While the latest Pixar/Disney animated film, Wall-E (teasers, trailers and clips) debuted as the No. 1 movie this past weekend and has been met with critical acclaim, including a 97% "Fresh Rating" at RottenTomatoes and a 93% ranking by critics and 90% by viewers at MetaCritic, the film has outraged the radical right. "[M]y kids were bombarded with leftist propaganda about the evils of mankind..." "...I will do my part to avoid future environmental armageddon by boycotting any and all WALL-E merchandise and I hope others join my crusade." "I agree that the Malthusian fear mongering was annoying."^*
posted on Jul 1, 2008 - View this thread

Baghdad Zoo and Entertainment Experience - “massive American-style amusement park that will feature a skateboard park, rides, a concert theatre and a museum. It is being designed by the firm that developed Disneyland.” Here's a quick roundup of some commentary. (last link with concept design sketches)
posted on May 21, 2008 - View this thread

The last of Disney's Nine Old Men, Ollie Johnston, has passed away at the age of 95. His work at Disney on several classic features and his books with Frank Thomas (The Illusion of Life in particular), have long been inspiring to animators like myself. He was one of the great ones, and will be missed.
posted on Apr 15, 2008 - View this thread

Snow White and the Seven Stormtroopers. Inspired by the Disney attraction Star Tours, and its related merchandise, DeviantArt user Thumper-001 is working on an evolving series of creative mashups. (Via)
posted on Jan 27, 2008 - View this thread

Can't afford to get to Disney this year? Worry not: ride the rides on YouTube. There's The Haunted Mansion, The Pirates of the Caribbean, Splash Mountain, The Tower of Terror, Peter Pan and plenty more. The best, though, are the ride-throughs for rides that are no longer there: EPCOT's Horizons, World of Motion and original Imagination are ones I remember vividly from my childhood. Maybe you will too.
posted on Jan 22, 2008 - View this thread

Peace on Earth - 1939 Disney animation directed by Hugh Harman. And Goodwill to Men, a 1955 remake by Hanna-Barbera.
posted on Dec 24, 2007 - View this thread

Magic Highway U.S.A. Disney's May 1958 view of the future of transportation. Some recaps at 2719 Hyperion and Paleo-Future. [IMDB; via]
posted on Dec 17, 2007 - View this thread

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.)
posted on Dec 12, 2007 - View this thread

4 Artists Paint 1 Tree, a segment from Disneyland included on the recent DVD release of Walt Disney's Sleeping Beauty, features the artistic process of one of my favorite painters and cartoon modernists, Eyvind Earle. If you've seen Sleeping Beauty, Lady and the Tramp, Paul Bunyan or Peter Pan, you're familiar with the fantastical and brilliant landscapes he produces. His paintings show a particular fondness for Big Sur and Central California.
posted on Dec 10, 2007 - View this thread

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?
posted on Dec 3, 2007 - View this thread

For whatever reason, this girl has uploaded over a hundred and fifty videos of Disney songs dubbed in Icelandic (as well as a few other languages). I just can't wait to be king, Strange Things, the Siamese cat song.
posted on Nov 25, 2007 - View this thread

Covering The Mouse. An MP3 blog dedicated to cover versions of Disney songs. My favorite so far is Gene Simmons' cover of "When You Wish Upon A Star."
posted on Nov 21, 2007 - View this thread

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 on Oct 29, 2007 - View this thread

The Art and Flair of Mary Blair.
posted on Oct 21, 2007 - View this thread

Eldon Dedini NSFW is one of several 1960's Playboy cartoonists featured over at the Animation Archive.
posted on Oct 4, 2007 - View this thread

Remember the Town Disney Built? -- 50% of the homes in Celebration, Florida are up for sale. A failure of corporate-owned and -planned Community™? or just a fallout of the bursting of the housing bubble? And whither New Urbanism?
posted on Oct 4, 2007 - View this thread

The Donald Duck animated short film anthology. Donald Duck's family tree. More Donald Duck family trees. Donald, Donald, Donald. Quack, Quack, Quack.
posted on Sep 28, 2007 - View this thread

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 on Sep 8, 2007 - View this thread

The author of this site takes screen-shots from long-pan scenes of classic animation and puts them together to re-create the original larger background images. Much cooler than it sounds, honest. [via MeFi's own kokogiak, sort of]
posted on Aug 10, 2007 - View this thread

"Why (For) Pat Carroll wasn't actually Disney's first choice to voice Ursula in 'The Little Mermaid'? The casting story of one of Disney's most delightful demons.
posted on Jun 15, 2007 - View this thread

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 on Jun 10, 2007 - View this thread

A Fair(y) Use Tale ^{Single link YouTube}
posted on May 19, 2007 - View this thread

Cloned Disney cels: page 1 [Russian, bad English], page 2 [Russian, bad English]
posted on Apr 10, 2007 - View this thread

