InQuire Newspaper 9.6

Page 19

IQ Culture

best and worst: disney films

Ginny Sanderson

Since 1937, Walt Disney Pictures has built a formidable reputation for producing quality family feature films. But despite its legacy of achievement, there have also been a number of failures. Here are my picks of the best and worst Disney movies. Aladdin earns third place in the Disney greats. What stands out in this film is the sizzling aesthetic vision of Agrabah, with its powerful, oriental essence of the Arabian Nights, mixed with a hilarious screenplay and convincing voice acting. A manifestation of the reasons why Disney is so well-regarded today, this movie is a Cave of Wonders to the child in all of us. Second best in my list is Beauty and the Beast. It won a Golden Globe for Best Film as well as a nomination for Best Film at the Academy Awards – a previously unachieved feat for an animated movie. With its deft characterisation, classic songs and ground-breaking use of CGI in the ballroom scene, it deserves that recognition. And the greatest Disney film award goes to - of course - The Lion King. Hans Zimmer, Elton John and Tim Rice’s score and soundtrack are standalone exquisite triumphs, from

the soaring, Swahili-inspired brilliance of The Circle of Life, to the awardwinning, mellifluous Can You Feel the Love Tonight. This is blended with a stirring storyline (a homage to Hamlet) and a bundle of likeable characters, including Jeremy Iron’s sassy love-tohate villain Scar, Rowan Atkinson’s uncanny anthropomorphism in Zazu, and the sensational double act of Timon and Pumbaa. From the sublime to the ridiculous: Pocahontas 2 gets the dishonour of third worst Disney movie. I seriously advise anyone to avoid this if you have a smidgeon of respect for the first film. The sheer audacity of Disney to smear Pocahontas with a more realistic and cynical storyline is beyond words. A pop to the proverbial bubble of childhood - nay, a punch to the face - that Disney so beautifully encapsulates with its essentially escapist fantasies. Why did you do this to us? Why? Second most abysmal is High School Musical 3. While the whole franchise is pretty terrible, the first two deigned to have catchy songs and a vague stab at plotline. This third shambles continues the cheesiness and atrocious “acting” of its predecessors,

while lacking in any of the wit, intelligence or nuance of previous generation’s Disney films. It is like the Jedward of movies – so bad you have to watch it just to realise your expectations. And – drumroll please - the worst of Disney’s disasters is: Beverly Hills Chihuahua. As if the title isn’t enough to put any sane person off this traincrash of cinematic embarrassment, predictably the content is meagre to say the least. It wounds the soul to think that the producer of so many classics conceived an idea so vacuous, so offensive, as a film about the commodification of small dogs as fashion items, not to mention its racial stereotyping of Mexicans. The worst thing about this debacle? They made a second and third.

With the sound of hydraulic drills and diggers becoming the soundtrack to a walk through campus, what more obvious reminder is there to explore the existing buildings on campus, and the new library extension to come? The original four colleges - Eliot, Rutherford, Keynes and Darwin - were all built between 1965 and 1970. This was during the Brutalist period in architecture, which is known to be very repetitive and angular, having lots of “blocky” elements, and typically has a concrete or brick exterior. This style also applies to buildings like Marlowe and Templeman library, which also have this heavy concrete and brick façade. Following from this army of concrete on campus, it’s interesting to see the style in which new buildings have emerged. The Jarman building, built in 2009, is a zinc clad, heavily glazed building that seems to completely drop this Brutalist characteristic, but ingeniously has elements of the adjacent Marlowe building entwined into the design, for example, the proportions of the windows. Interestingly enough, in 2007, the council rejected the design as they believed that the original aluminium cladding was out of

keeping with the rest of the University buildings. Following an appeal and a change from aluminium cladding to zinc, the design was approved and the development was back on track a year later. After planners suggested concrete to architect firm Hawkins/Brown, director David Bickle disagreed, saying “we wanted something that would stand out”, and this was a principle that seems to have caught on following the completion of the Jarman building. A building following this manifesto is the Digital Crit Space, which is an extension onto the Marlowe building. This is a direct comparison between old and new, with a glass walkway being the passage between the two entities. Another new building to consider is the Colyer-Fergusson building, completed in 2012, which seems to be a hybrid of the Brutalist campus buildings and the striking new buildings such as the

this week in... 1989: 9th November The Berlin Wall was breached after nearly three decades of keeping East and West Berliners apart. The gates along the Wall were given permission to be opened after hundreds of people converged on crossing points.

1995: 20th November Diana, Princess of Wales, spoke openly for the first time to the BBC’s Panorama programme about her separation from the Prince of Wales. She admitted to an adulterous affair with her riding instructor, James Hewitt.

the architecture of campus

Emilie Harris

19

Jarman building. Studying these buildings on campus provokes a question of what the relationship between these buildings is. The older buildings like Eliot represent the origins of the university and the period in which it was founded, but newer structures such as the Digital Crit Space symbolise the growth of the University, whilst the dynamics created reflect the hustle and bustle of the movement surrounding them. However much the council can oppose new, shiny buildings, the progression from the past to the future is necessary. The older buildings do tend to form a certain character, somehow managing to panic people into leaving half an hour earlier than normal to try and find their seminar room at the beginning of term. New buildings have the opportunity to create new social spaces, adapting to the way we work, integrate technology and socialise. So, despite this age-old war between the past and the future, it’s only appropriate to appreciate what we already have and to welcome the introduction of new surroundings. It will be fascinating to see the integration of the new library extension and what it will offer its visitors and surroundings as a building.

1963: 22nd November US President John F Kennedy was assassinated by a gunman in Dallas, Texas. The president was shot three times in the head and throat whilst his open-top car was travelling through the city. He was sped off to Parklands Hospital immediately, but died 35 minutes after being shot.

1991: 24th November Freddie Mercury, lead singer of rock group Queen, died aged 45, just one day after he publicly announced that he was HIV positive. Mercury died quietly at his home in West London of bronchio-pneumonia, brought on by his Aids.


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