#lion film

[demifiendrsa]

EGOT winning american film, television, and broadway actor James Earl Jones has passed away on September 9, 2024 at the age of 93.

Jones made his film debut in Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove. He received a Golden Globe Award nomination for Claudine. Jones gained international fame for his voice role as Darth Vader in the Star Wars franchise, beginning with the original 1977 film. Jones' other notable roles include in Conan the Barbarian, Matewan, Coming to America, Field of Dreams, The Hunt for Red October, The Sandlot, and the voice of Mufasa in The Lion King. Jones reprised his roles in Star Wars media, The Lion King (2019) remake, and Coming 2 America.

Jones' television work includes playing Woodrow Paris in the series Paris between 1979 and 1980. He voiced various characters on the animated series The Simpsons in three separate seasons. He then was cast as Gabriel Bird, the lead role in the series Gabriel's Fire which aired from 1990 to 1991. For that role, he won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series and was nominated for his fourth Golden Globe Award, this time for Best Actor in a Television Series Drama. He played Bird again in the series Pros and Cons, which ran from 1991 to 1992; that earned him his fifth and final Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Television Series Drama. He then had small appearances in the series Law & Order, Picket Fences , Mad About You, Touched by an Angel, Frasier. His role in Picket Fences earned him another Primetime Emmy Award nomination, one for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series. His later television work includes small roles in Everwood, Two and a Half Men, House, and The Big Bang Theory.

Jones' theater work includes numerous Broadway plays, including Sunrise at Campobello (1958–1959), Danton's Death (1965), The Iceman Cometh (1973–1974), Of Mice and Men (1974–1975), Othello (1982), On Golden Pond (2005), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (2008) and You Can't Take It with You (2014–2015). He was also in various off Broadway productions and Shakespeare stage adaptations such as The Merchant of Venice (1962), The Winter's Tale (1963), Othello (1964–1965), Coriolanus (1965), Hamlet (1972), and King Lear (1973). His roles in The Great White Hope (1969) and Fences (1987) earned him two Tony Awards, both for Best Leading Actor in a Play.

[jewishregulus]

there’s another life out there in which james potter is a very famous author creating the long awaited adaption of his most famous series and regulus is a nepo baby actor who gets the part of the main character to appease fandom fancasting authority . there’s a lot of hype over this including reposting of old gifsets w tags like GUYS who can’t WAIT to see regulus say this famous line!!! except regulus has never fucking read this book before going to auditions and gets the part solely because james has a parasocial crush on him from being tagged in all the posts . regulus eventually reads it for the job and becomes insanely fond of it even outside of his work bc it’s just objectively good literature . this pisses him off severely. he tells james to his face he fucking hates it meanwhile whilst reading over the script he complains about what was cut from the book and james is like SEE i TOLD THEM to include it but they said it would still read well!!! regulus replies WELL IT DOESNT. mad as hell they agree about the book James Wrote . then they kiss a lot about it

[ainasluv]

THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE (2005)

[hydravns]

MUFASA

THE LION KING (1994)

[cametotheshowinsd]

Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me? (2024) written & directed by Taylor Swift

So tell me everything is not about me …but what if it is?

[semic0nstructivecr1tic1sm]

Film Graphics!

[quinnigallagherjones]

movie night with buffy [57/?]

⤷ the chronicles of narnia: the lion, the witch and the wardrobe (2005)

do not cite the deep magic to me witch, i was there when it was written

[thief-of-eggs]

and maybe in the next life, or in the one after that- maybe for once they won’t be bound by the narrative that makes them doomed siblings

[valerie4ever]

so… I will be the first to admit that I’ve been over-analyzing the dorothy scraps from wicked, but I’ve noticed that toto is on a leash. that’s apparent in the scene where they’re all walking back to the emerald city and also when they’re walking into the wizard’s chamber. the interesting part to me is that in the second photo I posted of when they’re standing in front of the wizard’s animatronic head, dorothy isn’t holding a leash anymore. toto is right at the tin man/boq’s feet and I need to know… is he the one holding toto’s leash?????? because that would be the most amazing thing ever. ok that’s all, I’m done with my niche observation of the day 😙✌️

[shihlun]

Glauber Rocha

- The Lion Has Seven Heads / Der Leone Have Sept Cabeças

1970

[flowerynameslover]

The Lion King (1994): Nala and Simba

Romance in Film Gif Meme: (1/10) Favorite Gazes/Touches/Yearnings

[artist-issues]

I'm tired of being disappointed. By far the best part of the movie was the what-could-have-been in the soundtrack. Mufasa had seeds of being good but it suffered from a lack of focus and terrible visual language, so it was ultimately unsatisfying. 

