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a year ago
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"Once Upon a time, there was a princess and a peasant. She lived atop a hill in a glittering castle. There, she had a servant who kept her castle in order, selected and pressed her robes for the day, prepared her royal breakfast and served it to her in her chambers. She had fame, she had fortune, she had production indorsements. But she was not what she seemed."
Cat's Don't Dance was a 1997 US animated musical comedy which got the short end of the stick. seriously.. (and I wish the website of one of the animators was still around.. maybe my hunting through the archives will find it again some day)..
It was to be a film by Turner Features Animation done in the style of the classic Warner Brothers cartoons. It featured some pretty state of the art animation tools, hand draw, all star cast of good voice actors (more then just famous ones) including Scott Bakula, John Rhys-Davies, Don Knotts, Hal Holbrook, Betty Lou Gerson, Jasmine Guy, Rene Auberjonois and more. Director Mark Dindal had his first chance of directing as well as co-writing the story and voicing a character. Musical numbers were inspired by the 'golden age of Hollywood' style and written by Randy Newman, with Gene Kelly working as the choreographer for the dance numbers. At the preview screening for the cast and crew, not only did they rent a real movie theatre (often the previews are at a smaller in studio room) but many of the cast dressed in period outfits.. It was a big deal and set to be a smash hit film.
So what happened?
Turner Broadcasting Systems was 'merged' into Time Warner. They merged Turner Feature Animation into Warner Bros Feature Animation. Warner didn't want the film.. It was pretty much complete and very much in the classic great style but it wasn't there film. So they released in the minimal theatres the contract would allow, did pretty much no promotion and it was almost straight to video. There was a brief and kinda rare 'happy meal' toys, IF I remember right (90% sure) in some places for a smaller chain but that's about it. The Staff were not happy.
Basically.. the story is the set in 1939. Danny, a young and happy go lucky Cat dancer and singer leaves his home town of Kokomo to go to Hollywood to make his fortune and fame. Mostly to carry on doing what he loves and be a success. However, he quickly finds out that in Hollywood, Only the humans get the big parts. As a Cat, his job is to sit in the background and meow on cue. Cat's Don't Dance!
His main rival? Darla Dimple, the Adorable little girl who saves all the animals and is sooo sweet.. But of course, she isn't. That is her act. She is a bratty over pampered rich girl who has everything in the world she could want, and if you dare threaten her fame or fight back against anything she says, you better watch out.
Now, I'm not here to review the film today.. I just wanted to set it up. I knew about the film from when it came out but didn't see it until I got it on VHS in the early 2000s. Since then I have the Soundtrack CD and the DVD (boy, its still had a bad time with very limited barebones DVD releases). What I wanna wondered about is the Age of Darla Dimple who is .. well, she isn't just an antagonist, she is a Villain. Very much so.
She looks like a very young girl. Her very short and 'cute' nature kinda leans into that and she is a bit of a parody of Shirley Temple and child actors like that. But.. I always get the feeling she is much older then she appears.. The Studio which makes her films, Mammoth Pictures, still has the founder alive but the studio made itself due to her pictures. She seams very well known and setup. No parents in the picture but a older servant (the giant Max, which works even better due to her overly small size). At the end of the film, when she is defeated, we see her taking up a job putting up posters, which kinda lean into the fact she may be MUCH older then she appears. I get the feeling she is probebly more a teenager.. 16-18 at the youngest.. She looks young and is shown to undergo alot of makeup and stuff, which might feed on the old 'they give them age supressing drugs to keep them looking young' theories which sooo many people seam to think at times (no.. seriously, they don't.. It's a joke. Micheal J Fox just looked far younger then he was for some time, He was able to play a late 20s, early 30s year old when he was late 30s, early 40s. He was mid 20s when he started playing teenager Marty McFly.. some people are like that.. some are the opposite).
