Thursday, November 16, 2006

Alan Vs Randy & A Disney Princess Like We Have Never Seen Before?



Many fans of the traditional Disney Animated Musical features rejoiced at the news that Disney is finally getting into 2D Animation again with "The Frog Princess".
One of the many reasons for the excitement for people like me was that the key filmmaking team behind this project was gonnna be the same as "The Little Mermaid" which bought about the last "Golden Age" of Animation.
It just seemed right and poetic, if u will...That once again the Directing team of Ron Clements & John Musker along with the amazing composer, Alan Menken would bring about this re-birth of the Classic Disney Musical. Cause these storytellers and Alan's music played a very important part in the success of all those disney musicals Mermaid, Aladdin, Beauty & The Beast etc.

However, the news just broke this week that the new Animation head honcho and disney, John Lasseter (of Pixar), has decided to replace Alan Menken with Randy Newman and give him his Musical debut Randy Newman is no stranger to Pixar, he has been a staple composer for most of their movies and specially all of John's movies (Both the Toy Storys,Bug's Life, Cars).

This sent many Alan Menken fans into a fit of anger (including myself) with people already predicting Frog Princess to be doomed and the saying how John L. is gonna turn Disney into Pixar 2!

But on further discussion with a friend in Animation (who was equally disappointed with the switch),it led to him doing some investigations.
Which in turn led to quite an interesting discovery which might explain this move.

It SEEMS, The Frog Princess could be Disney's first African American princess, in a New Orleans-ish setting with a Jazz soundtrack and not a very theatrical soundtrack!
And that might explain the preference of Randy Newman over Alan Menken.
I can honestly say, IF this is a fact...am actually excited by this decision and its about time Disney shook things up in this direction!

Coupled by the fact that Alan Menken is swamped with so many projects for Disney already , with bringing Little Mermaid and Sister Act On Broadway , writing songs and scoring the 2d/Live Action hybrid "Enchanted" etc etc..it just might just be the best thing to have happened!

Am happy again...for now! :-)

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous1:11 AM

    Bonsoir! :D
    Cet ami qui est dans l'Animation, il n'écrirait pas sur le forum Disney français http://disneycentralplaza.aceboard.fr par hasard? ;)

    ReplyDelete