Winnie the Pooh

A-

Old-style tribute to older tastes, adorned modestly with golden honey scenery, childish songs and cute 2-dimensional use of printed words.

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Disney's first animated feature based on the Winnie the Pooh tales of AA Milne (The Many Adventures of WtP), issued in 1977, combined three existing featurettes. Consequently, the 2011 "remake" is effectively the Pooh's first dramatised animated feature. Mistakenly, at little more than an hour long, it's not a full-length movie. That surely partly accounted for its relatively poor gross box office takings: only US$33 million globally, barely covering half its reported budget cost of US$30 million.

It's a sweet movie, fittingly for the ever-hungry honey-loving bear. The hand-made drawings are the usual old-fashioned Disney delight, the cels creatively given CGI visual enhancement through the cute device of using the books' printed words, paragraphs, letters and pages as film-stage props.

English accents are rightly maintained for all the characters, from Christopher Robin (a very characterless schoolboy) to Pooh and his pals. Jim Cummings voices both the bear and Tigger, while John Cleese enunciates the narration well, without histrionics. Other voices remind the audience that Eyeore, Piglet, Kanga and Roo are very thin characters and boring fall guys.

Adult jokes or wordplays are rare, though long, big words remain the semi-comic speciality of pompous Owl. Overall, this is a simple tale designed for pre-teens. There are minor potential threats from a forest setting and a comic yeti-like Heffalump (whose appearance at the end suggests a putative spin-off that won't happen).

The short duration of the film, and the relatively small budget, indicate a lack of fully-funded confidence in the old product by Disney's animation team (now headed by Pixar's John Lasseter). They created an old-style tribute to older tastes, adorning it modestly with golden honey scenery, childish songs and an appropriate two-dimensional use of printed pages in honour of Milne's original book and its classic characters. More likely, their primary intention was to create advertising material for valuable Pooh merchandise.

Princess and the frog

A+

Delightful dialogue and rich plotting made this a cartoon adults could admire, a non-stop pageant of appropriate animation conceits.

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When Disney fully merged its animation business with that of Pixar, there were concerns that its distinctive hand-drawn artistry might vanish into an ocean of CGI. The Princess and the Frog was cheering proof that old-fashioned techniques were still in effect in 2009 and still brilliantly effective.

A poor black girl dreams of fulfilling her dead father's goal to open a niterie of fine fare and happy jazz in old New Orleans. Her mother worked for a rich white family, whose happy-go-lucky tomboyish daughter remains her best friend (voiced with glorious self-mocking nouveau riche joie de vivre by Jennifer Cody).

An irresponsible outcast young French prince arrives in the city with his plump put-upon manservant, planning to marry the rich man's spoiled "princess". The voodoo conman Dr Facilier makes pacts with the two men, tricking the prince and turning him into a frog.

He accidentally transforms the black girl into a frog too; together, the lazy male and tomboy female amphibian must defeat the evil Shadows and achieve their dreams. Helped, naturally, by a typically Disneyish crew of bizarre characters - a romantic glowworm in love with the Night Star, a cowardly obese alligator who's a jazz sax maestro, and a cantankerous old voodoo lady (Oprah Winfrey) with a loyal versatile snake.

Delightful dialogue and rich plotting (mostly credited to Disney's experienced writing-directing duo of Ron Clements and John Musker) made this a cartoon adults could admire, and it's a non-stop pageant of appropriate animation conceits. Although the overall drawing style evokes old-style New Yorker magazine sketching, the usual tricks of the Disney trade are displayed in colourful and convincing swirls of smoke, fire, bubbles, water and shadows.

The Broadway-style comedy musical's songs (two nominated for the Oscar) were typical Randy Newman delights, and the animation's socio-political colour-blindness (featuring Disney's first black princess) was admirable, probably made more acceptable in some US states by its "foreign" setting and prince. A sequel, and a further US$100-million investment in hand-drawing would be welcome.

James and the giant peach

A

Director Henry Selick maintained the acerbic edge that was Dahl's distinctive edge as a children's writer.

