Harry here. That Buffy lusting spy Agent Xander was scooping up the dish at New York City's TOY FAIR and listening and paying attention to Disney's extravaganza highlighting their efforts over the next 16 months or so. As I've saying for a while now... there is some exciting animation heading our way via Disney, Dreamworks and Warners. And that's just what I know of so far. Let's hope this trend continues....

Hey Harry

Agent Xander here with a bushel o' Disney animation news. Last week, I attended a dog and pony show set up by Disney for merchandise licensees visiting New York's Toyfair, at which I had the chance to see almost half an hour of TARZAN in addition to some big meaty chunks of FANTASIA 2000 and about five minutes each from TOY STORY 2 and DINOSAUR. In addition, there were speeches and stuff from Joe Roth, Roy Disney and a few other miscellaneous animators and executives. It was all topped off by a live performance by Phil Collins of his songs from TARZAN (which, while not great, were nowhere near as bad as I had feared they would be).

Running down the movie footage in the order it was presented

DINOSAUR

They kicked off the presentation by showing what's presumably the first five minutes of the movie, a sequence (coincidentally) similar to the beginning of PRINCE OF EGYPT--an egg that will eventually hatch into the movie's dinosaur hero is punted around like a football by numerous dinosaurs, swept over a waterfall, etc., escaping what looks like certain destruction about 20 times. The dinosaurs themselves look a little plastic, but that doesn't mean the footage wasn't beautiful. The backgrounds look like a combination of CGI and real-world nature footage of rainforests and such with the CGI dinosaurs superimposed on top. Really beautiful--except for the egg-punting, it looked like it could have come off of the Discovery Channel (or a 1950s Disney nature film) if they had time travel at their disposal. From the clip, it was impossible to tell if the dinosaurs will talk or if it's going to be done entirely as a faux "nature film". The release date is set for Memorial Day 2000, making it, if I'm not mistaken, the first 2000 movie to claim a summer release date.

TOY STORY 2

Two relatively brief clips, both involving Buzz and all of the usual toy suspects save Woody (he's been "kidnapped" and the toys are figuring out how to get him back). The animation looked just about identical to the original TOY STORY, both clips were funny as hell and the voice actors were all in top form. Pretty cool, and from what I can tell the strong plot will keep it from being "more of the same."

FANTASIA 2000

Clips were shown from three of the six new segments: one set to a Saint-Saens piece that was just OK, and ones set to Elgar and Stravisnky that were stunning. The Elgar segment, set to "Pomp and Circumstance" (that's "Land of Hope and Glory" for you Brits) is F2K's answer to "The Sorcerer's Apprentice": it features Donald Duck as an assistant to Noah who is charged with rounding up the animals to get them on the ark before the flood starts. Beautiful animation, and Donald's characterization is spot on (although you never hear him over the music). Donald Duck fans are just gonna eat it up. We only saw half of it, but it was just amazing. The other new segment they showed was Stravinsky's "The Fire Bird", the movie's grand finale and answer to "Night on Bald Mountain"--very scary and apocalyptic, with an environmental twist. Really tremendous stuff. Again, they just showed half of it. Roy Disney also outlined F2K's release pattern, which you know about by now if you read VARIETY: It premieres at NYC's Carnegie Hall with live accompanyment by the London Symphonia Orchestra conducted by James Levine (!) on 12/17, followed by encore performances with Levine and the orchestra on 12/18 and 12/19. Then they take the show on the road, with live performances in London (12/21 @ Royal Albert Hall), Paris (12/22, Theatre des Champs-Elysees), Tokyo (12/27, Orchard Hall) and Pasadena (New Year's Eve, Pasadena Civic Auditorium). After that, F2K will play exclusively at IMAX theaters "worldwide" (whatever that means) from January-April 2000 before going into regular theaters.

TARZAN

I was severely skeptical about this one, but it's now #4 on my list of most-anticipated 1999 movies (after THE PHANTOM MENACE, EYES WIDE SHUT and MAGNOLIA). They showed almost 30 minutes of the movie in 5-7 minute chunks from throughout the film, some of them unfinished. The character work is beautiful and fluid, the backgrounds gorgeous, and man, I never thought I'd lust afetr a cartoon character the way I'm lusting after Jane! The segments they showed involved baby Tarzan being discovered by the apes, his growing up, the adult Tarzan's discovery of Jane, Jane and her dad educating Tarzan about the outside world, and a segement focusing on the comic-relief animal characters voiced by Rosie O'Donnell and Wayne Knight (Newman from Seinfeld). Rosie aside, it's obvious that they have a hell of a lot of respect for Edgar Rice Burroughs (animator Gil Keane spoke about how Tarzan's physique was designed to reflect feats ERB has Tarzan pulling off, reading from TARZAN OF THE APES to provide examples, in addition to reading from a 1936 letter from ERB to his son in which Burroughs described his desire for an animated TARZAN movie, as he didn't think live action could do his creation justice) and I think Burroughs fans will be pleasantly surprised. The film, surprisingly, is *not* a musical (at least in the conventional sense)--the Phil Collins songs are all sung by Collins himself and accompany the action on the soundtrack instead of being sung by the characters. Collins has provided five songs for the movie, four with lyrics, the fifth being an all-percussion instrumental (not that surprising, really, since Collins *is* a drummer). The instrumental accompanies a scene where Rosie (an ape) Knight (an elephant) and other animals inadvertently tear up Dr. Porter's camp as they explore it. Anyone worried about having to sit through a song sung by Rosie can rest easy. The action stuff (Tarzan zipping through trees, one fight scene) was simply amazing, and it looks like the cute stuff is gonna be relatively subdued. As you may have read in VARIETY, Collins has recorded his songs in several languages--French, German, Italian and Spanish (in both Latin American *and* Castillian, no less) for the dubbed prints for the world markets.

All told, then, we'll be seeing *four* terrific-looking animated films from Disney in a span of less than 12 months (June 1999-->May 2000). It'll be interesting to see if the market will support so many, but if any of them flop, it doesn't look as if poor quality will be to blame.

--Agent Xander out!