When Matt Damon compared the vice-presidential candidacy of Alaska governor Sarah Palin to something out of “a really bad Disney movie,” he got the jokesters over at College Humor to thinking. Would we? Could we? Should we? . . .They did, and it’s pretty much the “wackiest family comedy of the year!” My two cents? It may be funny on screen, but in reality—this sitch ain’t no comedy. Reik! Reik! Reik!
disney
Amuse Bouche: Is Palin a Figment of Walt Disney’s Imagination?
Thursday, October 2nd, 2008The depths of Disney
Friday, July 11th, 2008
So I saw Wall-E the other day. It’s a great film with an anti-consumerism message that it wears proudly on its sleeve. In the movie, a mammoth corporation named Buy N’ Large is the only visible corporate force in the marketplace. And when I say visible, I mean the behemoth size of Wal-Mart supercenters combined with the collective advertising ubiquity of Coke, McDonald’s, and yes, Disney!
The earth has been so overrun with trash that humans have abandoned the planet and the lone inhabitants are a little trash-compactor bot named Wall-E and his robotic cockroach friend. It’s amazing how a Johnny-5 lookalike can be imbued with such stark human emotion while computer animators are still failing miserably at getting it right with CGI people. But I digress…
Two things jumped out immediately on my trip to see the movie. First, I went to the El Capitan theater in Los Angeles for the first time. For those who don’t live here or have never been, the El Capitan is owned by Disney and is their own version of Grauman’s Chinese (it’s right across the street, in fact). Old-school theater, massive pipe organ that some guy plays before each movie starts, only one screen, etc.
Apparently one of the draws is the little show that the theater puts on beforehand. They have this trippy little silkscreen show that ends with a lit up version of LA. I thought that was it and I was pretty satisfied, until the horror of what unfolded next dawned on me.
coo-coo-ca-ccino latte
Thursday, June 7th, 2007This here above is mashed-up Disney on the evils of corporate influence on US copyright law. Say that five times fast; it will prepare you for the video, which is instructive and entertaining and difficult to endure.
Coincidentally, the most Disneylike of the Beatles, Paul, released his latest solo album, Memory Almost Full, on the Starbucks label Hear Music yesterday—the cute Beatle at last taking a political stand by eschewing the record industry giants for… the Frappuccino giant? Meantime John, the desperately missed Beatle, spun in his grave and Grande Venti drinkers the world over were subject to nonstop McCartney madness, the new record being required listening for the entire day in every one of the existing 20 gazillion Starbucks worldwide. In other words, it was another bad day for the kings of the fading exploitative music industry but also a Baby Boomer version of a day in one of the deepest of Dante’s circles of hell.
A Black Disney Princess
Thursday, March 15th, 2007
Finally we’ll get to see a black princess in an animated film, something that would have been helpful to my self-esteem during my childhood ten or fifteen years ago. Disney is set to release The Frog Princess in 2009, the first 2-D animation film since big-ears released Home on the Range in 2004. This fairytale musical will focus on the story of Maddy, a young girl growing up in New Orleans during the 1920s Jazz Age. Disney hasn’t given many details, but the original story is about a girl who rescues a frog that turns out to be a handsome prince.
I remember my father buying me a series of fairy tale books once that illustrated a black Repunzal, a black Little Red Riding Hood, and a black Snow White. I read these stories maybe once or twice, but I never got the same joy from reading those books as I did from watching tapes of The Little Mermaid or Cinderella a hundred times. And every Halloween when I saw all the other girls dressed up as Jasmines, Snow Whites, and Belles, I always wondered why I never looked or felt right in the same costumes (well my mom never bought me the real Disney princess costumes, let’s just say she liked to improvise with whatever was in her closet).
New Orleans is a nice touch. Thumbs up Disney, but why did this take so long?