tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-82806502455245075572024-03-19T02:54:41.066-06:00Yesterday, Tomorrow and FantasyAn unofficial guide to the world beyond Disney... Explore the original stories and sources of beloved films and attractions, along with critical essays and trip reports. Cory Grosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12141983255020503557noreply@blogger.comBlogger202125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8280650245524507557.post-41067649402442307332017-11-29T00:00:00.001-07:002017-11-29T00:00:02.503-07:00The Enduring Power of Fairy Tales<div style="text-align: justify;">
To what do we credit the enduring power of fairy tales? </div>
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At first they may appear to be merely entertaining stories about fantastic places and strange events. Looking at them again, they might appear to be straightforward morality tales or instructive lessons: whistle while you work, a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, have courage and be kind. Academics have built careers constructing socio-cultural and psycho-sexual interpretations. Fairy tales can bear many interpretations and be enjoyed on many different levels.</div>
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There is, however, something deep at the root and core of fairy tales that invites them to be reread and reinterpreted and reimagined every generation, from paintings on cave walls to CGI musical spectaculars on the silver screen. This enduring power is <i>wonder</i>.</div>
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<a name='more'></a>One of the greatest defenders that fairy tales have ever had was the Edwardian writer G.K. Chesterton. Recalling his youthful days, he reminisced, </div>
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When the business man rebukes the idealism of his office-boy, it is commonly in some such speech as this: "Ah, yes, when one is young, one has these ideals in the abstract and these castles in the air; but in middle age they all break up like clouds, and one comes down to a belief in practical politics, to using the machinery one has and getting on with the world as it is." Thus, at least, venerable and philanthropic old men now in their honoured graves used to talk to me when I was a boy. But since then I have grown up and have discovered that these philanthropic old men were telling lies. What has really happened is exactly the opposite of what they said would happen. They said that I should lose my ideals and begin to believe in the methods of practical politicians. Now, I have not lost my ideals in the least; my faith in fundamentals is exactly what it always was. What I have lost is my old childlike faith in practical politics… My first and last philosophy, that which I believe in with unbroken certainty, I learnt in the nursery… The things I believed most then, the things I believe most now, are the things called fairy tales. </blockquote>
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Chesterton listed some of the valuable lessons to be gained from fairy tales: "There is the lesson of 'Cinderella,' which is the same as that of the Magnificat—EXALTAVIT HUMILES. There is the great lesson of 'Beauty and the Beast'; that a thing must be loved BEFORE it is loveable. There is the terrible allegory of the 'Sleeping Beauty,' which tells how the human creature was blessed with all birthday gifts, yet cursed with death; and how death also may perhaps be softened to a sleep." Yet for him, it was not the specific lesson of any one particular fairy tale that matter most, but rather, "a certain way of looking at life, which was created in me by the fairy tales, but has since been meekly ratified by the mere facts."</div>
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For Chesterton, that certain way of looking at the world was to witness its everyday magic, and to delight in it. "I observed that learned men in spectacles were talking of the actual things that happened—dawn and death and so on—as if THEY were rational and inevitable. They talked as if the fact that trees bear fruit were just as NECESSARY as the fact that two and one trees make three. But it is not." He observed "you can easily imagine trees not growing fruit; you can imagine them growing golden candlesticks or tigers hanging on by the tail… The only words that ever satisfied me as describing Nature are the terms used in the fairy books, 'charm,' 'spell,' 'enchantment.' They express the arbitrariness of the fact and its mystery. A tree grows fruit because it is a MAGIC tree." Perhaps he summarized it best by saying "It is one thing to describe an interview with a gorgon or a griffin, a creature who does not exist. It is another thing to discover that the rhinoceros does exist and then take pleasure in the fact that he looks as if he didn't."</div>
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Fairy tales charm us into recognizing the wonder of everyday life. It is wonderful to consider the pixies that may be lying in wait beneath a blade of grass. It is more wonderful yet to consider the blade of grass, and that the blade of grass is yet it might just as easily not have been. More... practical... persons have taken on the exercise of explaining humanity in purely materialistic, mechanical terms that succeed in truly explaining nothing. More rightly the Psalmist declares "I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made." </div>
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Wonder, fear, and praise seem to be closely aligned. The sort of delight and fascination described by Chesterton – the magic by which a tree should produce apples and not tigers – is fixed on the idea that it could have been something else. By some quirk of a quark or sleight of hand on the part of evolution, apple trees could have produced tigers, or pixies, or devils, a million other joys or a million other horrors. Underlying this is the dreadful realization that the world is not under our control, and indeed, is terrifyingly indifferent to us most of the time. A mere dragon or a giant or a wicked stepmother would be a blessing.</div>
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Here fairy tales charge once more to our rescue. Against well-intentioned concerns that fairy tales were too frightening for children (or these days, too anti-social), Chesterton had this to say:</div>
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Fairy tales, then, are not responsible for producing in children fear, or any of the shapes of fear; fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already. Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.</blockquote>
