Beauty and the Beast is also my favourite Disney film and I was born a year later after its release. It really is a tale as old as time as I can watch it time and time again and witness the timelessness of the animation right before my eyes. More than any other Disney character, Belle is someone I can personally relate to and her journey is one I admire. She overcomes many obstacles to discover her love for the Beast and through that relationship she provides us with the important moral that love comes from within. The fight for that love that comes at the climax of the film provides for me one of the most moving scenes from the Disney Renaissance period and what I believe metaphorically shows us the rebirth of Disney animation as a whole after the release of the Little Mermaid. The music also consists of some of my all-time favourite songs and even the score is something I can listen to for hours. No matter how much I love the other Disney films – classic or renaissance – Beauty and the Beast will always be my favourite and hopefully I will get to share my love for the film with future generations, may that be with the animation or in the Disney Parks.

Keep up with the great website.

Seriously though, I’ve been greatly missing the Ink and Pixel Club for the past several months; never know what ya got until it’s gone, as they say. But your analytical wit and vibrant passion for the subject have clearly not faded, and I greatly look forward to the continuation of this new “Why I Love Animation” series.

Personally, “Beauty and the Beast” is by far my favorite animated film of all time and, indeed, probably my second-favorite film of all time PERIOD – ironically enough, the only movie that I can say I enjoy rewatching more is the one that beat it at the Oscars, “The Silence of the Lambs.” And even then, it’s a fairly close call.

Of course, I didn’t exactly see it 20 times in theaters, having been (checks quickly)…five months old at the time it was released. But I’ve easily seen it around that many times since, and received the most recent Special Edition last Christmas to great excitement. And yet, with each viewing, the sheer magnificence of the picture only shines brighter, from the gorgeous animation to the completely flawless soundtrack to the welcome and perpetually relevant messages it espouses, even twenty years on.

And as the true heart of any great story must be its characters, so too did “Beauty and the Beast” produce a nigh-unparalleled litany of them…a strong and capable but still fundamentally relatable heroine, a hero whose progression into one is so utterly fascinating that it can be watched again and again and never lose its awe-inspiring power, and the man who remains perhaps Disney’s most believably human villain, and who chills one’s bones with terror at that fact alone. Belle, the Beast, and Gaston succeeded at transcending their inky shells and speaking to the fundamental archetypes of human morality, and together with the always memorable secondary and tertiary characters (LeFou’s always been my favorite, if only because of the gut-busting sequence that is the song “Gaston”), they helped to produce what I have no compunctions about declaring a timeless masterpiece.

But eh…I think I’ve gushed enough about my sheer love for this film for now, LOL. Once again, it’s incredible to see this site back up-and-running, and I can’t wait to hear more about both this and any other animated works that strike your critical fancy.

Cheers!