Lion King

It's good to be the king.This is the thrust of "The Lion King," the new Disney animated feature film opening today, which wants to be about fathers and sons but can't quite break free of the fact that it's about kings and princes. Although it's state of the art, one might say that in terms of its values, it's the best animated film of the 19th century.Beautifully mounted and dynamically told, it follows Simba, Prince of the Beasts, son of the mighty Mufassa (James Earl Jones), current holder of the kingship.

"The Lion King" still roars. This 1997 Broadway musical is still running in New York. A touring version was a box office smash during a 14-week run at Baltimore's Hippodrome Theatre in 2005 and now the musical has returned for a month-long stay. Judging from all of the smiling children at a recent performance, this show is a wonderful family activity for the holiday season. The kids weren't the only ones smiling, laughing and pointing, because "The Lion King" knows how to please a crowd.

While McDonald's is banking on Bedrock, arch-rival Burger King hopes to reap the lion's share with the tried and true this summer: a Walt Disney animated family film.Burger King is readying what is believed to be its largest promotional program to date for the animated "The Lion King" with an estimated $18 million to $20 million in media support over an eight-week run. That would surpass its previous promotional effort on Disney's box office blockbuster "Aladdin," which added an estimated $15 million to $17 million in media.

With the broad appeal of a fast-food chain — 54 million people served in 14 countries on five continents — "The Lion King" enjoys a mighty status on Broadway, where it's the seventh-longest-running musical and has packed them in since 1997. The show isn't likely to lose its appeal on tour any time soon, either. When it first played the Hippodrome in 2005, it was a 14-week smash, raking in $15 million. It's back at the theater for a monthlong engagement that is bound to be just as fruitful, nicely timed as it is for the holidays, when families with kids need diversions even more.

With the opening of Disney's much-heralded "The Lion King," some parents may worry that hidden among catchy tunes and state-of-the-art animation lurks a danger to little psyches.Some critics have greeted Disney's 32nd animated film with warnings about the lion king's "disturbing on-screen death" and "scenes of truly terrifying animal kingdom violence."Early in the film, its hero, the precious lion cub, Simba, loses his father in a wildebeest stampede provoked by his evil uncle Scar, who wants to be king.

Who's the king of the local video jungle? "The Lion King."A week after its release, the videocassette of the hit Disney movie has set national sales records, but it remains in stock at Baltimore-area outlets.An informal survey yesterday of a variety of stores showed that sales have been brisk since last Tuesday -- and even before, at outlets that had a pre-release order promotion, such as Blockbuster and West Coast Video stores.But most places contacted had the video in ample stock, at prices ranging from $15.95 to $18.99.

The Lion King will play a 14-week engagement, the longest of any touring show in Baltimore theater history, at the Hippodrome Theatre this summer. "It hasn't played the mid-Atlantic. It has a huge following from the family standpoint," Marks Chowning, executive director of the Hippodrome, said of the musical's ability to sustain such a long run. "I think it just has the same kind of broad appeal that the really successful, long-running shows have had." The run begins June 2 and concludes Sept.

OAKLAND MILLS resident Pat Muth, artistic director at Columbia Ice Rink, will present "Pocahontas" and "The Lion King," an ice extravaganza performed by members of the Columbia Figure Skating Club this Saturday and Sunday at the Columbia Ice Rink on Thunder Hill Road at the Oakland Mills Village Center.East Columbia performers skating major roles in the "Circle of Life" are Lauren Clark as Scar, Amanda Buckler as Old Simba and Amy Buckler as young Nala in "The Lion King."Many of the skaters have competed in the South Atlantic and Junior National competitions.

THE LION KINGOriginal Motion Picture Soundtrack (Walt Disney 60858)Despite Disney's reputation for pop market savvy, most of the studio's feature-length cartoons don't hold up at album length. Sure, there's always a hit or two on hand, along with a couple of spirited production numbers, but once past those, the listener is usually left with barren stretches of boring background music. Maybe that's why the soundtrack album for "The Lion King" became a best seller even before the movie was unleashed.

Old Disney: parochial, smug, genteel, self-reverential, avuncular, secret control freak. Dress code: coat and tie or (optional) country-club attire, complete to white belt and polyesters. Jokes about . . . nothing. Quote: "Well, I think Walt would want it that way."New Disney: Young, irreverent, hip. Facial hair. Dress code: It's hot, wear shorts. Jokes about . . . snicker, snicker . . . Uncle Walt. Quote: "We were concerned about sexism in lion culture."Yes, new Disney, as in "The Lion King," as in Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff, the directors, who alone in a Washington hotel full of dreary men in suits with little pointy shoes, show up in shorts and T-shirt (Roger)

With a staging as intricate as "The Lion King," the right personnel have to be backstage making everything click into place night after night. Bruce Paul Reik, a Milwaukee native who calls Baltimore home, is one of the puppet assistants on the national tour of the musical, responsible for maintenance and repair. "So much has to happen before each show goes on," said Reik. "Getting Scar hooked up is pretty involved. There's a mechanical aspect to his headgear. " All of the costumes are checked out each week; those of the principal characters are checked every day. "During a show, I'm working in triage in the puppet and mask emergency room," Reik said.