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Fairy tales were the first to open us up the idea that our world is one of limitless possibilities, with which come limitless terrors. But, as Chesterton went on to say, fairy tales were also the first to accustom us "to the idea that these limitless terrors had a limit, that these shapeless enemies have enemies in the knights of God, that there is something in the universe more mystical than darkness, and stronger than strong fear." </div>
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"At the four corners of a child's bed stand Perseus and Roland, Sigurd and St. George," he concludes. "If you withdraw the guard of heroes you are not making him rational; you are only leaving him to fight the devils alone. For the devils, alas, we have always believed in."</div>
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If the world could have been made any other way, then who is to be praised for it being the way it is? And if it is full of devils of our own making, what great commander should be given the laurel crown for sending so mighty an army as the Brave Little Tailor, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, the Sorcerer's Apprentice, Peter Pan and Tinker Bell, Alice, J. Thaddeus Toad, and Snow White to fight alongside us? </div>
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"I was right when I felt that roses were red by some sort of choice: it was the divine choice," answered Chesterton. The modern sarcastic might say that it is no wonder, since the Bible is just a fairy tale. Chesterton might reply no, the Bible is not a fairy tale, it is only the meek factual ratification of the eternal truths he learned from fairy tales. Jesus is not a fairy tale, but He certainly heard some while sitting at Mary's feet. </div>
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Wherever one stands on the subject of religion, what cannot be denied is that the lion's share of these stories, inherited from European cultural roots, reflect 1800 years of Europe's Christian heritage. Some reflect this heritage more deeply than others, as in the case of Hans Christian Andersen's moralism. Nevertheless, no interpretation of fairy tales can be accurate that does not take into account that the first giant-killer these writers were familiar with was David, and the first magical chalice they saw was the cup at Eucharist. Theirs is a worldview in which God is very much active as the beginning and end of all wonder, and mingled with fear, and worthy of praise. </div>
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Perhaps that is why more materialistic, mechanical interpretations of fairy tales always seem to fall short of explaining their enduring power. Divested of pious allegory, they are typically reduced to mere good advice or metaphors for puberty, which are always the least interesting interpretations. </div>
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In most of the world touched by the light of a film projector, Walt Disney’s name has become synonymous with fairy tales. For thousands, even hundreds of thousands, Disney’s film adaptations of these classic stories are the definitive versions.</div>
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When he just started out in animation in a small studio in Kansas City, Missouri, Walt’s first films were based on fairy tales. These crude “Laugh-O-Grams” cartoons modernized such stories as <i>Cinderella, Jack the Giant Killer, Jack and the Bean Stalk, Little Red Riding Hood</i>, and <i>Puss in Boots</i>. The studio’s final film after bankruptcy was Alice’s Wonderland, a blending of animation with live-action footage of a girl's dreamtime foray into the world of cartoons. </div>
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The success of <i>Alice's Wonderland</i> allowed Walt Disney and his brother Roy to set up shop in Los Angeles in 1923, starting the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio. In 1926, this was changed to the Walt Disney Studio and a new home was found on Hyperion Street. Then in 1928, Disney hit the big time with the creation of Mickey Mouse.</div>
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The Mickey Mouse cartoon series was largely inspired by silent films, current affairs, or barnyard gags. Wanting to branch out artistically, Disney began the <i>Silly Symphonies</i> series in 1929. For the most part these were simple strings of gags synchronized to classical music, but over time developed more complex plots for which Walt once again turned to fairy tales. Magical, fantasy characters were always a favourite subject of <i>Silly Symphonies</i>, building on the strength of animation to visualize the imagination, but the first formal adaptation of a fairy tale came in 1931 with <i>Mother Goose Melodies </i>and <i>The Ugly Duckling</i>. These were followed by <i>The Tortoise and the Hare, The Grasshopper and the Ants, The Pied Piper</i> and the smash hit <i>Three Little Pigs</i>. The <i>Silly Symphony</i> series ended in 1938 with a remake of <i>The Ugly Duckling</i>. By that time, Walt had moved on to bigger things.</div>
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Artistic and technical advances made through the <i>Silly Symphony</i> and Mickey Mouse cartoons reached fruition in the first full-colour, feature length animated film from Hollywood: <i>Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs</i> (1937). To produce the film, Walt "bet the farm" by putting the entire studio up as collateral. Industry wags called it "Disney’s Folly" and predicted that no one would want to spend an hour and a half watching an unending series of gags like those in the <i>Silly Symphony</i> films. Audiences were unprepared for the drama, pathos, horror, comedy, and romance of this adaptation from the Brothers Grimm, and they rewarded it handsomely. The future of the Walt Disney Studios was secure, a new studio complex was custom-built in Burbank, and Disney cemented its association with fairy tales.</div>
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Following <i>Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs</i> were <i>Pinocchio</i> and <i>Fantasia</i> (1940), <i>The Reluctant Dragon</i> (1941),<i> Fun and Fancy Free</i> (1947), <i>The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad</i> (1949), <i>Cinderella </i>(1950), <i>Alice in Wonderland</i> (1951), <i>Peter Pan</i> (1953), and <i>Sleeping Beauty</i> (1959). Walt’s vision for animation extended into the real world with the development of Disneyland, which held at its heart a fairy tale castle and picturesque village called "Fantasyland" where these storybook characters could live. Whenever company fortunes have flagged, it has always been fairy tales that have brought it back to the spotlight. The release of <i>The Little Mermaid</i> (1989),<i> Beauty and the Beast </i>(1991) and <i>Aladdin</i> (1992) ushered in a new golden age of Disney animation. <i>Tangled</i> (2010) and <i>Frozen</i> (2013) charted the course for the company in the new age of CGI animation. Today, the Disney Princess franchise is the company’s most lucrative. </div>
