Walt Disney’s masterpiece, Fantasia, may seem at first like a random collection of animated shorts whose only common factor is that each was inspired by a well-known piece of classical music.  However, consciously or not, the film has a deeper unifying principle.  Each of the film’s episodes touches in one way or another upon the ... read more »

Hand-drawn animation, once the mainstay of Disney and other studios that created “cartoons” for popular consumption, is becoming something of a lost art.  Audiences seem to prefer Pixar-style CGI. Disney itself may be partly responsible for the form’s decline, since all of their hand-drawn features since 101 Dalmations – with one or two rare exceptions ... read more »

The Avatar hype continues.  There was a front-page (!) piece in the L.A. Times today, whining – for lack of a better word – about how “unlike the great majority of best picture nominees, the ‘Avatar’ actors have not nabbed a single major critic’s award, or guild prize. The snubs reflect the apparent ambivalence of the ... read more »

When you believe in things you don’t understand, you suffer. –Stevie Wonder In 1949 Walt Disney Studios produced the last, and arguably the best, of their “package” films – barely-feature length vignette collections made on reduced budgets during World War II for theatrical distribution – though the dyad of animated novellas included are improved little ... read more »

Watching the marvelous Blu-ray edition of Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), I was struck by how certain shots foreshadowed the imagery of Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane (1941) released by the same studio, RKO, only four years later: the gothic castle at night with its one glowing window … … the outstretched hand ... read more »

Robert Charles Benchley (1889-1945) was a drama critic and writer of humorous essays, most memorably for The New Yorker, before he fell into performing after reading one of his pieces, The Treasurer’s Report, as part of a theatrical revue put together by his friends at The Algonquin Round Table. The Treasurer’s Report was filmed in ... read more »

Last night, I had the pleasure of attending a screening of some of Kenneth Anger’s most recent short films – hosted by Mr. Anger himself. The legendary “underground filmmaker” was surprisingly youthful and energetic for a guy born in 1927, looking not much older than he does in the picture at left, taken decades ago. ... read more »

Continuing her series of commissions for the Walt Disney megacorp, Annie Leibovitz photographs Julianne Moore as The Little Mermaid. Somewhere, Hans Christian Anderson is smiling. [Thanks to Nathaniel R for the tip.]

As long as our blog appears to be on a Walt Disney kick, I thought I’d share this cleverly wrought video in which some familiar characters explain certain intellectual property concepts such as copyright and fair use.

Prima photographer Annie Leibovitz was commissioned by the Walt Disney Company to photograph Scarlett Johansson as Cinderella. Sure, it’s corporate art, but doesn’t Scarlett look gorgeous! (Click to enlarge, and note the glass slipper.) Courtesy John Brownlee, PopSugar, and the indispensable GreenCine Daily.