, like "Forty second" or "Four hundred", then just filed those films accordingly, but I do NOT approve of putting "For Me and My Gal" ahead of "Forbidden Planet". When I alphabetize my DVDs (and comic books), I prefer to ignore all the blank spaces in a title, just to resolve any conflicts about what goes where. So, to me, something beginning with "Forb" would go ahead of a title beginning with "For M", because I don't count the space as part of the process. Maybe I'm in the minority on this one.
Anyway, it's almost another push for me, having seen 6 of tomorrow's 12 films. That brings me up to 37 seen out of 70, but my percentage drops just a bit to 52.8% seen. Tomorrow looks better, but I predict that I'll finish right around 50% seen, hopefully.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "The Lion King" (Movie #1,020)
THE PLOT: After the murder of his father, a young lion prince flees his kingdom, only to learn the true meaning of responsibility and bravery.
AFTER: Ah, but this one is really tough for me to rate - I (finally) watched the original Disney cel-animated "Lion King" in 2012, which I'll admit was pretty late - 18 years after its release. But hey, it's not like I work in the field of animation or anything - wait, I just remembered that I do. You have to factor in, though, this familiarity that arises when you're too close to something, like for many years I didn't want to mix my work life with my home life, so for a long time I wasn't watching many movies at home, because I was making movies at work. This phenomenon worries me, because last week I submitted applications to work at a movie theater, a brewery and a candy store, and I don't want to end up hating any of those things. I know a guy who worked for Penthouse magazine for a long time, and I often wondered what effect that job had on his personal life - there's also the old joke about the gynecologist who comes home to his wife, but you can look that one up.
But I was also late getting to a lot of Disney movies, like "The Lion King", because I'm not a kid, and I don't have kids. Parents have an excuse to enjoy animated films for kids, because they might watch them with their kids, or watch them in advance to see if they're OK for their kids (yeah, some cartoons have adult content, deal with it...) but if you don't have kids and you watch movies made for kids, that's weird. I do it, and I'll admit it's weird. Why did I watch "The Emoji Movie" or "The Angry Birds Movie"? Regrets, I've had a few...
But then there's the curiosity factor - I already watched the "Dumbo" remake this year, and so why not follow up with the new "Lion King"? I've had the Disney Plus subscription for 18 months now, and it still hasn't cost me anything, so I might as well use it. (I got a free year after upgrading my iPhone, then my BFF gave me another year as a Christmas gift...) I can watch any "Star Wars" movie now without reaching for a DVD, plus there was "WandaVision" and now "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier" is running, so I suppose this October I'll have to start paying for the service. With luck, by then I'll have a second job...
But, you know, this new "Lion King" might be on to something - sure, I was skeptical, do we really need another remake? And people called it the "live-action" version of the film, when it's clearly anything BUT live-action, it's mostly CGI, like the recent "Jungle Book" movies, right? So why doesn't anyone call it the "CGI Lion King"? Honestly, I don't know. And my biggest problem, honestly, isn't with the film itself, but with the fact that I've already seen this story told TWICE, once in the cartoon form, and once on a Broadway stage. Jeez, at least when they reboot Spider-Man or Batman, they don't keep telling the same exact story over and over. The "Mary Magdalene" film yesterday did the same thing as this film, told the same story that we all know, just with a slightly different spin. Can I PLEASE get a movie this week that isn't a remake or a reboot or a sequel? (I just peeked at the schedule, the original films are coming, just give them a couple more days...) "Palm Springs" is just a week away, thank God.
Anyway, so the story is the same old one, which hasn't changed since 1994, and that one managed to rip off both "Hamlet" and the Japanese film "Kimba the White Lion", but hey, every story's a rip-off of some other story, usually Shakespearean and/or Japanese. And Disney's been one of the most recycling-friendly studios out there, spinning Victor Hugo and Alexander Dumas and Edgar Rice Burroughs novels into box-office gold for decades, once they ran through all the Brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault fairy tales. Greek myths of Hercules, tales of Sinbad, they're all grist for the mill in the end, and it's not technically illegal, just really sketchy, if you ask me.
