Disney To Use Its Savoir Faire for French Animated Film

IMDB.com ^ | 5-19-03

[Paul Atreides]

Disney, which received much criticism for its marketing and distribution efforts on behalf of Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away (which ended up beating Disney's own animated product at this year's Oscars), has now agreed to distribute an animated feature produced in France. The company announced in Cannes on Saturday that it has bought for an undisclosed figure distribution rights to Onyx Films' 3-D animated film Renaissance, the first digitally rendered animated feature ever produced in France.

[Paul Atreides]

Who runs Disney, Gore Vidal?

[Excuse_My_Bellicosity]

Go for it, Disney! French products are oh-so-popular in the 'States right now.

[Behind Liberal Lines]

Who runs Disney, Gore Vidal?

Michael Moore?

[My2Cents]

The film: An animated story of an existentialist little mouse, who, filled with angst, kills himself by the end of the movie.

[Cicero]

I thought Spirited Away was pretty good. What was the criticism about? Also, I had no idea Disney was involved.

[My2Cents]

[kezekiel]

Is the bad guy Jewish? This is a French film, after all.

[tiamat]

disney translated "Spirited Away" and marketed it for American audiences. Tia

[weegee]

The criticism is that Disney kept Spirited Away from US audiences, opening the film in select cities. I don't think that it even played in Houston before it won an Oscar.

Miazaki has been making films for years.

The Hong Kong action film circuit was better than the US product too. Disney (under Miramax) has been buying up those films, editing them, dubbing in new music, and releasing them dubbed (not subtitled). Even on video Americans cannot get the unadulterated versions. Used to be able to buy the original Hong Kong release on DVD (with English subtitles) but Disney leaned on the foreign studios to reissue the titles without English subtitles.

Disney buys up quality product and shelves it. It presents too much of a challenge to the status quo. They would have to step up their own game and they already have a semisuccessful formula for creating animated films (stock villain, some show tunes, and a few famous actors supplying voices). Disney animation is not what it was decades ago (when genuine artists like Walt Kelly were animators).

[Paul C. Jesup]

On the bright side, when Disney does finally bankrupt itself, there is going to be firesell on the release rights to a lot of anime titles.

[weegee]

This may be part of an effort to get more Disney-Hollywood-Miramax-etc films on French screens. The French limit the number of American films that can play their screens (the French are big on their cultural purity, including things being in the official language, French).

[Junior]

Savoire Faire is everywhere!

[Excuse_My_Bellicosity]

Interesting, I didn't know that!

[ConfusedAndLovingIt]

While I suppose I should be grateful to Disney for releasing the Miyazaki films that it has so far, I sure wish they would hurry up and release the rest of them. I'm not holding my breath.

One thing that I'm even more grateful for is that Miyazaki specified in the contract that Disney had to release them uncut. I hate to think what would have happened if Disney had a free hand to make changes.

And to anyone who hasn't watched any Miyazaki animated films, give them a try. They may not be your cup of tea, but I think they're great. I don't know about the rest of the world, but here in the U.S.A. the ones I know are widely available are: "Spirited Away", "My Neighbor Totoro", "Princess Mononoke", "Castle in the Sky", "Kiki's Delivery Service" and "The Castle of Cagliostro"

[weegee]

Actually the Castle Of Cagliostro is the only one I've seen/own (Japanese laserdisc). In the ads for this new one, I saw some impressive looking scenes but I've only seen excerpts from his films.

I need to sit down and watch them sometime. Did Streamline release his films before Disney acquired the rights?

Is it possible to watch them subtitled and not dubbed? I can understand having dubbed versions so that kids can enjoy these films too.

[BibChr]

It is a charming movie, isn't it? And with so much beauty.

Dan

[P.O.E.]

[Petronski]

BOYCOTT DISNEY: a vortex of seductive evil™

[weegee]

One can always buy Japanese movies from CDJapan.co.jp, Hong Kong DDDhouse.com, Australia (Ezydvd), England at Blackstar.co.uk, etc.

I love my region free PAL capable DVD player.

My Australian DVD of Akira has 2 ENGLISH dub soundtracks (the Streamline version and the new version). Since their release came after the US version, they still wanted the home (and global) market to want to have a reason to buy their version.

[weegee]

Meanwhile Miramax has picked up a Japanese animated film featurings two female homosexuals to be titled Lez Affair...