Disney's newest movie FROZEN, loosely based on The Snow Queen

it was good in french. it was nice not knowing who was doing the voices.

― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Saturday, January 11, 2014 8:26 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

i actually didnt recognize anyone's voices, which was really refreshing

XP: yeah, that was my experience as well. When I.saw that dichotomy set up, I was expecting it to lead to a more mature resolution.

This is my favorite movie of 2013. Felt it worked in every way, as a work addressing the Disney formula filmmaking-wise and politically, as a musical with great numbers, as a story on its own, the characters were captivating and unpredictable, the sidekick was not annoying but contributed positively to the humor and warmth of the story. Genuinely feels like the perfect Disney film. The villain twist: Why does it need to set up the surprise villain if he's a surprise villain? When we don't follow him along every step. She didn't get to know him and thought he was worth marrying - we didn't get to know him and thought he was marriage material, and then when we do get to know him - surprise, he's an asshole. Some people are, that's what I got out of it, and to be sure that's true.

Ideologically speaking, unlike Brave, where the female character is predictably the victim of a plot where that's something she has to defend herself again, work out, not just a character on her own, Frozen is not about her being female, it just follows naturally the relationship between two women, and some male side characters. There's no visible 'struggle' with subverting the limited Disney princess role.

Above all Frozen shows us how necessary it is to have a Disney in form to get big old musicals at their best in cinemas. There are no other films like this in 2013 or any year and when they've worked out their kinks like this the future should be bright. Jennifer Lee is one to watch, anyway.

Those moments when Elsa hurt Anna (physically) and was close to killing off her and some soldiers were wonderfully tense without being too loud about it, thrilling in that you weren't exactly sure what to make of her as a character (a good thing) and what it would to do her, what she would do to others, and of course the swagger of the Let It Go sequence, a character expressing the thrill of being something special and alone and not only gloom and emo over it. So many COOL moments animations-wise as she established her snow kingdom.

but what about those horrendous songs?

I did guess the 'surprise' ending, or at least what it entailed...

Not because I'm so brainy, there was a massive clue about 30 mins before the end.

http://everythingwrongwithfrozen.tumblr.com/

recommended reading

shit. I hadn't even thought of it that way.

#I'm going to turn into a cat I'm so mad

So I guess this movie is a giant hit? Makes sense. Not only has there been little animated competition this season, but the weather has driven a lot of people indoors (I wonder if movie tickets in general are currently up?). Also, apparently this movie has really connected with tweens.

liked it. nowhere near as much as abcfsk, but still, like is like. agree that many (most) of the songs are horrendous, but "let it go" is good enough to make up for a lot of that. and the filmmakers were kind enough to keep most of them quite short. also like that the movie passes the bechdel test on an integral level, not just in terms of its dialogue. the romance stories were given a fair bit of screen time, but everything hinges on the relationship between the sisters.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/03/10/christian-radio-host-disneys-frozen-is-satanic-tool-for-indoctrinating-young-lesbians/

Blows my mind what a sensation this mundane movie has become. It's basically just a bunch of trudging up and down a mountain in the snow, broken up by the filler of perfunctory (and mostly passive) villains and a talking snowman. I've challenged many a teen or pre-teen to tell me what the movie is about. Not what happens, but what's it about, and generally they're at a loss. Yeah, it's about "sisters," but the conflict is pretty weird. She's angry she hurts her sister - and she does seriously hurt her sister - so she shuts herself off, because she loves her sister so much she doesn't want to hurt her again. Her little sister is ignorant of this and doesn't know why her big sister is so ... cold. So her big sister freaks out, runs away, builds a fortress of solitude guarded by an ice monster (and inadvertently gives life to snow man), then makes everything in this already wintery hamlet more wintery (she can control her powers enough to do the former but not undo the latter). Then she ... chills out, realizes, wait, she does love her sister (was there ever any doubt?), which ... thaws her heart. And all is good. I liked "Enchanted" a lot more.

My daughters asked me to come up with a few sequels, so here's what I spitballed:

Frozen 2: Anna and Ilsa open an ice cream parlor, but they lack the business savvy to go big. A mysterious stranger arrives in town and convinces Ilsa to work with him. He instead enslaves her and steals her powers, thus cornering the ice cream market, and Anna (and later Ilsa, after she escapes) must figure out how to stop him *without* magic. They succeed, and the movie ends with all well and Ilsa powerless ... or so we think, as she gives a frosty wink after the credits roll. Which sets us up for:

Frozen 3: Love Means Never Having to Say You're Thawy: Ilsa is still keeping her powers a secret when a heat wave hits their wintery hamlet and puts an end to their flourishing ice trade. Ilsa tries to cool things down but finds out she really is powerless and unable to help. What gives? So she and her sister must go on a quest together to the heart of elf country and find out what happened. It turns out there was a prince (!) who was similarly cursed, only with heat powers. Ilsa and Anna must stop him, they succeed, and then Ilsa marries him in an elaborate fire and ice ceremony.