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Tim Burton co-produced James and the Giant Peach and it sports similar styles to his live action fairy tales (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Alice in Wonderland) and his clay or other animation fantasies (Corpse Bride, The Nightmare Before Christmas). It's a UK-based 1996 production and a successful adaptation of yet another Roald Dahl comic horror fable for intelligent children.

Dahl's young heroes are always troubled by evil grown-ups; orphan James's are two spiteful spinster sisters (Joanna Lumley and Miriam Margoyles) merrily sneering at the surreal scenery of their seaside hilltop.

James was a first-time boy actor, Paul Terry, who appeared in a few children's TV episodes, played in a band at uni and never returned to the entertainment industry. The only other major human being in the scene-setting intro is an elderly mystery man (Pete Postlethwaite) who gives the ill-used lonely lad a bag of crocodile tongues, one of which turns into the titular Giant Peach.

The enormous deus ex machina has no personality per se. Instead it is home for a wrangling group of animated insects with a variety of powers and personalities: star-voiced by Simon Callow, Richard Dreyfuss, Jane (later Frasier TV regular) Leeves, Susan Sarandon and David Thewlis. When James flees his horrible aunts and enters the peach, he becomes a stop-motion animation figure too, as a charming accidental hero leading the peach and his new friends on their flight to NYC courtesy of spider web strings attached to a flock of seagulls.

Their trip is packed with fearsome adventures and several insect songs and dances (cue the ubiquitous Randy Newman). Infant viewers may gyrate, adults will ho-and-hum: the material is better than children's TV, but it isn't old-style hand-drawn Disney cartoon quality. It has a grittier less homely quality.

All ends well in NYC, except for the aunts; and director Henry Selick (Nightmare with Burton, and Coraline most recently) rightly maintained the acerbic edge that was Dahl's distinctive edge as a children's writer.

Shine a light

The Rolling Stones in concert, as seen by Martin Scorsese. What more needs to be said? Shine a Light (issued in 2008) is a set of slick recordings, an exciting tribute and a wry documentary as well as a superb showcase for five extraordinary old men (including Scorsese himself, once again showing himself off as a film editor with an exceptional ear for pop music).

Seven cinematographers were at work in New York's Beacon Theater at the end of 2006 for the special charity concerts staged during the band's A Bigger Bang Tour. The last show was attended by Bill Clinton, his family and invitees, whose photo ops were better managed than the music line-up. Scorsese doesn't get the song list until a moment before the Stones strut on stage for their opening number, Jumpin' Jack Flash.

3 idiots

Bollywood's audiences clearly demand much more than just their money's worth: in addition to frantic action, sentimental romances, family values, epic song-and-dance routines, luscious colour schemes and superstar actors, they expect long running times. Which are really necessary to accommodate all the aforesaid prerequisites. Bollywood certainly fulfilled their needs with 3 Idiots in 2009, and its audiences rewarded the comic caper with record box office receipts, at more than US$75 million gross (ten times its production budget).

It's not just a good buddy movie, about three room-mates at a top engineering college. It's also a road movie and a rom-com, in which the irreverent lead character (superstar Aamir Lagaan Khan) hits it off with a soignee medical intern (Kareena Kapoor) whose frizzy-haired arrogant father is the college's director (Boman Irani). And it's a nerd saga, with a materialist college rival discovering the true meanings of science and success when he tracks down his nemesis a decade after college.

The six grandiose quick-cut musical set-pieces are above-average smile-inducing sequences of movie quotations from Hollywood, Bollywood and classic romances. The aerial location work in Simla and Ladakh provides wide-screen delight, and the ageing lead actors convey youthful elan and silliness with the winking stylishness of vintage Cliff Richard movies.

Technically, however, the movie is light years ahead of Cliff and Carry On comparisons, as are the plotting and dialogue. Credits go to young story creator and editor-director Rajkumar Hirani and veteran screenplaywright-producer Vidhu Vinod Chopra, who'd previously won many awards and big profits for their two Munna Bhai comedies (starring Sanjay Dutt).

