The Disney “live-action” remakes, of which the new “Beauty and the Beast” is but one in an assembly line, are starting to resemble an iPhone software update. Click a button and that old cartoon interface changes Belle into Emma Watson, the Beast into Dan Stevens and maybe fixes a few bugs in the system.
“Beauty and the Beast,” that “tale as old as time” (or, to pinpoint it, 1740, when the French fairy tale was published), could certainly use a few tweaks. It is, after all, a fable about finding beauty within that ends, curiously, with the once superficial prince falling for a beautiful woman he’s kidnapped, whose name literally means beauty. If you’d like to untangle those ironies, please, be our guest.
Director Bill Condon’s film _ let’s call it “Beauty and the Beast 2.0” _ often feels in search of a purpose beyond the all-but-certain dollar signs. Much of the live-action/digital effects makeover is less lifelike than the Oscar-winning 1991 animated film: It’s gained a dimension but lost a pulse. The merely fine acting and the lavish production design (the sumptuous sets nearly swallow the performers whole) dutifully strive to make this a worthy enterprise.
Opposites attract, of course. And this “Beauty and the Beast” is equal parts dispiriting and enchanting: overflowing in handsome craft, but missing a spirit inside. Howard Ashman and Alan Menken’s songs still have their infectious kick, but most of the big musical moments feel more like very good covers of the originals. (There are also three less-memorable new songs by Menken and Tim Rice.)
And yet “Beauty and the Beast” finds its own verve _ or, to quote Lumiere, “reason d’etre” _ late. Condon (the “Dreamgirls” director who, having helmed much of the “Twilight” saga, knows a thing or two about young love and monsters), working from a script by Stephen Chbosky and Evan Spiliotopoulos, has taken many of the old tale’s more cringe-worthy gender roles and mixed them up in the movie’s bright swirling medley.
Belle’s bookishness is more pronounced, thanks partly to the ‘Harry Potter’ credentials of Watson. Her performance is a little minor key, still, but Watson lends Belle an intelligence and agency that she has lacked. She’s less of a Stockholm syndrome Victim and more deserving of young girls’ admiration. And the Beast, a pile of horns, makeup and effects on top of the former ‘Downton Abbey’ star Stevens, is more haunted and melancholy.
But as the film nears its celebratory coda, a buoyant pluralism bursts forth. Characters _ large parts and small _ are freed from their prescribed roles in a glorious dance, shortly after Mrs. Potts (Emma Thompson), Cogsworth (Ian McKellen), Lumiere (Ewan McGregor) and the rest come to life. (Be sure to shake your living room and see which British star tumbles out of the furniture.) Here is where that already much discussed “gay moment,” as Condon has called it, arrives. It comes and goes in a flash
Josh Gad, the MVP of many a Disney movie, plays LeFou, the doting sidekick of the caddish Gaston (Luke Evans), the dopey pursuer of Belle’s hand. LeFou spends much of the movie hinting at his affection for his lecherous friend, but LeFou, too, earns a chance for redemption toward the end. That’s all it is _ an easy to miss suggestion that LeFou might find another love. And yet this slightest wink of homosexuality has drawn the ire of some who, it’s worth noting, raised no concerns over a romance between an imprisoned girl and a beast or, for that matter, a candelabra and a feather duster.
In fact, “Beauty and the Beast” would be better if it dared more such moments and went further with them. Nevertheless, the uproar suggests even this must count as progress. Perhaps we’ll be ready for a truly up-to-date ‘Beauty and the Beast 3.0’ in another few decades.
Yes, Disney has already given us live-action versions of animated films like Alice in Wonderland, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and The Jungle Book in recent years — and lest we forget, this isn’t a brand-new idea (101 Dalmatians!) — but in a way, Beauty and the Beast feels like the riskiest of them all so far, as far as potential backlash is concerned. Though now 26 years old, Beauty and the Beast is still much more recent than those other animated classics, and many can clearly remember growing up during the film’s initial release and explosion in popularity. Simply put, it has more of a “This movie is mine” feel among some fans, who could be quite upset if this new version isn’t handled well.
Fortunately, it’s handled very well indeed. Screenwriters Stephen Chbosky and Evan Spiliotopoulos and director Bill Condon have done a commendable job of taking the 1991 animated movie and delivering what fans want, while also offering enough tweaks to not feel like a note for note copy offering nothing new.
Let’s be clear though, you know exactly what to expect from the storyline here, in all the most meaningful ways. The Beast (Dan Stevens) is a vain, casually cruel prince punished by a curse that has transformed him into a monster, and Belle (Emma Watson) is the book-loving local girl looking for more than her small village can provide. And so begins some imprisonment, unexpected bonding moments, and a love story for the ages!
