By Kim McGuire
FROM WIKIPEDIA COMMONS
Tarzan is a 1999 American animated adventure film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures. The 37th film produced by the studio, and the tenth and last released during the Disney Renaissance era, it is based on the 1912 story Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs, being the first animated major motion picture version of the story. The film was directed by Kevin Lima and Chris Buck (in his feature directorial debut) and produced by Bonnie Arnold from a screenplay by Tab Murphy, Bob Tzudiker, and Noni White. The film stars the voices of Tony Goldwyn, Minnie Driver, Glenn Close, Rosie O’Donnell, Brian Blessed, Lance Henriksen, Wayne Knight, and Nigel Hawthorne.
Pre-production of Tarzan began in 1995, with Lima selected as director and Buck joining him the same year. Following Murphy’s first draft, Tzudiker, White, and Dave Reynolds were brought in to reconstruct the third act and add additional material to the screenplay. English recording artist Phil Collins was recruited to compose and record songs integrated with a score by Mark Mancina. Meanwhile, the production team embarked on a research trip to Uganda and Kenya to study the gorillas. The animation of the film combines 2D hand-drawn animation with the extensive use of computer-generated imagery, and it was done in California, Orlando, and Paris, with the pioneering computer animation software system Deep Canvas being predominantly used to create three-dimensional backgrounds.
Tarzan premiered at the El Capitan Theatre in Los Angeles on June 12, 1999, and was released in the United States on June 16. It received positive reviews from critics, who praised its voice performances, music, animation, and action sequences. Against a production budget of $130 million (then the most expensive traditionally animated film ever made until Treasure Planet in 2002), the film grossed $448.2 million worldwide, becoming the fifth highest-grossing film of 1999, the second highest-grossing animated film of 1999 behind Toy Story 2, and the first Disney animated feature to open at first place at the North American box office since Pocahontas (1995). It won the Academy Award for Best Original Song (“You’ll Be in My Heart” by Phil Collins). The film has led to many derived works, such as a Broadway adaptation, a television series, and two direct-to-video followups, Tarzan & Jane (2002) and Tarzan II (2005).
TODAY’S ALMANAC
Sunday, July 23, 2023
Question of the Day
My deck is looking aged. Do I have to treat it, or can I let it go natural?
Advice of the Day
Home Hint of the Day
Word of the Day
Aloof
Puzzle of the Day
The (Blank) was waiting on the (Blank). (The two 5-letter words to fill the blanks share the same letters.)
Died
- Ulysses S. Grant (18th U.S. president) –
- Sir William Ramsay (chemist & Nobel prize winner) –
- D. W. Griffith (film director) –
- Montgomery Clift (actor) –
- Edward V. Rickenbacker (WWI flying ace) –
- William Pierce (white supremacist whose book, The Turner Diaries, is believed to have inspired Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh) –
- Chaim Potok (author) –
- Ron Miller (songwriter; hits include Touch Me in the Morning and For Once in My Life) –
- Amy Winehouse (singer) –
- Sally Ride (astronaut; first American woman in space) –
Born
- Raymond Thornton Chandler (author) –
- Don Drysdale (baseball player) –
- Philip Seymour Hoffman (actor) –
- Nomar Garciaparra (baseball player) –
- Daniel Radcliffe (actor) –
Events
- America’s first swimming school opened by Francis Lieber in Boston, MA–
- The first practical typographer (typewriter) was patented by William Burt–
- Union Act passed by British Parliament, uniting Upper and Lower Canada into one government–
- Copyright for “America the Beautiful” by Katharine Lee Bates registered–
- Boeing 767 turned into glider after fuel ran out due to metric conversion error, Gimli, Manitoba–
- Vanessa Williams became the first Miss America to resign when she relinquished her crown–
- Disney’s Tarzan became the first all-digital film–
- George Lee “Sparky” Anderson inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame–
Weather
- In his weather diary, George Washington described a big storm that passed over his home in Mount Vernon, Virginia. Historians often refer to this storm as George Washington’s Hurricane.–
- Sheridan, Wyoming, got drenched by 4.41 inches of rain, which washed away some railroad tracks–
- Rain delayed Giants/Mets baseball game 3 hours 39 minutes–
- A hailstone broke through a deck in Vivian, South Dakota, during a severe thunderstorm. The hailstone weighed 1 pound 15 ounces and measured 8 inches in diameter, 18.6 inches in circumference. It was the heaviest and largest hailstone in diameter ever recovered in the U.S.–
- Several counties in Kansas reported baseball size hail–
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