Students at the Catonsville Education Center are among those from four Baltimore County public schools who will get to see a performance of "Disney's The Lion King" for free at the Hippodrome Theater Dec. 8. In addition to seeing the musical, fourth- and fifth-graders at the school on South Chapelgate Lane for children with special education needs will also participate in two related in-school workshops, thanks to Donna Wasserbach, ...

Next season at the Hippodrome Theatre , a character in an iconic outfit will fly off the stage and into the house, soaring high above wide-eyed spectators. The chances of a mishap during this show-stopping feat are just about nil, however, since we're not talking about the guy who is supposed to zip effortlessly through the air in that unlucky monolith of a musical called "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. " Baltimore audiences will see instead a primly dressed woman with an umbrella over one arm — the famed governess who takes charge of children and adults alike in the well-traveled Broadway revival of "Mary Poppins.

Conviction, passion and creativity crackle and swing with a jazzy euphoria when you talk to Julie Taymor about art, whether the tragicomedy of the Bard or the myth-making of Marvel Comics. The director who brought experimental techniques to the Great White Way with "The Lion King" returns to screen and stage this winter with a rare aesthetic one-two combination. Taymor has unveiled a lyrical, thrilllingly lucid film of Shakespeare's "The Tempest," starring Helen Mirren, while completing the hugely ambitious and elaborate Broadway musical, " Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark," which boasts a score by Bono and the Edge.

There's a moment in the national tour of "Dreamgirls" currently running at the Hippodrome Theatre that perfectly captures the mingling of Motown and money that is the musical's main theme. In "Steppin' to the Bad Side," inventively choreographed by Shane Sparks, the stage goes dark, and a group of African-American men don glow-in-the-dark Stetsons and suitcoats and carry briefcases outlined on the front with fluorescent tape. All those green rectangles suddenly take on a resemblance to old-fashioned box radios.

Classical Baltimore Symphony Orchestra: 8 p.m. Thursday at Music Center at Strathmore, 5301 Tuckerman Lane, North Bethesda; 8 p.m. Friday at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, 1212 Cathedral St. $25-$60. Call 410-783-8000 or go to bsomusic.org. A slightly off-beat program that turned into a hit of the 2006-2007 Baltimore Symphony Orchestra season gets a summer rerun this week. At the heart of the program, led by BSO concertmaster Jonathan Carney, is T he Four Seasons, Vivaldi's matched set of violin concertos doubling as highly descriptive nature walks.

The Lion will roar in Baltimore. The Tony Award-winning musical The Lion King, will make its mid-Atlantic premiere at the Hippodrome Theatre in summer 2005. "We were absolutely competing against Kennedy Center and the National Theatre in Washington for the regional run of the show. It's not here and there, it's here or there, and we won," said Hippodrome executive director Marks Chowning in announcing the engagement, which will conclude the 2004-2005 season at the historic theater, currently undergoing renovation.

Ticket sales for the 14-week run of The Lion King that ended Sunday at the Hippodrome Theatre totaled more than $15 million, and the show was seen by nearly 230,000 people, according to figures released yesterday by the Hippodrome Foundation and Clear Channel Entertainment, which operates the theater. The Mid-Atlantic debut of the 1998 Tony Award-winning musical played to audiences averaging 97 percent capacity. With allowances for seats the show used for promotional or other purposes, "we literally sold everything that we could," said Marks Chowning, executive director of the Hippodrome.

The national touring production of The Lion King that has stalked into the Kennedy Center is a reminder of just what a seminal piece of theater this 10-year-old show continues to be. So prodigious is director Julie Taymor's visual imagination, so generous is her spirit, that it makes most other Broadway hits (such as the recent blockbuster Wicked, or even In the Heights, which won this year's Tony Award for best musical) seem like they are weak and insipid and candidates for being culled from the herd.

Not so long ago left for dead, the movie musical is showing renewed signs of life this year, even if filmmakers are still trying to figure out what form that life will take. Hairspray, the film version of the Broadway play based on sleaze auteur John Waters' ode to integration and other weighty matters on Baltimore's early-'60s dance floors (whew!), was one of the summer's surprise hits. With a total box-office take so far of $116.4 million, it's the fourth-highest-grossing movie musical ever, behind only The Sound of Music, Grease and Chicago.