As a huge fan of the animated film, I felt a tremendous sense of relief simply watching the opening number, “Belle,” performed. Once you get past the “Hey, it’s Emma Watson dressed up like Belle!” aspect, it’s easy to simply sit back and enjoy a well executed, lively version of a great song, and realize this is a film made with a lot of love and care for the source material.
Beauty and the Beast is expertly cast, beginning with the title characters. Watson brings her innate intelligent, thoughtful nature to Belle (being typecast as a voracious reader isn’t the worst thing), while Stevens — balancing the tricky nature of a mo-cap, CG-enhanced performance — brings the right bitter, yet still soulful feel to the Beast. Though it should be said that while no fault of Stevens, but rather some questionable wig and costume choices, the character is amusingly goofier looking as the long-haired prince than as the Beast… but some would say that the same goes in the animated version.
Also integral to this story, of course, are the staff in the Beast’s castle, who have all been transformed into household items by the curse. It’s impossible to imagine Disney’s Beauty and the Beast without Lumiere, Cogsworth or Mrs. Potts, and with top notch digital effects and the voices of excellent actors like Ewan McGregor, Ian McKellan and Emma Thompson playing them, these characters vividly come to life, as do Madame de Garderobe (Audra McDonald), Chip (Nathan Mack), Plumette (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) and the newly-created Maestro Cadenza (Stanley Tucci), a composer transformed into a harpsichord.
The cast also includes Kevin Kline, giving a sweet, sympathetic performance as Belle’s father, Maurice – and while it’s easy to be amused by a character with what is basically an American accent (Kline sounds like he is slightly tweaking his usual accent) being the father to a girl with a British accent, while both of them are supposed to be French, just remember folks, this is musical featuring a singing candelabra. It can survive the additional heightened reality of varied accents.
Last but not least are Luke Evans and Josh Gad as Gaston and LeFou, who in many ways are the scene stealers in Beauty and the Beast. Thanks to Book of Mormon and Frozen, Gad is a proven commodity when it comes to musical-comedy and gives a wonderfully energetic performance here. Evans in the meantime is a big surprise, showing off much more wit than his work in films like The Hobbit trilogy, Fast & Furious 6 or Dracula Untold hinted at.
There’s been a lot of press recently about the decision to make LeFou gay in this version, and give him an obvious crush on Gaston – though it should be noted it’s more of a small subplot/character thread, on par with Lumiere and Plumette being in love, than a major part of the film. It’s a tweak that blends well with the established material/character and beyond that, LeFou does have a more notable arc than in the animated version, where he was simply Gaston’s toady.
There are other expansions and alterations from the animated film here as well, including learning more about both Belle and the Beast’s parents and how it helped shape who these two kindred spirits are. While the story’s fantastical elements can never make it feel truly “realistic,” these touches certainly help to ground and flesh out the characters in some key areas.
As for the musical numbers, they are by and large great, with Condon proving to be an excellent choice to guide the film. The director’s eclectic career includes Gods and Monsters, Kinsey, a Candyman sequel and two Twilight sequels, but his work on two Academy Award-winning musicals, Chicago (which he wrote) and Dreamgirls (which he both wrote and directed), certainly serves him well here. The film is gorgeous to look at and the musical numbers are dynamic and involving, with many echoes of the animated film, but not feeling beholden to repeat every single bit of choreography. Small changes go beyond the visuals to the lyrics themselves, as purists should be warned there are some alternations from this songs you’ve sung along to for years, as this film makes use of a few lines written by the late Howard Ashman for the animated film that weren’t used at the time.
All the actors do solid to excellent work on the singing side. Watson, the one with the least musical theater background, isn’t likely to suddenly launch a second career as a pop singer, but still more than holds her own alongside Stevens, giving numbers like “Belle” and “Something There” plenty of emotion, as does Thompson with the title track. As for the crowd-pleasing “Be Our Guest,” any Moulin Rouge fan will love hearing McGregor belt out the tune and the number retains its inherent charm and fun – but it doesn’t quite hit the mark like it does in the animated version. It’s the one sequence where you feel the disconnect between Watson sitting there as a real person and all of the CG characters performing around her. The fact that they don’t truly feel like they’re occupying the same space stops it from completely gelling.
The showstopper instead is reserved for the aforementioned pairing of Evans and Gad, whose rousing rendition of the song “Gaston” thrills – and led to the biggest applause at the press screening I attended.
