Author: thehorsesheadblog

December 16^th 2002: The Library of Congress announces 25 more films added to the National Film Registry, bringing the total to 350 films. With all 25 films finally under my belt, let’s take a look back at the NFR Class of 2002:

Star Theatre (1901): “time-lapse photography is neat, and someone had to introduce it to the American mainstream.”

Wild and Woolly (1917): “[Douglas] Fairbanks is entertaining, but we’ve already got three of his later iconic movies on the list.”

Lady Windermere’s Fan (1925): “impressive as an exercise in translating a very wordy play into a much more visual film.”

Theodore Case Sound Test: Gus Visser and His Singing Duck (1925): “technically it has historical significance, but…there weren’t any other films to choose?”

From Stump to Ship (1930): “Thanks to this 30-minute documentation, I feel wholly qualified to be a 1930s logger”.

Punch Drunks (1934): “checks all the boxes you want from a Stooges short”.

Melody Ranch (1940): “a perfect encapsulation of the all-in-good-fun type of movies [Gene] Autry specialized in.”

La Perla [The Pearl] (1947): “Not a classic, but not a relic of its time either.”

The Bad and the Beautiful (1952): “a well-made tale of corrupt Old Hollywood”

This Is Cinerama (1952): “essentially the birth of the widescreen movie as we know it.”

All My Babies: A Midwife’s Own Story (1953): “the kind of unique film the NFR was made for…Just don’t eat before watching it.”

From Here to Eternity (1953): “A well made film with good performances all around, but that’s about it.”

Sabrina (1954): “iconic enough for eventual NFR inclusion, but not tops on anyone’s list.”

Wild River (1960): “an engaging examination of time and place, but as an NFR entry it doesn’t pass muster.”

The Endless Summer (1966): “If you’re going to have one surf film on the Registry, this is a fine choice.”

Navajo Film Themselves (1966): “a specific glimpse into an Indigenous culture…courtesy of the culture itself.”

In the Heat of the Night (1967): “A top-notch film that shows us where we were, where we are, and where we’re going. Now that’s a classic.”

Why Man Creates (1968): “I have no objections to including a film by Saul Bass, whose praises I have sung in many previous posts.”

Fuji (1974): “highlights what experimental animation is capable of.”

Alien (1979): “There’s no way [the NFR] could ignore a move as iconic, as memorable, or as perennially exciting”.

The Black Stallion (1979): “set the template for kids-and-animal films for the next two decades.”

Stranger Than Paradise (1984): “a perfect representation of [Jim Jarmusch’s] work.”

This Is Spinal Tap (1984): “one of the most consistently funny movies ever made.”

Beauty and the Beast (1991): “a spectacular feat of animation, an incredible piece of musical theater, and an overall outstanding film.”

Boyz n the Hood (1991): “a realistic, sincere movie with a strong message.”

The Plot: In 1937, Tennessee is in a transitional phase as the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) builds several dams across the state’s rivers to prevent flooding, as well as purchasing nearby land and relocating families residing within the flood zones. TVA bureaucrat Chuck Glover (Montgomery Clift) heads to Garthville, Tennessee when one family refuses to sell their land on Garth Island within the Tennessee River. Glover is unable to reason with the family matriarch Ella Garth (Jo Van Fleet), but forms a mutual attraction with her widowed granddaughter Carol Baldwin (Lee Remick). At the same time, Glover runs into trouble with the locals when he proposes hiring Black workers to help with the land clearing and paying them equally to their White counterparts. With its liberal leanings and a cast of Actors Studio alum, this film has all the earmarks of an Elia Kazan production.

Why It Matters: The NFR calls the film “often overlooked and visually stunning”. Their brief write-up does, however, contain two factual errors: they state the film’s year of release as 1961, and refer to Lee Remick’s character as Ella’s daughter-in-law.

But Does It Really?: This one baffles me. There’s nothing wrong with “Wild River”, it’s a well-made film with good work on both sides of the camera, but no one has made a compelling argument to me for its NFR inclusion. “Wild River” is not an important movie in Kazan’s body of work, had a brief and unremarkable theatrical run, and has rarely been referenced or discussed in the ensuing 65 years, even within the confines of Kazan’s filmography. As a standalone movie, “Wild River” is an engaging examination of time and place, but as an NFR entry it doesn’t pass muster.

