In the early 1950's,
Monsanto Chemical Company, MIT and Disneyland
collaborated their resources and creative brainpower
to build "the house of 1986." Using 30,000 pounds of plastic (The building's structure, carpet, chairs, sinks, appliances and floors were all plastic. About $7,500 to $15,000 worth.), the
Monsanto House of the Future* was opened to an excited public in June of 1957. It was closed in 1967 as ideas of the future were beginning to change.
Let's take a quick tour, shall we?
*(Not to be confused with Xanadu Homes of Tomorrow.) [more inside]
posted by miss lynnster
on Dec 12, 2007 -
30 comments
Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue was an animated drug prevention television special starring many popular cartoon characters from American Saturday morning television. Airing in 1990 and financed by McDonald's, it was simulcast on all three major American television networks. The VHS home video edition of the special also opened with an introduction from then-President George Bush Snr and Barbara Bush.
And thanks to the wonders of the interwebs, you can watch the whole thing here. And you really should. After all, where else are you going to get to hear cartoon characters like Garfield and Winnie the Pooh talking about smoking crack and shooting juice?
[more inside]
posted by Effigy2000
on Dec 3, 2007 -
48 comments
It's a Big World After All. The Disneyland Small World ride is going to be closed for 10 months in 2008 due to refurbishing. The main reason for the refurbishing: the ride isn't built to accommodate today's average passengers' body weights.
posted by Bugbread
on Oct 29, 2007 -
64 comments
Salvador Dali and
Walt Disney collaborated in 1946 on the short animation Destino. Disney had concerns about some of the graphics and it was never released. Lost for 56 years, it was restored in 2003 and has not yet been released for wholesale distribution. Tommorrow is your last chance to see
it at the
Dali and Film exhibit at the Tate Gallery.
Previously.
posted by Xurando
on Sep 8, 2007 -
26 comments
Mars and Beyond - 50 years ago, this animated episode of Tomorrowland aired on Disneyland a few months after the launch of Sputnik - an entertaining melange of astronomy, sci-fi, pop culture, science, speculation, and surreality. Walt himself and Wernher von Braun make guest appearances and clip 5 is particularly trippy. (Parts
2,
3,
4,
5,
6)
posted by madamjujujive
on Jun 10, 2007 -
9 comments
Virtual Space Mountain! Wheeeee!
(Click on the second video where you sit in front. What are you, a wuss?) Real video just
can't do Space Mountain justice, but it does a pretty good job of capturing some other rides. Feel like revisiting some original Magic Kingdom rides without leaving home? Well here you go...
Pirates,
Mr. Toad,
Small World,
Haunted Mansion,
Tiki Room,
Thunder Mountain,
Star Tours,
Indiana Jones,
Alice in Wonderland,
The Jungle Cruise,
Matterhorn,
Roger Rabbit, the late
Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse and a bunch of people covered in lightbulbs dancing to
the world's most excruciatingly annoying synthesized music. During your virtual day at the park, please just remember to watch out for Goofy. That dude is nothing but a
messed up troublemaker.
And don't forget... the parking trams do not go to aisles B as in Bambi & C as in Cinderella.
posted by miss lynnster
on Mar 26, 2007 -
23 comments
Los Angeles Magazine asks, "Can the LA Times be saved?" One suggestion is to hire
Nikki Finke, Hollywood's
ultimate contrarian reporter. Finke was
canned in 2002 by the New York Post over
a series of articles critical of Disney. [1 2] She sued in response.
Shortly afterwards, she landed at the
LA Weekly, where she boasts
an incredible archive of weekly columns - recent entries include
a quasi-defense of Mel Gibson,
coverage of Cruise versus Redstone, and
Michael Ovitz's gay problem. On the side, she likes to
bite people's heads off, and
reminisce about a New York that's now gone. She now gets to let it all out on her own blog,
Deadline Hollywood Daily.
[previously mentioned 1 2 3 4]
posted by phaedon
on Mar 20, 2007 -
15 comments
"All over Orlando you see forces at work that are changing America from Fairbanks to Little Rock. This, truly, is a 21st-century paradigm: It is growth built on consumption, not production; a society founded not on natural resources, but upon the dissipation of capital accumulated elsewhere; a place of infinite possibilities, somehow held together, to the extent it is held together at all, by a shared recognition of highway signs, brand names, TV shows, and personalities, rather than any shared history. Nowhere else is the juxtaposition of what America actually is and the conventional idea of what America should be more vivid and revealing."