At almost three hours, the movie is never boring, with excellent subtitling that enables non-Hindis to appreciate the local comic touches, even the wordplay in a hi-falutin Hindu speech delivered by a Pondicherry-educated ex-Ugandan Indian. It's also cheering to see a film in which India is presented so positively as an aspiring society overcoming racial, religious, gender and caste issues, its everyday language decked with English-language expressions and liberal thoughts.

There's some astonishing coy homo-erotic campness, including chorus-lines of engineering students in non-sexy underpants whose rears are lowered, animated sperm, running jokes featuring farts, and levels of tear-wrenching super-strength schmaltz no old-style Hollywood mogul would have ever dared to produce in so many bucketfuls in so many sub-plots.

This is the sort of musical comedy that Hollywood used to make, on a much smaller and less cerebral scale, set in West Coast campuses and beach resorts. No one's still making such Grease or Xanadu clones in the USA, except Disney for the pre-teen market; the adult version has been outsourced to India, where it's done very well.

Bran nue dae

The origin of a movie title that looks oddly Welsh is easily guessed if it's pronounced with an Aussie accent: Bran Nue Dae (2009), a musical comedy first staged in 2000.

"There is nothing I would rather be than an Aborigine, and watch you take my land away!", is the ironic refrain of the curtain-closing final song. A cast of scores of black Aussies sing and prance, Broadway-meets-Bollywood style, led by Geoffrey Rush in priestly robes. Occasionally, elsewhere in the red-dirt outback of north-west Australia, a line of Aborigine youths in war-paint leap and smile to the same song. Then a heart shape frames the faces of the black teenagers who have finally found true love. Cliches? No surprise: they'd been endless for almost 90 minutes.

This painfully patronising love story with unmemorable songs was obviously an entertainment devised for white audiences in Oz, akin to B&W minstrel shows and a universe away from Porgy and Bess or the South African black version of Carmen.

Geoffrey Rush rises way above his material, eyeball-rolling and hamming wonderfully as a deeply-accented German mission school headmaster trying to guide one likely good lad (relatively handsome plump newcomer Rocky McKenzie) in the late 1960s on the path to goodness, a good girl and doing good for his people.

The rest of the cast support them with weak character props: a German hippie (who's actually the priest's son) with a van for the ensemble's road trip, a comic bearded black sage (who's going to turn out to be the hero's dad), a "Roadhouse Betty" with wobbly breasts (a cameo for Magda Babe Szubanski), a loving mum, black football team and temperance march, which is the excuse to get to a beach for the final singalong.

Director Rachel Perkins co-tweaked the stage show as a movie, and may have done the best anyone could with a concept that was cringe-worthily corny. Her first feature (Radiance, 1998) was a well-received Outback drama; her second film was a one-hour TV Outback drama (One Night The Moon, 2001) that also earned critical favour. This film's RT rating of 53% is too kind.

Scissor sisters

Movie presentations of pop groups' live shows are occasionally cinematic delights per se, and not just when Martin Scorsese directs them. If a group is confident enough, it will let a talented director frame and edit their performances, on and off stage, to create the movie equivalent of a parade of visually exciting floats conveying their music to fresh heights of thrills or meanings. Were the arch-gay NY-formed UK-resident Scissor Sisters glam-rock and honky-tonk fivesome that self-confident?

In 2004, their live concert at the Brighton Dome was recorded for their first DVD, We Are Scissor Sisters ... And So Are You. It also included a bio-documentary, Return to Oz. Both were directed by Julien Temple. Three years later in London, an O2 live show was captured in A Year of Ta-Dah, a debut direction for an unknown Benjamin Hoffman (the same family name as one of the group's founding members, NY-born Scot Hoffman aka Babydaddy).

He's the somewhat Teddy Bear-ish bearded guitarist whose stage persona is Nervousness. His be-suited lead guitar counterpoint, "Del Marquis", personifies Aloofness. There's a non-gay drummer in between them (originally "Paddy Boom"), personifying nothing special, while the group's primary foci are slim ultra-exhibitionist Jake Shears and plumpish butchy Ana "Matronic". Her to-camera remarks provide the thread for Temple's neatly-edited 26-minute documentary, showing how the group formed, starting with Hoffman and Shears sharing a bed.

