"Chicken Little" critical for Disney reputation
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Next month Walt Disney hopes to prove the sky is no longer falling.
The adorably round-headed star of its computer-animated movie, "Chicken Little," will make the case that the storied studio has moved into the next generation of animation and can produce the type of hit films that once were its signature -- and an important profit center.
In the works for five years, "Chicken Little" is the first computer-generated feature film created by Disney animators and follows a string of traditionally animated films that failed to perform as well as many computer-made competitors.
Disney's new effort follows Chicken Little's travails in middle school a year after his disastrously incorrect observation that the sky was falling.
It debuts November 4 in the midst of Disney's talks with Pixar Animation Studios Inc over whether Disney will continue to distribute and share profits from Pixar's computer-generated, or CG, films and could prove an important factor if a deal is struck, analysts said.
Disney's studio has had a number of golden ages with hand-drawn animated features centering around hits such as the 1937 film, "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," and in 1994 "The Lion King." Partner Pixar has had animated hits since 1995.
Ryan Ball, a senior writer for the online Animation magazine said the studio, known for its "Disney Look" and classic story lines, may have to sacrifice both to tap into a more sophisticated audience that now includes young adults.
"Now that everything is going CG, everything is looking the same. That's the trend," Ball said. "(DreamWorks Animation's) 'Shrek' was kind of the first animation movie that went from being a matinee movie for kids to a Friday night date movie."
Analysts said the film must open big and perform well overseas for Disney to be considered a player in the new world of animation, where DreamWorks Animation SKG's "Antz" was not considered a success despite $170 million in worldwide ticket sales.
'A GENUINE DISNEY CARTOON'
"My gut instinct is they need to do something in the $350 million range to be seen as 'Disney's on its way back in animation,"' Rich Greenfield, an analyst at Fulcrum Global Partners, said. "If it does $200 million or $250 million worldwide, it will not be seen as the way to replace Pixar."
Disney dabbled in CG for its 2000 film, "Dinosaur," which featured animated characters on filmed backgrounds, but was slow to adopt the technology that generated blockbusters like "Finding Nemo" for Pixar and "Shrek" for DreamWorks.
Although about 150 animators had to be trained in CG to make "Chicken Little," the studio says it has closed the gap and is on track to release one CG animated film for each of the next three years: "Meet the Robinsons" in 2006, "American Dog" in 2007 and "Rapunzel Unbraided" in 2008.
Like "Chicken Little," the films offer modern takes on classic themes -- similar to the approach DreamWorks and Pixar used to appeal to a new generation of animation fans, including sought-after young males -- and plenty of nods to adult humor.
Time magazine writer Richard Corliss, one of the first critics to review the film, praised it as "a genuine Disney cartoon" and "one of the funniest, most charming and most exhilarating movie in years."
"Chicken Little" director Mark Dindal, who watched the transition from hand-drawn to CG animation at Disney during the making of his film, said studio founder Walt Disney, who championed new technology, would have been proud.
"It was like horses at the starting gate waiting to get their chance," Dindal said of the animators. "We just caught a wave of all this pent up excitement of people saying, 'We'll show you what we can do."'
Cameron Crowe on music, marriage, film and "Elizabethtown"
NEW YORK (Billboard) - Cameron Crowe was on tour with his wife, musician Nancy Wilson. He gazed out the bus window at the Kentucky landscape and thought of his father; he had not been back to Kentucky since his dad's funeral many years earlier. For Crowe, returning to Kentucky was a celebration, an adventure into all the things he loved, all the things he could not see when he was mourning his father. "Elizabethtown" -- the film and the soundtrack -- was born.
Music and movies have no separation for Crowe, who began his writing career at age 15 with a byline in Rolling Stone. Crowe likens the music from "Elizabethtown" to a "great American radio station" -- a perfect road-trip mix tape.
Music has been an important presence in all of Crowe's films. In "Say Anything," the lovelorn hero blasts Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes" from a boombox as a wooing technique. "Singles" features the members of Pearl Jam, a band that was little known when the film was shot; and in "Almost Famous," loosely based on Crowe's days as a writer for Rolling Stone, Elton John's "Tiny Dancer" turns a bus sing-along into a meaning-of-life moment.
Crowe says he wanted to champion singer/songwriters on the soundtrack to "Elizabethtown," which stars Orlando Bloom and Kirsten Dunst. This eclectic mix, out on RCA Records, features previously unreleased songs by Tom Petty, Lindsey Buckingham and My Morning Jacket, as well as tracks from Elton John, Ryan Adams and Patty Griffin.
Crowe recently spoke with Billboard about music, marriage, film and his personal journey with "Elizabethtown."
Q: "Elizabethtown" marks another musical collaboration between you and your wife, Nancy Wilson, who wrote the score. How do you work together?
A: It's the most natural collaboration. Because even if there wasn't a movie, we'd still be playing each other music and having that kind of dialogue. From the years she toured with her sister (Ann Wilson) in Heart, they would always go back to their room, put on robes and watch movies. She's actually seen more movies than I've seen. That was the great surprise when we first got together. I thought, "That's crazy. You're not supposed to know that much about movies and be able to play the guitar like that!"
