18. Waking Sleeping Beauty (2010)
Waking Sleeping Beauty is a 2009 American documentary film directed by Disney film producer Don Hahn and produced by Hahn and former Disney executive Peter Schneider. The film documents the history of Walt Disney Feature Animation from 1984 to 1994, covering the rise of a period referred to as the Disney Renaissance.
Unusually for a documentary film, Waking Sleeping Beauty uses no new on-camera interviews, instead relying primarily on archival interviews, press kit footage, in-progress and completed footage from the films being covered, and personal film/videos shot (often against company policy) by the employees of the animation studio.
Waking Sleeping Beauty debuted at the 2009 Telluride Film Festival, and played at film festivals across the country before its limited theatrical release on March 26, 2010 by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.
Waking Sleeping Beauty is a documentary film looking at the period between 1984 and 1994 as the Disney animation staff goes from flop after flop to making some of the greatest animated films of their legacy including The Little Mermaid, Beauty & The Beast, and Aladdin and the bumpy roads that they’ve had to come across in that period. Disney animator Don Hahn directs, produces, and narrated the documentary with many of the Disney personnel working at the time including Michael Eisner, Peter Schneider, Roy E. Disney, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and many more.
Waking Sleeping Beauty is my personal pick for the best documentary film I saw from last year, even though I love Exit Through The Gift Shop. I guess, maybe it’s because I grew up on Disney films as has 99.9% of the people in the world. In fact, my all-time favorite movie, believe it or not, is Bambi. I’m going to do a blog about why I consider Bambi my all-time favorite movie, when the Blu-Ray comes out in a couple of weeks.
I think the real reason why I love this more than any other documentary I’ve seen this year is because, this is a really incredible story on how one of the institutes of American society almost went away forever and then has this amazing comeback. Hahn does a really good job complying all these old home movies and archive clips from the 1980s and 1990s plus drawings of events that happened and also providing really great narration during the film.
It’s a shame that I got to see this movie as late as I did because this would have easily made my top 10 list for 2010. It’s a really underrated documentary film and definitely deserves a watch. I don’t know if this is available on Netflix but it’s available in stores. Check it out, it’s definitely a good documentary.
17. Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs (1937)
A beautiful girl, Snow White, takes refuge in the forest in the house of Seven Dwarfs to hide from her stepmother, the wicked Queen. The Queen is jealous because she wants to be known as the fairest in the land, and Snow White’s beauty surpasses her own. The Dwarfs grow to love their unexpected visitor, who cleans their house and cooks their meals. But one day when they are at their diamond mine, the Queen arrives at the cottage, disguised as an old peddler woman, and she persuades Snow White to bite into a poisoned apple. The Dwarfs, warned by the forest animals, rush home to chase the witch away, but they are too late to save Snow White. They place her in a glass coffin in the woods, and mourn for her. The Prince, who has fallen for Snow White, happens by and awakens her from the wicked Queen’s deathlike spell by “love’s first kiss.”
Based on the German fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm, it is the first full-length cel animated feature film and the earliest in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series. The story was adapted by storyboard artists Dorothy Ann Blank, Richard Creedon, Merrill De Maris, Otto Englander, Earl Hurd, Dick Rickard, Ted Sears and Webb Smith. David Hand was the supervising director, while William Cottrell, Wilfred Jackson, Larry Morey, Perce Pearce, and Ben Sharpsteen directed the film’s individual sequences.
Snow White premiered at the Carthay Circle Theatre on December 21, 1937, followed by a nationwide release on February 4, 1938, and with international earnings of $8 million during its initial release briefly assumed the record of highest grossing sound film at the time. The popularity of the film has led to it being re-released theatrically many times, until its home video release in the 1990s. Adjusted for inflation, it is one of the top ten performers at the North American box office.
At the 11th Academy Awards, Walt Disney was awarded an honorary Oscar, and the film was nominated for Best Musical Score. It was added to the United States National Film Registry in 1989 and is ranked in the American Film Institute’s list of the 100 greatest American films, who also named the film as the greatest American animated film of all time in 2008. Disney’s take on the fairytale has had a huge cultural impact, resulting in popular theme park attractions, a video game, and a Broadway musical.
At the time, this was a huge gamble for Disney as his studio was on the verge of bankruptcy at the time of the release and there was no real indication on whether or not this movie could’ve saved the studio at the time because the idea of a full-length animated movie was a risky project to do at the time as most of the animated theatrical stuff we were getting were shorts and that’s it.
So, there was a lot of pressure for this movie to perform and it did, not only making a ton of money for the studio but also beginning a new generation of filmmaking that has never gone away since.
But, how does the movie itself fare up?
For the most part, it fares up pretty well and pretty spectacular for the time. Not everything about it works but for the most part, it definitely isn’t a failure by any means.
First off, the animation is still incredible after all these years. It’s bright and colorful and fits for the period but also feels very timeless too. The scary imagery of the film still holds up in several areas even for adults that have seen the film as kids, some of this imagery still holds up and can still give you the chills just by looking at it.
A lot of the main characters do still come off as very likeable and memorable, all the Dwarfs, the evil queen, and Snow White, although, to be perfectly honest, Snow White herself comes off as a little bland and not very endearing, but hey, she still comes off as a very likeable person and her heart is always in the right place and I’m okay with that. Probably the lone character I never really got into was the prince himself, he only gets a few lines in there and he’s the one that comes off as the most bland because he’s not given much to do, he’s only there to pine for Snow White and then come and save her with a kiss at the end. There really isn’t a whole lot of development with that character and that really gets to me.
The songs in here are really good too, I will always never forget Heigh Ho as a classic Disney song
I mean, to me, that’s the best song of the whole movie as most people would agree with and the scene of them going home will always be etched into our memories with that song playing.
The overall story fits the spirit of Snow White, it doesn’t require a lot of focus on the logic or realism but mostly plays on the emotional impact of the situations and that’s where I think the movie holds up the best, the emotional impacts we feel for the characters. When it seems like Snow White is on death’s door, we’re on the edge of our seat hoping for something to happen, especially after watching the scene where the dwarfs are all around her lifeless body like we’re at a wake, we’re just as emotional as they are. And the best part about it is that the movie doesn’t talk down to kids like many of today’s movies unfortunately do.
While Snow White doesn’t hold up in terms of the story or some of the characters, it exceeds in everything else from the main characters to the songs to the animation to the emotional impact it leaves behind, Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs is definitely one of the definitive groundbreaking movies ever made for the things it was able to accomplish, proving that you could make an animated movie engaging to not just kids but to adults too. It began a legacy of classic Disney animated movies that continues to this very day.
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