Mikado

There's much to laugh at, for good and bad reasons, in The Mikado, the first (1939) movie version of a Gilbert and Sullivan musical. The only totally negative feature is the stagey OTT make-up, visible proof that swatches of theatrical mascara and other facial paint look awful in close-ups. The gaudy costumes and lavish stage designs are more acceptably outre, as they suit the mock-Japanese setting and the Oscar-nominated Technicolor cinematography.

Although the movie was filmed at England's Pinewood studios and used many stars and choristers from the Savoy Theatre's D'Oyly Carte Company, it was a Hollywood co-production. To maximise its appeal to non-British audiences, it hired an American radio pop star (Kenny Baker) to take the role of wishy-washy Nanki-Poo, the Mikado's son and "second trombone", and an Australia-based D'Oyly Carte veteran (John Barclay) to giggle manically as the ludicrously logical Mikado.

A well-chosen Hollywood veteran talent took the director's chair. Trained as a violist and a composer, Victor Schertzinger had been Oscar-nominated for One Night of Love in 1934, and went on to make the first two Hope and Crosby Road movies. His last film, The Fleet's In, included four of his own songs, with lyrics by Johnny Mercer: Tangerine and I Remember You remain popular, explaining why the film's soundtrack (and sound recording) won Oscars in 1942. Schertzinger, at the age of 53, had died from a heart attack the previous October after completing the film (his 89th).

He worked with the then leading D'Oyly Carte stage director to add cinematic elements to a tradition-bound production that dared not stray too far from the beloved Gilbert's original 1885 staging. An explanatory prologue and a throng of extras were added, ornate costumes and sets were created, and various songs were cut (including two of baleful man-hungry Katisha's ballads). The Criterion DVD (published by its second-tier Janus division) includes one deleted scene: the Lord High Executioner's famous ditty about his "little list" of abhorred people, which included "nigger minstrels". In 1941, the producers hadn't seen the need to revise that, and also included a topical comic cut-away to an extra with a Hitlerian moustache.

English director Mike Leigh (whose Topsy Turvy focused on The Mikado and the G&S/D'Oyly Carte working relationships) provides an illuminating to-camera commentary in another DVD item. Similarly, two American academics comment in useful detail, their remarks amplified by short clips from the movie. As so often, Criterion's packet transforms a pleasant movie into a worthy cinema relic.

Gnomeo & Juliet

Animated movies now have such high production standards to live up to that, unlike other major movie genres, their success depends critically on the depth, wit and overall audience appeal of their screenplay. They cannot rely simply on star voices, glitzy locations or 3D effects. Inevitably, there will be therefore be more ransacking of the classics, as with Gnomeo & Juliet, an attractively reworked version of Shakespeare's play.

This time, the Capulets and Montagues are clans of red and blue garden gnomes, backed up by various other garden figurines, in neighbouring semi-detached English houses. Lord Redbrick (voiced by Michael Caine) is over-protective of independent-minded Juliet (Emily Blunt); Lady Blueberry (Maggie Smith) is the vengeful mother of bold Gnomeo (James McAvoy).

The production was headed by the partnership of Elton John (recycling some of his songs and Bernie Taupin's lyrics playfully) and David Furnish. The lively original score incorporating themes from many other John hits was composed by James Newton Howard. Director Kelly Asbury had previously made Shrek 2 and Spirit: Stallion, and the cast of voices includes many unexpected stars (from Lady Gaga to Hulk Hogan, Dolly Parton to Keith Statham, Ozzy Osborne and Matt Lucas) for the unusually ambitious non-US Disney (Touchstone) package, crafted by Toronto's Starz Animation (makers of 9), flourishing their CG skills on leaves, smoke, water, reflections and, uniquely, stone/cement surfaces.

Maybe there are just a few dozen too many cute word plays with Shakespearean and/or garden furnishing origins, and for sure the characters are too cute for comfort. Yet the movie achieves the impossible mission of making garden gnomes look and sound likeably cute. There's a host of visual comedy from plastic flamingos, lawn-mowers, a mute and loyal sniffer mushroom and a statue of Shakespeare (Patrick Stewart). The whole movie is colourfully wild and wacky, albeit going nowhere near the magical reality qualities of a Burton or Gilliam fantasy.