Q: Did you write any music into the script?
A: The Hollies' "Jesus Was a Crossmaker" was the only music cue that I wrote into the script, to begin the movie. The song is like the black-sheep stepbrother of "Bridge Over Troubled Water." I thought it would be great to begin the film with this feeling of an ending, because the movie ends with a beginning.
Q: How much music did you listen to in the process of making the film?
A: Tons. For years. I kept packing my iTunes with stuff that I thought might be right for the movie. I kept a notebook of thoughts for every scene. Then it was about whittling it down. There is so much great music. Maybe not albums, as much as there might have been when albums were crafted in a certain way.
Q: What makes a really good album?
A: Albums have been abused. There were some artists who would put out 27-minute albums. A good 40 minutes with two sides, that's sweet. You don't want to abuse the length on a CD. It's good when you approach it like a mix, like a letter to a friend. That's how the music in the movie was always supposed to be. It's really personal -- it's (Orlando Bloom's character's) journey.
In the past couple of years, many people hanging out around movies said, 'Ah, there's no good music.' Well, they weren't listening. There's tons of great music, particularly singer/songwriters. So I was thinking early on, maybe we could celebrate some of the singer/songwriters like Ryan Adams.
Q: Do you think this is more of a music film than "Almost Famous?"
A: Yes. It's got more music. It's more of a character in a way, whereas "Almost Famous" was about the characters who love music. In this, the music is the voice of the father who passes away.
Q: Let's go back to your days as a writer for Rolling Stone. Who was your worst interview?
A: The disastrous one was Steve Miller, who was a friend of (Rolling Stone founder) Jann Wenner. I really wanted to do well for Jann. But when I showed up, Steve Miller had a big problem with me being 17 years old. He was like, "Tell me how you know my music." And I said, "Everybody knows your music." He said, "But you're only 17." I said, "Your fans are 17!"
It got ugly and weird from there. I forget how it ended, but I think I was dismissed. It was the only time that ever happened. Everyone else I interviewed thought, "Wow, you actually buy my records."
COMPUTER 'WIZARD'
In the new, high-resolution DVD of "The Wizard of Oz," a bolt is visible between the Tin Man's eyes. You can clearly see the trapdoor used by the Wicked Witch of the West. And if you look closely, there's a fishing line holding up the Cowardly Lion's tail.
The latest digital version of the beloved classic, in stores Tuesday, is so crisp that the moviemakers' production tricks are clearly revealed.
"We didn't remove the fishing lines as a matter of philosophy," says Rob Hummel, senior vice president for production technologies at Warner Bros., who oversaw an eight-month restoration on the 1939 classic. "We didn't add or remove anything, just revealed what was already there by making the images much clearer."
For the movie's third release on DVD, the film was scanned using an ultra-resolution process that captured four times as much detail as the previous digital restoration in 1997.
The expensive process has been used on only three earlier Warner titles, "Singing in the Rain," "The Adventures of Robin Hood" and "Gone With the Wind," all of which were filmed in Technicolor.
Early Technicolor films were shot with special cameras that used filters and mirrors to produce three separate reels of black-and-white film, each representing one of the primary colors, which were added in the printing process.
"Some old black-and-white films like 'Casablanca' are unbelievably sharp, but the edges of Technicolor films tend to be soft because of problems in aligning the three negatives," Hummel explains. "What we did was to use computers to painstakingly line up the three images."
Though the results are spectacular, Hummel says the full effect won't be visible until new high-definition DVD formats arrive next year.
As part of the process, dirt was automatically removed for the first time using a new software program.
"But we did have a problem with the software removing the ruby slippers in some of the long shots," Hummel said. "That's why we use humans to correct the process."
The new restoration of "The Wizard of Oz" - No. 6 on the American Film Institute's list of Greatest American Movies - gets a big thumbs up from Judy Garland's daughter Lorna Luft.
"Thank God for Warner Home Video doing this," Luft says from Ireland, where she is on a concert tour. For Luft, it's important that the movie be preserved for future generations.
"Now it looks just as if you were looking through the cameraman's viewfinder," Luft says. My mother would really love that people can now see the movie in all its glory."
Eurythmics reliving Sweet Dreams with hits set
LOS ANGELES (Billboard) - Twenty-five years after forming Eurythmics, Dave Stewart and Annie Lennox admit that how they write songs together remains a mystery.
"It takes a tremendous amount of faith every time I go into the studio," Lennox says. "Music comes easy to me -- melody, chord progression, no problem. That's something very simple, and I like to sit down and do that. But to actually literally write something important ..."
She trails off as she shakes her head.
"(If) someone starts up a conversation with me, I have a lot to say and it comes easily to speak, but to actually hone it down to the craft of song or whatever it might be, you know, it's actually quite challenging to me. So I just kind of have to suspend disbelief. (Dave's) just the opposite, so that never helps."
Indeed, Stewart says the pair popped out with relative ease the two new songs that appear on "Eurythmics Ultimate Collection," out November 8 on Arista Records.
