Latest Movie News From Moviefone |
- 13 Life Lessons 'Gilmore Girls' Taught Us That We Can't Live Without
- 'Moana' Star Auli'i Cravalho Talks Breaking the Disney Princess Mold
- 'Moana' Directors Reveal How They Made Disney's Next Hit
| 13 Life Lessons 'Gilmore Girls' Taught Us That We Can't Live Without Posted:  Where would we be without the wisdom the "Gilmore Girls" imparted on us over the years? Nowhere, probably.The iconic TV series is chock full of teachable moments and quotes to live by. Behold, 13 "Gilmore Girls" lessons that guide us through life. Copper boom, people! This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| 'Moana' Star Auli'i Cravalho Talks Breaking the Disney Princess Mold Posted:
Moviefone: How filming "Moana," considering it was your first role and you headed straight into a booth where you had to act against a microphone? Auli'i Cravalho: Yes! That was interesting, there was major learning curve for that. I didn't know what to do, but I just kind of worked with it. Plus, I had the best people directing me -- Ron [Clements] and John [Musker], so I felt right at home. I think it was just finding that pocket of getting comfortable, because I remember being nervous. And I remember being nervous because I was nervous, and I thought that my voice was going to change because I was nervous. All of these thoughts swarmed in my head and I'm trying to digest butterflies as I walk into this booth and when the directors are there, they're like 'Ok, we're going to try it a few times,' and then Ron's like, 'Oh maybe we'll try it only once though, we think you're doing great.' And I was like 'I haven't even said a single word, thank you,' and from then on it just got better and better. The chemistry between Moana and Maui (Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson) is so on point. Did you ever get a chance to actually act against Dwayne? Thank you! I thought that I was going to be rubbing elbows with Dwayne Johnson in the booth, but no. He's the busiest man in Hollywood, so I suppose I can forgive him. We met on the Miami shoot though, and we had a lot of fun. But, the way our voices play off of each other, it really does sound like a true conversation, and that's where I swear some Disney magic becomes involved. I don't know how they do it, I really don't. It's incredible that I can do a line forty times and they can tell which ones they believe will work just from hearing Dwayne's voice and remembering how the scene plays out. I'm old enough to actually remember when Disney princesses looked a certain way and they were all the same with different stories. I was part of the 'please give us a cultural princess,' and here you are. You're fifteen years old and this is your responsibility to carry on. How does that responsibility feel considering that it is your first job and how do you intend to move forward with that? I feel so incredibly blessed to be voicing this character, who is inspired by my culture, who is rocking a beautiful tan, whose body is athletic and strong, and whose hair blows freely with those curls. I love my character, and I think she's so incredibly important in this day. We put Moana in the Disney heroine category. I think it's hit the major media that Moana doesn't have a love interest, and they're like, 'Oh no!" But it's like, 'Oh, yes!' Moana doesn't need a love interest. Her journey -- finding herself -- is something she does all on her own. I'm so excited for young girls and other women and everyone else to see this film because finding yourself should never be compromised. You sing a gorgeous song in this film. Can you talk a little bit about the vocal training you did to prepare? I didn't have formal voice training before this. Really? I sang in my school choir and my church choir. You have a stunning voice. Thank you! I credit my singing voice to my mom, because she didn't give me a binky when I was a child, so I screamed and I developed wonderful lungs. So thank you mom, for that. I love our music, I think it encompasses so much of what I've heard growing up. Opetaia Foa'i and his band just brings the Polynesian vibe to it. Lin-Manuel Miranda, his lyrics just blow my mind. I remember when I got the lyrics for the first time. I was on cloud nine. Mark Mancina as well, his score just takes it to a new level of emotion. Our music team rocks. How are you handling going from being a regular island girl to Disney royalty now? I still see myself as a normal fifteen year old. That's the thing. People come up to me in the store and they're like 'Oh my god, are you Moana?' I'm reaching for the peas, and I'm like, 'Uh, yeah...' I'm still quite normal in that sense. I am in love with my character, and I know how special she is. I feel honored that anyone would think of me as a role model, or think of me as someone they would look up to. But quite frankly, I have a lot to learn. I have so many things that I have yet to do and yet to see, and it blows my mind that someone does think of me as a role model. I haven't quite wrapped my mind around it just yet. So, you're joining the ranks of the Disney heroines of the past, Jodi Benson, Lea Salonga, Idina Menzel... where do you see your career going? This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| 'Moana' Directors Reveal How They Made Disney's Next Hit Posted:
Now, they are responsible for Disney's next hit, "Moana," which promises to usher in another kind of rebirth for the studio, one that harkens back to the Renaissance full of Disney "princesses" with a new, forward-thinking heroine in the title character. Moviefone recently sat down with the directors to discuss the genesis of the new project and the new tech they used to bring it to life, and the legacy of Disney's princesses. Moviefone: I was a teenager when "Little Mermaid" came out, and it was a big part of my life. And the last film you made was in 2009, "The Princess and The Frog." Here we are, seven years later, with "Moana." John Musker: We spent five years on this project. We did spend a year on another project that didn't quite get going, but, yes, here we are again. Ron Clements: Most of the films, they are a big part of your life, they take at least, four to five years. Musker: He's been at Disney for 43 years, I've been there for 40. We're long time Disney guys.With "Moana," we're seeing a very authentic representation of the culture here. Can you talk about how you flipped it from the usual "Western" idea of Polynesian