In Laman's Terms: It's Time For MGM To Get Back Into The Musical Game

In Laman's Terms is a new weekly editorial column where Douglas Laman rambles on about certain topics or ideas that have been on his mind lately. Sometimes he's got serious subjects to discuss, other times he's just got some silly stuff to shoot the breeze about. Either way, you know he's gonna talk about something In Laman's Terms!

After spending the 1980's and 1990's as an infrequent presence, the American musical came roaring back to life with the early 2000's double-whammy of Moulin Rouge! and Chicago. Since then, it's been common to get a new live-action musical adapting a famous Broadway musical (see: Nine, Les Miserables, Dreamgirls, Into The Woods, etc.) dropping around the holiday season in order to be a heavy presence around awards season. Though the American musical feature film has been far more common in the past 15 years compared to decades prior, the vast majority of them (save for Enchanted and Across The Universe) have been based on previously existing Broadway musicals or remakes of already existing musical movies.

La Belle at ta Bete (Beauty and the Beast) Is A Classical Take On A Beloved Fairy Tale

The various 56 films in the Walt Disney Animation Studios canon have become so ubiquitous in pop culture, it can be difficult to remember that, for many of these feature films, they were not the first attempts to translate their source material to the big screen. There's been plenty of big screen versions of Cinderella beyond just the animated Disney version, for instance, Two other Snow White movies (one of them starring Betty Boop!) preceded Disney's historic animated Snow White motion picture in 1937. Thus, it should come as no surprise that Disney was far from the first studio to adapt the tale of Beauty & The Beast in feature-length narrative form.

Beauty And The Beast Trailer Is Angling For Your Millennial Nostalgia

The next in Disney's long line of upcoming live-action adaptations of their animated movies (which somehow does not include a Home On The Range remake from director Peter Strickland) is Beauty And The Beast, which already had the most watched trailer of all-time this past summer and is now looking to translate the popularity of its trailer into box office success. That shouldn't be a problem at all (seriously, this thing's gonna be a box office...beast!), but will it actually be a good movie? Pete's Dragon and The Jungle Book suggest these live-action Disney remakes are on the upswing quality-wise but the likes of Maleficent and Alice In Wonderland still linger in one's mind. Well, there's a new trailer for Beauty & The Beast that looks to give prospective moviegoers a better glimpse as to what's to come.

Tim Burton Is Directing A Live-Action Dumbo Movie. I Swear, This Isn't An Onion Headline

Disney's recent surge of converting their classic animated films to live-action/CGI features has only been done twice (I'd say count Oz The Great And Powerful, but it's not technically an extension of a Disney movie), but those two films were Alice In Wonderland and Maleficent, which both made big bucks at the box office. Hell, Alice managed to gross over billion dollars, paving the way for a sequel to that 2010 film (which arrives in 2016), as well as a cavalcade of updates to classic Disney movies.

Editorial: Disney Needs To Start Rereleasing Their Classic Animated Movies To Theaters Again

I watched The Jungle Book last night for the umpteenth time last night, but let me tell you, that movie never gets old. On the contrary, it gets better with each viewing. It's actually a much more mature tale of coming of age than many give it credit for, and its upbeat atmosphere is beyond infectious. One thing I did wonder (besides some peculiar choices in terms of color on the Platinum Edition DVD) is how great the film would look on the big screen.

Space Jam Review....Why Is This Movie So Popular?

If You Wanna Slam...You Probably Grew Up In My Generation

What is Michael Jordan standing on in this thing??
That circle can't possibly hold him, can it?

Four months back, me and a bunch of friends sat down to rewatch a movie that we knew had shaped not only our own cinema sensibilities, but pretty much our entire generation. Was it the only movie to do this? Of course not. But a movie where Michael Jordan faces off against a Danny DeVito voiced alien is likely to remain one of the more memorable features to have that kind of impact. We popped in the VHS, and it started.