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In addition to wonder, fear, and praise, fairy tales also offer <i>flexibility</i>. Some of these stories have specific authors, a Hans Christian Andersen or Kenneth Grahame or James Barrie, but many were inherited from folk traditions. These folk traditions were were told and retold and adapted for each new audience in each time and place they were repeated, over the course of hundreds of years. When Disney adapted <i>Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs</i>, it was just as timely and original in 1937 as when the Grimms first recorded the German fairy tale in 1812. Fairy tales mirror and respond to the concerns of the age in which they are shared afresh, and ironically it is that flexibility which helps to make them timeless. Fairy tales have consistently helped the Walt Disney Company endure, and in turn, the Walt Disney Company has helped these stories endure in the age of film, theme parks, and modern entertainment. </div>
Cory Grosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12141983255020503557noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8280650245524507557.post-9480672520354202242017-11-19T00:00:00.000-07:002017-11-20T19:01:26.256-07:00Top Five: Favourite Non-Disney Versions of Disney Things<div style="text-align: justify;">
Disney has left an indelible mark on fairy tales, to the point where it is virtually impossible to think of the stories of Grimm and Perrault, of Barrie and Carroll, without thinking of how Disney visualized them. Yet these stories are part of the common heritage of the West and Disney is not the only artist to have approached them. The following is a list of mine and Ashley's favourite non-Disney versions of stories typically considered the be Disney's own property. In some cases, our love for these renditions supersedes that of the Disney version, either from quality or nostalgia. At the very least, they are well worth the time to check out.</div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><b>#1: The <i>Peter Pan</i> Broadway musical starring Mary Martin</b></b></span></div>
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Produced for Broadway a year after Disney released their animated feature film, the <i style="text-align: justify;">Peter Pan</i><span style="text-align: justify;"> musical rode a wave of popularity for J.M. Barrie's story. It was telecast live in 1955, 1956, and 1960, the last of those telecasts becoming Ashley's childhood favourite (it was also recently restaged with Christopher Walken in the role of Hook). When she thinks of <i>Peter Pan</i>, it is less with the melodies of "You Can Fly" and "Second Star to the Right" and more with Mary Martin belting out "I'm Flying" and "I Won't Grow Up." Cyril Ritchard also performs the nearly perfect Captain Hook, part comic but always with a sense of elegantly sneering, British disdain.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small; text-align: justify;">"I'm Flying" from the 1960 telecast of </span><i style="font-size: small; text-align: justify;">Peter Pan</i><span style="font-size: x-small; text-align: justify;">.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">#2: </span></b><b>The <i>Adventures of Mark Twain</i> Claymation feature film</b></span><br />
I have already discussed how Disneyland's Tom Sawyer Island and Mark Twain Riverboat helped inspire me to sit down and read the works of America's bard. The other thing that piqued my interest to do so was Will Vinton's Claymation feature film <i>The Adventures of Mark Twain.</i> I first happened across it on TV and was immediately taken with its premise: Mark Twain aboard a dirigible riverboat, seeking his own destiny in the pursuit of Halley's Comet (Twain was born when the comet circled near earth in 1835 and he died when it came next in 1910). That alone appealed to my love for retro-Victorian Science Fiction. Around this framework the film adapts a number of Twain's short stories that examine the human condition with intelligence and sensitivity uncommon in what would be considered a "children's film." Instead of brash, juvenile jokes, we get Twain's incisive wit. Instead of beating and humiliating the bad guy, we get Twain's discourse on the duality of human nature. Instead of happily ever afters we get a meditation on the meaning of life and death. It is a powerful film presented in an unexpected medium and genre.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">A modern trailer for <i>The Adventures of Mark Twain</i>.</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">#3: Jean Cocteau's <i>Beauty and the Beast</i> feature film</span></b></div>
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I have a great love for classic films from the silent era through the years of the Second World War. One of the best films ever produced in that time was <i>La Belle et la Bête</i>, directed by French auteur Jean Cocteau and released in 1946. Filmed in glorious black and white, it alternates between sumptuous Baroque designs and Expressionist minimalism, vacillating between fairy tale decadence and the eerie, unsettled atmosphere of a Universal Studios horror movie. It is a study, in a single film, of the aesthetics of the sublime and beautiful. Many of its motifs went on to inspire not only Disney's later animated adaptation of <i>Beauty and the Beast</i> but also the Haunted Mansion attraction. It is also a beautiful, atmospheric film in its own right, without comparison, rightly heralded today as one of the classics of French, and World, cinema.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">A modern trailer for Cocteau's <i>Beauty and the Beast</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>#4: </b></span><b><span style="font-size: large;">The <i>Wind in the Willows</i> stop-motion animated series</span></b><br />