She is shown to be very cunning, well aware of how to use her looks and appeal to play with people to get what she wants. True, she is very bratty but she was in this situration where she got everything she wanted for quite some time. She even built up the studio wealth so much that even the founder panders to her. . This is also a bit like Shirley Temple in a way, in that during the great depression in the USA, the success of the Shirley Temple films are often credited as being what saved them from going bankrupt. Trying to work out how many child films she made is a bit tricky in that she started off doing as a 3 year old dancer doing one-reeler short films before launching into feature films in 1934, and as she grew up, she moved into playing the older role. By the mid 1940s, she was the teenage love interest role more then the 'sweet little child'. Another strong connection is the 1936 film 'Dimples'.. where Temple plays the titular 'Dimples' and behind the scenes, Shirley Temple and also star Frank Morgan where... pretty much fighting for control of who is the star, with Morgan trying to see scenes from Temple and Temple stealing scenes from Morgan. This probebly lead to the film being classed as, while not one of her worse, far from her best.
anyway.. back to topic.. She is also a pretty good judge of character and even after Hero Danny has seen her nasty side, and learned about it from his friends, she is still able to quickly find just the right way to twist him around her fingers in order to get rid of the animals from Hollywood all together.
It's pretty tricky to work out just how old she is meant to be.. I mean, you have to take into account it's an Anthro world so a mixture of humans and anthro animals who also appear to live atleast human lifespans, in fact a slight little joke/story bit right at the end appears to show some of these animals who are adult in the 1930s, are still around in the late 1990s and doing films... possible but... yeah.. not in the way they are showing.. so.. you have to take into account the 'cartoony' nature of things.. So she could be a very advanced 3 year old, or a young little 30 year old.. personally, I'm thinking more the older but like I said, I'm thinking 16-18 years old.
Some of the artistic design style is also of note in this idea of her looking younger then she is. Model sheet notes point out how when she is being her 'cute' form, she is very soft looking, baby-like hands which are tiny and slighty chubby, keeping the 'cute baby' look, but when she is angry, there is quite a change. Her hands are more expressive, larger in size and more defined with quite sharp fingers, even her nose goes from 'button like' to 'pig like'. Really, these are pretty good animation shortcuts for showing her as a cute girl or as the evil villain but also goes to a bit of the 'not what she seamed'.
Something a bit unusual for me, I asked a friends view on the matter. He believed between 6 and 12 as he thinks she acts too immature to be a teen and seams too mature to be under 6. Interesting and possible. She does have the bratty nature of wanting everything to be about her.. though this isn't always a sign of being younger.. there are quite a few examples of adults like this.
So.. what are peoples views on this?
Posted using PostyBirb
Cat's Don't Dance was a 1997 US animated musical comedy which got the short end of the stick. seriously.. (and I wish the website of one of the animators was still around.. maybe my hunting through the archives will find it again some day)..
It was to be a film by Turner Features Animation done in the style of the classic Warner Brothers cartoons. It featured some pretty state of the art animation tools, hand draw, all star cast of good voice actors (more then just famous ones) including Scott Bakula, John Rhys-Davies, Don Knotts, Hal Holbrook, Betty Lou Gerson, Jasmine Guy, Rene Auberjonois and more. Director Mark Dindal had his first chance of directing as well as co-writing the story and voicing a character. Musical numbers were inspired by the 'golden age of Hollywood' style and written by Randy Newman, with Gene Kelly working as the choreographer for the dance numbers. At the preview screening for the cast and crew, not only did they rent a real movie theatre (often the previews are at a smaller in studio room) but many of the cast dressed in period outfits.. It was a big deal and set to be a smash hit film.
So what happened?
Turner Broadcasting Systems was 'merged' into Time Warner. They merged Turner Feature Animation into Warner Bros Feature Animation. Warner didn't want the film.. It was pretty much complete and very much in the classic great style but it wasn't there film. So they released in the minimal theatres the contract would allow, did pretty much no promotion and it was almost straight to video. There was a brief and kinda rare 'happy meal' toys, IF I remember right (90% sure) in some places for a smaller chain but that's about it. The Staff were not happy.
Basically.. the story is the set in 1939. Danny, a young and happy go lucky Cat dancer and singer leaves his home town of Kokomo to go to Hollywood to make his fortune and fame. Mostly to carry on doing what he loves and be a success. However, he quickly finds out that in Hollywood, Only the humans get the big parts. As a Cat, his job is to sit in the background and meow on cue. Cat's Don't Dance!
