MetaFilter posts tagged with Disney

Disney Isn't "Brave" Enough To Leave Princess Merida As Is

SkylitDrawl — Fri, 10 May 2013 13:17:18 -0800

Merida, Pixar's "Brave's" red-headed heroine will be crowned Disney's 11th princess on May 11. And just in time for her royal coronation, she has been given a "Victoria's Secret" makeover. This makeover has caused some outrage in the blogosphere, and has even inspired a change.org petition launched by A Mighty Girl, a girl's empowerment website.

Disney Rejection Letter, 1938

latkes — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 14:02:52 -0800

Women do not do any of the creative work in connection with preparing the cartoons for the screen, as that work is performed entirely by young men. For this reason girls are not considered for the training school.

Millions of Baby Boomer boys in mourning

waitingtoderail — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 12:08:33 -0800

Annette Funicello , beloved star of the original Mickey Mouse Club, beach movie queen, teen idol, and darling of many an early 60s teenage boy has died.

Right about now you're thinking, "I have a bad feeling about this..."

zarq — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 22:28:40 -0800

Each year in May and June, the Disney Hollywood Studios theme park at the Walt Disney World Resort holds a "Star Wars Weekends" festival. The days conclude with "Snig and Oopla's Hyperspace Hoopla" and Star Wars characters competing against each other in a dance competition. Shows 2007 (finale only) 2009 2010 2011 2012 Also: Highlights from Star Wars Weekends 2006, Parts 1, 2, 3 and 4 Playlists * Orlando Attractions Magazine: Hyperspace Hoopla * Ahsoka Tano: Star Wars Dance * YouTube: Star Wars Weekends Selections * Darth Vader & Boba Fett: Smooth Criminal * C3PO doing 'The Robot' * Slave Leia, Chewbacca, Padme, C-3PO: Sexy and I Know It * Vader / Stormtroopers: Beat It * Vader / Stormtroopers: Enter Sandman * Cantina Band: Medley * Emperor Palpatine: Mama Said Knock You Out * Emperor Palpatine, Darth Maul, Boba Fett: Back in Black * Chewbacca and an Ewok: Welcome to the Jungle Wikipedia lists franchise actors who have appeared at the festival over the years.

Walt Disney posters from 1924 to present

elgilito — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 15:00:34 -0800

Thousands of movie posters from the Mouse , from Alice's Day at Sea (March 1, 1924) to Wreck-It-Ralph (November 2, 2012). Includes US and foreign posters, historical and modern versions (the changes in poster design are particularly interesting), trailers and advertising material. The site (in French) covers movies produced under the Disney umbrella (including Touchstone, Hollywood Pictures and Pixar but not Miramax): shorts and feature films, animated and live action movies, classic and less classic works.

Home Movie of Walt Disney Playing with a Model Train in 1948

zzazazz — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 14:02:06 -0800

Ward Kimball's home movie footage of Walt Disney playing with a backyard scale model railroad in 1948.

LucasArts RIP

Elementary Penguin — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 10:47:01 -0800

Game Informer has learned that Disney is closing its LucasArts game publishing subsidiary.

After evaluating our position in the games market, we've decided to shift LucasArts from an internal development to a licensing model, minimizing the company's risk while achieving a broader portfolio of quality Star Wars games. As a result of this change, we've had layoffs across the organization. We are incredibly appreciative and proud of the talented teams who have been developing our new titles.

LucasArts is probably best known for its point-and-click adventure games, such as Maniac Mansion, LOOM, the Monkey Island series of games, Full Throttle, and Grim Fandango. (via Joystiq)

Not so happily-ever-after?

Defying Gravity — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 18:58:34 -0800

Ever wondered what happened to the Disney princesses after the curtain dropped? Jon Cozart, aka "Paint" fills us in...

Before the dark times... before the Empire.

DigDoug — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 09:12:40 -0800

How Disney Bought Lucasfilm—and Its Plans for 'Star Wars' is an interesting BusinessWeek article on how one media conglomerate went about buying another, and how it plans on improving the value of both. Single Page View For those of us not as interested in realizing the shareholder value of our childhoods, it still has a lot of insights, and at least one truly amazing graphic describing how good at least one of the deals made by Robert Iger has gone. Ultimately, Lucas chose to sell to Disney because of how they handled both Pixar and Marvel acquisitions. Unsurprisingly, he was also burned out on trying to deal with the fandom he'd created:

The criticism got to Lucas. He found it difficult to be creative when people were calling him a jerk.

It's a secret to everyb-- well, to some people without google.

boo_radley — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 08:15:05 -0800

Disneyland's Secret Restroom.