culture to representing it accurately? Clements: The trip we took there was a big game changer for us, cause we knew it from that Western point of view. We have a development department with the studio executives who help get things going and they arranged a trip for us, about five years ago, for three weeks. They made sure it was not a "western" trip, it was more an island trip. We talked to cultural ambassadors, anthropologists, linguists, choreographers, and we got to visit villages and go sailing with Fijian fisherman. All of this got us in touch with some of the deeper culture, sort of the pre-Christian culture of those islands. They really made a personal impression on us, we felt like we connected with them. Pape Mape, an elder from Moorea, he kinda said to us, "For years we've been swallowed by your culture, one time, can you be swallowed by ours?" We felt like we really owed it to them to try to do that. When we came back, we were infused with the ideas we learned about navigation, their connection to the ocean, how the ocean being a living thing -- having feelings and emotions -- so we reworked the story. It was really Ron's idea -- our original story was built around Maui more -- and then he was like, "what if we do it around a sixteen-year-old girl, who has the blood of her ancestors in her?" That sounded like a great story and it tied into the culture well; that's ultimately what we pitched to John Lasseter, he liked that new take, and we built on that. Musker: We assumed that the technology would catch up to the story. Dangerous assumption. Clements: The ambitions were there from early on. I think after that first trip, people talked about the ocean as if it were alive. We were with a navigator in Fiji, on a taumako, like they were thousands of years ago, who would caress the ocean, so you have to speak gently to the ocean. Right away, it's like, the ocean's gotta be a character in the movie, we want to make it a character. Also, anthropomorphizing nature is very much part of mythology, that's a recurring thing. We knew we were going to have a living island and a lava monster, and things like that. Those things existed from a concept standpoint, from a story standpoint. These things, particularly things like anthropomorphic nature and living oceans, they combine two areas of animation that are usually separate. We have what we call "character animation," and they're the actors of the movie, and they really bring the character life in terms of their thought process and their personalities. And we have effects animators, who do things like the water and the ocean and fire -- and usually they are separate -- but we knew, in this, they were going to combine. In fact, the scene -- where the little toddler Moana meets the ocean for the first time -- that was actually the very first thing animated for the movie, and it was done way in advance of everything else. We thought that scene would be in the movie, but it was designed as a test to begin with. Musker: For awhile, the story evolved where that scene wasn't in the movie. Clements: For a little bit. Musker: And we were like: "No, we gotta keep it." Clements: But the test went on, either way, and a lot of things got figured out in that test, and that's kind of how that happened. The music was so key to this story. At what point did you start thinking about where the music would fit? Musker: We try to get music involved as early as we can because we want it to tell the story. Clements: Even on our first trip five years ago, the music of the islands that we heard -- and we heard it everywhere -- which we didn't necessarily expect. People sing welcome songs, farewell songs... when you're with the village there's prayer, and celebration, it's everywhere we went. Musker: And I had researched the music, I had a playlist of about 30 songs that were traditionally sung in the islands that I played over and over. We played those for Mark Mancina, who did the score, and he loves the harmonies, in particular, of those islands. It was really our producer, who found Te Vaka, Opetaia Foi'a, and then listen to his music. Musker: He even has songs about navigation and sailing, and how important that was to the culture. Clements: So then, we wanted to pair him with a narrative storyteller, someone that could tell a story in song. We went to New York three years ago, and interviewed a bunch of musicians, Lin-Manuel Miranda was one of those. Musker: The musical team that these three guys -- Lin, Mark, and Opetaia -- create, they each bring something very different and special. It's this kind of alchemy, you could definitely put together three guys like that together and it might not work at all. But in this case... Clements: They were giving guys and they were super talented in their own areas. They found ways to give each other space, to back off sometimes and other times, to take the lead. The whole score worked that way. There's been a lot of talk about princess culture, whether it's embracing it or pushing away from it. In "Moana," we have a new sort of heroine that is kind of leading the way. Can you talk about what your views are for a new princess culture? Musker: She is absolutely leading the way. Early on, we thought of this as a coming of age story. She's the hero of the story, she's the heroine. It's her finding herself, her leading the way, her responding to her own voice. We never really had a romance in the story, we thought we didn't need one. Gender was, in some ways, taken out of the equation. It was just a strong, empathetic character who was capable of great physical stuff. We liked the idea of having, kind of, an action-adventure princess that could dive off cliffs and battle monsters. Clements: She's got this determination, this grit, that no matter how many times she gets knocked down, she gets back up again. Musker: Rachel House, she did the voice for Grandma Tala, she's in some ways the emotional heart and soul of the movie. She's an actress of New Zealand descent, and she has been moved to tears by the movie. She told us, on several occasions, "I can't wait to see the effect of this movie on girls around the world." It's a source of pride, and empowerment. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
One may say that Moana was a role newcomer 
Directors | You are subscribed to email updates from Moviefone News RSS Feed - Moviefone.com. To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States | |
No comments:
Post a Comment