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Disney's <i>The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad</i> is certainly a wild ride, adapting the more frenetic story of Mr. Toad's misfortunes with a motor car. But when reading Kenneth Grahame's original novel, we find a book that is considerably more genteel and contemplative. The great motorcar robbery is in there, in all of its comic action, but interspersed between those chapters are quaint, thoughtful, sensitive accounts of life along the River Thames. In 1983, Cosgrove Hall Films and Britain's ITV network produced a stop-motion animated film adapting the book, followed by a TV series that ran from 1984 to 1987. This was actually the version of <i>The Wind in the Willows</i> that I grew up with, and now that I have read the book as an adult, I can see how well served it was by its gentility.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">An extract from <i>The Wind in the Willows</i>: Mr. Toad's great locomotive chase.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>#5: Shelley Duvall's Faerie Tale Theatre </b></span><br />
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Much like Mary Martin's <i>Peter Pan</i>, Ashley's main exposure to fairy tales on the screen was through <i>Shelley Duvall's Faerie Tale Theatre</i>. This six season series hosted by Duvall starred numerous Hollywood actors in hour-long adaptations of various and sundry fairy tales. Robin Williams starred as the Frog Prince in an episode written and directed by Eric Idle. Mick Jagger played a Chinese Emperor in <i>The Nightingale</i>. Bernadette Peters and Christopher Reeves wooed in <i>Sleeping Beauty</i>. Pee-Wee Herman played Pinocchio and Carrie Fisher played Thumbelina. Tim Burton's first director credit after leaving Disney was the <i>Aladdin</i> episode. Francis Ford Coppola directed <i>Rip Van Winkle</i>. Production values for this mid-Eighties television series perhaps weren't the best, but it is more than made up for by the performances.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Susan Sarandon and Klaus Kinski star in <i>Beauty and the Beast</i>.</span></div>
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Cory Grosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12141983255020503557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8280650245524507557.post-16997786087457714332017-11-15T00:00:00.002-07:002017-11-15T00:00:00.294-07:00After Walt's Era: Top Fives<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I just can't let it go! Having discussed "Life After Walt" in the closing chapter of <i>Walt's Era</i> and touched on it in my conclusion, which included a "Top Five", I'm going to carry on in a fashion. I have no inclination whatsoever to go systematically through every Disney film made from 1968 to today. Please God no. But I can offer up my top five films, animated and live-action, from each of the company's major eras.<br />
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First would, of course, be the era of Card Walker and Ron Miller, from 1968 to 1984. This was the era immediately after Walt's passing, when the company tried in fits and starts to find its way without its founder. That came to an end in 1984 with chaos on the board of directors, several takeover attempts, and finally the introduction of Michael Eisner. It was this era I actually grew up in, incidentally. It's easy to be negative about Eisner from the controversial final years of his reign, but for an entire generation, Eisner was the only face of Disney they really knew. When I sat down on Sunday nights to watch <i>Wonderful World of Disney</i>, it was not Walt Disney who greeted me, but Michael Eisner. Finally it is the era of Bob Iger, who took charge of the company after Eisner was escorted out. Though originally slated to end this year, the loss of Iger's heir apparent, Tom Staggs, forced him to stay on for at least a few more years, with preparations to stay on even longer if necessary.<br />
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My reaction to each of these eras is a little different. Having reached the end of Walt's era and having studied Walt Disney World's history a bit more, I have a greater appreciation for what Walker and Miller tried and accomplished during their time. They were up against incredible challenges, and even though their experimentation didn't often work, at least they tried. Eisner's era was the Disney Renaissance, phenomenal in the beginning, a little more questionable towards the end. As a fan of classic Disney, I'm growing less and less enchanted with Iger's transformation of the company into a high-end IP management firm, of which "Disney" is merely one brand, easily discarded as the needs of marketing demand. I recently saw a comment that jokingly, but accurately, described Iger's reign as the Anything-But-Disney Decade. Keep in mind that as I rank these top fives from each era, I'm only counting Disney and none of Iger's acquisitions.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Top Five Animated Feature Films</b></span><br />
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<li><b><i>The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh</i></b> - The Winnie the Pooh shorts produced up to this time were linked with new animation forming the best, most enduring animated film of this period. In feature film form, Pooh has managed to retain its charm inherited from Walt's own guidance, way back on his first short. </li>
<li><b><i>The Rescuers</i></b> - This is actually one of Ashley's favourite Disney films, and I can understand why. It's got some nice charm and atmosphere. I would have loved to have seen Cruella De Vil the villain, as was the original intent, but we can't have everything I suppose. </li>
<li><b><i>The Aristocats</i></b> - It's really just<i> Lady and the Tramp</i>, isn't it? It's not bad, just <b>too</b> on the nose as a remake but without the real heart.</li>
<li><b><i>Robin Hood</i></b> - What I find most odd about <i>Robin Hood</i> is that it's not really a <b>story</b>. I mean, it has a story, and that story touches on some of the famous parts of the Robin Hood legend, like the archery competition, but there is no overarching narrative like in most cinematic renditions of Robin Hood. Even Disney's first crack at it back in the Fifties featured his entire story arc, from beginning of his career to its end. This is just an odd little episode from it. It's an interesting exercise and still a decent film. <i> </i></li>
<li><b><i>The Fox and the Hound</i></b> - Sure I guess? Why not? I haven't actually seen this film since I was a child, but there aren't a lot of animated films to choose from in this period.</li>
</ol>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Top Five Live Action Feature Films</span></b><br />
