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      ‘Chip ’n Dale: Rescue Rangers’ Review: Remember Them? (No?)

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      This Disney reboot combines animation and live-action comedy with an irreverent, self-referential attitude.As a general rule, movie reboots proceed from a basic assumption about interest and familiarity — that audiences adore some bygone franchise, and will be eager to see it resuscitated.The charming conceit of the director Akiva Schaffer’s “Chip ’n Dale: Rescue Rangers,” an ironic reboot of the short-lived cartoon series for children that aired on the Disney Channel from 1989 to 1990, is that hardly anybody remembers the original “Rescue Rangers,” and that few who do remember it fondly.A wry take on the material that combines animation and live-action comedy, the movie has some of the hip flair and anarchic meta-humor of “Who Framed Roger Rabbit,” as well as an irreverent, self-referential attitude that’s rather appealing.In the universe of this “Rescue Rangers,” cartoons live among humans. Chip (John Mulaney) and Dale (Andy Samberg), decades removed from the fleeting success of their Disney Channel series, are washed up and disconsolate, desperate for another shot at fame. After their former co-star Monterey Jack (Eric Bana) is abducted, they find themselves embroiled in a real-life caper — one that involves not only a helpful human detective (Kiki Layne), but also a variety of familiar cartoon faces, including a middle-aged Peter Pan (Will Arnett) and Ugly Sonic (Tim Robinson), the janky-looking version of Sonic the Hedgehog who was hastily redesigned after online backlash in 2019.These kinds of cross-universe cameos have been done before, notably in the 2012 animated movie “Wreck-It Ralph” and last year’s “Space Jam: A New Legacy.” But this odd “Rescue Rangers” menagerie is surprising and eclectic, with some niche nods and deep-cut references, which is fitting given the conspicuous insignificance of the material and its heroes.If there’s going to be a movie about nobodies like Chip and Dale, it only seems right that it should include such wide-ranging animated allusions as “South Park,” “Rugrats” and “The Polar Express.”Chip ’n Dale: Rescue RangersRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. Watch on Disney+. More

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      Estelle Harris, George’s Mother on ‘Seinfeld,’ Dies at 93

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      Employing a high-powered screech, she took maternal exasperation and paranoia to comedic heights as one of the show’s most frequently recurring characters.Estelle Harris, who hyperventilated her way into the hearts of millions of “Seinfeld” fans as George’s mother, Estelle Costanza, died on Saturday in Palm Desert, Calif. She was 93.Her son Glen Harris announced the death in a statement sent by Ms. Harris’s agent.In 27 episodes — starting in 1992 during the fourth season of “Seinfeld,” around the time that the show became a pop culture sensation, and continuing until its final episode in 1998 — Ms. Harris embarrassed and harangued her son, one of the show’s four main characters, George Costanza (Jason Alexander), and his father, Frank (Jerry Stiller).During her character’s meltdowns, often in response to slights and offenses to propriety, Ms. Harris deployed a screech that had the urgency of a hyena in its death throes. When she whined about “waiting for hours,” that final word had three, maybe four moan-like syllables. The combination of stiffness and violence in her gesticulations expressed a forbidding level of psychological tension.Ms. Harris knew how to make outrage into a joke.“You don’t play comedy,” she told The Chicago Tribune in 1995. “It’s like that Jewish expression ‘crying laughter.’ All through the centuries the Jews had such terrible things happen to them that they had to laugh a little harder.”Her “Seinfeld” debut was one of the series’ most famous episodes: “The Contest.” After George’s mother catches him having a private moment with one of her issues of Glamour magazine, she falls in shock, throws out her back and enters a hospital.“I go out for a quart of milk; I come home and find my son treating his body like it was an amusement park,” Ms. Harris said. “Too bad you can’t do that for a living” — and now, with her voice rising, she used her working-class New Yorker’s accent to milk the script’s sarcasm: “You could sell out Madison Square GAAARDEN. Thousands of people could watch you. You could be a BIIIG STARRR.”That set the template for her subsequent appearances, including on other beloved episodes like “The Fusilli Jerry” (1995) and “The Rye” (1996). She began her scenes in a sane register of a volatile emotion — recrimination, self-pity, bafflement — and by the end of the sequence arrived at an outburst so intense it could only be farcical.Ms. Harris’s success in the role led to other opportunities to play the shrill and unhinged, including in the “Toy Story” movie franchise, for which she provided the voice of Mrs. Potato Head.At the height of the popularity of “Seinfeld,” Ms. Harris found herself with the kind of celebrity that drew looks on the street. Something in the emotionality with which she portrayed Estelle Costanza had prompted fond recognition in a national audience.“Black people, Asians, WASPs, Italians, Jews — they all say, ‘Oh, you’re just like my mom,’” she told The Tribune.Estelle Nussbaum was born on April 22, 1928, in the Hell’s Kitchen section of Manhattan, where her Polish-Jewish parents owned a candy store. She grew up largely in Tarentum, Pa., a coal-mining town where her parents moved to help relatives run a general store and to provide Estelle a gentler setting for her childhood.Though she faced antisemitic taunts in her small town, Estelle found an outlet in stage performances. Her father, who she said “spoke the King’s English,” insisted that she take elocution lessons from a young age.Ms. Harris in 2010 at the premiere of “Toy Story 3” in Hollywood. She provided the voice of Mrs. Potato Head in the movie.Kevin Winter/Getty ImagesShe moved back to New York in her late teens and later married Sy Harris, a salesman of window treatments. They had three children, and for a while, Ms. Harris was a homemaker.She wound her way through dinner theaters and television commercials, including a 1983 spot for Handi-Wrap: “It don’t mean a thing, if it ain’t got that cling: doo-wrap, doo-wrap, doo-wrap,” she sang with schmaltzy enthusiasm.After her big break on “Seinfeld,” Ms. Harris’s other major credits included the movies “Out to Sea” (1997), starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau, and “My Giant” (1998), with Billy Crystal.Mr. Harris died last year. In addition to her son Glen, Ms. Harris is survived by another son, Eric; a daughter, Taryn; three grandsons; and a great-grandson.In her Tribune profile, Ms. Harris said she had complained to Larry David, the co-creator of “Seinfeld,” about her character’s constant yelling, but experience proved him right: “The more I yell, the more they laugh,” she said.Ms. Harris admitted that her personal life prepared her for the part.“I yell at my husband, but he doesn’t mind,” she said. “He’s grateful for the attention.”Tiffany May More

