Verbal Diorama

It's International Women’s Day tomorrow, and if we’re talking about someone who represents feminism, women’s rights, gender equality and reproductive rights, there’s no fictional character used to represent this as frequently on International Women’s Day than Wonder Woman.

A character born from polyamory, first-wave feminism and also linked to the very first birth control clinic in the United States; Wonder Woman was the only one of DC's top tier heroes to not have her own solo headline movie, after Superman in 1978 and Batman in 1989, and their numerous sequels. With the MCU blazing a trail for the superhero cinematic renaissance, the race to get the first female headlining superhero movie of the 2010s was on.

It was a race that DC won, rather wonderfully. That doesn't mean it was quick, easy or free from studio mandated scenes...

I would love to hear your thoughts on Wonder Woman !

CONTACT....

• Twitter @verbaldiorama
• Instagram @verbaldiorama
• Facebook @verbaldiorama
• Letterboxd @verbaldiorama
• Email verbaldiorama [at] gmail [dot] com
• Website verbaldiorama.com

SUPPORT VERBAL DIORAMA....

Give this podcast a five-star Rate & Review

Join the Patreon | Send a Tip | Buy Merch

ABOUT VERBAL DIORAMA

Verbal Diorama is hosted, produced, edited, researched, recorded and marketed by me, Em | This podcast is hosted by Captivate, try it yourself for free.

Theme Music: Verbal Diorama Theme Song. Music by Chloe Enticott - Compositions by Chloe. Lyrics by Chloe Enticott (and me!) Production by Ellis Powell-Bevan of Ewenique Studio

Patrons: Simon E, Sade, Claudia, Simon B, Laurel, Derek, Vern, Cat, Andy, Mike, Griff, Luke, Michael, Scott, Brendan, Lisa, Sam, Will, Jack, Dave, Chris, Stuart, Nicholas, Zo, Kev, Pete, Heather, Danny, Aly, Stu, Brett, Philip, Michele and Xenos!

The final episode of Animation Season 2024, and one of Walt Disney's crowning achievements in animation: Sleeping Beauty.

Doing another princess movie after Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Cinderella seemed like the obvious choice, but it was also risky. Walt Disney didn't want to make the same thing again, and wanted to wow the public with yet another cinematic visual masterpiece to prove Disney were the pioneering animation studio.

A "moving illustration".

To do this he enlisted Eyvind Earle, combining pre-Renaissance, Italian, and Gothic French influences with his own abstract style of realism to create the formalised elegance and stylish design, while also taking advantage of 70mm Super Technirama for the first time ever in animation.

Sleeping Beauty would be lavish and be exactly what Disney intended, but it would come at a cost. Literally and figuratively.

I would love to hear your thoughts on Sleeping Beauty (1959) !

CONTACT....

• Twitter @verbaldiorama
• Instagram @verbaldiorama
• Facebook @verbaldiorama
• Letterboxd @verbaldiorama
• Email verbaldiorama [at] gmail [dot] com
• Website verbaldiorama.com

SUPPORT VERBAL DIORAMA....

Give this podcast a five-star Rate & Review

Join the Patreon | Send a Tip | Buy Merch

ABOUT VERBAL DIORAMA

Verbal Diorama is hosted, produced, edited, researched, recorded and marketed by me, Em | This podcast is hosted by Captivate, try it yourself for free.

Theme Music: Verbal Diorama Theme Song. Music by Chloe Enticott - Compositions by Chloe. Lyrics by Chloe Enticott (and me!) Production by Ellis Powell-Bevan of Ewenique Studio

Patrons: Simon E, Sade, Claudia, Simon B, Laurel, Derek, Vern, Cat, Andy, Mike, Griff, Luke, Michael, Scott, Brendan, Lisa, Sam, Will, Jack, Dave, Chris, Stuart, Nicholas, Zo, Kev, Pete, Heather, Danny, Aly, Stu, Brett, Philip, Michele and Xenos!

5 years, 244 episodes, 258 histories and legacies. I guess I need to crack on and do some more...

Thank you to you all for supporting me over five years of podcasting.

Huge thanks to Russell, Brett, Tracy, Josh, KT, Oti, Jack, Scott and Zack for being kind enough to send me some messages of congratulations.

Lots of love to you all! Thanks for listening!

For the final fifth birthday episode, Disney could see that motion capture was quickly becoming the next big thing for animation, and they wanted in. They teamed up with Robert Zemeckis to make A Christmas Carol, and then Mars Needs Moms, based on a children's book, written to persuade a young child to eat his vegetables.

