Hi Vi! It’s been a while
Disney's Encanto!
-
- AV Forum Member
- Posts: 219
- Joined: November 8th, 2004
- Location: Poland
- Contact:
-
- AV Founder
- Posts: 25714
- Joined: October 22nd, 2004
- Location: London, UK
-
- AV Forum Member
- Posts: 219
- Joined: November 8th, 2004
- Location: Poland
- Contact:
Re: Disney's Encanto!
It’s been scientifically proved that keeping the same avatar for 20 years improves youthful appearance and longevity immensely
As for Encanto on disc - it’s sad to acknowledge that those might be swan song physical media releases. The end of an era of magnificent feasts for fans that special editions used to be packed to the brim with cool behind the scenes materials often more interesting than the movie itself. Here in Poland even Pixar’s Luca didn’t get BD treatment - only barebones DVD edition with no extras at all. It removes a lot from the joy and celebration that home releases used to be.
Last edited by Kaszubas on December 5th, 2021, 2:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.
-
- AV Forum Member
- Posts: 736
- Joined: April 8th, 2020
Re: Disney's Encanto!
We don't even have DVDs. The last one that was released on DVD was Frozen (the original).
-
- AV Founder
- Posts: 7389
- Joined: October 23rd, 2004
- Location: SaskaTOON, Canada
-
- AV Founder
- Posts: 7389
- Joined: October 23rd, 2004
- Location: SaskaTOON, Canada
Re: Disney's Encanto!
Home video announcement:
https://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=29785
Feb. 8 is coming fast.
Now, where's my Steelbook?
https://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=29785
Feb. 8 is coming fast.
Now, where's my Steelbook?-
- AV Founder
- Posts: 25714
- Joined: October 22nd, 2004
- Location: London, UK
Re: Disney's Encanto!
Well…where to start.
Encanto is, in a word, a mess.
After a fairly cracking opening, in which we are intro’d to the family by way of a hyperactive, too fast and too packed song (which breaks every rule Stephen Sondheim stated about making sure your audience can understand lyrics and not bombarding them with too much expository info), the film just breaks apart. Question after question keeps arising: why is the family magical? Did they earn this? Do they do anything with their powers? How come what they can do doesn’t play into the plot in any meaningful way? What is is about this story that means it has to be set in Colombia?
I’m all for inclusivity, but there’s nothing here that makes setting Encanto in Colombia an element that means anything. It’s like they had a story, and chose a country, perhaps even as a way to get Lin Manuel Miranda interested, without any reason or local customs playing, again, any *meaningful* part in what happens and why. So we just get Mirabel, as the only one in the family without any power, basically talking to all the others in the family like Meet The Robinsons never happened, after she has some kind of premonition of impending doom.
So doesn’t that kind of sort of suggest her power is premonition of visions of a potential future? Shouldn’t someone in the family recognise that, and maybe, y’know, listen to her words of warning? Yes, okay, there are convoluted plot reasons why they don’t, but this is why the film doesn’t work with its super-lazy storytelling. And song after song after song after song — none of which really propel the narrative outside of just giving each character a backstory that stops the show every time, and not in the good way — just drag out a running time that feels at least half as much again as the film already is.
And about those songs… I feel I am at the point where, as much as I admire as achieved in such a relative short span of time, I think I’m entering Miranda overload, where his one-trick pony tricks are starting to creak at the seams. I wasn’t a fan of Hip-Hop Hamilton, which I feel is mostly a success due to its novelty as a colorblind, ultra-modern treatment of a period subject, but at least knew what to expect from the film of In The Heights, that did that same Miranda wordy-playey thing that couples rhythmic lines and half-lines in repetitive, quick-fire fashion. This is fine for a song or two, or even an album, but quickly becomes draining for an entire show, on stage or screen.
Here the songs are much of the same, hence the feeling that Miranda has shown what he can do…but this is all he can do. Moana was perhaps tempered by him only being a co-writer, and having more traditional arrangements and orchestrations, but here it kind of feels like a music album with pictures. And *not* that I’m a grumpy old guy that doesn’t like modern music, or even hip-hop. Some of the tracks here work well enough *on their own* (in as far as how they sound), and I’ve been listening to the soundtrack for a week or so before watching, with the result that the opening has become ingrained, along with one or two other hooks. But…watching them in context is a different thing, and they just stop the film or have too much (or too little) going on so as to make them work.