Not the Messiah

The Life of Brian was the second (1979) feature film made by Monty Python, the British comedy outfit that changed a generation and a country. Almost three decades later Eric Idle, a member of the team's "Flying Circus", transformed the classic spoof of Biblical movie epics into a multi-leveled musical spoof, Not The Messiah (He's a Very Naughty Boy).

Idle had already gained new fame and fortune for Spamalot, his musical-comedy adaptation of MP's Holy Grail, another classic movie spoof (sending up the Arthurian legend via many now-immortal sillinesses). For both ventures, long-time behind-the-scenes associate John Du Prez was his co-writer.

NTM premiered as a concert performance at a Toronto festival in 2007. Two years later, its UK premiere was staged at the Royal Albert Hall as a one-night-only celebration of MP's 40th anniversary. Appropriately, all but one of the surviving MP team joined the lavish production, with Michael Palin, Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam donning costumes and reprising comic statements happily cheered and echoed by the Hall's nostalgic Proms-like audience. [John Cleese was on another of his alimony-funding global tours.]

Other old colleagues (such as Carol Cleveland) joined them for a mock Messiah oratorio that should become, at the very least, an annual event at the Hall. It has enough tuneful pastiches and comic set-pieces to become a fully-staged production in the West End, following in Spamalot's successful clip-clopping footsteps. Its Broadway transfer is slightly less likely, as it would continue to anger sensitive Christian souls.

Jewish feelings might be offended too (naturally, in New York) by the outrageously funny tale of Mandy Cohen's impregnation by a Roman centurion and birth of Brian ("a good Jewish boy") who joins a Judean political sect, has an affair with fellow-member Judith ("He's a very naughty boy") and ends up crucified.

Four operatic soloists in formal attire stand front-stage to act/sing the leading roles, alongside "baritonish" Idle himself and his guest stars (including a pipe band, a trio of fake sheep and Idle's harmonica-blasting imitation of Bob Dylan). Told mainly through its songs' lyrics, the fast-paced comedy employs almost every musical genre known to man and Andrew Lloyd Webber, as well as Handel. In between, Idle and Du Prez recall the glories of Rodgers and Hammerstein, Les Miserables, etc and acknowledge their audiences' memories of When Harry Met Sally, McArthur Park, etc and, most emphatically, of course, The Life of Brian.

Viewers will inevitably love some pastiches more than others. The Amourdeus will become a classic item, and my personal favourite is What did the Romans ever do for us? Returning to its original setting (from its Spamalot borrowing) is Look on the bright side of life, and there's a grand finale of audience-delighting irrelevance when Michael Palin, more guest stars and the BBC Symphony Orchestra and its massed choirs perform another MP classic, the Lumberjack Song.

As a DVD entertainment, the production is well-directed, with close-ups, fast edits and panning shots matching the varying beat, moods and lyrics effectively and unobtrusively. The show warrants the high rating, and the hopes that it will make a transfer to the West End.

Dr Horrible's sing-along blog

Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is a 3-part 40-minute musical-comedy fantasy that won an Emmy in 2009 for creator-director Joss Whedon. Its title role was played by young TV sitcom veteran Neil Patrick Harris, whose many claims to Hollywood fame include his outing as the homosexual partner since 2004 of an actor who's become a catering entrepreneur.

The actor had worked with him on Doogie Howser, M.D., for which Harris title-starred in 97 episodes (1989-1993). In 1999 he made 22 episodes of Stark Raving Mad. Many cartoon voices later, his career gained a new hit with How I Met Your Mother (since 2005 and still going strong).

Non-Americans may have been surprised to see his unannounced appearance as the singing-dancing opening star turn at the 2010 Oscars show, but not Hollywood and New Yorkers. For them, he wasn't simply a belated American answer to Hugh Jackman's previous audience-winning stylishness.