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<li><b><i>Blackbeard's Ghost</i></b> - I'm legitimately torn over which is my favourite Disney pirate movie: <i>Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl</i> or <i>Blackbeard's Ghost</i>. Lost to obscurity now, this is actually a very funny film. Peter Ustinov does a hilarious job as the ghost of Blackbeard, cursed to do good deeds to deliver himself from purgatory. Dean Jones plays his usual straight man with aplomb. I might even say that this is my favourite film of his too. It's got college pratfalls ala <i>The Absent-Minded Professor</i> and some really spooky stuff, including a wonderfully designed/matte-painted inn. </li>
<li><b><i>The Love Bug</i></b> - If <i>Blackbeard's Ghost</i> is maybe the best Dean Jones Disney film, this is certainly his most well-known. Besides Winnie the Pooh, who got his start during Walt's era, Herbie is Disney's most recognizable... perhaps even <b>only</b>... classic character to come out of this era. I don't know, maybe Elliot too? Herbie's status is deserved, as <i>The Love Bug</i> is also a very good, very funny film. </li>
<li><b><i>The Best of Disney's True-Life Adventures</i></b> - Cheater! Yes, okay, one of my favourite Disney films from this time period is a clip-show from some of the best Disney films of Walt's era. <i>Que sera, sera</i>. What makes this particularly good though is that it's as much a documentary <b>about</b> the <i>True-Life Adventures</i> as a clip anthology from them. It talks very lovingly about Walt Disney's nature documentary and conservation legacy. </li>
<li><b><i>The Island at the Top of the World</i></b> - Sometimes a film is a guilty pleasure, and I know that. <i>The Island at the Top of the World </i>was one of them. This retro Victorian-Edwardian Sci-Fi adventure story was produced against a renewed interest in the genre in Disney's studio household. Had it been a commercial success, a ride based on it would have served as the anchor for a new land for Disneyland dubbed "Discovery Bay." Designed by Tony Baxter, it would have featured this ride, a Nautilus-themed restaurant, a few other interesting attractions, and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, all in a 1850's San Francisco wharf setting roughly where the entrance to Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge now lies. The movie flopped and only Big Thunder was completed. Plans were for a much more ambitious film that would have rivaled <i>20,000 Leagues Under the Sea</i>, but Disney got cold feet, pulled back, and left behind a quirky little film that never quite reaches its full potential. </li>
<li><b><i>Tron</i></b> - I get what <i>Tron</i> was trying to do, both as an artistic and a corporate enterprise. It was one of the first to really attempt to explore what this newfangled computer technology could do for film, and did so in a surprisingly intelligent, self-referential way, using a messianic story about the subjective inner world of computers and their relationship with the users. A disingenuous sequel 30 years later only succeeded in making <i>Tron</i> look more admirable. That said, "admirable" is not the same as blindingly <b>good</b>. It does drag at times, and on its release, Disney stock took a 2.5 point dive. </li>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>The Eisner Era (1985-2005):</b></span><br />
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<li><i style="font-weight: bold;">Beauty and the Beast</i> - The only Disney animated feature to get a nomination for Best Picture at the Academy Awards, <i>Beauty and the Beast</i> is a serious contender for one of the best Disney films of all time if historical concerns are taken out of the mix. Walt Disney Animation, freshly empowered by <i>The Little Mermaid</i>'s success and emboldened by Howard Ashman (who died during production), gave it their all and it shows. It has exactly everything it needed in characters, setting, themes, and quality to make it succeed. </li>
<li><b><i>Treasure Planet</i></b> - My tastes are out of synch with most of society, and I know that. But there are times when I cannot for the life of me figure out how a movie gets <b>so</b> maligned. <i>Treasure Planet</i> is one of those cases. It's certainly not any <b>worse</b> than any other Disney film, from the Eisner era or otherwise. It's quite a bit <b>better</b> than a lot of the films coming out during the late Eisner era. And even if it is merely an average Disney film, the retro-futuristic designs, its 70%-30% mix of old and new, is inventive and beautiful. It's one of the first films to present a neo-romantic view of space, overcoming the drab void of Stanley Kubric to depict the vividness of the Hubble Age. I don't get why people stayed away in droves. </li>
<li><b><i>The Little Mermaid</i></b> - After the dry period of the late Sixties and Seventies, <i>The Little Mermaid</i> heralded the return of <b>Disney</b>. Disney being Disney. Classic Disney... The Disney fairy tale film. It's quality of animation is surprisingly low-budget compared to films of Walt's Era or later films in the Disney Renaissance, but the story and characters cut through it to deliver something wonderful.</li>
<li><i><b>Atlantis: The Lost Empire</b></i> - I like <i>Atlantis</i> a lot, but this time I <b>do</b> understand why it didn't do well. Disney consciously attempted to replicate the subject matter, themes, and look of Mike Mignola, the comic book writer/artist who created <i>Hellboy</i>. The thing is, his work is an homage to pulpy, old fashioned, occultic "weird fiction," particularly in the vein of H.P. Lovecraft. It's great if you're into that stuff... Which most people aren't. But I am. </li>
<li><b><i>Aladdin</i></b> - The third film of the real Disney Renaissance, before it sort of simultaneously peaked <b>and</b> went off the rails with <i>The Lion King</i>, definitely shows the marks of Howard Ashman's passing. Ashman was not unjustifiably heralded as Walt Disney's effective reincarnation: a brilliant storyteller who understood the potentials of the animated musical and could push animators to deliver the best in their craft. He was the main force guiding <i>The Little Mermaid</i> and <i>Beauty and the Beast</i> to excellence. <i>Aladdin</i> almost feels like a <i>Jungle Book</i>, a film made with the scraps of what the creative visionary left behind. It's still a fantastic film, just slightly off of what the previous two films had accomplished. </li>
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<li><b><i>Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl</i></b> - Ignoring the diminishing returns of the <i>Pirates</i> sequels (we literally didn't realize <i>Pirates</i> 5 came out, and then duly forgot to see it until it was in the sole cheap theatre in town), and giving up anger over how the film franchise has corrupted the rides it was based on (not to mention Tom Sawyer Island and Fantasmic), <i>Curse of the Black Pearl</i> is a phenomenal movie. It's <b>at least</b> the best Disney live-action film since <i>Mary Poppins</i>, if not <i>20,000 Leagues Under the Sea</i>. The writers deliberately scripted it like a grand adventure film from the Golden Age of Hollywood, carefully setting up a great interweaving of compelling duos - Will and Elizabeth, Will and Jack, Jack and Barbossa, Will and Norrington, Norrington and Jack, Elizabeth and Barbossa, Pintel and Ragetti, Murtog and Mullroy - and pulling some of the best imagery from the ride to create an excellent and very satisfying tale of swashbuckling and the supernatural. </li>