And so much of Encanto is the songs, so they can’t be overlooked, but there just isn’t much interest in the whole thing. My cousin hails from Bolivia, not a million miles away, and even she preferred our other film of the day, Raya And The Last Dragon, finding Encanto just as confused and inconsequential as we all did. By the time we get to the non-ending (as many have said, WTF!?) that just stops rather than concludes the story, we were all scratching our heads, the result being that Encanto is perhaps the most poorly constructed Disney movie since who really knows when (Frozen II doesn’t count, since that was a clear cash grab and had low expectations to begin with). But Encanto should know better, and it certainly should *be* better.
I’m now in a quandary when it comes to the disc: to add to the collection or not? It’s not a film I really feel I need to own (the first in a long while that didn’t really touch me in any way at all). Even Frozen II I ended up with because it was the only way, at the time, to see the film, but Encanto opens with a (half-hearted) "60th Motion Picture" logo…and I have the 59+ films that came before it! It goes without saying that I will pick it up, but it’ll just be to keep the streak going. And maybe to glean from some of the extras just what went wrong…
Encanto is, in a word, a mess.
After a fairly cracking opening, in which we are intro’d to the family by way of a hyperactive, too fast and too packed song (which breaks every rule Stephen Sondheim stated about making sure your audience can understand lyrics and not bombarding them with too much expository info), the film just breaks apart. Question after question keeps arising: why is the family magical? Did they earn this? Do they do anything with their powers? How come what they can do doesn’t play into the plot in any meaningful way? What is is about this story that means it has to be set in Colombia?
I’m all for inclusivity, but there’s nothing here that makes setting Encanto in Colombia an element that means anything. It’s like they had a story, and chose a country, perhaps even as a way to get Lin Manuel Miranda interested, without any reason or local customs playing, again, any *meaningful* part in what happens and why. So we just get Mirabel, as the only one in the family without any power, basically talking to all the others in the family like Meet The Robinsons never happened, after she has some kind of premonition of impending doom.
So doesn’t that kind of sort of suggest her power is premonition of visions of a potential future? Shouldn’t someone in the family recognise that, and maybe, y’know, listen to her words of warning? Yes, okay, there are convoluted plot reasons why they don’t, but this is why the film doesn’t work with its super-lazy storytelling. And song after song after song after song — none of which really propel the narrative outside of just giving each character a backstory that stops the show every time, and not in the good way — just drag out a running time that feels at least half as much again as the film already is.
And about those songs… I feel I am at the point where, as much as I admire as achieved in such a relative short span of time, I think I’m entering Miranda overload, where his one-trick pony tricks are starting to creak at the seams. I wasn’t a fan of Hip-Hop Hamilton, which I feel is mostly a success due to its novelty as a colorblind, ultra-modern treatment of a period subject, but at least knew what to expect from the film of In The Heights, that did that same Miranda wordy-playey thing that couples rhythmic lines and half-lines in repetitive, quick-fire fashion. This is fine for a song or two, or even an album, but quickly becomes draining for an entire show, on stage or screen.
Here the songs are much of the same, hence the feeling that Miranda has shown what he can do…but this is all he can do. Moana was perhaps tempered by him only being a co-writer, and having more traditional arrangements and orchestrations, but here it kind of feels like a music album with pictures. And *not* that I’m a grumpy old guy that doesn’t like modern music, or even hip-hop. Some of the tracks here work well enough *on their own* (in as far as how they sound), and I’ve been listening to the soundtrack for a week or so before watching, with the result that the opening has become ingrained, along with one or two other hooks. But…watching them in context is a different thing, and they just stop the film or have too much (or too little) going on so as to make them work.