"I've Got a Life," the first single, is classic Eurythmics: an uplifting melody juxtaposed with sad lyrics. "That's every Eurythmics song," Stewart says with a laugh. "There's a lot of optimism, there's a lot of angst and melancholy in the same song, which is unusual."
Lennox thinks their songs just reflect life's contradictions. "Life is joyous and full of beauty and hope and optimism and at the same time, it's tempered by potential catastrophe personally or nationally at any moment," she says.
The "Ultimate Collection" contains 17 past U.K. and U.S. hits the duo culled from as far back as 1983's "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)" up to "17 Again," from its last album, 1999's "Peace."
Even though the new collection, aside from the two new songs, is fairly similar to a greatest-hits set that came out in 1991, Stewart says, "There's a whole generation of people who doesn't even know about the Eurythmics."
Separately, they've both been busy composing for films. Lennox won an Oscar last year for co-writing "Into the West" for "Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King." Stewart shared a 2005 Golden Globe with Mick Jagger for their song "Old Habits Die Hard," which they wrote for the remake of "Alfie."
HE SAID, SHE SAID
To sit with the pair, whose history actually goes back to pre-Eurythmics group the Tourists, is to witness two distinct personalities who display tremendous warmth and ease toward each other, complete with the freedom to genially bicker over the past.
When asked if they consider Eurythmics an ongoing concern, even though they may go years without recording, they do not answer, instead noting that they had to have some time apart after the first decade of incessant touring and recording.
"But we never fought," Stewart says.
"We did too fight," Lennox counters.
"Did we?" Stewart asks.
They agree that they had to get off the schedule they were on in order to "do regular things," Stewart says. "I wanted a family," Lennox adds, "and they don't come off the shelf." (Lennox had two daughters with Uri Fruchtmann, to whom she was married from 1988-2000.)
When asked if they plan to work on a new album, they just laugh. "I'm always amazed when people ask us," Lennox says. "We don't know."
Although they have not ruled it out, it is also unlikely that they will tour behind the "Ultimate" set, in part because Lennox dislikes many aspects of being on the road. "I get all anxious and I can't calm down. And to do the 54 dates I did with Sting (last year), it was mad. I don't really know why I did it. I thought I misread the amount of dates."
'Doom' No. 1 in Another Slow Movie Weekend
LOS ANGELES - The Rock did not meet his doom at the box office, but his latest action flick came in with a light pop instead of a bang during another slow weekend at movie theaters.
"Doom," adapted from the sci-fi video game, debuted as the top movie with a modest $15.4 million, according to studio estimates Sunday. The movie led a lackluster lineup that continued Hollywood's box-office slump, with the top 12 movies taking in $71.3 million, down 27 percent from the same weekend last year.
"Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story," a horse racing family film starring Kurt Russell and Dakota Fanning, opened in second place with $9.3 million.
Charlize Theron's blue-collar drama "North Country," based on the real-life story of a woman who led a sexual-discrimination lawsuit against male co-workers at a mining company, premiered a weak No. 5 with $6.5 million.
"Stay," starring Ewan McGregor, Naomi Watts and Ryan Gosling in a thriller about a psychiatrist racing to save a suicidal patient, flopped with a $2.15 million debut.
Films in limited release opened strongly. The romance "Shopgirl," starring Steve Martin, Claire Danes and Jason Schwartzman in an adaptation of Martin's own novella, debuted in eight theaters with $236,000. The comic crime thriller "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang," starring Robert Downey Jr. and Val Kilmer, took in $174,300 in eight theaters.
Both films expand to more theaters over the next couple of weeks.
Hollywood has been in a box-office slide for most of the year, with admissions running about 8 percent below 2004 levels.
Though distributor Universal expects to make its money back on "Doom," the studio had hoped for a bigger opening weekend, said Nikki Rocco, head of distribution.
"I'm very concerned about the marketplace," Rocco said. "There are so many movies out, so much to choose from, yet the marketplace continues to fall, and not just by little amounts."
Other studio executives are sticking to the idea that the industry has simply had a prolonged run of movies that failed to pack in crowds.
"I've been telling people for a long time that I think it's content-driven. I don't think we had a film that jumped out for people this weekend," said Dan Fellman, head of distribution for Warner Bros., which released "North Country."
Warner has a certain blockbuster coming in mid-November with " Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire." Other big films scheduled through the holidays include "King Kong," "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" and "The Producers."
October typically is a slow time for movies. Over the same weekend a year ago, though, the box-office shot up on the unexpectedly strong debut of the ghost story "The Grudge," which opened with $39.1 million.
"In all fairness, this was more of a typical late-October weekend, as opposed to a year ago, when `The Grudge' surprised everyone and made this weekend look pale by comparison," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations.
Here are the estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Exhibitor Relations Co. Inc. Final figures will be released Monday.
1. "Doom," $15.4 million.
2. "Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story," $9.3 million.
3. "Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit," $8.7 million.
4. "The Fog," $7.3 million.
5. "North Country," $6.5 million.
6. "Elizabethtown," $5.7 million.
7. "Flightplan," $4.7 million.
8. "In Her Shoes," $3.9 million.
9. "A History of Violence," $2.7 million.
10. "Two for the Money," $2.4 million.