Pages tagged “walt disney”

Release Date: Nov. 21
Directors: Byron Howard and Chris Williams
Writers: Williams and Dan Fogelman
Art Director: Paul A. Felix
Starring (voices): John Travolta, Miley Cyrus, Susie Essman, Mark Walton, Malcolm McDowell, Greg Germann
Studio/Run Time: Walt Disney, 96 mins.

Animated charmer falls into awkward place

The era of family animation spiked with irony and winking asides for adults in the audience arrived with the CG format, and together the new traditions have come to dominate what was once a conservative standby in Hollywood. DreamWorks briefly co-opted Disney’s habitual dominance of the format with the Shrek franchise, but Disney decisively reclaimed it with its fateful (and bluntly expensive) acquisition of Pixar in 2006.

What to do with three Academy Award nominations, eight symphonies and a swathe of film scores and solo works under your belt? For esteemed classical composer Philip Glass, the next logical step would naturally be an opera about the life of Walt Disney, right? So it's no surprise, then, that he was commissioned to do just that.