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      ‘Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood’ Review: OK, Boomer

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      Richard Linklater’s new animated film tells the story of the moon landing with some tongue-in-cheek revisionism.There are some people out there who insist that the moon landing never happened. As far as I know, the director Richard Linklater is not among them, but his new movie whimsically proposes its own revisionist account of what NASA was up to in the summer of 1969. Before Neil Armstrong took his giant leap, it seems, a Texas fourth grader named Stan stepped out of the landing module and onto the lunar surface.Stan’s story is narrated by his grown-up self (voiced by Jack Black). It isn’t really a full-blown conspiracy theory, but more what Tom Sawyer might have called a stretcher — the kind of yarn it might be fun to pretend to believe. The full title of the film, which debuts on Netflix this week, is “Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood,” and Stan’s astronaut fabulations are bright threads in a cozy fabric of baby-boomer nostalgia.Plenty of kids dreamed of going to the moon back then. Stan’s imaginary adventures are filtered through animation techniques that are both dreamlike and precise, so that they blend seamlessly into his meticulously rendered suburban reality. (The head of animation is Tommy Pallotta, whose previous collaborations with Linklater include “Waking Life” and “A Scanner Darkly.”) And that’s what the movie is really about: remembering what it was like to be a young American in the ’60s. Black’s voice-over has a wry, can-you-believe-it quality, as if Stan were a dad (or even, at this point, a grandpa) regaling the youngsters with stories about the old days. Or maybe boring them stiff, if they’ve heard this stuff before.But cut the old guy a little slack. “Apollo 10½” may not be working with the freshest material — “The Wonder Years” popped wheelies and played kickball on similar generational turf — but it’s a lively and charming stroll down memory lane all the same. The movie’s strongest appeal might well be to viewers of Stan’s generation, who are likely to appreciate its meticulous sense of detail and its tolerant, easygoing spirit.Stan is the youngest of six children, a “Brady Bunch” configuration of three boys and three girls who live with their parents on the outskirts of Houston. Dad works for NASA — in shipping and receiving — and is a mildly grouchy, slightly eccentric, mostly benevolent patriarch. Mom is harried, sarcastic and efficient, running the household like a bustling small business.Things sure were different back then. There was a lot more cigarette smoking, and a general disregard for the safety of children, who were piled into the backs of pickup trucks, paddled frequently at school, and free to ride bikes without helmets through clouds of DDT. There were fights about who controlled the television and the hi-fi, and plenty of good stuff to watch and listen to even without cable or Spotify: “The Beverly Hillbillies” and the Monkees, to name just two.Of course there was also the Vietnam War, racial conflict and political assassinations. “Apollo 10½” pays some attention to all that, but also notes that, to a 9-year-old boy in the Houston suburbs, the wider world could seem very far away. Unlike the moon, which was suddenly, miraculously in reach.Linklater captures the drama and suspense surrounding the Apollo 11 mission, and also the way it was folded into the patterns of daily life. This isn’t the first time he has used animation layered over live performances, and this digital rotoscoping technique is especially attuned to nuances of gesture and facial expression. The way Stan’s father leans forward while he’s watching the news, the side-eye glances that pass between Stan and his siblings, the weary stoicism of their mother’s posture — it’s all beautifully subtle, and more cinematic than cartoonish.And “Apollo 10½” is more a modest memoir than a whiz-bang space epic. Its view of the past is doggedly rose-colored, with social and emotional rough edges smoothed away by the passage of time and the filmmaker’s genial temperament. The moon landing itself is epochal, transformative, and also just another thing that happened in one boy’s eventful, ordinary life: a small step after all.Apollo 10½: A Space Age ChildhoodRated PG-13. Smoking and other dubious period-appropriate behavior. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. In theaters and on Netflix. More

