{"id":2392,"date":"2011-03-11T17:38:30","date_gmt":"2011-03-12T01:38:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/?p=2392"},"modified":"2011-03-11T18:06:24","modified_gmt":"2011-03-12T02:06:24","slug":"dream-on-disney","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/2011\/03\/11\/dream-on-disney-2392\/","title":{"rendered":"Dream On, Disney"},"content":{"rendered":"

Annie Leibovitz recreates classic moments from Disney films with\u00a0lavish sets and contemporary actors in her\u00a0“dream portraits” series and the results are…\u00a0underwhelming.<\/p>\n

The most consistent problem in the series\u00a0is the grand scope of each tableau. Queen Latifa has a huge… personality and fills Ursula’s tentacles nicely,\u00a0yet she is lost in that enormous set. Something as simple as a\u00a0tighter shot, or a bit of cropping, would have produced a more powerful result which actually featured the talent and\u00a0highlighted\u00a0her\u00a0charisma.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Just a little off the top<\/p><\/div>\n

\"\"

Drew Barrymore as Alice, by Mark Seliger<\/p><\/div>\n

The production quality is very high, but everything was just so straightforward, blessed with neither irony nor a Hollywood\u00a0savviness. I know the work needs to be squeaky clean since the\u00a0client is Disney.\u00a0It doesn’t need to be Fran\u00e7ois Nars’ photos of Shalom Harlow as Snow White, flashing garters and panties, or Mark Seliger’s photo of Drew Barrymore as Alice, legs splayed and blowing smoke rings.<\/p>\n

But these celebrities have big personalities and their lives and loves off screen are well known. Jeff Bridges as\u00a0The Beast (post-transformation) and Pen\u00e9lope Cruz as Belle\u00a0(post-Tom Cruise) simply doesn’t work. Not only is he nearly twice her age, but… the dude abides<\/em>. He’s just not the cocky prince\u00a0type. Instead, how about Katie Perry and Russell Brand\u00a0as Beauty and the Beast? Seliger has already shot Brand magnificently as Charlie Chaplin.<\/p>\n

One casting that they nailed was Tina Fey as Tinkerbell, complete with her signature specs. Then they snatched failure\u00a0from the jaws of victory, making her\u00a0so tiny as to be unrecognizable.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Where's Waldo?<\/p><\/div>\n

Speaking of being unrecognizable, Disney cast as the Evil Queen an actress so far below the pop culture radar that they actually had a contest to see who could identify her first: Olivia Wilde. Sorry, never heard of her. (I have since googled her.) When I saw Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs as a kid I fell hard for that\u00a0Evil Queen. Hottttt!\u00a0She deserved better. How about Susan Sarandon, Isabella Rossellini, or Glenn Close?<\/p>\n

I am a great admirer of Annie Leibovitz, and I doubt that she had much creative input into the crafting of these images. The photographs are gorgeous and flawless technically. Photographers need to get paid and she did her job. It’s just a shame that the collaboration between the artist and her client could not have yielded more.<\/p>\n

Michael Singman-Aste
\nPostdiluvian Photo<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Annie Leibovitz recreates classic moments from Disney films with\u00a0lavish sets and contemporary actors in her\u00a0“dream portraits” series and the results are…\u00a0underwhelming. The most consistent problem in the series\u00a0is the grand scope of each tableau. Queen Latifa has a huge… personality and fills Ursula’s tentacles nicely,\u00a0yet she is lost in that enormous set. Something as simple […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7,3],"tags":[269,270,268,271],"class_list":["post-2392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musings","category-rants","tag-annie-leibovitz","tag-disney","tag-francois-nars","tag-mark-seliger"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pPxQO-CA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2392"}],"version-history":[{"count":29,"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2392\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2487,"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2392\/revisions\/2487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}