Shout Outs: Some of the historical flooding footage at the beginning comes from “The River”, the government-sanctioned documentary about how great the TVA is.

Title Track: I think it would be easier to list the working titles this film didn’t go by. Originally taking its name from its source material “Mud on the Stars”, the film’s multiple screenplay drafts contained such titles as “Time and Tide”, “God’s Valley”, “The Swift Season”, and “As the River Rises” before settling on “Wild River”. After the film’s initial box office disappointment, the title was changed again to “The Woman and the Wild River” with a promotional re-emphasis on the love story.

Seriously, Oscars?: No Oscar nominations, but “Wild River” was named one of the top 10 films of 1960 by both Cahiers du Cinéma and the National Board of Review.

• For the role of Carol, Fox pushed for Marilyn Monroe, but Kazan’s first and only choice for the part was Lee Remick, his breakout discovery from “A Face in the Crowd”. Carol doesn’t have a lot to do for the first third of the movie, but Remick keeps her very present in her scenes, even when she’s just in the background observing Chuck and Ella’s back-and-forth. When Carol begins her relationship with Chuck, both Remick and Clift help make the situation more believable by injecting tons of subtext. The dialogue is about the land and the river, but those eyes are telling a different story.

• We learn from his tombstone that the name of Carol’s deceased husband is James Baldwin. The author and Civil Rights activist of the same name was already an established writer by 1960, so if that’s meant as a nod to him, having it on a White guy’s tombstone is a weird choice. Speaking of Civil Rights; Kazan keeps his progressive streak going by casting a large number of Black actors in the film, including Robert Earl Jones, father of James Earl Jones.
• While at Carol’s house, Chuck uncovers her deceased husband’s shotgun. Upon the gun’s reveal, I wrote down the note “Chekov’s shotgun” and continued with my viewing.
• My problem with this movie is how it was shot; not the compositions of cinematographer Ellsworth Fredricks, but rather the initial choice of how to shoot the film. “Wild River” was filmed in De Luxe color and widescreen CinemaScope, but I think the film would have worked better in black-and-white and a more standard aspect ratio. Perhaps color and widescreen were mandated by the studio (this was only Kazan’s second film in color after “East of Eden”), but the color makes the Tennessee landscape too beautiful, and the CinemaScope gives the whole thing an unnecessarily epic feel. Maybe I just associate the Depression with black and white, but I kept thinking how much better this film would have been without the distracting aesthetics.
• One scene near the end features Chuck drunkenly confronting Ella late one night. This scene is notable due to Clift’s well-known alcohol problem following his car crash. Apparently Kazan made Clift promise he wouldn’t drink during the shoot, and whether or not Clift kept his word depends on who you ask.
• As I’ve said before on this blog, “It’s not a movie about racial tensions until a White male lynch mob shows up”. As the locals start surrounding Carol’s house and things take a violent turn, I kept an eye out for the inevitable return of Chekhov’s shotgun. Not only does the shotgun fail to make an appearance here, it’s never mentioned again. They brought it up earlier with no pay off. Come on!
• I don’t have much else to say about this movie. It’s good, but is it NFR good? The film doesn’t waste too much time reaching its inevitable conclusion (and I appreciated the ongoing rain as a metaphor for the impending flood), but I wasn’t too attached to the story or its characters, and by the end I was ready to move on and go about the rest of my day. And I have say that despite the title, that river wasn’t wild at all. Maybe they’re thinking of that Meryl Streep/Kevin Bacon movie?

• Although “Wild River” is largely forgotten, it is still highly regarded by Southerners, especially those whose families were directly impacted by the floods. Perhaps the biggest fans of “Wild River” are the people of Bradley County, Tennessee, where most of the movie was filmed. In 2010, Cleveland, Tennessee held “Wild River Days” celebrating the film’s 50^th anniversary. The festivities are included in the 2011 documentary “Mud on the Stars”, along with interviews from locals who witnessed the production first-hand.

While not currently available for streaming, “Navajo Film Themselves” is available for purchase on DVD through the Penn Museum website. All profits from the DVD sales go to the filmmakers and their families.

My immense thanks to the Internet Archive for preserving the Penn Museum’s original “Navajo Film Themselves” website, where most of my information about these films comes from.