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      ‘Turning Red’ Review: Beware the Red-Furred Monster

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      A 13-year-old girl becomes a red panda when she loses her cool in Domee Shi’s heartwarming but wayward coming-of-age film.A quirky Asian teenager transforms into a giant red panda whenever she gets excited … even the premise gives me pause. Which makes the task of reviewing the new Disney/Pixar film “Turning Red” (on Disney+ March 11) especially tricky. Because that’s the idea behind this sometimes heartwarming but wayward coming-of-age movie, which toes the line between truthfully representing a Chinese family, flaws and all, and indulging stereotypes.Meilin Lee (voiced by Rosalie Chiang) is a typical 13-year-old girl: she dances, has crushes on boys and has a cohort of weird but loyal besties who share her obsession with the glossy-lipped members of the boy band 4*Town. She’s also Chinese Canadian, living in Toronto in 2002, where her family maintains a temple. There she helps her loving but overbearing mother, Ming (Sandra Oh), and tries to be the perfect daughter — even when that means burying her own thoughts and desires in the process. This becomes a lot more difficult when she goes through her changes — not of the period variety, but the panda kind.The character writing and design are where “Turning Red,” directed by Domee Shi, most succeeds. Mei has the relatable swagger of the middle school cool nerd — she’s creative and confident, and also has a perfect report card. The tomboy skater girl Miriam, the deadpan Priya and the hilariously fiery Abby form a funky trifecta of gal pals who are Mei’s emotional safety net. And Ming strikes an impressive balance between dictatorial and doting, dismissing Mei’s friends and interests but also stalking her at school to ply her with steamed buns.Shi finds subtle yet effective ways to illustrate the personalities of even the ancillary characters, from the stiffly applied makeup of Mei’s grandmother (Ho-Wai Ching) to the flamboyant open-toed footwear of the gang of aunties who follow Grandma Lee around. And the animation of Mei’s hair in her panda form — how it lays flat when she’s calm or spikes upward when she’s mad — reinforces her emotional shifts.It’s no surprise that these kinds of expressions are where Shi’s direction most shines; as in her 2018 Oscar-winning Pixar short “Bao,” “Turning Red” lives and breathes on the complex emotional relationship between a mother and a child preparing to leave the nest. And also as in “Bao,” in which a mother raises a steamed bun child from birth to adulthood, here again Shi uses a culturally specific metaphor to convey her characters’ emotions.This is where “Turning Red” gets sticky: though the plot’s red panda magic is rooted in its characters’ cultural traditions (the Lees honor an ancestor who defended her family with the power of a red panda), these details aren’t enough to absolve the film of its kid-friendly version of exoticism. After all, its characters profit off Mei’s cute and foreign transformation.And when it comes down to the movie’s conflict, the antagonists are the women in Mei’s family. Or, more accurately, the suffocating cultural traditions and familial expectations that are embodied by the women. The fact that Mei’s grandmother gets the kind of shady introductory scene that you’d expect of the head honcho in a mobster flick, and that these women share the red panda affliction, means they fall into a formula of cold, emotionless Asian women. Is the film tackling the stereotype or fulfilling it? The line is too blurry to tell. By the end, a bit of understanding, empathy and a pandapocalypse reassures us that the stoic Asian dames aren’t the source of the problem but also victims, like Mei. Though I wonder what the movie would look like if the conflict wasn’t enacted solely in the form of these women.“Turning Red” offers satisfying morsels despite its messiness, like the few throwbacks to the early aughts, including Tamagotchis and pre-BTS boy band mania. (4*Town’s criminally catchy songs, written by Billie Eilish and her brother, Finneas O’Connell, are perfect reproductions of 2000s pop hits.)It’s too bad that “Turning Red” fumbles its storytelling, because at the very least it has fun when it lets its fur fly.Turning RedRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. Watch on Disney+. More

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      ‘The 2022 Oscar Nominated Short Films’ Review: Small Tales, Big Ideas

