OC.TREI@CU20B.ARPA (06/16/85)
From: Peter G. Trei <OC.TREI@CU20B.ARPA> >> ...The Black Cauldron....but the title sounds promising. > > Sounds promising? Don't you recognize it? You mean you've > never read Lloyd Alexander?[...] > > The Book of Three > The Black Cauldron > The Castle of Llyr > Taran Wanderer > The High King > der Mouse > {ihnp4,decvax,...}!utcsri!mcgill-vision!mouse I dont claim to have specific knowledge of where Disney's writers are getting their plot, but to automatically assume that The Black Cauldron derives from Lloyd Alexanders' work is a little like saying that an earlier Disney opus 'The Sword in the Stone' is based on the film 'Camelot'. Cauldrons appear in several places in ancient Celtic legend. The cauldron most likely to be involved in the movie is the one featured in the story 'Branwen Daughter of Llyr', the oldest surviving manuscript being in The White Book of Rhydderch, which dates to 1300-1325 AD. The story is thought to date back to about 1050, and may well be a 'modernization' of something far older. The cauldron had the property that if you threw a dead soldier into it, the next morning he would have revived (save that he could not speak and give away the secrets of the underworld). If you have the slightest interest in reading the original, I highly reccomend that you track down a copy the 'The Mabinogion' by Gwyn Jones and Thomas Jones. This scholarly translation of The Four Ancient Books of Wales first appeared in 1948, but continues in print. My copy is a '74 Dent paperback, but there is also Dutton US paperback (ISBN 0 460 01097 2). The language is a little strange, sort of a King James English, but it carries the alien feel of the original stories very well. Another translation of the stories appears in 'Celtic Myth and Legend' by Charles Squire (Newcastle, ISBN 0 87877 030 5), a trade paperback facsimile of 'The mythology of the British Isles', 1905. Squire tried to pull the ravelled threads of legend together into one coherent mythos, and what the tales gain in self consistancy they lose in power. However, it does tell (with a Victorian gloss) the tales, including some not in The Mabinogion. Whenever I read a modern fantasy 'based on' an actual myth of which I have read the original (or a faithful translation) I find things that put my teeth on edge. It isnt the departures (sometimes major) from the orginal plot line that bothers me so much as finding late 20th century ethics and mores being espoused by Dark Age men and women. It annoys me to find the ancient tales used as a vehicle for contemporary ideas. The original is so much stranger and wonderful. Here is a short abstract from 'The Voyage of Mael duin'. MD and his companions are on a voyage of exploration, and are running out food: "Now when those apples failed, and their hunger and thirst were great, and when their mouths and their noses were full of the stench of the sea, they sight an island which was not large, and therein (stood) a fort surrounded by a white, high rampart as if it were built of burnt lime, or as if it were all one rock of chalk. Great was its height from the sea; it all but reached the clouds. The fort was open wide. Round the rampart were great, snow-white houses. When they entered the largest of these they saw no one there, save a small cat which was in the midst of the house, playing on the four stone pillars that were there. It was leaping from one pillar to the other. It looked a little at the men, and did not stop itself from its play. After that they saw three rows on the wall of the house round about, from one doorpost to the other. A row there, first, of brooches of gold and of silver, with their pins in the wall, and a row of neck-torques of gold and of silver: like hoops of a vat was each of them. The third row (was) of great swords, with hilts of gold and of silver. The rooms were full of white quilts and shining garments. A roasted ox, moreover, and a flitch in the midst of the house, and great vessels with good intoxicating liquor. "Hath this been left for *us*?" saith Mael duin to the cat. It looked at him suddenly and began to play again. Then Mael duin recognized that it was for them that the dinner had been left. So they dined and drank and slept. They put the leavings of thee liquor into the pots, and stored up the leavings of the food. Now when they proposed to go, Mael duin's third fosterbrother said: "Shall I take with me a necklace of these necklaces?" "Nay," saith Mael duin, "not without a guard is the house". Howbeit he took it as far as the middle of the enclosure. The cat followed them, and leapt through him (the fosterbrother) like a fiery arrow, and burnt him so that he became ashes, and (then) went back till it was on its pillar. Then Mael duin soothed the cat with his words, and set the necklace in its place, and cleansed the ashes from the floor of the enclosure, and cast them on the shore of the sea. Then they went on board their boat, praising and magnifying the Lord." This, and many other original tales evoke for me the 'sense of wonder' which I find missing in such modern glosses as 'The Mists of Avalon.' Peter Trei oc.trei@cu20b.arpa -------