The Plot: In the summer of 1966, professors Sol Worth and John Adair traveled to Pine Springs, Arizona with a grant from the National Science Foundation for an anthropological project: Teaching local Navajo residents how to make films. Over the course of two months, Worth and Adair taught six students of varying age and experience the fundamentals of filmmaking, and asked them to each make a film about something important to them.  The result is a collection of seven films focusing on Navajo customs and traditions: from rug weaving to a medicine man ceremony to a local silversmith to…more weaving.

Why It Matters: Not a lot of superlatives in the NFR write-up for “Navajo”, just some historical context, which we’ll delve into throughout this post.

But Does It Really?: “Navajo Film Themselves” is certainly the kind of unique filmmaking I’ve come to expect from the NFR. Not only do we get a specific glimpse into an Indigenous culture, we get that glimpse courtesy of the culture itself. The individual films are interesting on their own, but the historical context I found in my research definitely enhances the experience. I’m glad “Navajo Film Themselves” has made the NFR, and equally glad that the film is once again available for individual purchase.

Everybody Gets One: Sol Worth was a communications professor at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania; John Adair was an anthropology professor at San Francisco State College (now San Francisco State University, my alma mater!). Richard Chalfen was a former student of Worth’s who joined the two in Arizona and would go on to be a successful Visual Anthropologist in his own right. “Navajo Film Themselves” came to be as an experiment in a new type of anthropology Worth dubbed a “bio-documentary”: filmmaking by the subject to get a better sense of how they see the world. The Navajo were chosen for this experiment for a number of reasons, but primarily as an exercise in giving the oft-studied community free agency to film what they deemed important or significant without any outside influences.

Title Track: In 1972, Worth, Adair, and Chalfen published a book about their experience with the Navajo called “Through Navajo Eyes”. Since then, the book’s title has been used interchangeably with “Navajo Film Themselves” as the film series’ title.

Listen to This: The National Recording Registry also includes documentation of Navajo traditions, with ethnomusicologist David McAllester’s 1957-1958 recordings of a Navajo Shootingway ceremony, the nine day event that often uses Yeibichai masks like the one from “Intrepid Shadows”. Anthropology professor Charlotte Frisbie pens a very detailed essay about the recordings, and you can listen to a brief excerpt on the NRR website.

Further Reading: The companion book “Through Navajo Eyes” is a treasure trove of information regarding this project. If any of this interests you I can’t recommend this book enough. Read it for free on Internet Archive!

“George Stevens’ World War II Footage” can be viewed on the Library of Congress website. For those of you who don’t have 6 ^1/2 hours to spare, I recommend 1994’s “George Stevens: D-Day to Berlin”, a 45 minute documentary by Stevens’ son George Stevens Jr. For those with even less time, Stevens Jr.’s other documentary about his dad, 1984’s “George Stevens: A Filmmaker’s Journey” contains about 10 minutes of the footage.

As always, this post is about the film, and not the war it is documenting. This write-up is a massive oversimplification of major WWII events, and I encourage you to do further research if any of this interests you.

The Plot: Like many of his Hollywood contemporaries, director George Stevens contributed to the war effort by making films for the US military during World War II. In 1943, Stevens was ordered by General Dwight Eisenhower to recruit 45 people (primarily Hollywood cinematographers and screenwriters) for a Special Coverage Unit (SPECOU) to capture raw footage of the war. Armed with 16mm cameras and Kodachrome color film, Stevens and his team (nicknamed the “Hollywood Irregulars” or the “Stevens Irregulars”) captured over six hours’ worth of footage of the war as it was happening. Highlights of their documentation include the D-Day invasion in Normandy, the liberation of Paris, footage of the Dachau concentration camp a few days after its closure, and the streets of Berlin shortly after the end of the war. “George Stevens’ World War II Footage” is the most comprehensive color documentation of the war known to exist.

Why It Matters: The NFR gives the footage its proper historical context, and declares it “an essential visual record of World War II”.

But Does It Really?: Oh yeah. I am not a WWII expert by any means, but even I can appreciate the rare historic value of this footage. Most WWII footage I’ve seen is in grainy black-and-white, creating a distance between me and the footage, as if to say, “This all happened a long time ago.” But seeing the war in color makes the whole thing more immediate, more alive. It’s also refreshing after watching so much edited propaganda to see raw footage of the war without context or government-sanctioned narratives. This is as close as we’ll ever get to seeing the war as it actually was, and for that alone “George Stevens’ World War II Footage” is an indispensable addition to the NFR.