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      From near-future nightmares to inspirational sports narratives, this year’s shorts are an eclectic bunch.This year, the Oscar-nominated short films are being presented in three programs: live action, animation and documentary. Each program is reviewed below by a separate critic.Live ActionRarely is it the case that every nominee in a particular Oscar category feels equally deserving of attention, but this year’s program of live action shorts is particularly strong. All show situations range from mildly uncomfortable to downright terrifying, yet the quality of the filmmaking takes center stage.Anchored by a wise and wonderful lead performance from Anna Dzieduszycka, the Polish film “The Dress” follows Julia, a motel maid with dwarfism, as she tries to ease her loneliness and lose her virginity. A date with a handsome truck driver promises to do both, with troubling consequences. Filmed in beautifully soft light and directed by Tadeusz Lysiak in artful close-ups, this affecting and upsetting look at sex and disability reminds us that tall, dark strangers aren’t always a romantic prize.“On My Mind,” the sad-sweet entry from the Danish director Martin Strange-Hansen, doesn’t at first seem at all romantic, but just wait. When a strange, mournful man (Rasmus Hammerich) walks into a bar and begs to sing one special song on the karaoke machine, his deceptively simple request will soon be revealed as, quite literally, a matter of life or death.In the darkly humorous dystopia of “Please Hold,” a 19-minute nightmare set in a near-future world almost completely controlled by artificial intelligence, a young man (Erick Lopez) is arrested by a police drone and pressured to take a plea deal for an unknown crime. While he fumes in a hellscape of touch screens and disembodied voices — “I’m sorry, I didn’t get that!” — the Mexican American director KD Dávila delivers a shockingly clever satire of the privatized prison system and the elusiveness of justice.Explore the 2022 Academy AwardsThe 94th Academy Awards will be held on March 27 in Los Angeles.The Hosts: The comic actresses Wanda Sykes, Amy Schumer and Regina Hall are in final talks to take on the highly scrutinized role as a trio.A Makeover: On Oscar night, you can expect a refreshed, slimmer telecast and a few new awards. But are all of the tweaks a good thing?Making History: Troy Kotsur, who stars in “CODA” as a fisherman struggling to relate to his daughter, is the first deaf man to earn an Oscar nomination for acting. ‘Improbable Journey’: “Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom” was filmed on a shoestring budget in a remote Himalayan village. In a first for Bhutan, the movie is now an Oscar nominee.Dreams of an education are dashed when Sezim (a terrific Alina Turdumamatova), the young Kyrgyz woman at the center of “Ala Kachuu (Take and Run),” is kidnapped and forced into marriage with a stranger. With empathy and energy, the German-Swiss director Maria Brendle uses Sezim’s youthful resilience as a cudgel against the repressive customs of rural Kyrgyzstan, a region where so-called bride kidnapping is believed to be a common practice.Preparations for a more joyful wedding open “The Long Goodbye,” Aneil Karia’s visceral film accompaniment to the actor and musician Riz Ahmed’s 2020 concept album of the same name. In a slight 12 minutes, Karia whisks us from scenes of happy chaos to abject horror, finally settling on fury as Ahmed, playing a brother of the bride, weaponizes his words and music to attack British racism. Powerful and tensely edited, this tiny movie says more in those few minutes than some movies manage in hours. JEANNETTE CATSOULISAnimationA scene from “Bestia,” a stop-motion chiller directed by Hugo Covarrubias.ShortsTV“Animation is not just for children,” Paul McCartney once said on an awards stage. “It is also for adults who take drugs.” The caution is apropos for the 2022 animated program of Oscar Nominated Shorts, although the “Yellow Submarine” star probably imagined more fun than what a doctor would prescribe for these anxiety-inducing films about heartbreak, resentment, torture and despair.“Bestia,” by Hugo Covarrubias, is a brutal and beautifully executed bit of payback against Chile’s Íngrid Olderöck, a paramilitary major who, according to survivors, trained dogs to sexually violate opponents of the dictator Augusto Pinochet. Made of deceptively cuddly felt, Covarrubias’s stop-motion chiller follows Olderöck and her German Shepard into her nightmares, revealing her as a husk of a human hiding under a tight-lipped ceramic mask. Note the hairline crack at the temple of Olderöck’s near-expressionless face — a nod to a 1981 assassination attempt.The Russian illustrator Anton Dyakov clearly admires “Rocky.” A poster of the Sylvester Stallone Oscar-winner pokes into the frame of Dyakov’s “Boxballet,” a simple, bittersweet tale about a declining boxer with a crush on a Swan Lake dancer under the thumb of a predatory male director. In this expressionistic