"Welcome to the theme-park nation." [more inside]
posted by wander
on Mar 2, 2007 -
61 comments
The Reedy Creek Improvement District's goal "is to provide effective and efficient services to the public and our taxpayers." The taxpayer is Disney, and the taxes are used to provide services for Disney by
contracting the services to Disney. The
RCID is a county-like entity in Florida, composed of the cities of Lake Buena Vista and Bay Lake, which are also controlled by Disney. The government of the RCID is elected by the landowners - Disney executives who own five-acre plots, the only non-corporate and non-government landowners. The governments of the cities are elected by the residents - about 40 Disney employees split between
Bay Lake and
Lake Buena Vista. The
Rotten Library (SFW article on a NSFW site) discusses the district, which is administered from a
SimCity 2000 construction site.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim
on Feb 9, 2007 -
17 comments
Tom Hignite wasn't content owning one of Wisconsin's most successful companies, Miracle Homes. The evangelical contracting magnate had a dream. He would be the
Walt Disney(sound) of the 21st century. So he turned a portion of his 7,000 square foot house into a studio, hired a crew of veteran Disney and Warner Bros. animators, and proceeded to make a
feature film QT starring his own creation,
Miracle Mouse. This is the story of
how it all went wrong.
posted by maryh
on Dec 10, 2006 -
54 comments
Five go adventuring in Disneyland. Enid Blyton, beloved British children's author, created
tales of child detectives
Julian, Dick, Anne, George and Timmy the dog in the 1940s. Deemed outdated, or at times
downright offensive(.pdf), stories abound that the author's work has been
banned from libraries or school reading lists in the past for being sexist and/or racist. Debate sprang up earlier this year over
the publisher's attempts to update the books for a modern audience (read: American), which some interpreted as a politically correct attempt at sanitisation. The Famous Five was nevertheless
voted by adults as their favourite series for children in 2005.
Now owned by brand business
Chorion, the historic characters are being reimagined as Cole, Dylan, Jo and Allie in a 26-episode animated series from Disney. Some are
delighted, others are
not amused. Pour yourself some
lashings of ginger beer, and remember
Kirrin Island fondly. It may be the end of an era.
posted by szechuan
on Dec 5, 2006 -
19 comments
Advanced Animation by Preston Blair, "the best 'how to' book on cartoon animation ever published."
Blair, a Disney and MGM animator, put the book together in 1947 to illustrate the various basic principles of animation, only to have the book pulled from shelves after the rights to use some of the characters were revoked. Animation historian
Jerry Beck has been hunting for a first edition of Blair's landmark book for many years. He finally found a copy and is sharing high-quality scans on the
Animation Archive.
(Archive previously linked in this thread; discovered via this thread.)
posted by soiled cowboy
on May 7, 2006 -
11 comments
FollowupFilter - After a two year hiatus (read:
punishment ban), Gregg Easterbrook (founder of Beliefnet, Brookings scholar, ex of Slate & NFL.com) one of ESPN's most popular football writers
returns, with no acknoledgment of where he went or why. Hopefully he'll keep his mouth shut about ABC and/or Disney related projects this time. As a side note, his two seasons worth of back articles are apparently not available, as they were purged (permanently?) when he was fired.
posted by jonson
on Apr 25, 2006 -
16 comments
Education for Death. (YouTubefilter.) Disney-produced
anti-Nazi cartoon short from 1943. Look for Hitler's Satanic horns. More weirdness from WWII: Warner Bros
Snafuperman, starring Pvt. Snafu (originally created by Dr. Seuss!), who also deals with
spies, all while jabbering away in a voice that sounds disconcertingly like that of a certain cwazy wabbit. From Archive. org -- Pvt. Snafu learns about
booby traps, in one case literally. Bugs himself joined the Air Force, and was faced with
gremlins for his trouble. Superman himself got in on the act, battling
Japoteurs. After all, during the War we were plenty worried about those canny
Japanese.
posted by Astro Zombie
on Mar 23, 2006 -
26 comments
Disney eats crow. Disney, whose former CEO Michael Eisner rejected the idea of Disney being hired to market Pixar's movies, who insisted on owning their sequel rights, and who apparently
hoped Finding Nemo would flop so that he could get better negotiating terms with Pixar, is now in talks for buying Pixar outright for approximately $6.7 billion in stock.
Steve Jobs gets his revenge... again. How much revenge?
50.1% of $6.7 billion dollars, apparently.
posted by insomnia_lj
on Jan 19, 2006 -
51 comments