<li><i><b>Who Framed Roger Rabbit? </b></i>- I imagine that it would be more of a feat to make a <b>bad</b> movie that involved Disney and Amblin, directed by Robert Zemeckis. <i>Who Framed Roger Rabbit?</i> is, above all, a love letter to the Golden Age of animation and of Hollywood, with a great, but not overwhelming, L.A. Noire feel. Being fond of that era, I'm fond of this film too. </li>
<li><b><i>The Rocketeer</i></b> - Keeping on the Golden Age theme, <i>The Rocketeer</i> was a game attempt at an old fashioned, Nazi-smashing, two-fisted Pulp adventure film. Brisk, enjoyable, and with great costumes and set pieces. I wonder if they're going to remake this or do a disingenuous 30-year later sequelboot. </li>
<li><b><i>The Three Musketeers</i></b> - <i>The Three Musketeers</i> starring Kiefer Sutherland, Charlie Sheen, and Tim Curry is another film in the "game attempt" category, this time trying its hand at swashbuckling adventure in the vein of Flynn and Fairbanks. It's a bit obscure today, but looks that much better compared to more recent film and television versions.</li>
<li><b><i>Return to Oz</i></b> - This film <b>terrified</b> me as a child, and still does to a certain degree. In the late Seventies and early Eighties, Disney often went dark, and this loose adaptation of the later Oz novels was no exception. Even the protagonists are grotesque, let alone the villains. But I like it, and not just because of my credentials as an old Goth. I want to like the classic 1939 <i>Wizard of Oz</i> because it is a classic, but I genuinely find it overstimulating and oversaturated to the point of being obnoxious. The muted Gothness of <i>Return to Oz</i> is actually more appealing to me, even as it is terrifying. </li>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">The Iger Era (2005-Present):</span></b><br />
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<li><b><i>The Princess and the Frog</i></b> - Boy did <i>The Princess and the Frog</i> play it safe, sometimes almost insultingly so. Disney had a lot riding on the film, not the least of which was the rebirth of traditional animation, which Eisner had previously shuttered. It ended up being more of a deathrattle. Nevertheless, it's the animated film of Iger's era that I like the most, for its characters, setting, art, and themes. </li>
<li><b><i>Frozen</i></b> - I would have rather seen a straight adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen's <i>The Snow Queen</i>, but <i>Frozen</i> was still alright. It definitely has its flaws - I was disappointed in Hans being just another villain, and "Oh, love" is a running joke between Ashley and I (representing any flippant answer to a major crisis or psychological problem) - yet the overall quality of it is enough to look past them. Overall in Disney's oeuvre I would place <i>Frozen</i> on the same tier as a <i>Great Mouse Detective</i> or <i>Robin Hood</i>, not unenjoyable but not a masterpiece. It's second here because, let's face it, the Iger Era is slim pickings for good original films in general. </li>
<li><b><i>Tangled</i></b> - This is a batshit crazy movie. Rapunzel has a chameleon, because why not? And her hero is actually a theif guy obsessed with his nose, sure? And his arch-nemesis is a horse, who he fights with a frying pan, because f**k it? And then there's the Snuggly Duckling... On it's own it's a fun movie. In context, I have to resent it a little for starting the trend at Disney of "funny" reimaginings of fairy tales given adjectival titles. </li>
<li><b><i>Moana</i></b> - Honestly, I should like <i>Moana</i> more than I do. I love Tiki, and have been researching Polynesian cultures, and all of that. That should give me the background for really liking this film... but... but... I don't know. It's just sorta' there. I enjoyed it, but it didn't leave a deep, lasting mark. </li>
<li><b><i>Frankenweenie</i></b> - I need five for a top five, so I guess I'll put this here. Honestly, Tim Burton's original live-action short is better, if for no other reason than it's brevity and being made by Tim Burton rolling into the height of his creative expression in the Eighties and Nineties rather than on the downslide of his career in the Two Thousands. The feature animated version was okay. </li>
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<li><b><i>The Lone Ranger</i></b> - Another case of me not understanding why people didn't like a film... I'm <b>almost</b> offended that people didn't like this, as though they have any right not to like this after propelling brainless dreck like <i>The Avengers</i> into being one of the highest-grossing films of all time. The only sympathy I can muster is that you get the most out of <i>The Lone Ranger</i> if you have a working understanding of Western North American history and Western movies as a genre. It's a much smarter film than it is given credit for being. </li>
<li><i><b>John Carter</b></i> - Please revisit my complaints re: <i>The Lone Ranger, Treasure Planet</i>. <i>John Carter</i> is also one of those films that I really liked and didn't see as being, at least, any worse than the stuff people do like. What really pisses me right off about how this bombed at the box office (including Disney throwing it under the bus before it even opened) is that I've read the first trilogy of John Carter novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs, so I have a pretty fair idea of how the rest of this trilogy <b>should</b> have gone. But I'll never get to see it. Thanks guys. Thanks. </li>
<li><b><i>The Jungle Book</i></b> - Disney's fetish for live-action remakes of classic animated films has uneven results. <i>Maleficent</i> was just plain awful, as were Tim Burton's <i>Alice</i> films. Did anyone even see <i>Pete's Dragon</i>? But <i>The Jungle Book</i>, of all things, showed what can and should be done. Working with source material that was only really "okay" to begin with, it went back to Kipling's original stories to build a film from the ground up that had an actual plot and heart that exceeds the animated original. </li>