Fairy Tale Weddings for all -- Disney, under fire for discriminating at its parks, opens up its popular (and expensive!) Fairy Tale Weddings and Honeymoons to same-sex couples.
posted on Apr 8, 2007 - View this thread

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 on Mar 26, 2007 - View this thread

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 on Mar 20, 2007 - View this thread

Star Wars in 5 Seconds. The Empire Strikes Back. Return of the Jedi. Dozens more from this YouTube user, including Batman; The Lord of the Rings I, II, and III; Amadeus; The Passion; The Princess Bride; Titanic; The Big Lebowski; and my personal favorite, The Lion King.
"In 5 seconds" not to be taken literally. Some audio may be NSFW.
posted on Mar 8, 2007 - View this thread

Who Delayed Roger Rabbit? Rich Drees lays bare the backroom bickering and production studio drama behind one of the 1980s' most successful comedies. For an encore, Drees reviews the unproduced script of Roger Rabbit II: Toon Platoon. Weep for what might have been.
posted on Mar 8, 2007 - View this thread

"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 on Mar 2, 2007 - View this thread

The Ecstasy of Influence, A Plagiarism
posted on Feb 24, 2007 - View this thread

"Oh bother" said the Disney corporation. "It seems we've lost Pooh."
posted on Feb 16, 2007 - View this thread

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 on Feb 9, 2007 - View this thread

Remember Captain EO? Meet Captain Eeyore!
posted on Jan 30, 2007 - View this thread

David Gonterman is still alive. Gonterman was last mentioned here five years ago. Gonterman has become a long-time Deviant. Gonterman is accepting comissions via his journal. Gonterman is writing a "part autobiography" about a boy who was teased in school and retreated into a fantasy land. Gonterman has made available the first part of this novel (doc). Gonterman has made available the first part of his new furry PI comic series (pdf). If you don't know Gonterman, you are fortunate: this is Gonterman.
posted on Jan 20, 2007 - View this thread

Comic Strip Artist's Kit Carson Van Osten's tips for cartoonists and animators, scanned huge for easy printout.
posted on Jan 11, 2007 - View this thread

The 50 Greatest Cartoons Ever: the List - including links to the full-length videos of the corresponding toons on YouTube and Google, etc. Based on a twelve year-old-vote by the animation industry, which explains why there are no appearances by Cartman, Bart, or Fry.
posted on Dec 21, 2006 - View this thread

He had an awesome name for an animator. He created Mickey Mouse. He won two Academy Awards. He invented rotoscoping. Now he is mostly forgotten, except among cartoon aficionados. Also forgotten: Flip the Frog. He was Ub Iwerks.
posted on Dec 17, 2006 - View this thread

In 1983, John Lassetter and Chris Wedge created some test footage that integrated CGI and traditional animation [YouTube] for Disney. The work it was based on? Where The Wild Things Are. The movie was never made and Lassetter left to start Pixar, which redefined how animated movies were created. Curious to see the shorts that led to Toy Story and its followers? Pixar's put all their short films online.
posted on Dec 13, 2006 - View this thread

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 on Dec 10, 2006 - View this thread

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 on Dec 5, 2006 - View this thread

I can show you the world
Shining, shimmering, splendid...
posted on Oct 27, 2006 - View this thread

Sex education of trainables, a 1970's instructional video for educating the mentally handicapped about human sexuality is just one of the many excellent ephemera uploaded to Google Video by Slave to the Man Productions. Along the same lines (from the collection) are Parents Talk to Children About Sex and Walt Disney's Attack Plan for Syphilis.
posted on Oct 7, 2006 - View this thread

Disney's The Little Mermaid - WMV W/NSFW Audio by Out of Bounds troupe, Brown University
posted on Oct 6, 2006 - View this thread

ABC agrees to take the lies out of their 9/11 miniseries. previously discussed here
posted on Sep 8, 2006 - View this thread

Becoming Mary Poppins - A look at the original author P. L. Travers, Walt Disney, and the differences therein. Via the New Yorker.
posted on Sep 2, 2006 - View this thread

DisneyWorld's death toll since 1989
posted on Jun 30, 2006 - View this thread

Ask Greg allows fans of Disney's first dramatic animated series, Gargoyles, to submit questions to series co-creator and producer Greg Weisman. It's been around since 1996 and has become a treasure trove of information and insight into not just the show, but the animation industry in general. Ask Greg and a fan-run annual gathering has kept the flame of the Gargoyles Universe alive and their efforts are paying off. Recently Disney began releasing the show on DVD and now it's set to return in the form of a comic published by Slave Labor Graphics and written by Greg Weisman.
posted on Jun 9, 2006 - View this thread

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 on May 7, 2006 - View this thread

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 on Apr 25, 2006 - View this thread

The Story of Menstruation (youtube video) -- A 1954 cartoon from Walt Disney, created at the behest of Kotex.
posted on Mar 28, 2006 - View this thread