• Side note: There are many sources (including George Stevens Jr. in his documentaries) claiming that the Stevens WWII footage is the only color footage of the war in Europe. While color footage of the war is a rarity, let’s not forget William Wyler’s “The Memphis Belle”.
• On July 4^th, 1944, SPECOU covered a ceremony awarding medals to survivors of D-Day attended by several high ranking officers, including Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, General Omar Bradley, and General George S. Patton! I don’t think I’ve ever seen the real Patton before, and I must say George C. Scott did his homework.

• Speaking of cameos and guys named George: George Stevens and his fellow filmmakers make several appearances throughout this footage. Stevens can be easily identified: He’s the tall one smoking a pipe and/or instructing the cameraman what to film.
• After D-Day, Stevens and his team joined up with the 2^nd Armored Division headed by General Philipe Leclerc, en route to Paris following news of the city’s successful uprising against the Germans. Upon Leclerc’s arrival in Paris, Nazi Commander Dietrich von Choltitz surrendered to the French, ending Germany’s four year occupation of Paris. A large chunk of “George Stevens’ World War II Footage” is of the liberation of Paris on August 25^th, a day Stevens later called “the greatest day of my life”. In addition to footage of Parisians celebrating in the streets, we witness General Charles De Gaulle’s return to Paris for the first time in four years, as well as sniper fire from the handful of Germans who refused to acknowledge the surrender. As far as the Allies were concerned, the Liberation of Paris was the beginning of the end, with SPECOU member Irwin Shaw betting Stevens the war would be over by October. But a surprise attack from the Nazis that December (the Battle of the Bulge), extended the war for the time being.

• Stuck in Germany in December 1944, Stevens filmed his unit celebrating Christmas, making this one of the last NFR titles I expected to add to my “Die Hard Not-Christmas” list. Of note is a shot of soldiers hanging grenades on their Christmas tree like ornaments, as well as a sequence of Stevens receiving a care package from his family, including letters and plenty of candy. This scene shows Stevens doing something we don’t see him do in any of the other footage: Smile.
• After a reassignment to London in early 1945 to help with the propaganda film “The True Glory”, Stevens returned to SPECOU in April to document the meeting of US and Soviet soldiers on the Elb river near Torgau. It’s an enjoyable bit of levity in the midst of all this darkness, but it’s still weird to see Americans and Russians getting along. Enjoy it while it lasts, boys.
• As with any war footage, there are plenty of unsettling images in this collection, including violent attacks and abandoned corpses. Unsurprisingly, the most disturbing, sobering section of this footage is the unit’s documentation of the Dachau concentration camp in late April 1945, mere days after its liberation. As with the rest of the footage, seeing Dachau in color makes the tragedy all the more real, with shots chronicling piles of corpses and the few gaunt survivors, as well as the bodies of Nazi soldiers who had been beaten to death by the inmates following the liberation. Stevens later recalled that the sights at Dachau made him realize the potential of evil hiding inside all of us; that anyone under the right circumstances is capable of the inhumanities the Nazis perpetrated. Stevens spent the rest of 1945 in Germany compiling concentration camp footage to be used as evidence in the Nuremberg trials.
• Shortly after the surrender of Germany on May 8^th 1945 (V-E Day), Stevens and his team reached Berlin. Their footage of Berlin in the immediate aftermath of the war is fascinating. When I think of the end of WWII, I think of big celebrations, of sailors coming home and kissing random women. What this footage showed me was the aftermath of a city that had actually been in battle: streets covered in debris and a city divided into allied occupation, and the seeds of what will one day become the Cold War. The Stevens footage ends with the realization that even when war is over, it’s never over.

• Steven’s post-war filmography was devoid of the kind of light comedies and adventure pictures he was known for in the 1930s, opting instead for serious fare that examined human ideals. His next three films after “Mama” have all been inducted into the NFR: “A Place in the Sun”, “Shane”, and “Giant”. Among the names found in the credits of these films are screenwriter Ivan Moffat and cinematographer William Mellor, two of the many men who served with Stevens in SPECOU. 

• Stevens’ only post-war film that dealt directly with the war was 1959’s “The Diary of Anne Frank”. While other war films were considered, Stevens found himself most drawn to “Diary”, especially once he learned that at one point during the war he and his unit were only 100 miles away from the attic in Amsterdam where Frank and her family were hiding.

