Sean's watching Chicken Little this week. The character design is beautiful, but the story is a crazy quilt stitched together with thread and scotch tape. I think when people talk about storytelling or plot, they are really trying to describe whether the film has been put together with dramatic integrity. Sean kept asking "is this the end?," not because he was bored, but because he couldn't figure out where he was in the film.
Sean also made it halfway through the original 101 Dalmations. I'm not sure why people think Disney was such a good storyteller. Many of the films he personally supervised—101 Dalmations, Peter Pan, Pinnochio—have always seemed awkward to me. The general feeling of these films is that the punctuation is wrong; some parts really drag, and some parts that ought to be dramatized are just glossed over (the exception, I think is Cinderella). Despite all this, 101 Dalmations is very watchable. Nice, fresh character design. And for a change, the humanoids and creatures seem to be living in the same universe. If I remember correctly, this is one of the first Disney films to bypass inking using the xerographic process instead. It helps to give everything a beautiful lively quality. I wonder if what makes the mid-century Disney films compelling is the abstract qualities of the animation woven together with narrative? Visually, 101 Dalmations is spontaneous and sizzling with energy. It's the expressionistic counterpart of Star Wars. Like Disney, George Lucas is usually an awkward dramatist. But the abstract mechanical qualities of his films (which are essentially animations) are compelling.
Also, last night I dreamt I was Werner Herzog's assistant as he put together a new documentary that examined everything from Polynesian seagoing ritual to fashion photography for the stage.
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