Word: film
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Stravinsky's The Firebird, animated by the brothers Gaetan and Paul Brizzi, becomes a volcano dweller who destroys a forest; an elk and a wood sprite must somehow restore the glade. The story is similar to the Japanese animated film Princess Mononoke but told in under 10 minutes and with a more vibrant palette...
Well, maybe next time. After all, there were plans for animating Firebird soon after the original film was released; Stravinsky saw Disney's take on The Rite of Spring, liked it and gave Disney the rights to other pieces. "Good ideas will always find their way to the screen," says Peter Schneider, Disney Studios boss. Or to some other part of the Magic Kingdom. Roy talks of putting the Rachmaninoff piece, which was fully storyboarded before it was scratched, in Disneyland's CircleVision pavilion. With a budget estimated at $85 million (some skeptics say it's nearly twice that amount...
Oddly, the most protean among them is the least well known today. No other 20th century figure approaches Coward's creative breadth: playwright, actor, composer, lyricist, novelist, stage director, film producer, Vegas "entertainer." His nose for talent was such that he launched Laurence Olivier's career and produced the first four films directed by David Lean. "Success," he once said, "took me to her bosom like a maternal boa constrictor...
...Hanks' pained restraint. The two villains are vigorously portrayed: a sadistic, craven guard (Doug Hutchison) and a strutting, rabid inmate (played with a daringly lunatic, dark-star quality by Sam Rockwell), whose crimes are even worse than we feared. At the core, though, one finds a slacky, sappy film. The human mystery that breathed so easily in Shawshank is often forced here. Grandstanding reaction shots of teary guards cue us to John Coffey's miraculous power as surely as the big man's initials hint at his majesty...
...there's no excuse for the movie to run, or meander, for more than three hours. Darabont must believe his film will move audiences, or he wouldn't have had the nerve to end it with the line "Oh, Lord, sometimes the green mile is so long." To more than a few viewers, this one will feel like a life sentence...