|
Mary Poppins gets super facelift
LOS ANGELES- Movie animation has come a long way since Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke frolicked with cartoon penguins, sheep and carousel ponies in Mary Poppins. Yet fresh off her voice work in the cutting-edge cartoon sequel Shrek 2, Andrews thinks the blend of live-action and animation holds up splendidly in the 1964 musical fantasy, which gets elaborate new DVD treatment in a 40th anniversary two-disc set out Tuesday. "I looked at it again, and I'd just come off Shrek, and I know these days how animation has changed and how different it is, the tools they have today," Andrews said in an interview. "But you don't see a single crack in the work of Poppins, and they didn't have that technology in those days. It's brilliantly done." For the new DVD edition, Andrews and Van Dyke teamed up with co-composer Richard Sherman for a reunion segment to reminisce about the film. The set also has an extensive making-of documentary and a new cartoon short featuring Andrews in an adaptation of one of P.L. Travers's Mary Poppins stories. The Disney classic marked Andrews's film debut after a stage career that included originating the role of Eliza Doolittle in the London and Broadway productions of My Fair Lady. Mary Poppins stars Andrews as a practically perfect nanny who floats out of the London sky on her umbrella to become mother hen for the mischievous children of an aloof banker. The movie's memorable songs include Chim-Chim-Cheree, A Spoonful of Sugar and Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. The role earned Andrews a best-actress Academy Award, ironic given she was passed over in favour of Audrey Hepburn for the lead in the movie version of My Fair Lady that same year. Hepburn was not even nominated, though her co-star Rex Harrison won the best-actor prize and supporting players Stanley Holloway and Gladys Cooper earned nominations, while My Fair Lady won best picture. Andrews said she never took her Oscar win as a vindication after losing out on the lead in My Fair Lady. "In my acceptance speech, I remember saying how I know you Americans are famous for your hospitality, but this is ridiculous. What I really meant was that I think they were saying, 'Welcome,' " Andrews said. "People were saying welcome to the industry in some way. That may be because there was some sense that they felt unhappy I didn't do Fair Lady, but it wasn't my feeling at all. I wasn't anybody in those days. I didn't expect to get it. I'd hoped, but I didn't really expect it."-D. German.
|
Burt Young: Well and alive
A semi-literate slob with a hairy paunch and no-neck fireplug body. That's the image that actor Burt Young cultivated for dozens of film and TV roles -- most notably for Paulie, Sylvester Stallone's brother-in-law in Rocky and the Academy-Award-winning film's four sequels. But to dismiss him with that image would do him an injustice. Young is not only an Oscar-nominated actor (true, he's mastered the slob image), but he owns a restaurant, writes plays and scripts, and paints, with plans for his works to be exhibited in Santa Monica and even Russia. "I'm pretty good. I'm even better than pretty good," he boasts with a hearty laugh during a telephone interview from Hollywood. And although he smokes three packs of unfiltered Camels a day, he is -- depending on when you encounter him - either that proverbial slob or buff and muscular. "I go up and down," he says. "I used to be a fighter and I'm used to taking weight off. Goes back pretty easy, though." Young is helping to promote the upcoming release of the Rocky Anthology, a DVD boxed set of all the Rocky movies. Which is something of a surprise given widespread reports that he and Stallone had a falling out over the final film in the series, 1990's Rocky V. Young himself confirms that he had disagreed with elements of the screenplay in which Paulie naively mishandled Rocky's money and threatened to kill himself. He was hurt that Sly, unlike in the past, had ignored his suggestions for improvements. "So, for a short while we didn't talk," he explains. "But now he has this reality fight show (Mark Burnett's The Contender), so they asked me if I would show up, you know? And I was pleased to hug him and forget the time lost." Young still wears the inscribed gold Cartier watch Stallone gave him in '90. So what is it about the Rocky franchise that made it such a hit that it spawned four sequels since its debut in 1976? Young says it really wasn't a boxing movie.
|
Photo:
scene from Mary Poppins.
Photo:
Burt Young is shown in this undated handout photo. For five Rocky
films, beginning in 1976, actor Young played Paulie, the no-neck slob
of a brother-in-law to Sylvester Stallone's Rocky Balboa.