So I'm not here to judge the story tonight, it barely even registered because I was so familiar with it. But DAMN, does this film look great! I thought it might be really weird to see photo-realistic animals talking, or that this might look cheap, like those commercials for the flea and tick medicines where the dogs tell their owners how bad their itches are, but this was done so well that I got used to it really quickly! Now I'll probably look at zoo footage and wonder why the animals aren't talking to each other... The background plates are great, too - which makes me wonder if they're real, or also CGI, or what. But this is what happens when a film's budgeted at over $260 million, they can really do it right - but should any film cost that much? That's more than the GDP of most mid-sized countries, or that money could have been used to cure three diseases, so was it worth it? Since I'm a Disney stockholder, I'm going to have to concede this point, I suppose. And it brought in $543 million, over $1.6 Billion worldwide, and maybe this is why Disney didn't mind sitting on "Black Widow" for over a year, they were still counting the money that "Lion King" took in.
I think that with a $260 million budget, the filmmakers had two options, they could either hire a bunch of professional animators and use top-notch CGI, or build a second Africa where real live animals can evolve to where they can think and speak English. Evolution takes time, though, so it was probably a smart move to go with Option "A". Seriously, though, that scene with the giant gnu (wildebeest?) stampede, extremely impressive. Two lion cubs running across the plains, surrounded by zebras? Equally impressive. And a dozen lions fighting about 20 hyenas in the climax - very, very impressive. I'm blown away by all the technical stuff here, but remember that I'm old school, I've spent over 25 years working for an animator who draws by hand, and I wouldn't know the first thing about how to create a CGI image of any animal. (CGI technology was in its infancy when I went to film school, basically you could use a formula to generate a sphere, put it on top of a cone shape, call it ice cream, and get a passing grade. I totally faked it, I'll admit.)
There's only one voice actor here who also appeared in the original Disney film, and that's James Earl Jones. This was a good call, I support this, his voice just IS Mustafa's. I currently have a collection of over 120 "Star Wars" autographs, but James Earl Jones has always eluded me. He was on Broadway a few years back, and I had a free night, and I was prepared to wait outside the show after (this was December, 2015, so the show might have been "The Gin Game"). But I turned up on a night that the show was dark (a Wednesday?) so I consoled myself by going to see an exhibition in Times Square called "Star Wars: The Power of Costume". This was about a week before the release of "The Force Awakens". But I should probably seriously start looking for a James Earl Jones autograph, the guy is like 88 now, and we've already lost some key "Star Wars" actors in the last few years - Carrie Fisher, Peter Mayhew, Dave Prowse and Jeremy Bulloch.
And now I'm all caught up on Disney's recent remakes of their classic animated films - I've seen all eight: "Maleficent", "Cinderella", "The Jungle Book", "Beauty and the Beast", "Christopher Robin", "Dumbo" and "Aladdin". I mean, don't get me wrong, this has been great, but can I watch some political documentaries now? Can Disney maybe get back to making some original stories again? Oh, wait, they've never done that, they just rip off fairy tales and Greek myths and classic novels. Never mind. (EDIT: Damn, I forgot about "Mulan", which just came off of Disney Plus Premium and is now on Disney Plus Regular. Gonna add it to my list now, but it may be a while before I can link to it...)
Also starring the voices of Donald Glover (last seen in "Solo: A Star Wars Story"), Seth Rogen (last seen in "Paper Heart"), Alfre Woodard (last seen in "The Core"), Billy Eichner (last seen in "Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising"), John Kani (last seen in "Murder Mystery"), John Oliver (last heard in "The Smurfs 2"), Beyoncé Knowles-Carter (last seen in "Fyre Fraud"), James Earl Jones (last heard in "Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker"), Florence Kasumba (last seen in "Mute"), Keegan-Michael Key (last seen in "Dolemite Is My Name"), Eric André (last seen in "Rough Night"), Penny Johnson Jerald (last seen in "Swing Shift"), Amy Sedaris (last heard in "My Life as a Zucchini"), Chance the Rapper (last seen in "Between Two Ferns: The Movie"), Josh McCrary, Phil LaMarr (last heard in "Incredibles 2"), J. Lee, JD McCrary, Shahadi Wright Joseph.
RATING: 7 out of 10 tasty insects
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