fable, creeps have claws, limbs stretch like linguine noodles, and the would-be lovebirds must settle for much less than seven glitzy sequels.The chain-smoker at the start of Alberto Mielgo’s restless stunner “The Windshield Wiper” resembles the artist himself, a visual consultant on “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” whose streaks of color and startling use of light position him as one of the foremost artists designing digital animation’s future. “What is love?” the man asks. In response, the film races through cynical vignettes scattered across the globe, and in one case, on a satellite above it.For nearly 35 years, Joanna Quinn has pencil-sketched the adventures of Beryl, a raucous British factory worker who here reveals she always fancied herself an artist. “Affairs of the Art” finds Beryl stark nude and painting herself blue. But the spotlight is on Beryl’s macabre childhood and a string of dead pets. Yes, McCartney — even kids can be creeps. As a balm, Aardman Animations offers “Robin Robin,” the one cartoon suitable for families. This musical trifle celebrates an orphaned baby bird who must learn to use her wings. It’s saccharine fluff — and Oscar prognosticators have it as their front-runner. AMY NICHOLSONDocumentaryThe high school football player Amaree McKenstry in “Audible.” His senior year is eventful beyond the gridiron.ShortsTVWith three out of five nominees, Netflix is almost bigfooting this year’s documentary short category, but one of those three is a standout. “Audible,” directed by Matt Ogens, observes the high school football team at the Maryland School for the Deaf, zeroing in on one player, Amaree McKenstry. His senior year is eventful beyond the gridiron, as he navigates a tentative relationship and reconnects with the father who left him.McKenstry says that while he cannot hear cheers, he is able to feel vibrations from running. The players approach football with a different perspective. (“A lot of the hearing teams don’t want to play us,” the coach says. “And most coaches don’t like to lose to deaf coaches.”) Ogens, without overdoing it, finds ways to appeal to viewers’ other senses, looking for tactile moments, like teenagers dancing to booming bass lines or team members slamming locker doors and flicking a light switch as they rev themselves to return to the field.School memories also suffuse “When We Were Bullies.” In the early 1990s, the filmmaker, Jay Rosenblatt, had a random encounter with a former fifth-grade classmate from the 1965-6 school year. Both had remembered an incident when they and others had ganged up on an ostracized student. Years later, haunted that he had been a bully, Rosenblatt seeks out other classmates and their 92-year-old teacher. Not all remember the dust up, and Rosenblatt consciously leads the movie into a dead end. Still, “When We Were Bullies” plays with structure and animation in ways that leaven it.Less successfully empathetic is “Lead Me Home,” a documentary on homelessness shot in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle from 2017 to 2020. It is simply too diffuse at this length; few of its 15 featured subjects emerge with clarity, although it has heart-rending moments, like when a mother explains why she shops for groceries and makes dinner for her children instead of accepting meals. The many aerial shots of encampments inadvertently call attention to the distant perspective of the filmmakers, Pedro Kos and Jon Shenk, whose overuse of time-lapse photography and unfortunate deployment of Coldplay’s “Midnight” suggest it’s easier to lyricize poverty than explore it.“Three Songs for Benazir,” from the directors Gulistan and Elizabeth Mirzaei, follows a father-to-be in a displaced-persons camp in Kabul who yearns to join the Afghan National Army, but others are convinced his place is in the poppy fields. A poignant epilogue set four years later confirms a downbeat fate, while also hinting at a great unrealized feature that might have been.Finally, the New York Times Op-Doc “The Queen of Basketball,” directed by Ben Proudfoot, puts a spotlight on Lusia Harris, who died in January. In close-up, she recalls her career as a pathbreaking basketball player, the first woman to be officially drafted by an N.B.A. team. Released before Harris’s death, the movie now makes for a simple but moving memorial, interspersing Harris’s recollections with clips of key games and headlines. BEN KENIGSBERGThe 2022 Oscar Nominated Short Films: Live ActionNot rated. In English and several other languages, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 1 minute. In theaters.The 2022 Oscar Nominated Short Films: AnimatedNot rated. In English and several other languages, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. In theaters.The 2022 Oscar Nominated Short Films: DocumentaryNot rated. In English and several other languages, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 39 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Lin-Manuel Miranda on His 'Encanto' Oscar Nomination and His EGOT Prospects