Unfortunately, the handful of new songs, written by Ashman’s collaborator Alan Menken alongside Tim Rice, are a bit on the lackluster side. While I did enjoy “”How Does a Moment Last Forever,” a short and poignant number performed by Kline, other new inclusions “Days in the Sun” and “Evermore” feel a bit uninspired and hard to recall after the fact.
The Verdict
While it doesn’t rise to the heights of last year’s tremendous version of The Jungle Book, Beauty and the Beast is far from the artistic misfire of Alice in Wonderland when it comes to Disney’s current love of turning their animated classics into live-action. Powered by Bill Condon’s direction and terrific performances from a game cast, it’s a lovely film that includes the elements fans of the animated classic would hope to see, while also introducing some new aspects that, by and large, effortlessly fit in with the original story’s framework and yet feel appropriate as far as both expanding and grounding the characters and their world.
And you’ll find it very hard to not go home humming or singing “Gaston.”
Walt Disney’s Beauty and the Beast hits theaters in North America (and elsewhere) on March 17, 2017. The film is the latest in one of the Mouse House’s most valuable would-be franchises. What started as a “wow” moment with Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland (2010), which made $1.025 billion worldwide, thanks to a well-timed release date and spectacular director, concept and stars, has now morphed into a regular feature of the Disney playbook. And the only question is whether this $160 million-budgeted live action/CGI hybrid fantasy will become the fairest one of all.
For the record, it is entirely possible for me to argue that this Bill Condon-directed adaptation of the 1991 animated feature has a solid shot at becoming one of the highest-grossing movies of the year while swearing up-and-down that it doesn’t have to clear $1 billion to be considered a success. But as this is the first one of these live-action adaptations to retell a more contemporary Disney animated feature, we’re getting a comparatively unprecedented shot of nostalgia and multi-generational interest.
You’ve got adults who grew up with the Oscar-nominated toon, kids who will come to this either with fresh eyes and everyone in between. Oh, and toss in Emma Watson as the title character, just as the kids who grew up with Harry Potter are coming of age, and you have a financial concoction so perfect it borders on evil. Including the 2012 3D reissue and not accounting for inflation, the original toon has earned $216 million domestic and $424m worldwide. It will be fun to see how quickly that figure gets trounced by this new variation. Say what you will about Disney’s diabolical doings, but if it gets them the money to make the likes of Pete’s Dragon and Queen of Katwe, then be my guest!
The Review:
Walt Disney’s Beauty and the Beast is the first of these newfangled live-action fairy tale adaptations that feels motivated purely by financial whims. The live-action adaptation of the 1991 animated musical is less of a new interpretation of an old text than a straight remake of a popular movie purely because that previous film was popular. It is a celebrity cover band version of the animated movie, intended primarily to milk nostalgia and cross-generational interest. Yet it is burdened by length-padding digressions, miscasting, a choppy narratives and an emotional detachment that only highlights that icky subtexts within.
One of the core problems, believe it or not, is Emma Watson as the title character. Even with slight revisions to make Belle more of a master of her own destiny, this is still not the healthiest romance ever told. Unlike, say, Twilight or Fifty Shades of Grey, it is a romance that begins absent consent and without equal agency. And Watson can’t quite sell her own acceptance of this narrative. Like Jodie Foster in Anna and the King, Watson can’t quite dumb herself down to the level of buying it.
Belle is much more engaged when she’s fending off Gaston (Luke Evans) or conversing with her father (Kevin Kline). She looks unsure of how to react when she’s watching a bunch of silverware put on a dinner theater or falling for a relatively charmless Beast (Dan Stevens, with a great singing voice even if I kept thinking of Colm Wilkinson’s Jean Valjean). The film is much stronger, at least as surface-level entertainment, in the village sequences, where good actors are conversing with each other, as opposed to Beast’s castle where good actors do their best to bring visually displeasing CGI creations to life.
What works fine in animation–the various anthropomorphic dishes and tea cups singing and dancing–comes off as awkward in live-action. Much of the Beast’s castle is visually drab and ugly, in contrast to the bright and vibrant village sequences. That may be intentional, but since much of the film takes place in said location, it’s akin to a horror movie set in a single poorly-lit locale. Further muddying the waters is a series of digressions and complications that stretch the film to over two hours while offering little beyond undoing what was a fat-free and airtight screenplay of logical cause-and-effect.
We get a new subplot explaining, in detail, what happened to Belle’s mother and Gaston gets more scenes with Belle’s dad, which only serves to overly complicate Gaston’s third-act machinations. While more Kevin Kline is a good thing, the extraneous material and altered emphasis has two significant consequences. They make Gaston much more interesting than anyone else onscreen while pushing the Beast himself into a narrative corner until the film’s second half. Both sabotage what should be the movie’s core dramatic arc.
