Review: ‘The Black Cauldron’
Fantasy author Lloyd Alexander was beloved for his imaginative series, the [[[Chronicles of Prydain]]] so anyone who read the series, originally released between 1964 and 1968, were no doubt apprehensive to see the entire story collapsed into an 80 minute animated feature from Walt Disney.
The filmmakers decided to focus on the second book, [[[The Black Cauldron]]], and substantially altered characters, settings, and events so when it opened July 24, 1985, fans of the material were not happy. Worse, people unfamiliar with the source material were not particularly entertained leading to a box office collapse. That this film came at the tail end of a period where creativity was clearly lacking meant that it looked and felt like a generic Disney animated film. Jeffrey Katzenberg arrived on staff just prior to the film’s release and he could merely nip and tuck sequences, but recognized their most expensive feature to date, and the first to use computer-generated animation, was not working.
Now released in a standard DVD 25th Anniversary edition, the movie has been cleaned up a bit but still lacks suspense and imagination. Rather than visually embrace the Welsh mythology that Alexander mined for his novels, Disney made everything look fairly bland.
In short, the Horned King (John Hurt) is attempting to find the legendary Black Cauldron which would give him the power to rule the world. According to a trio of witches, no one had been looking for the magical artifact in over 2000 years, but now the time seemed ripe. What the tall, shadowy figure did not count on was the plucky band of adventurers to stand in his way towards global domination. Leading the charge was the teenaged Taran (Grant Bardsley), who we meet as he laments his having just missed out on participating in the last war. Instead, he works as the assistant pig keeper to a wizard, unaware the prize pig, Hen Wen, can conjure up images of the future. When the pig goes missing, Taran goes in search only to encounter a talking creature named Gurgi (John Byner), followed by a dim-witted princess Eilonwy (Susan Sheridan) and Fflewddur Fflam (Nigel Hawthorne), a broken down balladeer.
The movie barely resembles the book with characters altered beyond recognition and the Horned King a possible threat, as opposed to the malevolent force he is in the books. Instead, the standard quest story and coming of age for Taran are inserted much to the disappointment of the readers. Comical elements are there for the children but overall there’s no spark to ignite the imagination.
The new edition comes complete with a deleted scene, “The Fairy Folk”, that would have added to the exposition and you see it in semi-complete and pencil form with the soundtrack. A scene Katzenberg ordered cut, is not here. Also new to this set is “The Witches’ Challenge”, a trivia game for the youngsters. “The Quest for the Black Cauldron” game and art gallery are preserved from the previous release along with the 1952 Donald Duck short “Trick or Treat” included merely because it featured a witch.
George Lucas is a filmmaker who believes that movies are works that can be revisited and altered as the artist’s vision or his tools change. This has been a hallmark of his dating all the way back to his 1967 USC student film, [[[Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB]]]. When Lucas and colleague Francis Ford Coppola made it from film school to Hollywood, they wound up getting the money to make a feature-version of the story as Lucas’ film directing debut. A co-production between Coppola’s American Zoetrope and Warner Bros., [[[THX 1138]]]was shot and released in 1971 to dismal results.
[[[Chuck]]] is the ultimate fanboy dream television show. We all wish we could be accidentally zapped with the Intersect and be a walking computer, filled with espionage details. This way, we too could be protected by the CIA and NSA in the form of the rough Colonel John Casey and the gorgeous Sarah Walker. The show’s producers know this and Josh Schwartz and Chris Fedak have carefully built up the television series reeling in the fans and finding new ones along the way with a delightful mix of humor, action and pathos.
“Greed is good” and “Lunch is for wimps” became the two catch phrases that helped turn Oliver Stone’s [[[Wall Street]]] into a smash hit. The feature film also debuted at just the perfect moment as Wall Street blazed across the headlines with a serious financial collapse. The film cemented Michael Douglas as the leading man of the decade and gave us a stellar cast of newcomers, most of who have gone on to do other good work.
I found myself interested in seeing 
Rarely are Philip K. Dick’s stories appealing and accessible to mass audiences. You need fights and things blowing up and Arnold Schwarzenegger to really attract a crowd because the thought-provoking subject matter doesn’t always translate well from the printed page. As a result, it was a major mistake to release [[[A Scanner Darkly]]] on July 7, 2006, in the midst of the summer blockbuster season. The movie was certainly appealingly cast and was nicely marketed, but it opened small, never caught on and vanished from the public discourse. Instead, its competition the same weekend was the seasonal popcorn favorite [[[Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest]]].
I was too young to buy the 1962 Topps trading card series, [[[Mars Attacks]]], and grew up hearing about these wonderful cards and was delighted when a facsimile edition was released in the 1990s. Others, though, were clearly inspired by them and when he was in a position to do pretty much whatever he wanted, director Tim Burton said he wanted to use the cards for a loving tribute to the goofy SF movies of the 1950s.
When [[[The Matrix]]] burst on to the scene in 1999, we were wowed. Not only was it visually dazzling, but it seemed like a delightful science fiction concept that made you think. The backstory seemed fascinating and viewers wanted more, which Warner Bros and the Wachowski Brothers delivered. Now we know to be careful for what we wish since the two sequels really didn’t live up to the expectations. And maybe they couldn’t since there was just enough background material conceived to make the main story plausible. The Wachowskis clearly didn’t have a sequel in mind and when asked to fabricate one or two, they had to not only top the thrill of the first, but make their imaginary realm come alive.
I should have loved 
when it debuted on CBS in the fall of 1965. At seven, I was the prime audience for this family adventure about the Robinsons and friends who are literally, hurtling through uncharted territory. Instead, I never warmed up to the show and much preferred ABC’s [[[Batman]]] when that arrived in January 1966. I found the science fiction lacking, the acting over-the-top, and the robot one of the few interesting aspects.
