Word: beastes
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...other creation, pre- or post-Walt, has been the company's success in exploiting established franchises and accumulating new ones. Perhaps the most cunning Disney trick is to take fairy tales in the public domain and reinvent them as corporate property. A billion-dollar example is Beauty and the Beast, which has metamorphosed from a bedtime story known to every child into a megahit animated film (and an even bigger hit on video), a sound track, a theme-park attraction, an ice show, a lunch-box and T-shirt decoration and, as of last week, a Broadway musical. Actually...
Only briefly does Beauty become affecting, when Belle and her captor, a prince transformed into a sort of buffalo, fumblingly get to know each other. Terrence Mann finds coltish gawkiness in a lumbering leviathan and suggests a new reason why the myth has endured. When the beast stops slurping and growling and starts thinking of cleanliness and manners, he evokes the civilizing process boys go through in adolescence as they discover girls. Mostly, though, the characters seem even simpler when played by actors than they did as cartoons. The costumes that help them resemble a candelabrum or a clock also...
...verbal, richer in farcical action and far less despairing. In Soprano, mock-philosophical discussion shaded into nonsense. The Lesson, a portrait of a megalomaniacal teacher, reflected dark satire of the powerful. Rhinoceros blended those themes with a manic physical portrait of a city where everyone turns into a rampaging beast. This eccentric mix of humor and horror, of prattle and inarticulate profundity, influenced writers from Tom Stoppard to Edward Albee. The plays are widely taught at colleges and high schools and probably helped shape the surrealist sensibility of much contemporary TV comedy...
...producing animation that appeals to both adults and children. However, the movie's confused plot and lack of engaging characters, despite a number of talented voices, prevent it from achieving this goal. A film of a few good moments, "Thumbelina" lacks the sustained charm of a "Beauty and the Beast" or "Aladdin...
...Poacher's Tale: Shooting the beast at close range...