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      It was just one of those Tuesdays for Lin-Manuel Miranda. The composer, lyricist and actor — known for “In the Heights” and “Hamilton” — had trouble getting his youngest off to preschool, and his older son’s school bus was running late.He sat down with his wife, the attorney and engineer Vanessa Nadal, just in time to catch the Oscar nominations. The real joy in watching, he said, was “how many friends I’m lucky enough to know that made such amazing work this year.”He texted Ariana DeBose when she was nominated for best supporting actress for “West Side Story” and hit up the costume designer Paul Tazewell when he scored a nod for the same film. When Germaine Franco was recognized for best original score on the Disney animated film “Encanto,” which Miranda wrote songs for, he screamed for the whole neighborhood to hear.“Encanto” follows Alma Madrigal, who fled her home years ago while escaping conflict. She saved her three infant children, but lost her husband, Pedro. Devastated, Alma clung to the candle she was using to light her way, which became enchanted — hence the “encanto” — and imbued her family members with magical powers, all except her grandchild Mirabel.Miranda also received a nomination for the film: best original song for “Dos Oruguitas,” a heart-rending ballad at the emotional climax of “Encanto.” To top it off, the film — directed by Byron Howard and Jared Bush and co-directed by Charise Castro Smith — garnered a nomination for best animated feature.Miranda, who lives in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York, jogged across the George Washington Bridge and back in his excitement.Although he has written his fair share of music — his “How Far I’ll Go” for Disney’s “Moana” picked up a best original song nomination in 2017 — “Dos Oruguitas” is the first song Miranda had written from start to finish in Spanish.“I really went pretty far out of my comfort zone to write the tune, so I’m really just thrilled it’s been recognized,” he said. “It just makes you want to push more: lean into the things that scare you and do those things. That’s what’s worth doing, because that’s what makes you grow.”These are edited excerpts from the conversation.When did you write this song? What did that process look like?It’s probably early last year, like March or April. But I remember the idea came on a brainstorm with Jared and Charise on the phone. Just sort of like, “I think the butterfly metaphor is already there visually. What if this song goes to nature’s original miracle?” And then, when I thought of the idea of two caterpillars in love, it was a wrap.There’s so much that it was able to hold: both Abuela [Alma] and Pedro, and what the family is doing to each other by holding on too tight. I wanted it to feel like a song that always existed. All of my favorite folkloric songs all have nature metaphors embedded in them. I started dreaming in Spanish again while I was writing it. It was like my whole brain was trying to make it happen, even my subconscious.Once you had that idea — caterpillars in love — were you able to write smoothly or did it take awhile to write in Spanish?I think I wrote the first verse and chorus in, like, a week. Sent it to the creative team. They were all sniffling and they were like, “You’re on the right track; keep going.” I needed to reach for a poetic language that is beyond my standard conversational Spanish. I’m pretty fluent in conversational Spanish, but this needed to be elevated. I ran the grammar by my dad. And looked for the words that aren’t in my everyday usage: crisálidas [chrysalises], desorientadas [disoriented]. You do whatever you need to do to get the hook out.Why did it feel like this song had to be in Spanish?Because honestly, all of the words central to the metaphor are more beautiful in Spanish, on a technical level: oruguitas, crisálidas, mariposas [butterflies] are just beautiful words. But also I think there’s a subtle generational play happening with the way we use language in this movie: The younger siblings are all expressing themselves in pretty contemporary genres: reggaeton for Luisa, ’90s rock en español for Isabela [Mirabel’s sisters]. And so it felt like the matriarch of the family and the central, foundational story of this family and this miracle should be in Spanish.How did you choose Sebastián Yatra — a younger, pop-y singer — to voice that sentiment?We went back and forth initially over whether it was a female or male vocal. And we kind of felt like, “Well, if it’s female, it will feel like Abuela is singing it.” It didn’t feel quite right. I tell the story a lot, but a lot of writing the right song is figuring out what is not the right song. It didn’t feel right for Abuela to sing a song to Mirabel, full stop. So that’s what gets you to the male vocalist.When we started working on this together — Jared, Charise, Byron and I — we all sort of made mixtapes for each other. We all did our own deep dives of Colombian music, and Sebastián just popped up in all our mixes. He’s got such a beautiful voice, and he’s around the age of Abuelo Pedro when the film takes place, so it’s just kind of a perfect fit.Mirabel (voiced by Stephanie Beatriz) in a scene from “Encanto.”DisneyWhat specific aspects of Colombian folk music inspired you?First of all, the folkloric music we heard over there, which was so beautiful — basically anything with a tiple on it, I was kind of in love with. But then the other thing I really thought about was, “What are just the Latin songs that live forever?” I was thinking about “Guantanamera” and “Cielito Lindo.” I don’t feel like anyone ever wrote those songs. Although of course they all have incredible songwriters. I just feel like they always existed. So I really listened to those and the shape of them. The verse and chorus of it owes a lot to those hits.The only other song that feels close to it in songs I’ve written is a snippet of a song called “Siempre” in “In the Heights,” where I wanted that to feel like a bolero that always existed. But again, that’s not a full song. It’s like a verse in the chorus for a record-scratch joke.In the scene where we hear “Dos Oruguitas,” golden butterflies are everywhere, which evokes a favorite motif of the Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez. Did his butterflies inspire the metaphor in any way, or did they just happen to align once you found the caterpillar idea?Absolutely. The song itself was absolutely inspired by the visual metaphor that the animation team was already playing with. That scene in all of its conception hadn’t existed yet, but I had seen the candle which turned into a butterfly. And that was the inspiration for going to that metaphor. So it’s also of a great example of how much collaboration happens in an animated movie. It’s like writing for theater to the nth power.Like I write a rap section for Dolores in “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” and the writers take that and ran that vibe for her throughout the movie, and in turn, the animation department thinks of this butterfly metaphor absolutely inspired by García Márquez. And then I get to run with that as a song idea. You know you’re cooking with gas when you’re all kind of feeding each other.This song makes me cry every time. Did you cry at all while writing it?Oh yeah. I always think of myself as Tita in “Como Agua Para Chocolate” [“Like Water For Chocolate”]: I cry in the recipe.I thought about my first serious relationship and how we were two people who loved each other very much, but the world was bigger and we were going in different directions. I definitely went there in my heart while I was writing it. You pull on all of it. And also moments in your life when you were so scared of change, and you just have to trust that there’s a reason it’s happening. That, to me, strikes a deeper chord than even the themes as they appear in the movie itself.This is your second Oscar nomination, and if you were to win, you’d become the 17th person to attain EGOT status. How does it feel?On one level, it feels totally silly, because that is a term that got popularized by “30 Rock,” which is a hilarious thing for anyone to chase: that you’re chasing something Tracy Jordan chased.But on another level, the thing that always feels special about this is that artists vote on it. My fellow moviemakers, my fellow songwriters, the music branch. I’ve met some of those folks, and they’re like the most incredibly, wildly intelligent folks who have made music that I love. More