I think it's actually worse when you can see the threads and interesting seeds of a good story just wasted and abandoned under a pile of Bad Storytelling. 

Lack of Focus:

The movie was trying to say something about Bravery, and Bloodlines, and Vengeance, and Going Against the Status Quo, and Self-Reflection, and Loyalty, and Family, and Relying on One Another Instead of Just Yourself, and Belief in Yourself, and even Vague Spirituality, all at once. So it wound up giving the movie-equivalent of two or three disjointed sentences about each topic, and never actually made a clear point about any of them. 

For example, Mufasa is afraid of water. Rafiki says that this is because Mufasa is afraid of his own reflection, even though the audience would have been assuming that it was because Mufasa almost drowned as a cub. Then in the climax, Mufasa and Kiros are battling underwater and Mufasa remembers his foster-mother telling him to close his eyes and use his other senses to hunt. So he does, and he realizes I guess through the currents, that a big rock is falling toward them, and pushes Kiros into it.

What does that tell us? That Mufasa was taught to hunt like a lioness, so he can use those skills when he needs to. Which he's already been doing with no hesitation for the whole movie. Just because he's in water during the final battle, doesn't mean that's a satisfying conclusion to what they were doing with water, as a symbol for his character.

IF Mufasa had been embarrassed about his lioness-observational-skills, thinking it made him less of a lion, or weird, and therefore rarely used those skills because he was always trying to be more like Taka or the other males—conserving energy, not being mindful of what's around him—THEN finally embraced his weird skills at the end, while in water fighting—that would be something thematic. 

You would be able to say, "he's learned not to be afraid of where his skill-set is, as a leader, ergo: he's learned 'not to be afraid of his reflection/the water.'"

But that's not what happened. Because they didn't devote time to developing what, exactly, Mufasa is afraid of seeing in himself, or WHY he's afraid. Because everything he does succeeds. He wins his first race, wins his first fight, wins the favor of his adoptive father, survives diving into water even though he's afraid of it, wins at saving sarabi and then wins her affections even when he's actively trying not to—there's no reason for him to be trying not to. Not any that tie back into "Mufasa is afraid of himself." There's no reason ever shown for this weird halfhearted insecurity he sometimes has, and has to overcome.

So then it's not compelling. And that sort of thing is sprinkled all over the movie.

They keep mentioning "Milele," which means "forever" in Swahili, but that whole concept is alternately described as a "dream," or "a place you feel inside of you," but basically it's also a physical location that becomes the Pridelands. And nobody ever clarifies what exactly Milele is. It's treated like a fantasy concept or a spiritual vision or a physical utopia whenever the film needs it to be those things. But if it's never clearly defined, it's not compelling, which sucks when Milele is what the characters are "searching for." Another example of starting a concept and then never following it through to a satisfying conclusion.

They have seeds of Mufasa being the only lion to ask for help and be willing to cooperate with other animals besides lions—but they are few and far-between. He doesn't ask Rafiki for help; Rafiki sort of convinces him not to eat him. And asking animals for help like he does with the elephants or the Pridelands animals isn't unique to him; the first to do it is Sarabi, who willingly accepts and relies on Zazu despite others' scorn—and MUFASA is one of the ones who is scornful, initially! So they plant seeds for the big climax where he's the only voice that can unite animals across species by the climax, but they're don't water or tend to or help those seeds to grow. So the climax feels a little out of nowhere and less compelling.

If they had just focused on one of these things, it would've been tighter and more emotionally impactful.

Except NO, it wouldn't have been. Because you will have a hard time connecting, emotionally, to photorealistic-CGI lions even if the story's focus was tight.