<li><b><i>Beauty and the Beast</i></b> - Whereas <i>Jungle Book</i> was good for how it found the diamond in the rough of its source material, this live-action remake is good because it is, beat for beat, a remake of good source material. Often where it diverges from the source material, it only calls attention to how good that source material is (like the <i>Gaston</i> number). The Beast's showstopping solo nearly made me lose it, though. I'm just rubbing my eye because it's itchy, okay?! Hold it together Cory, hold it together...</li>
<li><i style="font-weight: bold;">Cinderella</i> - This live-action remake is a bit too visually intense for my unreserved liking, but I did appreciate how it added more depth to the characters (including turning the prince into one!). I also want to like it for it's message of "have courage and be kind" that abuse was, inexplicably, heaped upon by the intelligentsia. </li>
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Cory Grosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12141983255020503557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8280650245524507557.post-34883035375523041162017-11-11T00:00:00.000-07:002017-11-11T00:00:00.166-07:00Walt's Era - Part 19: Conclusion and Top Fives<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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What does one learn by watching every Disney film of Walt's Era, in order? </div>
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Almost all of these films I had seen before, in one way or another, mostly through building up our own DVD collection. Walt's era has long been an interest of mine and my favourite era in the company's history. It was, after all, the era when the company rose to ascendancy, built Disneyland, and produced nearly all of my favourite Disney films. Yet I never sat down to watch them in order, which turned out to be a monumental task that was great in the good years and surprisingly tedious and demoralizing in the not-so-good ones. Here's what I learned...</div>
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<a name='more'></a>It was interesting to see Disney's artistic development contextualized. <i>One Hundred and One Dalmatians</i> is a very different film from <i>Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs</i>, and now my understanding of why and how is better grounded in an understanding of Disney's artistic development. Yet for as different as they are, watching the evolution of Disney's art has also helped me better articulate how they are similar in key ways that set Disney's films apart from their contemporaries.<br />
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A commitment to romance, in both senses of the word, suffuses the best of Disney entertainment. That means not only the romance of love affairs, but the romance of a general love affair with life. It is in Disney's fairy tale cartoons, with their romance of chivalry and courtly love. It was in Disney's romantic nationalist epics, most of which starred Fess Parker. It was the romance of the natural world that suffused the <i>True-Life Adventures</i> and <i>20,000 Leagues Under the Sea</i>. It was even in Hayley Mills' romantic comedies and Fred MacMurray's family dramas. The Absent-Minded Professor had to fight for his girl as much as Prince Philip did. It is romance given physical shape in Disneyland.<br /><br />Disney films, the best of them, were also defined by a well-roundedness of romance, adventure, drama, humour, music, artistry, and even horror. They were movies that, for the most part, could effectively balance something for everybody in the truest meaning of a family film. In one movie, like the monumental <i>Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs</i>, you literally had a bit of something different at every turn. One minute, the Prince was wooing Snow White, the next she was fleeing through a terrifying forest in a scene that notoriously even gave chills to Vincent Price. </div>
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The most fascinating thing has been to watch how the company transitioned and did, or didn't, respond to its times. I can't imagine that I'm saying anything radically insightful when I observe that Disney really was a product of the interwar and immediate post-war years. Walt rose to prominence as a fixture of Hollywood's Golden Age of the Twenties and Thirties, innovating with synchronized sound cartoons in 1928 and feature length animated films a decade later. In between, he and his mouse were two of Tinsel Town's shining lights. Disney deservedly held his own with the big studios and the great stars. This is perhaps nowhere better reflected than in a film I did not cover in this project: the 1934 MGM vehicle <i><a href="http://yesterday-tomorrow-and-fantasy.blogspot.ca/2015/03/mickeys-first-feature-film-appearance.html">Hollywood Party</a></i>. This star-studded extravaganza included an appearance by Mickey Mouse, his first in a feature film, alongside Laurel and Hardy, Jimmy Durante, The Three Stooges, Eddie Quillan, and Lupe Velez.<br />
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Yet just as soon as Disney's first "golden age" began, it screeched to a halt. <i>Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs</i> was an unprecedented artistic and commercial success that literally saved the company, but while <i>Pinocchio, Bambi,</i> and especially <i>Fantasia</i> were artistic masterpieces, they underwhelmed at the box office. Once the war ended and resources could be employed for creative consolidation, Disney exploded back onto the scene with a vengeance. If Disney was a Hollywood fixture during the Thirties, it became a <i>bona fide</i> cultural icon in the Fifties. The company resumed full-length animated features and expanded to live-action features, nature and cultural documentaries, television, and theme parks. </div>
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Disney's cultural reach during the Fifties raises the question of whether the man and the company <b>just happened</b> to fit so well with the post-war milieu, or if it actually had a hand in <b>shaping</b> it. To what extent was Walt <b>feeding</b> a renewed sense of optimism expressing itself in the Space Race and the Baby Boom, or to what extent was he helping <b>create</b> it? His films, his TV shows, his park, were more than just good, clean entertainment or artistic ventures. When I stack <i>Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan,</i> and <i>Lady and the Tramp</i> against <i>Snow White, Fantasia, Pinocchio,</i> and <i>Bambi</i>, they are still incredibly good but don't quite measure up as pure artistic masterpieces. What they made up in was cultural relevance. Those films of the Fifties <b>said something</b> more than the ones of the Thirties and early Forties, as did Disney's live-action films. There is more going on in <i>20,000 Leagues Under the Sea</i> than a submarine. Then add in <i>Walt Disney's Disneyland</i> on the small screen and in an Anaheim orange grove, when it's making cultural thesis statements like <i>Man in Space</i> and Tomorrowland, or <i>Davy Crockett</i> and Frontierland. Uncle Walt offered reassurance of Western liberal democracy's primacy, nostalgia for the best of the good old days whose dreams we were now living out, and hope for an ever brighter and more peaceful future. Disney hit the perfect inspirational, aspirational note.<br />