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      in Movies

      ‘The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild’ Review: A Franchise Thaws

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      The latest installment in this animated film series replaces nearly all of its celebrity voice performers with close proxies.Upon beginning “The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild,” the sixth feature in the animation franchise that grows woollier by the movie, you sense something amiss. Perhaps it’s the dinosaur paradise serenely preserved beneath alpine glaciers? Can’t be: That particular anachronism has been canon for several “Ice Age” installments.Rather, oddness stems here from the missing cast of celebrity performers, including Ray Romano, who over five movies lent surly gusto to the mammoth Manny, and John Leguizamo, the source of the sloth Sid’s erratic charm. Neither appears in “Buck Wild” (on Disney+), which opts instead for a set of close proxies. Substituting actors in sequels isn’t unheard-of (Robin Williams was notably absent from “The Return of Jafar”), but adults may find themselves absorbed in nit-picking this movie’s voices to gauge their fidelity to the originals — at least it distracts from the dialogue.And there’s a lot of dialogue. Directed by John C. Donkin, “Buck Wild” spotlights the motor-mouthed possum brothers Crash (Vincent Tong) and Eddie (Aaron Harris), who in earlier movies served only as half-witted sidekicks. Seeking adventure, they reunite with the one-eyed weasel Buck (Simon Pegg, the only actor reprising his role) and tag along on his quest to save the subterranean Mesozoic jungle from a despotic Protoceratops (Utkarsh Ambudkar). It’s simpler than it sounds.Reining in the chaos is a sensible zorilla named Zee (Justina Machado) who bails the boys out of trouble while teaching us that courage comes from within. Being detained with this zoological crew could melt one’s brain faster than ice in a heat wave. And where is Scrat, the squirrel whose unwavering pursuit of an acorn is often the franchise’s saving grace? Nearly nonverbal, Scrat wouldn’t even require a locum tenens; of all the movie’s sins, his omission is unforgivable.The Ice Age Adventures of Buck WildRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 21 minutes. Watch on Disney + More

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      How Disney Created the Hit Single 'We Don't Talk About Bruno'