• Following Stevens’ death in 1975, his son George Jr. oversaw the restoration of his father’s WWII footage at the American Film Institute. Stevens Jr. would later use this footage in the two documentaries I mentioned at the top of this post.
• Here’s a recent, weird coda to the “George Stevens: D-Day to Berlin” documentary. It turns out that the film was an edited version of a 1985 special produced for the BBC similarly titled “D-Day to Berlin” by Paul Woolwich and Robert Harris. In 2019, Woolwich and Harris learned of the 1994 “D-Day to Berlin” and sent a request to the Television Academy to launch an investigation of how closely Stevens’ film copied theirs. The Television Academy determined that Steven’s version was indeed a slightly altered version of the BBC documentary, and made the rare decision to rescind the three Emmys and four nominations Stevens’ version received in 1994. (Stevens has never commented publicly about the Academy’s decision).

Further Viewing: I have somehow covered this much NFR wartime propaganda without mentioning “Five Came Back”. Based on the book by Mark Harris, “Five Came Back” is a three-part documentary by Laurent Bouzerau about five Hollywood filmmakers — Frank Capra, John Ford, John Huston, George Stevens, and William Wyler — and their experiences on the front lines making films for the war effort, and how those experiences effected their films after the war. Of the five, John Ford is the only one who doesn’t have at least one of his wartime films on the NFR, which means I should mentally prep myself now for the inevitable inclusion of “The Battle of Midway” or “December 7^th“.

The Plot: Once upon a time, a lovely young woman named Cinderella (voice by Ilene Woods) is mistreated by her evil stepmother and obnoxious stepsisters (voice by Eleanor Audley, Rhoda Williams, and Lucille Bliss), and forced to wait on them hand and foot. One day the King (voice by Luis van Rooten) announces a royal ball as a homecoming for the Prince (voice by William Edward Phipps), and invites every eligible maiden in the kingdom. Although Cinderella’s animal friends make her a dress for the occasion, it is destroyed by her stepsisters, and Cinderella is left at home the night of the ball. Fortunately, Cinderella has a Fairy Godmother (voice by Verna Felton) who uses her magic to give Cinderella a beautiful gown with slippers made of glass for some reason. Cinderella goes to the ball and falls for the Prince, but at the stroke of midnight…you see where I’m going with this.

Why It Matters: The NFR really loves “Cinderella”, calling it “the definitive version of this classic story”, praising its “[s]parkling songs, high-production value, and bright voice performances”.

But Does It Really?: Oh of course. While not a personal favorite (it didn’t make the VHS rotation too often growing up), “Cinderella” is one of Disney’s undisputed classics. 75 years on, there’s things I could nitpick about – and I will – but ultimately “Cinderella” succeeds as an animated fairy tale and family entertainment. The animation is beautiful, the characters are fun, the songs are catchy, what’s not to love? The only surprising part is that it took the NFR 30 years to get “Cinderella” on the list.

Everybody Gets One: Ilene Woods came to prominence during World War II when she sang with Paul Whiteman and the Army Air Forces Orchestra. In 1944, she briefly had her own radio program on the Blue Network, which shortly thereafter became ABC. In 1948, as a favor to her friends Mack David and Jerry Livingston, Woods recorded three songs the two had written for “Cinderella” as a demo for Walt Disney. Upon hearing the demo recordings, Walt immediately hired Woods as the voice of Cinderella over 300 other women who had auditioned. Although her career peaked with this performance (and she would subsequently sue Disney over the film’s video release), Woods always spoke highly of her time working on “Cinderella”.

Seriously, Oscars?: One of the biggest hits of 1950, “Cinderella” received three Oscar nominations (Song, Sound Recording, and Scoring of a Musical Picture), but went home empty handed. The film did, however, provide one of the ceremony’s highlights, when its nominated song “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo” was performed by comedy duo Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis.

• I have several questions about Cinderella’s bird and mice friends. Is she their god? I was also going to question why she makes clothing for all of them, but if I were in a toxic home environment and forced to do labor, I would probably have some weird hobbies too.