"Never trust a man in a caftan."

MCMikeNamara — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 10:43:56 -0800

'I Was Rob Lowe's Snow White': The Untold Story of Oscar's Nightmare Opening "Once upon a time -- March 29, 1989, to be exact -- a 22-year-old aspiring actress named Eileen Bowman thought that all her dreams were about to come true. She was very wrong." (the 61st Annual Academy Awards previously on MetaFilter)

“An entire ‘vault,’ like a Money Bin, filled with 40,000 comics.”

koeselitz — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 13:54:49 -0800

“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” A brief essay by the great cartoonist Don Rosa, Eisner-winning author of "The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck." This piece includes some reminiscences and reflections on Rosa's life and personal work ethic, along with his thoughts on the unfortunate realities of the Disney comic system. (Note that it sadly appears unlikely that "the Don Rosa Collection" will be published in English.)

Flintheart Glomgold!

shakespeherian — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 11:44:33 -0800

DuckTales invented a new animated wonderland—that quickly disappeared.

When Walt Met Peter Met Abe Met Andy Met Philip: "The Perfect American"

maudlin — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 08:08:55 -0800

"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.) The LA Times: "Glass delves deep into the psyche of a visionary at the end of his life, of an artist who devoted his life to a vision of a world without death, now grappling with mortality. By most counts this is Glass' 24th opera, and it is his most personally intimate. It does what opera does best by making the larger-than-life creator of Mickey Mouse an imperfect life-size, ultimately earning our wonderment." Opera News on the premiere. NY Times gives a more mixed review: loves the music, has some words for the libretto. Interview with Glass, including opera excerpts, from BBC's The Strand. (Audio plays in Canada, hopefully for the rest of you, too.). Previous post about medici.tv . Yes, there's a hashtag: #ENOAmerican

Love and a gross misuse of office resources in mid-century New York City

brieche — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 12:01:49 -0800

Disney's Oscar-nominated animated short Paperman has just been made available for your viewing delight on the official Walt Disney Animation Studios YouTube channel! Paperman, which played before Wreck-It Ralph in theatres, makes use of a new in-house animation technology that "seamlessly merges computer-generated and hand-drawn animation", allowing "the 2-D hand-drawn artwork to “stick” to the dimensional CG layer underneath". Here's a video of the tech in action.

I Am Not A Mouse

Wordshore — Sun, 20 Jan 2013 02:10:30 -0800

"Escape From Tomorrow" is playing at the Sundance 2013 Film Festival. The black and white movie describes one family man's mental disintegration over a day at Disney's Orlando park. Randy Moore directed the film on-site without the knowledge of Disney. Reviews are generally good, with comparisons to The Truman Show and Eraserhead, though people who have seen it wonder how this will play out legally. Filmmaker Magazine: "The film is like a bad acid trip version of National Lampoon’s Vacation, but with Wally World substituted by the real thing." New York Times (spoilers): "There is a gruesome vomiting scene, a creepy obese guy on a motorized scooter and a sequence at Disney’s Epcot theme park where Mr. Abramsohn’s character gets Tasered in the crotch. He is then taken to a secret room underneath Epcot’s Spaceship Earth sphere — referred to in the film as “the giant testicle” — and brainwashed. Ultimately, he suffers a bloody death at Disney’s Contemporary Resort." LA Times: "To make the movie, Moore wouldn’t print out script pages or shot sequences for the 25 days he was filming on Disney turf, instead keeping all the info on iPhones. This way, when actors and crew were looking down between takes, passersby just thought they were glancing at their messages." The director on filming: "So it wasn’t like we weren’t prepared, but the whole thing was still extremely distressing as we basically lived the movie with the actors. At one point, I even made the camera department shave off their facial hair and dress in tourist attire, which almost provoked a mutiny." A clip from the movie, the movie poster, and an associated twitter account.

Steamboat Willie overdubbed with the Koyaanisqatsi theme. [SLYT]

baconaut — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 20:06:06 -0800

The Disney classic paired with Phillip Glass' classic theme. Oddly unsettling on a number of levels.