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      “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” from “Encanto” is a surprise chart topper and TikTok darling. Here’s how Disney created its biggest smash since “Let It Go.”“A seven-foot frame! Rats along his back!” a curly-haired teenager draped in a cloak lip-syncs for the camera.“I associate him with the sound of falling sand,” a busy mom nods appreciatively, bopping along with a vacuum as she embarks on a kitchen dance break.“I’m sorry, mi vida, go on!” a pair of sisters screech, perilously off-key.“Encanto” cautioned against talking about Bruno, but a whole lot of people are obsessed with a song about him.Since that animated Disney film opened in theaters in November and arrived on Disney+ on Christmas Eve, its playful song “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” has steadily grown into an international hit. Unlike most Disney breakouts, “Bruno” is not a wistful hero’s solo or a third-act power ballad. It’s a Broadway-style ensemble track that revels in gossip about a middle-age man.Yet the song recently topped the Spotify, Apple Music and iTunes charts in the United States, reached No. 1 on the global YouTube music videos chart and currently sits at No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 — the first original song from a Disney animated film to rank that high since the “Frozen” anthem “Let It Go” in 2014. Other “Encanto” tracks, like “Surface Pressure” and “The Family Madrigal,” are also rising. And this week, the film’s soundtrack bumped Adele’s “30” from the top spot on the Billboard 200.“Bruno” has been bolstered by its popularity on TikTok, where tribute clips from the likes of that cloaked teenager, those screeching sisters and that bopping mom have racked up millions of views.“I could look at the TikToks all day,” one of the “Encanto” directors, Jared Bush, said in an interview. “Everyone is finding a different entry point, whether it’s a specific moment or character dynamic. There’s something in it for everybody and, honestly, it’s just delicious.”Explore the World of ‘Encanto’Disney’s new film, about a gifted family in Colombia, pairs stunning animation with spellbinding songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda.Review: “Encanto” charms with its focus on family dynamics, fantastic feats of wizardry and respect for Latino culture, writes our film critic.The Voice of Mirabel: Stephanie Beatriz, who won over fans with her role in “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” discusses taking on the lead role in the film.An Enchanting Soundtrack: The film’s album of music recently climbed to the top of the Billboard 200, displacing Adele’s “30.”A Slice of His Homeland: A Times reporter watched “Encanto” with her Colombian father. Here’s what they thought.In the movie about a Colombian teenager named Mirabel Madrigal (voiced by Stephanie Beatriz) and her supernaturally gifted family, Bruno (John Leguizamo) is a mysterious, outcast uncle whose ability to see the future earns the abject scorn of all those receiving bad news. His family and the townspeople share their colorful, often bitter, anecdotes about his prophecies in the song.Germaine Franco provided the “Encanto” score, while “Bruno” and the rest of the songs were written by Lin-Manuel Miranda, who had worked with Disney on the soundtrack of the 2016 film “Moana.” The “Encanto” filmmakers said he had delivered the infectious “Bruno” virtually on command.In spring 2020, the directors Bush and Byron Howard; the co-director Charise Castro Smith; and Tom MacDougall, then head of music at Walt Disney Animation Studios, hopped on one of their weekly video chats with Miranda to brainstorm an ensemble track about Bruno that could provide a jolt of energy midfilm.“We could see Lin thinking, and he looked at us and said, ‘It feels like a spooky ghost story, like a spooky montuno,’” Howard said, referring to a Cuban musical pattern. “And he turns to the piano and plays the first three chords. We literally saw him put it together and compose in that very moment. I’ve never had that happen before.” (Miranda was unavailable for an interview.)The character of Bruno had already evolved during the film’s creation. In an early iteration, he was much younger, someone Mirabel’s age. He was also originally named Oscar, but Bush said a legal snag over the existence of a number of real-life Oscar Madrigals in Colombia, led them to explore other name options. He sent Miranda a list of five alternatives, to which the songwriter replied, “Definitely Bruno.”“I couldn’t figure out why he was so definitive,” Bush said, “until two days later when we heard, ‘Bruno, no, no, no.’”Miranda then recorded a demo track in which he sang all 10 parts. “It was like Lin-Manuel on steroids,” said Adassa, the singer-songwriter who voices Dolores, the Madrigal cousin with exceptional hearing. (That demo has not been released, though a popular Miranda impressionist has taken a stab at what it might sound like.)With only storyboard sketches and Miranda’s audio to guide them, the film’s choreographer, Jamal Sims, and his team spent about two weeks in a Los Angeles studio creating the “Bruno” dance moves for the animators to render digitally. Incorporating elements of cumbia, the Colombian national dance that features African, Indigenous and European influences, along with salsa and rumba, they mapped out every moment of the song and shot a reference video in one take as if part of a live musical. Even Bruno’s rats perform intricate steps. (The animation team would later film the dancers from different camera angles.)“We had to build this all from our imagination,” the assistant choreographer, Kai Martinez, said. “What helped make this piece unique is that we had a group of Latinx dancers from Colombia, from Cuba, from Puerto Rico — people who understood the assignment.” (Clips of their choreography shared by Martinez on TikTok have amassed more than 23 million views.)Martinez, who is a first-generation Colombian American, also served as an animation reference consultant and provided the filmmakers with crucial insights into cultural nuances and mannerisms.“It was bigger than a job,” she said. “Being a Colombian woman, this is the kind of film that I would have wanted to watch when I was a kid.”Meanwhile, because of Covid precautions, the voice actors recorded their parts separately in studios across the United States and Colombia. Rhenzy Feliz sang the shapeshifting cousin Camilo’s lines in a rented space near San Luis Obispo, Calif., and said he channeled “theater kid” energy in his character’s dramatic delivery. Adassa recorded in her home studio in Nashville.“At first my rap was going to be an octave higher,” she said of her whispery bars. “I thought, she’s such an intimate speaker, I’m going to do it an octave lower. And it worked.”Despite its huge popularity, “Bruno” won’t get any Oscar love: The studio submitted only “Dos Oruguitas,” an emotional Spanish ballad performed by Sebastián Yatra, for awards consideration. That song, while not as ubiquitous as “Bruno,” made the academy’s best original song short list last month. Should it go on to take the statuette, it would make history as Disney’s first non-English-language winner.“‘Dos Oruguitas’ was so central to the emotional theme of the movie,” Howard said when asked if they had considered submitting “Bruno.” He added, “It’s probably the most critical bit of musical storytelling in the whole film because it has to do with the history of the family and Mirabel understanding her grandmother.”In fact, betting on “Bruno” would have been a bold strategic departure. You’d need to look as far back as “Under the Sea” from “The Little Mermaid” (1989) to find a Disney Oscar winner with a similar theatrical quirkiness. Since then, when the studio has wowed the academy, it has been overwhelmingly for ballads, including “A Whole New World” (“Aladdin”), “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” (“The Lion King”), “Colors of the Wind” (“Pocahontas”), “Let It Go” (“Frozen”) and “Remember Me” (Pixar’s “Coco”), along with the occasional Randy Newman ditty.Besides, multiple submissions could have risked the possibility of splitting votes, and Miranda lacks only an Oscar to achieve the rare career E.G.O.T. This wouldn’t be his first nomination: His “Moana” track, “How Far I’ll Go,” lost to “City of Stars” from “La La Land.” (In addition to his work on “Encanto,” he also directed “Tick, Tick … Boom!” and could potentially land a nomination for that film.)Beyond awards season, the “Encanto” directors said they were open to the possibility of a sequel, stage show or spinoff series. “I would love for there to be continuing stories of these characters because they’re real people to us,” Bush said. “Ninety minutes is not enough time to spend with the Madrigals.”And despite some fans’ theories that “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” — and the repeated reprimand “Silenzio, Bruno!” in the Pixar film “Luca” — show Disney has an anti-Bruno agenda, the filmmakers insist it isn’t so.“At the end of ‘Encanto,’ Bruno turns out to be a great guy,” Bush said. “So, you know, we’ve resurrected that name. I think Bruno should be proud of that.” More