But Mars Needs Moms would not only be incredibly dark for a family animated film, and venture deep into the realms of the uncanny valley, it would also become a huge box office bomb for Disney, affecting their next Martian-set movie John Carter, and who Disney now do their best to avoid promoting in any way as their own...

Sir Patrick Stewart has never had a role that could officially be described as "poop", until now.

For the second fifth birthday episode, The Emoji Movie was Sony's $1 million winning bid on making a movie all about those little characters you use on WhatsApp instead of actual words, and to ensure this was completed before anyone else had a chance, it came together in under two years!

Unfortunately, it was a critical disaster. Insert shocked face emoji here!

Quite famously a movie that almost destroyed DreamWorks by losing $125 million, Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas doesn't deserve its negative reputation as a box office bomb, and the final traditional 2D animated film from the studio.

It instead deserves to be featured as one of the fifth birthday episodes of this podcast.

Only five years late, too!

The Black Cauldron is notorious for being one of Disney's darkest and scariest movies, and it is, but there's a beauty in its darkness that's unrivalled. The score does feel mismatched in places and the characters aren't very well-developed, but there's something truly ambitious there, and the animation has moments of sheer awe-inspiring brilliance. It really is a work of visual art.

But you can see the behind-the-scenes troubles even in its animation - while some scenes are some of the most challenging and technically brilliant of all of Disney’s hand-drawn output, others look almost amateur.

The Black Cauldron was different, risky and slightly more mature in tone to average Disney fare. It’s often accused of being the movie that almost killed Walt Disney Feature Animation, but there’s always more to the story, and that includes the potential that The Black Cauldron had to change Disney’s animated fortunes for the better...

I would love to hear your thoughts on The Black Cauldron !

CONTACT....

• Twitter @verbaldiorama
• Instagram @verbaldiorama
• Facebook @verbaldiorama
• Letterboxd @verbaldiorama
• Email verbaldiorama [at] gmail [dot] com
• Website verbaldiorama.com

SUPPORT VERBAL DIORAMA....

Give this podcast a five-star Rate & Review

Join the Patreon | Send a Tip | Buy Merch

ABOUT VERBAL DIORAMA

Verbal Diorama is hosted, produced, edited, researched, recorded and marketed by me, Em | This podcast is hosted by Captivate, try it yourself for free.

Theme Music: Verbal Diorama Theme Song. Music by Chloe Enticott - Compositions by Chloe. Lyrics by Chloe Enticott (and me!) Production by Ellis Powell-Bevan of Ewenique Studio

Patrons: Simon E, Sade, Claudia, Simon B, Laurel, Derek, Cat, Andy, Mike, Griff, Luke, Michael, Scott, Brendan, Lisa, Sam, Will, Jack, Dave, Chris, Stuart, Nicholas, Zo, Kev, Pete, Heather, Danny, Aly, Tyler, Stu, Brett, Philip, Michele and Xenos!

Based on ND Stevenson's graphic novel, Nimona started life with Blue Sky Studios, and when Blue Sky was acquired by Disney in its purchase of 20th Century Fox, originally Nimona's production continued.

When Disney officially cancelled Nimona, it came as no surprise to the team working on the movie. While officially the reasons for cancellation were financial, rumours swirled that Disney didn't like the LGBTQ themes, and opposed a same-sex kiss.

But Nimona, and the crew behind the movie, refused to give up, and thanks to Annapurna Pictures and Netflix, Nimona was reborn.

Nimona is more than a character. Nimona is the story of the making of this movie. Nimona is the scrappy underdog who refuses to back down from a fight. Nimona refuses to let a corporate entity subdue her and control her. Nimona might fall down, but Nimona will get back up again, and she will prove all her doubters wrong.

And now Nimona is an Oscar nominated movie... take that, Disney.

I would love to hear your thoughts on Nimona !

CONTACT....

• Twitter @verbaldiorama
• Instagram @verbaldiorama
• Facebook @verbaldiorama
• Letterboxd @verbaldiorama
• Email verbaldiorama [at] gmail [dot] com
• Website verbaldiorama.com

SUPPORT VERBAL DIORAMA....

Give this podcast a five-star Rate & Review

Join the Patreon | Send a Tip | Buy Merch

ABOUT VERBAL DIORAMA

Verbal Diorama is hosted, produced, edited, researched, recorded and marketed by me, Em | This podcast is hosted by Captivate, try it yourself for free.

