The film that officially signaled Disney's animation renaissance (following The Little Mermaid) and the only animated feature to receive a Best Picture Oscar nomination, Beauty and the Beast remains the yardstick by which all other animated films should be measured. It relates the story of Belle, a bookworm with a dotty inventor for a father; when he inadvertently offends the ...
Obviously the Disney suits gave more than two figs about the legacy from the first Beast film, as they reassembled the former cast and spent some cash on production and tune-smithing for this straight-to-video effort. The events unfold between the time in the first film where Belle bartered herself to the Beast and her later return to the village to save her father. So the Beast's heart ...
Not half-bad, this lightly engaging, potboiler romance concerns an ice skater (Lynn-Holly Johnson) who loses her vision in an accident but goes on to excel on the ice with the support of the guy (Robby Benson) who loves her. When she takes up with some rich schmuck, however, intertwining problems in her work and in love throw a shadow over everything. Nice performances, nice skating--the whole ...
Audrey Hepburn's last Oscar nomination was for this adaptation of Frederick Knott's famed stage thriller about a blind woman, a con man (Alan Arkin), and a doll full of heroin. Thanks to Hepburn's husband, a photographer who does a good deal of traveling, she's unknowingly come into possession of said doll, which was given to him on a plane by a comely young drug runner who winds up dead. The ...
"Mama, when was Santa Claus born? Why doesn't he ever die?" Based on the popular children's book by L. Frank Baum (author of The Wizard of Oz), this 75-minute animated version of The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus provides answers to these and other pressing questions from the 3- to 8-year-old set. As in Baum's book, the quiet, moderately paced video steers clear of Christian ...