bfeir@watnot.UUCP (bfeir) (06/26/85)
> From: Peter G. Trei <OC.TREI@CU20B.ARPA> > > >> ...The Black Cauldron....but the title sounds promising. > > > > Sounds promising? Don't you recognize it? You mean you've > > never read Lloyd Alexander?[...] > > > > The Book of Three > > The Black Cauldron > > The Castle of Llyr > > Taran Wanderer > > The High King > > der Mouse > > {ihnp4,decvax,...}!utcsri!mcgill-vision!mouse > > I dont claim to have specific knowledge of where Disney's writers > are getting their plot, but to automatically assume that The Black > Cauldron derives from Lloyd Alexanders' work is a little like saying > that an earlier Disney opus 'The Sword in the Stone' is based on the > film 'Camelot'. Actually, you are dead wrong. Disney has shown a short preview of the show on one of their weekly shows. This was about 6 months ago, and at that time they only had the rough drawings, so it wasn't much of a show. But even so, it was definitely the adventures of Taran. It _is_ based on the set of books by Lloyd Alexander, albeit it does not follow them exactly; what movie does? \ / / \ Bubble, bubble | | Toil and trouble \ /\| /\/ Fire burn and \/|/\|\/ Cauldron bubble! ~~~~~~
chris@umcp-cs.UUCP (Chris Torek) (06/27/85)
By the way, the Lloyd Alexander books have been reissued (probably due to the movie tie-in). -- In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 4251) UUCP: seismo!umcp-cs!chris CSNet: chris@umcp-cs ARPA: chris@maryland
betsy@dartvax.UUCP (Betsy Hanes Perry) (06/27/85)
I was in my local bookstore yesterday when I saw
"The Black Cauldron Coloring Book", a Disney tie-in to the movie
of the same name. I skimmed it for clues as to how closely
the movie would follow the book. Here follow some hasty impressions:
o Visually, the movie owes far more to Sleeping Beauty than to the
original illustrations for the Alexander book. That is to say, Prydain
is far cleaner and more wholesome than I'd imagined it. It looks like
a Disney movie; what can I say?
o As an example of this, Gurgi is about knee-high and is clean. (no
dirt and leaves in his fur.)
o Eilonwy is a dead ringer for the Disney Alice.
o The Prince who sacrifices his life to break the Cauldron has vanished
entirely. Instead, the Dark Lord is knocked into the Cauldron by Taran.
(Somehow, I don't think they'll be making a sequel...)
o Hen Wen is round, pink, and clean. She looks rather like the
tidied-up Wilbur from Charlotte's Web.
o The Dark Lord, however, is at least as scary-looking as the evil witches
in Sleeping Beauty and Snow White. A definite seat-wetter.
Don't get me wrong; I'll be in line, $5 in hand, as soon as the box
office opens. I'll simply be expecting another charming Disney movie,
not a close approximation to the Lloyd Alexander books.
--
Elizabeth Hanes Perry
UUCP: {decvax |ihnp4 | linus| cornell}!dartvax!betsy
CSNET: betsy@dartmouth
ARPA: betsy%dartmouth@csnet-relay
"Ooh, ick!" -- PenfoldJAFFE@RUTGERS.ARPA (07/08/85)
From: boyajian%akov68.DEC@decwrl.ARPA (JERRY BOYAJIAN) > From: umcp-cs!chris@topaz.arpa (Chris Torek) > By the way, the Lloyd Alexander books have been reissued (probably > due to the movie tie-in). Possibly, but not probably. The Chronicles of Prydain have been almost constantly in print from Dell for close to, I'd say, 10 years. --- jayembee (Jerry Boyajian, DEC, Acton-Nagog, MA) UUCP: {decvax|ihnp4|allegra|ucbvax|...} !decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-akov68!boyajian ARPA: boyajian%akov68.DEC@DECWRL.ARPA <"Bibliography is my business">
leeper@mtgzz.UUCP (m.r.leeper) (07/31/85)
THE BLACK CAULDRON
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review(*): This is the most ambitious animated fantasy from
Disney since the 1950's. But budget constraints hurt the art and animation
quality and shortened the film to the point that it gutted the logic. Too
many of the characters are too cute.
When you think of animated fantasy, what studio most often comes to
mind? No question! Disney Studios. They created the standard. But even
at Disney Studios, there are major and minor animated films. The majors
tend to be classic stories, often fairy tales, that are made for perennial
re-release. Oh, occasionally they put RESCUERS or 101 DALMATIONS into
circulation, but their majors are films like SNOW WHITE, SLEEPING BEAUTY,
PINOCCHIO, and three or four more you can probably name off the top of your
head. For a decade, Disney Studios has worked on what seems to be their
first major in a good long time. Now it is out. THE BLACK CAULDRON is an
adaptation of parts of two books in Lloyd Alexander's "Prydain" series,
itself based on the Mabinogion.
