Noticias

Everybody wants to be a cat, but not a ton of people want to direct cats. Count Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson in that rarefied latter group, because the Oscar winner behind “Summer of Soul” is making his narrative debut with a remake of the Disney animated feature “The Aristocats,” IndieWire has confirmed.

An individual with knowledge of the project told IndieWire that the film will be a “live-action hybrid reimagining” of the original film, a 1970 animated feature directed by Wolfgang Reitherman. In addition to directing, Questlove will oversee the music for the film. The script was penned by Will Gluck, director of the 2014 “Annie” and “Peter Rabbit,” and Keith Bunin, writer of the 2020 Pixar film “Onward.”

The project makes sense for Questlove in a way because the film’s most memorable moment is a jazz sequence, set to the song “Ev’rybody Wants to Be a Cat” — Quentin Tarantino claims the...

Keith Johnstone, a pioneer in improvisation who trained a generation of actors and comedians in impromptu performance and creativity, on and off the stage, has died. He was 90.

Johnstone died at Rockyview Hospital in Calgary on Saturday, according to his personal website, with no cause of death specified. The creator of Theatresports and co-founder of The Loose Moose Theatre Company was born in Devon, England, on Feb. 21, 1933.

Johnstone trained at the Royal Court Theatre in London and was a teacher at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. According to Theresa Robbins Dudeck, co-director of the docu-series On Keith: Artists Speak on Johnstone and Impro, Johnstone developed his Impro System, or his improvisation theories, while at the Royal Court Theatre over 10 years to 1966. He eventually became associate director and head of the Rct Studio for professional actors.

“The Rct Studio, for Keith, was a ‘scientific laboratory,’ where he could investigate the nature of spontaneous creation,...

A live-action adaptation of the classic animated film “The Aristocats” is in early development at Disney, Variety has confirmed.

“Peter Rabbit” director Will Gluck and “Onward” writer Keith Bunin are set to pen the script, with Gluck also producing via his Olive Bridge Entertainment banner.

The original 1970 film follows a family of aristocratic cats — mother Duchess and her three kittens Berlioz, Marie and Toulouse — living a luxurious life in Paris. But when their owner’s butler finds out that the cats are set to receive a massive fortune, he kidnaps them and abandons them in an unfamiliar land — the country. The aristocats then must befriend an alley cat, named Thomas O’Malley, to help them get home before the butler steals what is rightfully theirs.

Directed by core Disney animator Wolfgang Reitherman, the original voice cast included Phil Harris, Eva Gabor, Hermione Baddeley, Dean Clark, Sterling Holloway, Scatman Crothers and Roddy Maude-Roxby.

The Aristocats

Written by Ken Anderson, Larry Clemmons, Eric Cleworth et al.

Directed by Wolfgang Reitherman

USA, 1970

The 1970s and early 1980s represent a curious episode in the history of Walt Disney Animation Studios’ features. The famous studio rarely produces outright poor movies, yet this period is just as rarely mentioned in the same breath as its first decade or so, when classics like Pinocchio, Bambi, and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs came to be, or the baptized renaissance that began with The Little Mermaid and lasted until Tarzan. It feels as though the aforementioned decade and a half feature a steady stream of decent, generally appreciated outings but nothing most people cite as being their favourite efforts. The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, The Rescuers, The Fox and the Hound, Robin Hood; few if any of these make anyone’s top 5 lists. Neither does the film that opened the 1970s,...