His main rival? Darla Dimple, the Adorable little girl who saves all the animals and is sooo sweet.. But of course, she isn't. That is her act. She is a bratty over pampered rich girl who has everything in the world she could want, and if you dare threaten her fame or fight back against anything she says, you better watch out.
Now, I'm not here to review the film today.. I just wanted to set it up. I knew about the film from when it came out but didn't see it until I got it on VHS in the early 2000s. Since then I have the Soundtrack CD and the DVD (boy, its still had a bad time with very limited barebones DVD releases). What I wanna wondered about is the Age of Darla Dimple who is .. well, she isn't just an antagonist, she is a Villain. Very much so.
She looks like a very young girl. Her very short and 'cute' nature kinda leans into that and she is a bit of a parody of Shirley Temple and child actors like that. But.. I always get the feeling she is much older then she appears.. The Studio which makes her films, Mammoth Pictures, still has the founder alive but the studio made itself due to her pictures. She seams very well known and setup. No parents in the picture but a older servant (the giant Max, which works even better due to her overly small size). At the end of the film, when she is defeated, we see her taking up a job putting up posters, which kinda lean into the fact she may be MUCH older then she appears. I get the feeling she is probebly more a teenager.. 16-18 at the youngest.. She looks young and is shown to undergo alot of makeup and stuff, which might feed on the old 'they give them age supressing drugs to keep them looking young' theories which sooo many people seam to think at times (no.. seriously, they don't.. It's a joke. Micheal J Fox just looked far younger then he was for some time, He was able to play a late 20s, early 30s year old when he was late 30s, early 40s. He was mid 20s when he started playing teenager Marty McFly.. some people are like that.. some are the opposite).
She is shown to be very cunning, well aware of how to use her looks and appeal to play with people to get what she wants. True, she is very bratty but she was in this situration where she got everything she wanted for quite some time. She even built up the studio wealth so much that even the founder panders to her. . This is also a bit like Shirley Temple in a way, in that during the great depression in the USA, the success of the Shirley Temple films are often credited as being what saved them from going bankrupt. Trying to work out how many child films she made is a bit tricky in that she started off doing as a 3 year old dancer doing one-reeler short films before launching into feature films in 1934, and as she grew up, she moved into playing the older role. By the mid 1940s, she was the teenage love interest role more then the 'sweet little child'. Another strong connection is the 1936 film 'Dimples'.. where Temple plays the titular 'Dimples' and behind the scenes, Shirley Temple and also star Frank Morgan where... pretty much fighting for control of who is the star, with Morgan trying to see scenes from Temple and Temple stealing scenes from Morgan. This probebly lead to the film being classed as, while not one of her worse, far from her best.
anyway.. back to topic.. She is also a pretty good judge of character and even after Hero Danny has seen her nasty side, and learned about it from his friends, she is still able to quickly find just the right way to twist him around her fingers in order to get rid of the animals from Hollywood all together.
It's pretty tricky to work out just how old she is meant to be.. I mean, you have to take into account it's an Anthro world so a mixture of humans and anthro animals who also appear to live atleast human lifespans, in fact a slight little joke/story bit right at the end appears to show some of these animals who are adult in the 1930s, are still around in the late 1990s and doing films... possible but... yeah.. not in the way they are showing.. so.. you have to take into account the 'cartoony' nature of things.. So she could be a very advanced 3 year old, or a young little 30 year old.. personally, I'm thinking more the older but like I said, I'm thinking 16-18 years old.
Some of the artistic design style is also of note in this idea of her looking younger then she is. Model sheet notes point out how when she is being her 'cute' form, she is very soft looking, baby-like hands which are tiny and slighty chubby, keeping the 'cute baby' look, but when she is angry, there is quite a change. Her hands are more expressive, larger in size and more defined with quite sharp fingers, even her nose goes from 'button like' to 'pig like'. Really, these are pretty good animation shortcuts for showing her as a cute girl or as the evil villain but also goes to a bit of the 'not what she seamed'.
Something a bit unusual for me, I asked a friends view on the matter. He believed between 6 and 12 as he thinks she acts too immature to be a teen and seams too mature to be under 6. Interesting and possible. She does have the bratty nature of wanting everything to be about her.. though this isn't always a sign of being younger.. there are quite a few examples of adults like this.
So.. what are peoples views on this?
Posted using PostyBirb
