The Michigan Daily - Wednesday, July 31, 1985 - page 9
Disney animation alls short ofcreative
By Byron L. Bull in Disney's risky, expensive attempt But right from the start something else's, from George Lucas - for the now rotoscope in tinted footage of real
to retool their film factory for the is missing. Aside from its blandly cuddily little Gurgi, who talks in clouds and smoke.
T he story is a simple fairytale. audiences of the 1980s. They've had homogenized characters, its graphic sideways English like Yoda, to Ralph The young animators bring the
The setting, a medieval forest some degree of success - Never Cry style firmly rooted in the '60s, and its Bakshi - for the design of the Horned characters to life with a keen
where magic is real, familiar from Wolf, and Splash - but more than a surprisingly shabby background ar- King and his castle. academic detail, getting all their
the first glance. And though the few expensive flops - Tron, Baby, twork, the film suffers from an acute Not that Disney's classics were all movements and gestures down right,
names have been changed, the young and the recent, sadly neglected lack of originality and spontaneity. that original to begin with, but at least but they don't do it with much style,
boy who daydreams of adventures Return to oz. The film put the studio's Not much more than 80 minutes long, the better ones, Pinocchio, maybe and the thing that Walt disney made
and romance, the imprisoned prin- new crew of young, relatively inex- the film encapisulates Lloyd Alexan- Fantasia, are redeemed by their his animators sweat for. The work
cess in need of a rescuer, and the perienced animators - who did their der's voluminous Prydain muthology combination of offbeat wit and here is only a slight improvement on
ghoulish evil sorcerer who commands apprentice work on the completely into a short, streamlined quest for a gorgeously detailed animation. The Saturday morning fare.
an army of dragons and skeletal forgettable The Fox and the Hound - magical cauldron, allowing scant Black Cauldron, despite its $25 million Not that The Black Cauldron is
warriors are not too different from the to the acid test. The property is one time for characterization except to dollar price tag, just doesn't have the outright bad, it itsn't. Every Disney
characters inhabiting any fantasy ad- that the studio has toyed with for the milk old studio cliches yet again. One same magic. animated feature has its charms, if
venture in recent memory. The film is last decade, pushing and pulling it in character, a bumbling minstrel, pops Where the studio once relied on the only in bringing a comic strip to life so
The Black Cauldron, Disney's lavish and out of production so that they a string on his lyre every time he tells talents of character actors to suppy colorfully and extravagantly. What
and very expensive attempt to create completely missed the sword and Sor- a lie, while the Princess Eilonwy's pet its cast with eccentric voices, they the film lacks is soul, something that
an animated classic the likes of which cery mania a couple years back, until ball of spectral light bears more than now rely on merely electronically only a director with a vision can
haven't been seen since founder they finally gave it the go ahead, a slight resemblance to Tinkerbell. doctored vocals. Where staff artisans breath into a film, something that
Walt's death two decades ago. albeit cautiously, in the hands of two When Disney isn't raiding their own once meticulously brought to life Disney, no matter how many times he
The Black Cauldron is the latest directors and nine writers. files, they're pilfering everyone streams of mist or drops of rain, they retread the same material, always
managed to pull off with a flair.
The climactic death and resurrec-
tion scene - a staple in every Disney
film back to Snow White - unfolds
and Midwest transplants Husker with the most calculated false sen-
Various Artists - The Du on then Zen Arcade album, as timentality, and seems here par-
well as. the Meat Puppets and their titularly stale. It's worth remebering
Return of the Living Dead Up on the Sun LP. Well, now Enigma tht Don Bluth, the Disney animation
Soundtrack (Enigma) Records has tried to get in on the director who left the studio several
garage super band thing and comes years ago to start his own film com-
Death rock is, excuse the pun, alive up with too little, too late. pany, pulled the same-trick off with
and well. Once the fetish of Misfits Original Music for a Generic World considerable more feeling and a much
fans and a few English fashion fads, sports none of the innovations-clean smaller staff and budget in his The
this genre is now making its way into production, really diverse sounds, Secret of NIHM three summers ago.
