“
The DON ROSA COLLECTION is a deluxe 9-volume set of books published by Egmont that tells the story of my life with comics, particularly the $crooge McDuck and Donald Duck comics for which I have become best known... As part of the special texts in the series, I wrote an autobiography of my life, at least as it pertains to comic books. As a conclusion to those texts it was always planned that I would write a sort of ‘epilogue’ to my career, the subject of which would obviously be the reasons for why I quit... At the last moment the Disney Corporation refused to allow my text to appear in a book series that was published under their license... So I agreed to allow set #3 to go forward as long as I would be allowed in volume 9 to direct interested readers to the ‘epilogue’ as it is appearing on this private website.”
Don Rosa: “WHY I QUIT” [more inside]
posted by koeselitz
on Feb 13, 2013 -
12 comments
"Disney goes to Anaheim late at night to help repair the animatronic Disneyland Lincoln, which has been malfunctioning and attacking members of the audience. Disney gets in an argument with the robot about blacks, and Lincoln goes crazy again and whacks Walt...." (
source). Starting today at 2 PM Eastern time (just under 3 hours from now) and for the next 90 days,
medici.tv will stream, free of charge, Teatro Real's January 22 premiere performance of
the new Philip Glass opera The Perfect American. It's based on the
novel of the same name by Peter Stephan Jungk, which the NY Times called "a surreal, meditative, episodic account of the last days of Walt Disney."
Four minute preview video. ENO rehearsal trailer. (Happy belated 76th, Mr. Glass.)
[more inside]
posted by maudlin
on Feb 6, 2013 -
21 comments
You may remember an animated film from the early '90s. Set somewhere in 'Arabia,' a land of bazaars and minarets, the story featured a bored, harem-panted princess, an orphan boy, a treacherous vizier with bird sidekick, a rotund and oblivious sultan, a blue-skinned magic user,
et al.
But it wasn't
Aladdin - and
the movie had
started production in 1964 ...
[more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns
on Jan 13, 2013 -
24 comments
Seven For A Secret - an anonymous fanfic author creates seven unhappy ( or at least, unconventional ) endings for Disney Princesses by placing them in proper historical, mythological, or thematic context.
posted by The Whelk
on Dec 27, 2012 -
53 comments
Disney has a new cartoon series called "
Gravity Falls," created by
Alex Hirsch who also created The Marvelous Adventures of Flapjack. It features X-Files style paranormal activity in the titular town in Oregon from the perspective of 12 year old twins, Mabel (voiced by Kristen Schaal) and Dipper. While this alone could cultivate a fanbase, it also helps that the show has
secret messages and
cyphers for viewers to decode.
[more inside]
posted by mccarty.tim
on Nov 28, 2012 -
70 comments
'TV historians will tell you that “Felix the Cat” was one of the first images ever broadcast on television (when RCA broadcast a Felix doll in 1928 on experimental station W2XBS) — but it wasn’t until the late ’40s that the first animated character was created expressly for TV.
Crusader Rabbit appeared for the very first time on KNBH (Los Angeles) on August 1, 1950, and featured a Don Quixote-like title character aided by his friend Ragland T. “Rags” Tiger as they pursued adventures in serial (i.e. cliffhanger) installments.' On November 8th, the voice of Crusader Rabbit, Lucille Bliss,
passed away at the age of 96. Ms. Bliss may be more familiar to younger fans as the voice of
Smurfette, from
The Smurfs, or as
Ms. Bitters on Invader ZIM.
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on Nov 15, 2012 -
18 comments
Animal Soccer World is a release by the late no-budget European publisher Phoenix Games. The primary feature of the "game" is a 30 minute animated feature (Youtube playlist
here) full of blatantly copied Disney characters, dozens of characters voiced by the same person, some of the worst animation you will ever see, and a throbbing jungle beat that literally never stops.
posted by Shadax
on Sep 2, 2012 -
10 comments
"Over the years in animation, there have been a lot of great animators.
Ub Iwerks was one of those people. We know his work, but we don't necessarily know the man."
The Hand Behind the Mouse: The Ub Iwerks Story (in 5 parts on DailyMotion:
1,
2,
3,
4, and
5) tells of the life of Ubbe Eert Iwerks, from the formation of the friendship with Walt Disney when they met at advertisement studio in Kansas City, their artistic collaborations and Ub's 20 years of animation, to Iwerk's technical creations that kept Disney animated pictures ahead of other studios.