Frozen 4: This one is just Anna and the snowman, and probably the guy with the reindeer, too. They're out exploring when some freak accident frees a bunch of mean frozen dinosaurs and wooly mammoths and stuff, which rampage through the town until they're stopped. (The original team has nothing to do with this installment, which is designed for the straight to video market.)

Yeah, it's about "sisters," but the conflict is pretty weird. She's angry she hurts her sister - and she does seriously hurt her sister - so she shuts herself off, because she loves her sister so much she doesn't want to hurt her again. Her little sister is ignorant of this and doesn't know why her big sister is so ... cold. So her big sister freaks out, runs away, builds a fortress of solitude guarded by an ice monster (and inadvertently gives life to snow man), then makes everything in this already wintery hamlet more wintery (she can control her powers enough to do the former but not undo the latter).

Never realized the emotional realities of Scandinavians would enchant the world to the tune of $1 billion.

That's reductionist bullshit - every movie can be summed up by seemingly mundane ingredients.

Well, yeah. But this one in particular I didn't feel like there was enough story to support its running time (not that it was imposing or anything). Like, the innate conflict seemed pretty easy to resolve, and a lot of the other stuff seemed peripheral or perfunctory, like the loss of the parents (natch), the mustache twirling bad guy, the snow monster, the gnomes, the snowman. They felt like placeholders to me, insubstantial subs for real villains or conflicts. Even the quest, as such, of the younger sister entailed walking up a hill to talk to her grouchy sister. It was fine, but I felt no thematic/narrative through-line, just ... stuff happening.

I'll have to ask my 5 year old a little more what he thought it's about. I think he mostly liked the snowman and the reindeer, and there was just enough "super powers" stuff. He dug how Elsa created the snow castle.

Yeah, that's what I mean. There's a lot to like and enjoy, but the sum is less than its parts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2hJYS6XNiw

I can relate.

I finally saw this and I loved it

The whole 'do you wanna build a snowman' thing reminded me a lot of growing up with my younger sister, who always wanted to play and I always wanted her to leave me alone

idk

I'm a sap but I loved the music, dug the story, enjoyed that the true love's kiss came from the sister and not the dude. the twist was a bit forced but overall I really really enjoyed it

oh and I really loved Kristen Bell as Anna, singing and speaking

every time i see images from this movie i can't get over how terrible the character modeling for the snowman is. it looks like it came from this:
http://axxomovies.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Sir-Billi-2012-Movie-Poster.jpg

I really enjoyed Frozen, but not as much as Tangled and Wreck It Ralph, and I'm intrigued how it's become such a massive, record-busting success in comparison. I guess part of the reason was that Tangled came after a series of relative flops (though the Amy Adams live-action crossover thing did pretty well IIRC), and part of Frozen's success can be traced back to Disney being "rehabilitated" in people's eyes by it and WiR?

every kid wants to sing the songs

girls

is the real answer

My five year old son is obsessed, but his best friends/playmates are girls, so maybe.

hey I bought the soundtrack as soon as I heard it so... um yeah what shakey said

GIRLS! :D

stay@home mommy bloggers?

Lool, Sir Billi is a huge standing joke in my household

Just need to register how bad this was on the relevant thread

i still maintain that hans being evil was not intrinsic to his character at all, but was instead a manifestation of lazy plotting. i have maintained this so firmly for so long that my sisters bought me a 12-inch-tall hans doll as a joke. when my young cousin comes over, we play a game where hans cordially greets her barbie dolls and then tries to murder them, which i realize now isn't supporting my argument.

lol

Lmbo

I think Disney's mastered the ol' fashioned whisper campaign as huge part of their marketing strategy; that the phrase 'frozen is the best disney film since X' wak just mysteriously everywhere during the initial run of this flick.

My girls (5 & 3) are obsessed and can now pretty much recite the script by heart. And a bunch of tweens at the park the other day were playing all the songs on their phones - reminded me of girls singing all the songs from Grease all summer of 1977 when I was a kid. I'm surprised how much I enjoy it. Much as I also like Tangled, that still felt like a quite traditional musical in many ways - the Gothel songs in particular. Frozen feels like the first post-Buffy OMWF Disney joint - didn't Christophe Beck do music for both?

My little girl is still wearing a winter glove* with a snowflake on it because of this movie. She calls it her Ice Glove.