such notable niches as Rolling Stone that its SST precursors do. Some If Disney really wants to take
and Spin magazine- as well as attrac- might say that Plain Wrap is like this animation seriously again - they're
ting oh-so-fashionable suburbanites to on purpose, that they aren't out of the talking about an aggressive
its ghastly ranks. And now, finally garage yet. That's OK by me, but I at production schedule of a new feature
there is Return of the Living Dead, a least want some decent songwriting 1 every 18 months - they're going to
movie whose soundtrack anthologizes to make up for the noisy repetition of 1 have to loosen up and let some
the whole smear. their songs. What I do get is inane imagination run free. The studio has
The opening tune by the Cramps, character assassinations of dull, ugly bought the rights to, and actually done
"Surfin' Dead," is easily the highlight people in "Myron," cliche three- t some experimental work on, material
of the album. With its punk-a- chord thrash with nonsensical lyrics rich in imagination like Maurice Sen-
billyish beat and driving slide guitar in Black Luck Man," "Green Light, - dak's book Where the Wild Things
work, along with Lux Interior's Frank Red Light," which amounts to Are, and that's where they should be
N. Furter-ish voice, taking his verse nothing more than an excuse to I gambling, with ideas, not dollars.
to the pre-nuclear surf era, it is scream over a guitar riff, and absurd A ARE
perhaps the best Cramps song ever. _jaies of urban environments in j a ACIDS ARE
Unfortinately, the other tracks on "Traffic." Diversity is limited to the WASHINGTON (AP) - Unless the
the album don't own up. 45 Grave's already worn use of funk by a white nation's libraries "deacidify" their col-
"Partytime" comes across as band in "Plain Rap," which even the / - lections, 90 percent of their holdings
something of a Motley Crue eulogy. always-copied R.E.M. has used on won't survive the turn of the century.
Weak, buzzy guitar chords shifting to their new album. Deacidification is a process where an
a rat-scowl voice chorus bang your In fact, everything about this band ^.acid-neutralizing agent --liquid or gas
central nervous system into nausea. seems about five years too late. If you - is passed through paper by vacuum
TSOL's "Nothing For You" is a fine want good suburban angst-gone- to remove acids that promote paper
doom piece of generic hardcore and artsy, pick up the new Marginal Man deterioration.
nihilistic virtue, adding a punkier side LP due out soon from Enigma; for O by s cient aproce Lben develoCo
to the album. Such diversity only goes garage super bands stick with SST's gress, where an estimated 6 million
o far though; Roky Erickson's lineup. But this untimely album, so k volumes out of 17 million already are
repetitious would-be balladeer drivel eclipsed by the superior talent of ban- The Cramps, (left to right) Nick Knox Ivy Rorschach Lox Interior, brittle from acid activity. A
and SSQ's synth-pop impotence dilute ds like the Minutemen and Marginal deacidification facility funded by Con-
the album's weight as a collection of Man, is just too generic and overworn turn in one of their finest performances on the 'Return of the Living Dead' gress will process the books.
strong singles. The Damned's "Dead to take seriously, let alone like. soundtrack.
Beat Dance." despite its inap- -Hobe Echlin
propriate bassline, harks back to the No one faces caneralone.oto
band's rawer days with its thrashy Callsan
cord shifts. C us.
This is an album for collectors only. AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY 542 L555eds
An interspersion of gold and sludge. 42B)
-Hobey Echlin
Plain Wrap - Original 74-r ;s
Music for a Generic STANLEY H.KAPLAN
World (Enigma) INSTANT:
Southern California has developed , , ,
a formula for the superbands of the ", d ! Paspr ise
'80s: take three (no more, keep: it " 17MOe P S
simple) talented musicians/disgrun- A' 00$CC
tied youths and have them write lots while -U -wai
and lots of songs. Make them play a FORMING
really diverse repertoire from coun- hrs. 1:00-4:30
try to funk, and have them release ,t3atnnMoo- Fri
albums at breakneck pace. And so Cancer Swain M2N 6623149
you have the critically acclaimed - nee 0EH0 suetdson
Minutemen and their Double Nickels ... malignant, and should be removed. . can't save SSQ's synth-pop. C D. Ann Arbor, MI 48104