Arabian Knight

the man of twists and turns — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 01:37:24 -0800

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 ... Animator Richard Williams, who would go on to direct the animation for Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, started The Thief And The Cobbler, his vision of an animation masterpiece. After it was taken over by the bond company for completion and release, it was turned into The Princess And The Cobbler for the international market, and then further changed (with voiceovers to for formerly silent characters) for the American market, into Arabian Knight. But some of the original animation remained, and the film has been partially reconstructed. The Thief and the Cobbler: Recobbled Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Full Length Youtube user TheThiefArchive has many videos of various stages of the movie's development, Richard Williams' work, and makings-of features. The making/unmaking of William's masterpiece was the subject of the documentary Persistence Of Vision. The trailer is on Vimeo and Youtube. Official page. The Thief blog, with lots of behind-the-scenes stuff. Animated commercials by Williams. Richard Williams on Cartoon Brew. TVTropes: The Thief And The Cobbler Previously on Metafilter: The best of YouTube (to date)?

Christopher Robin is a Sadist

clorox — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 10:59:00 -0800

Flash Friday!!! It's Winnie The Pooh Home Run Derby! In Japanese! And insanely difficult!

Kindness killed, just as surely as the huntsman's knife

The Whelk — Thu, 27 Dec 2012 22:37:39 -0800

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.

Man, those Masons are good at making cartoons

mccarty.tim — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 20:34:15 -0800

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. Of course, where there are arcane symbols and secret messages, there's also a Vigilant Citizen article to warn about the Illuminati threat.

The show can be legally viewed on The Disney Channel or iTunes. Disney has clips on their site, but no full episodes.

RIP, Lucille Bliss: Voice of Smurfette and Crusader Rabbit

zarq — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 14:47:12 -0800

'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. "Actors from her generation who came up in live radio, you'd do one or two takes with Lucille and she'd just nail it," said David Scheve, who owns TDA Animation and worked with Bliss. "She could do three or four characters in one [scene] and you'd never know they were all her. She was terrific." "[After Crusader Rabbit,] Bliss went on to hundreds of voiceover jobs in both feature film and TV animation, with some of her best-known roles being the ugly stepsister Anastasia in Disney’s Cinderella.... She also had roles in Disney’s Alice in Wonderland and 101 Dalmatians; Hanna-Barbera’s The Flintstones and Space Kidettes; Don Bluth’s The Secret of NIMH; MGM’s “Robin Hoodwinked” and “Droopy Leprechaun”; and Fox/Blue Sky’s Robots.
Ms. Bliss spoke about being Smurfette back in 2006 to the Archive of American Television. The Crusader Rabbit show was broken into 10 "Crusades", each made up of a different number of serialized episodes that were about four minutes long. From 1949 - 1951, ten crusades totaling 195 episodes were produced. But unless you're in your 40's or older, there's a good chance you've never heard of the show. The first 34 Crusader Rabbit episodes (two full "Crusades") can be seen in a YouTube playlist.

Eh oh ehh-uh-EH-oh

Rory Marinich — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 17:17:04 -0800

Disney meets Dada: Intensive Gaston Unit [SLYTP]

The Story Of The Haunted Mansion

hippybear — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 21:05:29 -0800

It's not too late for one more Halloween spook -- Thurl Ravenscroft narrates as Ron "Ritchie Cunningham" Howard and Robie Lester (Mrs. Kris Kringle, Disney Storybook narrator ["when Tinkerbells rings her little bells... turn the page"] encounter Pete Renoudet as the Ghost Host in Disney's 1969 adventure, The Story Of The Haunted Mansion. [25m] Bonus material: The Ghost Organist, Eleanor "Maleficent" Audley performs Madame Leota's Incantation, and Grim Grinning Ghosts, Buddy Baker's immortal song, in its entirety.

The 80s called, they want their Star Wars and Disney back.

TheSecretDecoderRing — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 03:06:03 -0800

Around this time in 1982, "The Wonderful World of Disney" on CBS aired Disney's Halloween Treat. In February of '83, a pre-special-edition Star Wars debuted on HBO. Later that year, what used to be known as the Disney Channel went on the air. Then in '84, Star Wars made its network debut on CBS, which included a short introduction ("We've seen Star Wars 324 times!"). "Disney's Halloween Treat" included clips from Night on Bald Mountain and The Legend of Sleepy Hallow, and the rather dark short, Pluto's Judgement Day. The special was later expanded and modified for (then-)annual Disney Channel airings, under the name of A Disney Halloween. This included shorts such as The Old Mill, Lonesome Ghosts (with Mickey, Donald, and Goofy), and the classic Trick or Treat (with Donald and his nephews). If you're like me, you also remember being terrified by the constant promos with a bearded Jonathan Pryce in Something Wicked This Way Comes, and that creepy blindfolded girl in Watcher in the Woods. If, unlike me, you're the type who feels it's never too early for Christmas, you may be interested in A Disney Christmas Gift or A Disney Channel Christmas. Or save 'em for later. The Disney Channel bids you a good night, and the Ewoks bid you a yub nub.