Please Murder Me

It is difficult sometimes to remember that just because we first see an actor in a particular role, at a particular age, that isn’t necessarily what they’ve always been. It’s easy to picture, for example, Jack Nicholson as the rebellious Randall McMurphy and forget the dashing young hero of The Raven, or to see Kurt Russell as any number of scruffy wisecrackers and forget the fact that he started out as a child actor. So when viewing an older movie, it’s sometimes surprising to see an actor or actress from well before the age at which one usually pictures them.

Like most children of the 80s, I was familiar with Angela Lansbury primarily from Murder, She Wrote or from her voice-acting as the kindly Mrs. Potts in Beauty and the Beast. If I had ever stopped to think of it, I’m sure it would have been obvious to me that she didn’t simply stroll into Hollywood as a senior citizen. But it’s not something that really occurs to a person until one sees the evidence of it, and so it came as a bit of a surprise to see her playing the role of Myra Leeds in Please Murder Me, a 1956 film noir directed by Peter Godfrey. And in this film, she’s not a meddling crime solver; rather, she’s at the center of the crime herself, as a young woman accused of murdering her husband.

Weekly Weblinks: Shuffles and Charades

It’s time once again for the Weekly Weblinks. It’s the last Friday in September, and that means we’re almost to that time of year when half the movie blogs, this site included, start filling their rosters with a bunch of horror films and monster movies. But even though we’ve had a few early arrivals, this week is (almost) free from frights, at least in the blog posts, though certain classics make appearances in the news post.

On the blogging front, a couple classic films get reviewed, as well as one of 2012′s, and a combination review and interview about an under-the-radar film from last year. In the news, a franchise relaunches, another gets a sequel, and a couple unexpected movie-to-TV adaptations. Read on for the details!

Favorites Films: Fantasia & Fantasia 2000

…It’s my very pleasant duty to welcome you here on behalf of Walt Disney, Leopold Stokowski, and all the other artists and musicians whose combined talents went into the creation of this new form of entertainment, Fantasia.

As Deems Taylor, the music critic who served as the Master of Ceremonies for the picture, described it, Fantasia was a film unlike any other at the time of its creation. Released in 1940, it was only the third animated feature released by Disney, so animated features themselves were a relative novelty. And unlike its predecessors, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Pinocchio, Fantasia didn’t tell a single story. It had several small stories within it, but they were unrelated to each other, connected only by the theme of classical music. There was something of a connection to the Silly Symphonies short films that Disney had produced, but it was also something more. It was longer by far — just over two hours — and where the Silly Symphonies were mostly based on the popular music styles at the time (the first, “The Skeleton Dance” was to a foxtrot), Fantasia featured classical music directed by Leopold Stokowski and played by the Philadelphia Orchestra. The artwork was even more elaborate than the shorts, and the stories — derived from the music itself — were mostly aimed more at adults than children, and had a strong sense to them of having been done for the sake of the artistry. Some were even abstract pieces.

The initial title Disney and Stokowski came up for the film was “The Concert Feature”, and that’s exactly what it was. It wasn’t meant to be run as a lead-in to a feature, it was a feature itself — and a unique one, with theatres revamped to support the new “Fantasound” stereophonic surround sound system (most theatres were mono prior to this time), and it was exhibited as a “roadshow”, in the same manner as ballets and classical theatre productions. Only a few shows were run per day, tickets had to be purchased in advance, and it was a treated like going to a play or an opera. Walt Disney’s expectation was that people would dress up for the production; Fantasia was viewed as not merely a movie, but an event.

Fantasia was obvious from the beginning as a huge labor of love for Walt Disney and Leopold Stokowski both. With its innovative blend of music and animation, providing something people had never seen before in an experience that was unique to films, Fantasia had a reception that was beyond anything Walt Disney had expected: it bombed.