Beauty and the Beast

When you were a kid, did you ever spend time with like, an aunt who listened to those adult contemporary radio stations — the ones that were all Michael Bolton and Toni Braxton and Celine Dion? You know, the stations that played “Margaritaville” and the Beauty and the Beast theme song every hour on the hour. If you don’t remember, then maybe Ariana Grande and John Legend’s cover of “Beauty and the Beast” will jog your memory.

About a month and a half separate the viewing public from the much-hyped live-action remake of Disney’s essential fairytale Beauty and the Beast. While regular TV viewers and net-surfers can look forward to an uninterrupted stream of commercials and ads until then, Disney has given one last push of publicity today with the final trailer promoting their handsomely-appointed new film. And as if to sweeten the deal, they included a snippet of the previously announced re-recording of the majestic theme tune, as sung by La La Land jazz-diluter John Legend and travel-size pop starlet Ariana Grande.

If anything, the live-action Beauty and the Beast will give us all the urge to curl up with some nice, cozy nostalgia for a few hours. With its faithful-to-the-cartoon costumes and songs, it’ll be like a leveled-up version of the classic, and today Disney has doubled-down on the nostalgia factor: Celine Dion, who recorded her own version of the title tune “Beauty and the Beast” for the original movie, is returning to the story with a new original song “How Does a Moment Last Forever.”

Because we tend to think of him more commonly as “slick neo-soul songbird” or “La La Land’s chief threat to the integrity of jazz” or “husband of Chrissy Teigen,” it can be easy to forget that John Legend’s got an Oscar under his belt. The musician and composer took the golden statuette for Best Original Song with his original tune “Glory” from Ava DuVernay’s thunderous Martin Luther King biopic Selma, and ever since, he’s been Hollywood’s go-to guy for poppin’ fresh (is that still what the kids are saying?) theme music. And today, a new announcement from Disney reported by Deadline lines up Legend’s next big gig.

When it comes to online movie polls, which ones do you think the public is usually most excited for: little indie pictures or huge superhero/sci-fi/fantasy blockbusters? Spoiler alert— it’s the blockbusters. Shocking, I know. In Fandango’s year-end poll of the most anticipated movies of 2017, Star Wars: Episode VIII, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, and the live-action Beauty and the Beast took the top spots.

We’ve only seen brief glimpses of Emma Watson’s Belle in Disney’s latest live-action remake, but today we finally get to see Beauty meet the Beast.

The wait for the full Beauty and the Beast trailer has reached agonizing levels, as Disney spent the last couple of months promoting the new 25th anniversary Blu-ray release of the classic animated film. Thankfully, we’ve gotten a few sneak peeks at the live-action redo via concept art, behind-the-scenes stills and a clip from a featurette on the aforementioned Blu-ray — and now we have a couple of new photos giving us our first look at Emma Watson’s Belle and Dan Stevens’ beast. But still no trailer. Sad trombone.

It’s an undisputed scientific fact that Beauty and the Beast’s Gaston is the greatest villain in the Disney animated canon. After all, we’re talking about a guy whose theme song is all about how many eggs he eats and how every last inch of him is covered in hair. Sorry Maleficent, you have nothing on this guy. So, the news that Luke Evans has been cast as Gaston in Disney’s upcoming live action take on Beauty and the Beast has us feeling awfully judgmental. Sure, Evans is a good actor, but is he Gaston good?

We all know the classic opening song to Disney's "Beauty and the Beast"... but how do you think the song would change if Belle lived in the ghetto instead of the French countryside?