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Aug 31, 2012 -
14 comments
"
Little girls are AWED by a princess. A woman in a big, sparkly, puffy dress is a thing of power and glory to them. They will stand and stare, or scream themselves hoarse in excitement, or become paralyzed in wonder by A Princess. Some little girls start hyperventilating. Some just sit down on the floor, their knees giving out from under them. They run up to touch your dress with the same crazed look of a Twilight fan trying to touch that Edward Cullen guy at a movie premiere. It's so different from seeing a face character at Disney World because to them, Disney World is a far-off fantasy place full of strangeness and unreal scenes. But this is A Princess, in the real world, in their own home."
[more inside]
posted by MartinWisse
on Aug 31, 2012 -
148 comments
There's kids farmed through juvenile detention centers for profit, oppressive corporate barons, and young people striking and occupying New York City to protest social injustice. The corporate overlords try to use the NYPD and private goons to break up the movement, but they can't stop the
Tony-winning choreography. Wait, what?
Newsies is a
record breaking Disney musical based on the flop-turned-cult favorite 1992 film starring a young
Christian Bale.
[more inside]
posted by kmz
on Aug 20, 2012 -
32 comments
What happens when you mash up Cinderella, Disney songs, queer culture, and top 40 hits?
This, apparently. [SLYT]
Warning for general ear-worminess. I'll be humming this all week.
posted by MeghanC
on Jul 28, 2012 -
12 comments
"Among all who read Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories during the ‘40s and ‘50s, there was one common term for the unknown artist who drew the Donald Duck stories. Comics readers and comics fans all over the U.S. independently applied the same term to him. To fans in Ohio, California, Arkansas and Pennsylvania, he was 'The Good Artist.' His name was never signed to his work, and his publishers—until the early ‘60s—never revealed his name to his public, though many of us wrote (unforwarded) fan letters. His name, as we finally learned, is Carl Barks." How two determined fans found out
who the Good Duck Artist was.
posted by MartinWisse
on Jul 27, 2012 -
40 comments
Snow White's Scary Adventures - A Retrospective [via
mefi projects]
The author can't post it here for obvious reasons, but I can. I think. Now to wipe these tears from my eyes...
Tomorrow, May 31st, will be the last day of operation for the ride Snow White's Scary Adventures at the Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World. The ride has played a significant role in my family's life for the past decade (my son is autistic, and has ridden the ride more than 3,400 times), and I wrote a retrospective about the history of the ride. This is a subject that is too close for me to post on the Blue, but Matthowie and Jessamyn both suggested that I post about it here. The linked blog post itself contains links to a four part series about my son, and also a link in the footnotes to the single best reference site on the web for the ride in all its permutations. I know it's just a silly old fairy tale dark ride, and not on many people's "must-see" list when they come to Disney World, but I hope my article can help at least a few people understand why it really is an important piece of history.
posted by COD
on May 30, 2012 -
32 comments
On June 7th, the Disney XD channel will premiere a new, 10-part miniseries:
Tron Uprising. The series, which will feature the voices of Elijah Wood, Lance Henriksen, Bruce Boxleitner (reprising his role as 'Tron',) Mandy Moore and Paul Reubens, will combine 2D and CGI animation styles, and is set between the events of the first and second Tron movies. Trailers:
1,
2. 2011 ComicCon
Preview. Disney released a full-length "prelude episode" yesterday evening (US Only):
Beck's Beginning. (
Via)
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on May 13, 2012 -
38 comments
The Sweatbox "the documentary Disney doesn't want you to see" (95-minute SLYT), was made when Sting wrote songs for "Kingdom of the Sun" and his filmmaker wife Trudie Styler got insider access to the production. What? You say there was no Disney movie "Kingdom of the Sun"? I meant "The Emperor's New Groove". Rarely has the decline of an Institution been better documented.
This may or may not be Disney property and may or may not be taken down any minute, but it has survived on YouTube for over 48 hours after getting blogged-about a dozen times.
posted by oneswellfoop
on Mar 23, 2012 -
97 comments
Plenty of people collect
Disneyana, the toys, books, animation cels, and theme-park souvenirs. Then there are those fans who collect information and details on the Disney parks themselves,
collecting official park maps or
drawing up their own ride blueprints,
assembling the design history behind the attractions, and even
collecting vintage tickets and
ticket books.
Yesterland (previously:
1,
2,
3) is an ever-growing collection of Disneyland history, and has
an updated collection of links to similar fan sites and Imagineering blogs, which is a whole collection of rabbit holes of nostalgia and behind-the-scense information. So grab a
riding crop and
pretend like it's the 60s all over again!
posted by filthy light thief
on Mar 15, 2012 -
9 comments