Bad Animation and Filming

Lions in real life move with too much weightiness and heavy-animal-breathing for you to commit to that weight 100% of the time AND have good character acting. You can only really commit wholeheartedly to one or the other.

So you can tell in this movie the eyes are bigger and more expressive than in the first CGI Lion King. But that doesn't save it. It doesn't cut it. 

When Taka is giving Sarabi his last longing look, he just looks like a vaguely displeased large animal. There's no human heartbreak in his expression. 

When Mufasa is singing a fast line about not knowing how to respond to Sarabi, he should be swinging his head back and forth, like he's looking around for something in desperation—because that's what the song sounds like—and his walking, if he's walking, should be fast. A cross between running from something and searching for something. Because that's what's happening in the emotion of the song.

But lions don't move that fast, because they're heavy. And when they're looking around for something, they do it with their noses and long head-turns in sweeping motions. No fast eyes-darting-around. Certainly no human conflict of desire in their faces. So photorealistic Mufasa can't do any of those things. Which sucks, because the actions of the characters and the action in the scene should match the emotions they're feeling, and the emotion the audience is supposed to be feeling. But it can't, so everything is flat and boring. 

And even if you could connect to photorealistically emotional lions—you might, we connect with our pets emotionally all the time—you wouldn't get the chance because the film avoids their faces every time something emotionally interesting is happening. 

For example: my favorite part of the song "I Always Wanted a Brother" is when the beat appears to hard-drive, and it feels like a "stop everything" moment, to match Taka's outrage that someone is dissing his brother. And he goes, "what did you say 'bout my brother? That's not a stray, that's my brother! You stay away from my brother 'cuz I say so."

That whole moment, I'm envisioning Taka getting all up in another animal's face, maybe taking a swipe at it, throwing his little weight around and puffing his chest, fearsome-face. The song FEELS like that's what's happening; like he's going on and on,  exploding with insistence and protectiveness.

Something similar to the "stop everything-angry" vibe of this:

But in the movie, is it a close-up shot of Taka invading another animal's space? Does the camera follow him from behind in a slow zoom, and then when he says, "what did you say bout my brother?" He spins and looks directly into the camera (in the direction of the animal he's talking to) and the camera stops while Taka charges closer? Do we get to see his angry face at all?

No.

The camera does this stupid boring thing where we, the audience, are in the branches of a tree (where the animal Taka is addressing is safely out of reach) and it pans slowly along, unfocused, like we're casually passing this interaction by. Taka's face is far away on the distant ground and you can't really see it's expression, his body language isn't doing anything interesting (he's just standing there for the whole part of the song) and at one point because of the panning, the tree the camera is in has a branch that actually hides Taka completely from view during the song.

We don't even get to see the animal he's talking to react. All we see is the back of its head.

They do this over and over in the movie. When Rafiki is finally running to meet his long lost brother, we get the back of his body, one quick snapshot of the underside of his face, and then it's flyover drone-style shots. When Sarabi and Mufasa decide to love each other, it's a close-up on the backs of their chins; no eyes, no mouths, no head-body-language. When Sarabi and Mufasa are singing a very back-and-forth interactive duet to one another, the camera is, again, far-off and distant for most of the song, rotating slowly around a landscape that they're lion-lumbering through. Boring. Distant. Wasteful.

Sometimes the movie tries to match the emotional pace in the way it's shot. When Kiros is readying a killing blow and Taka has moments to decide if he's going to save his brother, that scene cuts well between the raised paw and Taka and Mufasa's faces—for example. But those are the most basic ways to shoot those scenes, and scenes like them are few and far-between.

What it needed was one overarching idea to connect the character threads, and give them time to unspool. And then it really, desperately needed to be animated traditionally so that the lions could emote like humans.

So! I'll probably be writing a series of posts exploring what could've been to correct the fumble. Because I did enjoy the concepts in Mufasa.

[hydravns]

SARABI

THE LION KING (1994)

[cinelestial]

‘Sonic The Hedgehog 3’ earned $25.7 million at the box office in the United States for its Friday debut

‘Mufasa: The Lion King’ came in 2nd place earning $13.3 million in the U.S for its Friday domestic debut.

[mashbrainrot]