Luke Evans is pretty great as Gaston, and he is almost sympathetic until the story demands that he cross a clear moral line. Sure, he’s a take on the proverbial “nice guy,” but Evans imbues him with a certain level-headed charm and an awareness of societal injustices. That he’s totally okay with his best pal (Josh Gad) nursing an obvious crush on him makes him that much more endearing for the first half of the picture. Besides, he’s comparatively better than the abusive monster who locks women in cages.
This live-action version emphasizes one of the big problems with the animated film, namely that the Beast and his servants assume that that just because Belle is an attractive young girl that she might be “the one” to break their curse. They expect her to fall for him with just a token amount of effort. All due sympathy in regard to their cursed state, but every single action they take is self-serving. Beast saves Belle from the wolves not because he does a mitzvah but because it is in his interest for her to not die. Ditto the candlestick and the teapot and the feather duster all making Belle feel at home and trying to convince her that the abrasive, monstrous head of the household isn’t all that bad. It’s not quite gaslighting, but it’s close.
The Beast himself is largely absent in the film’s first half, until it is time for him to soften up and woo his would-be bride. Due to an arbitrary restructuring of certain plot points and dialogue exchanges (the library reveal is basically accidental), the Beast comes across as less sympathetic. This only highlights the fact that Beauty and the Beast is arguably something of a bodice-ripping Harlequin romance story squeezed into a G-rated bottle.
What works in the animated movie just doesn’t travel into the live-action realm. And that’s a problem considering Bill Condon’s core mission is to turn the animated feature into a live-action romantic fantasy. Unlike the previous live-action fairy tale adaptations, the ones I liked (Pete’s Dragon, Cinderella) and the ones I didn’t (Maleficent, Alice in Wonderland), this doesn’t even add anything to the mythology or bring anything new to the table.
It’s a deluge of good actors (including Ian McKellen, Emma Thompson, Ewan McGregor, Audra McDonald, Stanley Tucci and Gugu Mbatha-Raw) trying their best in what amounts to a cover band of a popular album. The new version feels obligatory rather than narratively organic, with the core romance feeling unearned. The love story plays out merely because all parties know how the plot must go. All we can do is simply admire the visual elements, the pomp and circumstance and the new variations on iconic beats.
And, source material fidelity notwithstanding, I’d like to think we’ve advanced a bit beyond the whole “that mean creepy dude is really a sweetheart once you get to know him” trope. On one hand, that’s the story. But it says something about our addiction to nostalgia that we keep having to tweak old stories so that they are slightly more palpable to modern audiences.
Since the Mouse House is going to make a fortune on this one, I think I can admit that I was never a huge fan of the 1991 film for much of the same reasons, namely the notion of rewarding the Beast for the initial act of kidnapping a young girl and being cruel to her. We can at least acknowledge something unsavory about the stories that are chosen as the next mega-bucks blockbuster.
If you argue that I’m overly harsh, it’s partly because I know Walt Disney can do better in this specific sandbox and I don’t feel the need to be too charitable to a movie that’s going to make a gazillion dollars anyway. My daughter liked it just fine, and I’m glad that I saw it in an environment with enough kids in the audience to observe their reactions. My critical opinion on this one is going to matter as much as my pan of Illumination’s Sing, which I made a point to see in that #SingSaturday national sneak preview, and I suppose that’s okay.
This new version accidentally accentuates the icky text at the core of the story while the plot alterations cause confusion and delay. If I was overly harsh on The Force Awakens partly because I feared it would unleash a deluge of glorified remake-quels, I also worry that the Mouse House will look at the success of this carbon copy revamp and choose to go in that direction instead of the likes of Pete’s Dragon and Cinderella. Nonetheless, Beauty and the Beast is among the lesser entries in Disney’s recent live-action fairy tale theater.
Swedish National Land survey has put its maps on Minecraft to promote its work
Since December 2015, anyone playing popular sandbox game Minecraft has been able to build their worlds on the actual map of Sweden.
Lantmäteriet, the Swedish National Land survey, launched the country’s maps as Minecraft-friendly downloads to increase interest in geospatial information and open data, particularly among younger citizens.
Tideström introduced the idea of a Minecraft Sweden in August 2015, and the complete map of Sweden and individual maps of each of its 290 municipalities were released to the public four months later. “For a governmental department, we completed the project very fast,” said Tideström. Lantmäteriet had a small internal team working on the project while the map data was converted to Minecraft by outside consultants using FME mapping tools.