Harris had done musical theatre work, notably in Sondheim's Assassins and Sweeney Todd. He was a former child star who'd worked hard, and his coming-out on the Ellen De Generes chat-show hadn't hurt his image.

His sweetly nasty Dr Horrible is a would-be evil mastermind who loves Penny from the laundromat, but her affections are stolen by the Dr's nemesis, Captain Hammer. There's a chorus, freeze ray, frequent short bursts of song, a league of evil chaired by Bad Horse, and the surreal TV exercise looks like a vacation romp by Hollywood professionals, a la the Oceans series. Reportedly, it is.

Joss Whedon, like all dutiful members of the Screen Writers Guild, was on strike in 2008, and just like all professionals, couldn't stop working. He thought up Dr Horrible. His track record is unique, as he's the first third-generation writer in US TV. His grandfather wrote for Donna Reed's shows and his father's successes included Golden Girls. Whedon himself created Buffy the Vampire Slayer (first as a movie) and Firefly, and co-wrote the original Toy Story among many other other Hollywood screenplays.

Whedon and Harris re-united for a multi-nominated episode of Glee in 2010. Canadian actor Nathan Fillion, who hams merrily as the mock-macho Captain Hammer, had worked with Whedon on Firefly, and the third lead in Dr Horrible, appeared in eight episodes of Buffy. In Us TV, it's clear that a career depends not just on knowing the right people but on working with them often.

Dr Horrible has a cult status, and it is an amusing foot-note for the biographies of many talents. But it isn't a Singing Detective and won't be seen as a pivotal moment in the development of the entertainment industry.

Nine

What went wrong with Nine? The question must still prompt autopsies at TWC, the Weinstein Company. The movie lost a fortune, with a North American box-office take of less than US$20 million. Yet it surely sounded like a box-office bonanza when it was lined up alongside Rob Marshall's debut multi-Oscar-winning Chicago.

What's not to love?, the production team probably exclaimed. Nine is another Broadway smash-hit musical. Marshall's a great choreographer-turned-director. He's back in his element, as he was with Chicago. We've got a star-studded line-up of award-winning acting talents who can actually really sing and dance, like Catherine Zeta-Jones, Queen Latifah and Richard Gere did. We've got more this time in fact. Who wouldn't spend good money to see Nicole(Moulin Rouge) Kidman, Marion (Piaf) Cotillard, Penelope Cruz (gee, she even walks like a song!), Kate Hudson and Judi (Little Night Music) Dench, and we got Sophia Loren! Salivate, guys!

TWC surely now knows it made a mistake casting the central character in the theatrical pageant that depicted the life and loves of Italian movie fantasist Federico Fellini. Daniel Day-Lewis is a good actor, almost too good for this tale of a Lothario with screen-writer's block. He has the intensity Gere rightly didn't in Chicago, the only award-winning performance of his career. That dark menace worked, although OTT for my taste, for Day-Lewis's recent Oscar-winning screen-stealing megalomaniac in There Will Be Blood, but not for a frothy stagy biopic. Maybe, in an unfair slur on Italian artistes, I just don't expect actors with broad Italian accents to fret and frown so psychotically.

The plot's contrived leaps from dramatics to musical numbers, acceptable as stage devices, create an enormous alienation effect in a movie. Include B&W flashbacks from the director's imagination, and the tribute to an unconventional movie director ends up feeling more like a self-conscious parody.

Another negative factor may account for the dire word-of-mouth non-recommendations the movie must have earned during its opening weekend. "How will it play in Peoria?" is a cliche of American showbiz, and it contains a basic truth. "New York isn't part of America", as the Beyond the Fringe team noted almost half a century ago. Going to see a Broadway musical is an integral part of many programmes for tour groups, but their members don't go to musicals back home. Chicago was an exception, because it had a bustling storyline, interesting characters, an infectious sense of humour, effectively happy Amateur Night song-and-dance acts by Gere and Renee Zellweger, some show-stopper routines, jolly tunes and, above all, an all-American joie de vivre.

Nine has none of those plus factors. Neither did another recent Broadway hit, Rent, the movie adaptation of which also bombed, though due to many other negative factors. TWC might well think of relocating its production office to Peoria.