And so much of Encanto is the songs, so they can’t be overlooked, but there just isn’t much interest in the whole thing. My cousin hails from Bolivia, not a million miles away, and even she preferred our other film of the day, Raya And The Last Dragon, finding Encanto just as confused and inconsequential as we all did. By the time we get to the non-ending (as many have said, WTF!?) that just stops rather than concludes the story, we were all scratching our heads, the result being that Encanto is perhaps the most poorly constructed Disney movie since who really knows when (Frozen II doesn’t count, since that was a clear cash grab and had low expectations to begin with). But Encanto should know better, and it certainly should *be* better.
I’m now in a quandary when it comes to the disc: to add to the collection or not? It’s not a film I really feel I need to own (the first in a long while that didn’t really touch me in any way at all). Even Frozen II I ended up with because it was the only way, at the time, to see the film, but Encanto opens with a (half-hearted) "60th Motion Picture" logo…and I have the 59+ films that came before it! It goes without saying that I will pick it up, but it’ll just be to keep the streak going. And maybe to glean from some of the extras just what went wrong…
-
- AV Founder
- Posts: 7389
- Joined: October 23rd, 2004
- Location: SaskaTOON, Canada
Re: Disney's Encanto!
As a counterpoint, this Colombian-born writer felt that the movie's plot and themes were very much tied to its setting.
https://www.polygon.com/22851932/encant ... -in-movies
https://www.polygon.com/22851932/encant ... -in-movies
-
- AV Founder
- Posts: 25714
- Joined: October 22nd, 2004
- Location: London, UK
Re: Disney's Encanto!
Well that’s an interesting take, and obviously it resonates, but there’s still no reason that the story actually needs to take place in Colombia. It is, ultimately, just a setting, albeit one that, as such, has been made to chime with the culture it depicts, as per the many consultants listed in the credits. All praise to them, but obviously I’m one of those who fits in the bracket of missing "the Colombian experience that many might overlook", which also kind of again backs up that this particular experience isn’t very well integrated into the film.
-
- AV Forum Member
- Posts: 1960
- Joined: December 16th, 2004
- Location: Burbank, Calif.
Re: Disney's Encanto!
I had very strong Meet The Robinsons vibes, throughout my viewing of this movie..!
A bit of a mess, storywise, I agree .. but it's a beautiful mess!
hey -- kinda like Isabela..!
-
- AV Forum Member
- Posts: 5207
- Joined: September 27th, 2007
Re: Disney's Encanto!
As veteran of quite a few propaganda-laden format wars, us old-school home-theater warriors caution against using European Blu/DVD/tech trends as early indicator of North American home-theater trends.
Things like disc, Netflix and 4K/3D have a puzzling habit of not catching on over there, probably due to TV being less of a cultural influence as well.
-
- AV Founder
- Posts: 25714
- Joined: October 22nd, 2004
- Location: London, UK
Re: Disney's Encanto!
Yes, it looks beautiful, a couple of design concepts aside. And, speaking of the look, is anyone else seeing the massive banding on D+'s 4K stream? A lot of the film is dark, and maybe it’s because we’re on a pretty big projection screen, but it was really obvious to the point of looking like an overly compressed dodgy version…!
-
- AV Founder
- Posts: 7389
- Joined: October 23rd, 2004
- Location: SaskaTOON, Canada
Re: Disney's Encanto!
I dunno. This sounds like a pretty random criticism (even aside from the fact that actual Colombians seem to find the setting important to the whole plot and theme of the film). How many films have a setting integral to their plot? Why do most films "need" to take place in New York or southern California? Personally, I'm glad to see any setting that isn't one of those places, regardless of how integral it is to the film.
-
- AV Forum Member
- Posts: 1960
- Joined: December 16th, 2004
- Location: Burbank, Calif.
Re: Disney's Encanto!
The magical 'casita' and its surrounding village in Encanto certainly came across as more authentic and better-thought-out than Kuzco's mythical kingdom in The Emperor's New Groove.
Not that that's a high bar ..
Not that that's a high bar ..
-
- AV Forum Member
- Posts: 736
- Joined: April 8th, 2020
Re: Disney's Encanto!
Yeah but The Emperor's New Groove is more entertaining.