The maps have gathered over 19,000 downloads to date, but Tideström believes their reach is far wider through the visibility of the project and the use of the maps in various other projects, such as a competition for schools to design a future city in the municipality of Kiruna.
“We were surprised that municipalities and organisations have started to use Minecraft as an actual planning tool for city development and have a dialogue with citizens,” said Tideström. “It is an easy way to translate maps into 3D, which makes it far easier for people to see how their city will look.”
The project, which cost an estimated kr400,000 (£36,000), has also received an accolade from the IT community, winning Digital Project of the Year at the Swedish CIO Awards.
Sweden is not the first country to recreate itself in Minecraft. Denmark and Norway have previously had similar projects, but Tideström said Lantmäteriet has gone a step further with the granular data the maps offer, from roads and lakes to forests and grasslands.
Lantmäteriet used the earlier project in Denmark for benchmarking, namely in opting for downloadable maps instead of a server-based approach. “In Denmark, they had an open server so people could log in and play,” said Tideström. “They had big problems with houses being torn down by players.”
The Swedish maps are available in 8×8 metre resolution (each Minecraft block is equivalent to eight meters). While this means small file sizes for downloading, the maps are more suitable for roaming the landscape than building detailed houses. To address this Lantmäteriet has so far launched four municipalities in a higher (1×1) resolution to enable more creativity.
“In some areas, schoolkids have built the whole centre of a town so it looks like real life, with the right textures and colours,” said Tideström.
Tideström said the Minecraft project hasn’t faced any major technical issues, but it has had an impact on Lantmäteriet’s approach to IT projects. The agency is now encouraging more experiments and fast deployments in addition to traditional large-scale projects.
“We realised if we would have taken this project through our normal process of driving things, we would have released it in 2018 or 2019,” he said. “We are now looking into how we can change this prioritisation and act faster with the deployment of ideas.”
Young gamers will take to the big screen this weekend to battle for the right to represent Denver at qualifiers for the first-evee.
Organized by Santa Monica-based Super League Gaming, Minecraft City Champs is a season-long competition that pits teams from twelve cities against each other across seven different Minecraft game modes. (A thirteenth team, the Virtual Storm, is made up of players that don’t live in an area with its own squad.) To earn a place on Colorado’s team, the Denver Drakes, players will have to qualify at a series of four weekly events.
For those not familiar with the phenomenon, Minecraft is a sandbox-style game that has players gather resources, create structures and attempt to survive in a blocky, pixellated landscape. The title has established itself as a favorite both of parents, who value it for its pseudo-educational, Lego-esque gameplay, and older players, who have used the platform to build everything from a working Game Boy to a model of Kings Landing from Game of Thrones.
This isn’t Super League Gaming’s first foray into this type of tournament. Last year, the company tested the model with a similar tournament for the popular eSports game League of Legends. In the fall, SLG held competitive Minecraft events in more than fifty cities across the U.S., with the best players entering into a nationwide tournament with a college scholarship as the prize.
Unlike the Minecraft tournament, SLG’s League of Legends competition allows players over seventeen.
While Minecraft doesn’t have the same reputation as a competitive game as popular eSports titles like League of Legends, DOTA 2, or Counter-Strike: Global Offensive — whose tournaments tempt pros with prize pools that can reach well into eight figures — SLG said in an e-mail that it aims to offer “a positive place for Minecraft fans to come together and experience the spotlight on the big screen.”
“The first League of Legends City Champs showed how intense local pride can be in gaming, and we want to bring that intensity to even more players across America,” said Super League Gaming CEO Ann Hand in a press release. “Adding a Minecraft tournament alongside League of Legends and expanding the number of cities are our next steps to bringing the big-screen gaming experience to everyone.”
Tickets to compete in the qualifiers are $20 per event. All players receive a free City Champs t-shirt; the highest-ranked will go on to compete against Seattle and Chicago in the City vs. City phase.
The first qualifications will take place today, Saturday, March 11, at 10:30 a.m. at Boulder’s Century 16 theater; participants must be seventeen or younger.
BOULDER – Playing video games on the big screen might sound like a dream to many kids.
That dream became a reality for some on Saturday who faced off in Super League Game’s event Minecraft City Champs.
The group of Minecraft enthusiasts faced off in Minecraft themed games including capture the flag and soccer.
The tournament is still in the qualifying rounds. The top finishers of the Denver Drakes team will face off against the champions from other cities around the country.
There will be three additional qualifying rounds that will be held at the 16 Century Theatre in Boulder.
The remaining events will be held every Saturday morning through April 1 at 10:30 a.m., with the championship round taking place this summer. Anyone from age 6-16 is eligible for the competition.
For more information, or to register for the remaining rounds, click here.