• Unsurprisingly, the story of “Cinderella” is quite short, so this movie needs to pad out the runtime. Like many a Disney film before and after, the extra time is spent focusing on the more entertaining side characters. There’s some fun moments in the literal cat-and-mouse scenes between Jaq, Gus, and Lucifer, but it’s definitely to the detriment of the story. Other adaptations more wisely spend this time fleshing out Cinderella’s character and/or her relationship with the Prince.
• On a related note, the problem with any version of Cinderella is that she’s too passive a lead: things happen to her, as opposed to her making things happen. At the very least, this film’s characterization of Cinderella (animated by Marc Davis and Eric Larson) is pleasant and likable enough that you are relieved when things finally start to work out for her. 
• In one early scene, Cinderella is able to calmly reason with Lucifer the cat. This is done to remind you that this film is pure fantasy. Side note: Lucifer’s mewing is provided by voiceover legend June Foray in one of her three NFR appearances, one of which might surprise you.
• I’m enjoying this film’s lighting effects. So much of Cinderella’s dreary existence is conveyed through darkness and shadows, with the occasional light seeping through. I suspect this was the influence of Disney artist Mary Blair, credited here as part of the film’s “Color and Styling” team. Blair’s visual style, especially in this stage of her career, often included images of darkness with bright elements peppered in for contrast.
• While not as theatrical as later Disney villains, the Stepmother is a worthy adversary to Cinderella, with her cold, menacing presence and equally chilling voice courtesy of Eleanor Audley. Balancing things out are the comic, but no less threatening, antics of Cinderella’s stepsisters, one of whom sounds like she’s from the Bronx.

• Sure it’s nice of the animals to make a dress for Cinderella, (and their work song is quite peppy), but I don’t know if I would wear anything made by disease-ridden rodents. If Cinderella’s going to wear that dress, she should have it sterilized as a precaution.

• I got chills during “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo”, a magic sequence in every sense of the word. My one quibble, turning the mice into horses and then turning the actual horse into a person seems like unnecessary extra work for the Fairy Godmother. And for the record: The jury is still out over whether Charles Perrault intentionally made Cinderella’s slippers glass or if the description got lost in translation. 

• It was not until this viewing that I realized the Fairy Godmother only appears in one scene. She’s the Beatrice Straight of the Disney canon!
• This movie really doesn’t care about the Prince. He doesn’t show up until 48 minutes into the movie, gets one song and minimal dialogue before disappearing again until his silent return in the finale. He doesn’t even have a name! The one thing this Prince has going for him is that his singing voice is Mike Douglas, a radio singer about a decade away from hosting his popular daytime talk show.
• “So This is Love” is an underrated favorite in the catalog of Disney love songs, plus it’s another inner monologue song! We haven’t had one of those in a while.

• Why are the guards who chase after Cinderella’s carriage so terrifying? They’re set up like the Central Park Rangers in “Elf”.
• I believe this is one of only two NFR films with the “Goofy Holler”, Disney’s answer to the Wilhelm. The other is “Who Framed Roger Rabbit”. 

• The film’s biggest laugh-out-loud moment for me comes when it acknowledges the fairy tale’s most infamous plot hole. When the King is informed that the glass slipper could fit any number of women, his response, in regards to the Prince, is, “That’s his problem.” Love it.
• This movie’s third act packs in a lot of tension with Cinderella locked in her room and the mice trying to retrieve the key, even if it further sidelines our heroine in her own movie. I also appreciated the little twist at the end involving the glass slipper before we head off to happily ever after. 

• But of course, Disney will run any major IP of theirs into their perpetual synergy machine, and “Cinderella” is no exception. The film received two direct-to-video sequels in the 2000s, with “Cinderella III: A Twist in Time” routinely considered the best of the direct-to-video sequels, which really isn’t that high a mark.

• When Disney started churning out live-action remakes of its animated films in the early 2010s, “Cinderella” was one of the first proverbial canaries in that coal mine. Directed by Kenneth Branagh and jumpstarting Lily James’ career, 2015’s “Cinderella” is a respectful updating of the Disney original, never stooping to the kind of pandering fan service that would plague later remakes.

• Characters from “Cinderella” have made many appearances in Disney media over the years, most notably Cinderella’s cameo in “Ralph Breaks the Internet”, in which she receives something she’s never had before: Ears.

• Despite Disney’s version of “Cinderella” being declared the definitive film adaptation of the story, I still hold firm that distinction goes to “Ever After” with Drew Barrymore. And no, that is not a joke.