Word: anastasia
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...find out next week, when Anastasia, the winsome, often winning debut film from Fox Animation Studios, arrives on screens nationwide. Directed by Disney renegades Don Bluth and Gary Goldman (An American Tail, The Land Before Time, All Dogs Go to Heaven), this fanciful story about the lost princess of the Romanovs has all the elements for a cartoon hit: a girl-becomes-a-woman plot; a chipper, Alan Menkenish score by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty (Once on This Island, Ragtime); and a cute, chatty bat. Close your ears to the Fox fanfare in the opening moments...
There's no mistaking Hollywood's sudden urge to outfox the mouse. Anastasia is the first in a salvo of all-animated features from three deep-pocketed Disney rivals: Fox, Warner Bros. and DreamWorks SKG. The next few years will see the biggest splurge of cartoon features ever. But after the exclamation point come the question marks. Are there ways to make popular animated films that don't slavishly follow the rules Walt and the boys made up in the 1930s? Are studios jumping on the toon trolley just as the form has shown signs of losing its commercial luster...
...Anastasia, which cost about $53 million, is getting a blast of promotion equal to that given any Disney cartoon--and 35% more marketing support than Fox lavished on last year's smash Independence Day. With such a price tag, a studio boss gets to hope out loud. "I'd like it to be, at a minimum, the most successful non-Disney animated film," says Fox filmed-entertainment chief Bill Mechanic, probably alluding to the $90 million earned at the box office by Warner's 1996 Space Jam. "But I really hope it will compete with the best Disney pictures." Best...
...elated at the empowerment of the FDA to regulate tobacco and the nicotine content of cigarettes. But, sadly, this is a step that should have been taken 50 years ago, when Bogie and Bacall first made smoking the chic way to die. SARAH ANASTASIA OLYNYK, age 14 Shaker Heights, Ohio...
...Socialists offered to double pensions and wages in the public sector. But even that promise is fast becoming worthless; the lev currency falls hourly, and wages are now worth half what they were only a month ago. Standing in a long line outside the State Savings Bank, a tearful Anastasia Yaneva, 70, whose pension is now worth $4, was desperate to withdraw her savings and exchange it for foreign currency. "People are in a very aggressive mood," she said. "I'm afraid civil war may burst...