*yeah, we lost the other one somehow.

This was kind of bad and it looked really ugly. IDGI. My two-year-old seemed into it though.

also how come all the women have huge-ass eyes and the men have normal sized, proportional eyes?

I used to think so too; I figured gayness had screwed my eyesight.

I dont even want to know what depravation might cause that, fr o'brien was right about ye

on Easter weekend, i was at a big family gathering, and some of the kids were playing in a room with the Frozen soundtrack in a CD player, some funny exchanges. one boy: "this is a girl song, I hate girl songs." a girl replies: "then why were you just singing along with it?"

I never truly realized how ubiquitous this film had become until a month ago when both a co-worker and my niece (just turned 5yo) separately asked me if I'd seen it yet

I was with my daughter in line to get her face painted at an Easter thing a few weeks ago with about 20 other young girls. "Let it Go" came on the radio and the whole room turned into a weird Manchurian Candidate moment when they all just glossed over and began singing in unison without missing a beat or even seemingly aware of each other.

Then I realized this is going to be their thing, like Grease or the Spice Girls or whatever. Funny to see it happen at such a young age.

There's still something very cheap looking about the cgi to me. It looks too glossy or something, and the people are too symmetrical and move too smoothly.

my son definitely sang along to "Let It Go" like he had never sang along to a song before, on like his 2nd viewing of the movie. that song has some kind of crazy grip on the young ones.

Funny, I've been thinking about this movie recently because of all the "OMG I CAN'T TAKE THESE FROZEN SONGS" from parents on my FB feed and elsewhere. I took my two sons (now 6 & 9) to it when it came out, and they really liked it but did not become obsessed with it (tho the youngest keeps asking to see it again). I thought it was not a very good movie -- felt sort of stapled together -- but I did think it was interesting. So dogged in its determination to flirt with and then invert the classic Disney princess tale -- the untelegraphed late-chapter evilness of Hans, the way Kristoff is set up to be the savior but then isn't. I'd like to think (wishfully, probably) that what draws girls in particular to it is that it is so much a girls' story. Even more than "Brave," which still revolved around the girl rebelling against being a proper princess. Anna and Elsa don't have any problem with being proper princesses, but they're also totally in charge. The men in the movie are all in supporting roles. The central conflict is between sisters -- and it's especially interesting that neither one is evil in the classic Disney style. Elsa is just afraid to be herself.

I don't know, the whole thing is clunky and problematic on a lot of fronts once you dig in a little. But it still seems like a significant phenomenon to me.

Thought that occurred:

http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20140409032203/frozen/images/8/8e/Kristoff.PNG

It's styled modernly, but dude totally has James Spader 80s hair

Yeah, I appreciate all that stuff as the father of a daughter (xp) but at the same time I wish the female characters could do all that stuff while also not having grapefruit-sized eyes and stringbean-sized arms

Except more of a boring Broadway pastiche version of that, imo.

both things exist on the highest equal plane for some people, e.g. Jim Pardo

^hey, I’m a huge Pardo fan!

(I’m sure y’all are aware this is now available on D+, several months early)

Today I had to fast-forward to where my kids had been in the movie (after Disney+ fritzed out); I was like, “...was it after she meets the Nokk?,” and my wife was all, “How the f do you know what the horse is called?”

My daughter made this today. Dunno if this will work ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yi58fwClSzA&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR0S8oB3FgLbtYW5HO1XvfrHdolTilxtbBl2U8vlQoEZv7xEOCmFios6jIM

No.

Yeah it worked. Cool!

How did it work for you? Are you able to access the link at least? I just see an error note. Anyway, here is the link, which needs to be de-quoted::

"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yi58fwClSzA&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR1wJFSS3ver2R2DipEUfLDIri1JFTQKSSqLD7acZo8FsPpOJtA126CGVGI";

Or not. Dammit!

I still can't see it.

http://www.youtube.com /watch?v=Yi58fwClSzA&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR1wJFSS3ver2R2DipEUfLDIri1JFTQKSSqLD7acZo8FsPpOJtA126CGVGI

OK, I assume just reconnect the two halves of that link.

I had just clicked on the original link in my web browser…

very cute, especially her Sven impression.

so cute! thumbs up on moose and snowman

https://www.instagram.com/p/CABP91pHgck/

🤘

There's another new(-ish) Olaf retcon short on Disney+, called "Once Upon a Snowman." It's cute, but I only accept the Chris Buck / Jennifer Lee productions as Frozen canon.

It's so f'd up that Anna leaves Hans in charge (when Elsa flees) - they presumably have a palace full of lifelong advisors, one of them really should have put the kibosh on that.