Theme Music: Verbal Diorama Theme Song. Music by Chloe Enticott - Compositions by Chloe. Lyrics by Chloe Enticott (and me!) Production by Ellis Powell-Bevan of Ewenique Studio

Patrons: Simon E, Sade, Claudia, Simon B, Laurel, Derek, Cat, Andy, Mike, Griff, Luke, Michael, Scott, Brendan, Lisa, Sam, Will, Jack, Dave, Chris, Stuart, Nicholas, Zo, Kev, Pete, Heather, Danny, Aly, Tyler, Stu, Brett, Philip, Michele and Xenos!

Guillermo del Toro once said “No single character in history has had as deep of a personal connection to me as Pinocchio.”

And this is coming from a guy who loves his passion projects. So much so that you could arguably say that every Guillermo del Toro project is a passion project, but not every Guillermo del Toro passion project gets made...

It took fifteen years for Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio to finally reach the big and small screen, in a year with two other Pinocchio adaptations - the Disney live action remake, starring Tom Hanks, directed by Robert Zemeckis, and the Pauly Shore led Pinocchio: A True Story. I think everyone agrees which is the superior 2022 Pinocchio...

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio is the rare del Toro movie that, due to del Toro’s sheer resilience and stubbornness at not backing down from his artistic integrity, meant that not only did it get made, it was made exactly how he wanted it to be made.

I would love to hear your thoughts on Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio !

CONTACT....

• Twitter @verbaldiorama
• Instagram @verbaldiorama
• Facebook @verbaldiorama
• Letterboxd @verbaldiorama
• Email verbaldiorama [at] gmail [dot] com
• Website verbaldiorama.com

SUPPORT VERBAL DIORAMA....

Give this podcast a five-star Rate & Review

Join the Patreon | Send a Tip | Buy Merch

ABOUT VERBAL DIORAMA

Verbal Diorama is hosted, produced, edited, researched, recorded and marketed by me, Em | This podcast is hosted by Captivate, try it yourself for free.

Theme Music: Verbal Diorama Theme Song. Music by Chloe Enticott - Compositions by Chloe. Lyrics by Chloe Enticott (and me!) Production by Ellis Powell-Bevan of Ewenique Studio

Patrons: Simon E, Sade, Claudia, Simon B, Laurel, Derek, Cat, Andy, Mike, Griff, Luke, Michael, Scott, Brendan, Lisa, Sam, Will, Jack, Dave, Chris, Stuart, Nicholas, Zo, Kev, Pete, Heather, Danny, Aly, Tyler, Stu, Brett, Philip, Michele and Xenos!

Based on Cressida Cowell's childhood experiences of living in a remote cottage in Scotland, her How to Train Your Dragon series of books was a wild success, and so naturally Hollywood came calling.

The writer/director team of Lilo and Stitch came on board the project, and the whole mythology surrounding the island inhabitants of Berk, and the mythology and biology surrounding its dragon neighbours, was built from the ground up.

How to Train Your Dragon not only has the style, the substance, the entertainment value, and a great cast, but also powerful emotional storytelling, focusing on Hiccup, a young man who doesn't quite fit in to traditional Viking standards, and instead prioritises intelligence, kindness, and Toothless, the cutest, most fearsome dragon in the land (anyone with a cat will understand!).

How to Train Your Dragon seems to be somewhat forgotten in the plethora of excellent animated movies - not just from DreamWorks, but from other studios too. There’s no doubt it deserves the praise, especially for its positive representation of disability.

I would love to hear your thoughts on How to Train Your Dragon !

CONTACT....

• Twitter @verbaldiorama
• Instagram @verbaldiorama
• Facebook @verbaldiorama
• Letterboxd @verbaldiorama
• Email verbaldiorama [at] gmail [dot] com
• Website verbaldiorama.com

SUPPORT VERBAL DIORAMA....

Give this podcast a five-star Rate & Review

Join the Patreon | Send a Tip | Buy Merch

ABOUT VERBAL DIORAMA

Verbal Diorama is hosted, produced, edited, researched, recorded and marketed by me, Em | This podcast is hosted by Captivate, try it yourself for free.

Theme Music: Verbal Diorama Theme Song. Music by Chloe Enticott - Compositions by Chloe. Lyrics by Chloe Enticott (and me!) Production by Ellis Powell-Bevan of Ewenique Studio

Patrons: Simon E, Sade, Claudia, Simon B, Laurel, Derek, Vern, Cat, Andy, Mike, Griff, Luke, Michael, Scott, Brendan, Lisa, Sam, Will, Jack, Dave, Chris, Stuart, Nicholas, Zo, Kev, Pete, Heather, Danny, Aly, Tyler, Stu, Brett, Philip, Michele and Xenos!