THE BLACK CAULDRON has the same basic age-old plot that STAR WARS had.
Boy from humble background (in this case, he's an assistant pig-keeper)
dreams of glory in battle. Before he realizes it, he is swept into and
becomes the key turning factor of a titanic battle. In this case, the
battle is against a supremely evil supernatural being called "The Horned
King." I don't know if we ever find out what he is king of, but he does
have a few subjects that we see and will have a good deal more if he can
unleash the power of the McGuffin of the title.
There is a serious problem with THE BLACK CAULDRON--it has too much
story. SLEEPING BEAUTY and SNOW WHITE had simple short plots you could tell
in two or three sentences. They are ideal for animated films. An animated
film takes a lot of work to make and Disney's tend to be 75 minutes or so.
This one is 80 with a long credit sequence at the end. This means that the
script does not have time to make things logical. Too many sequences are
required to tell the story and so each sequence must be short. Let's look
at at an example. The hero is backed up against a wall. Evil guards are
throwing a hail of spears at him and he's clearly in trouble. Someone
realizes that he (the hero) has a magic sword that cuts through metal, so
they stop throwing spears. Why? This sword is not a shield. The magic
sword is no better than a regular sword against that sort of an attack, but
it is a good excuse for ending the sequence and getting to the next one.
There are several other escapes that are similarly senseless.
The visualizations of characters are classic Disney, which is to say
that the images of evil are decent and the images of good are enough to put
you in diabetic shock. The hero is callow, the heroine is pretty, the pig
is cute and looks very little like a real pig. Then there is a cute
creature that looks like a miniature cross between a sheepdog and Albert
Einstein.
The art style is an odd mixed bag of styles and at times somewhat below
the Disney standard. In the early parts of the film it is much the usual
Disney animation, though not as complex. At other times, they do a sort of
pastel impressionistic background to save painting effort. A few scenes
have live action mixed in to show flame or smoke. There was a lot of
corner-cutting on the animation.
On the other hand, Disney has the highest standards in the industry for
print quality. The print was done on high-quality celluloid with no frame-
long white flashes or dark specks from cheap film. When I saw a brand new
print of KRULL, there were so many little flashes on the screen I though at
first they were intentional. That never happens with a Disney film and it's
time they got some recognition for that.
On the whole, though, I am indifferent to this film, mostly because of
a script that was so rushed that it killed the logic of the story. Rate it
a straight 0 on the -4 to +4 scale.
(*) Note: the suggestion to include capsule reviews is probably a good
one. I will try it for at least a little while.
Mark R. Leeper
...ihnp4!mtgzz!leeperfriesen@psivax.UUCP (Stanley Friesen) (08/06/85)
Well, since I have finally gone to see <The Black Cauldron>,
and most of the other reviewers seem not to have read the books, I
will now make a few comments.
For me the main disppointment was the *shallowness* of the
story developement compared the the books. I really enjoyed their
philosophical tone. Many of the more touching and significant
moments were either left out or distorted in the movie. For instance,
the basic points of how the sword was discovered were taken from the
books(except for being in the wrong castle), then Disney went and
ruined it all by allowing Taran(the Asst Pig Keeper) to actually
draw the sword(in the book only a person meeting a very exacting
qualification could draw that sword without being killed). Or the
incredible fanciful approach to magic, I mean making Eilonwy's bauble
*fly*, there is *no* valid reason to do that, all it does is provide
some cheap thrills(and only for kids at that). Of course, even worse
was turning the three "old ladies" into simple hyper-powerful witches!
Even the first time they are met in the books it is obvious that they
are something *quite* different than they appear, but just what is
unclear, this really intriguing bit of mystery is totally lacking in
the rather straight treatment they recieve in the movie. For instance,
in the books, while they are always *threatening* to turn people into
frogs, they are never *actually* seen to do so. As someone said, the
fair folk were too cute for words. I mean Doli as a klutzy, flighty
sprite with wings! Good points, well there were a few. The
characterizations of the main heros were actually fairly close to
what they were in the books. Yes, I can see the similarity between
Taran and Luke Skywalker, but Taran *predates* Skywalker, not the
other way around! And Gurgi, other than being to neat and clean,
was fairly well done(they actually *did* mention that he was
pungent).
By the way, the movie was really only based on the first
two of the books(<The Book of Three> and <The Black Cauldron>.
Unfortunately, they closed off too many of the loose ends to continue
with the series!(Or perhaps fortunately).
--
Sarima (Stanley Friesen)
{trwrb|allegra|cbosgd|hplabs|ihnp4|aero!uscvax!akgua}!sdcrdcf!psivax!friesen
or {ttdica|quad1|bellcore|scgvaxd}!psivax!friesen