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The second, and greatest, "golden age" faltered in 1959-60, with a financial loss that I don't think the company ever truly recovered from. Disney's films from the Sixties, particularly the early Sixties, could be quite good from an entertainment standpoint, but they seemed to lose their grasp of the changing culture around them. Promises made in the Fifties didn't seem to be panning out by the mid-Sixties, and everyone was taking notice. At certain high points Disney really grab hold of something, but those instances are rare. For the most part they seemed to be spiraling into irrelevance that eventually began reflecting in the quality of the films themselves.</div>
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Longstanding convention holds that the company turned to mediocrity after Walt's untimely passing. Without the hand of this creative genius, this grand populist, to guide them, the company simply could not adapt and forgot how to tell a good story. That's not what I saw unfold before me, however. Disney's decline began well before his death. 1966 was interminable, 1965 barely better, and 1964 would have been mostly a wash if not for <i>Mary Poppins</i>. The highlights are really good - <i>Mary Poppins, Absent-Minded Professor, One Hundred and One Dalmatians</i> - but exempting them, the films are fairly average or less. As I said, entertaining enough in their own right, but missing the vitality on display in the previous decades.<br />
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Had Walt not been taken from the Earth by the scourge of cancer, I'm not confident that the company would have done any better through the late Sixties and Seventies. The Mousetro would himself have been in his late Sixties and Seventies, which is well after the "best before" date of cultural relevance. Even in the Fifties, we see in the company's work the clear signs of people who came of age in the Twenties and Thirties (the <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TwoDecadesBehind">"Two Decades Behind"</a> problem). Circumstance might have forced him to carefully select heirs who could speak to their age, or his overwhelming influence might have even further stunted the company's relevance, or he might have just been too preoccupied with building his Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow to care much about movies. </div>
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Ironically, it was not the people who were closest to Walt who were best able to cement his legacy. It was almost twenty years later that a fresh, outside executive with his own strong vision for the company was able to pull it out of the slump that began in the Sixties. Reflective of the era of Reagan and Thatcher, celebrity moguls like Donald Trump, and the excess of the Eighties, Michael Eisner was once again able to suit the company to the age it lived in. It's easy to be negative about Eisner from the controversial final years of his tenure as Disney's CEO, but sober reflection on Disney's track record before Eisner's ascent and after shows that he was exactly what the company required if it was to have a future.<br />
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Let's give credit where it is due: without Eisner, there would have been no Disney Renaissance, no Disney Cruise Lines, no Disney Store, no expansion of Walt Disney World or Disneyland, no Disneyland Paris, no Disney on Broadway, no Disney Afternoon, none of that. The collapse of Disney towards the end of his leadership is mostly a function of its success at the beginning... One often gets setbacks when striving ahead, especially at so rapid a pace. If Eisner had any real fault it was overstaying his welcome, persisting in his office well past the expiration of his vision. Ironically, the soullessness attributed to Eisner is something I see far more in Bob Iger's transformation of the company into a deluxe IP management firm, akin to the former Classic Media. Even Eisner's love affair with Michael Graves' postmodern architecture demonstrates a certain creative vision lacking today, a certain refinement of taste beyond merely making money. Without Eisner there would be no Disney as we know it today. Some might consider that a good thing, but by the Eighties, the choice was not between the small, folksy company with its homey little theme parks or the entertainment megacorporation we presently have. It was more likely a choice between that megacorporation and not having Disney at all. </div>
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That often seems to be the way it goes though, isn't it? There are at least two distinctive ideas about how to maintain the legacy of a company like Disney. One is to simply keep copying what the original innovator did, the other is to bring in someone new to introduce fresh innovations. Studio Ghibli is a good example of the pitfalls of the former approach. The overwhelming influence of Hayao Miyazaki prevented Ghibli from really fostering new creative talent or daring to bring in anybody new from outside who could lead the company after Miyazaki's retirement. Disney in the Seventies is another good example. Trying merely to copy the original innovator petrifies the product in those original forms and styles, which was already happening by the time Walt himself was hitting his Sixties. Fess Parker observed that it was rare for Walt to bring in especially competent outside directors. Walt's desire for control may have led him to cutting out anyone who had a strong vision of their own. It would take his company twenty more years and a crisis that threatened its future to finally get that out of their system. Present day Disney is back there again, merely purchasing creative content producers instead of working hard to make really exceptional content themselves.</div>
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Watching all the films of Walt's era against the backdrop of the current company's goings on has further solidified what I already knew in the back of my mind about myself. As we watched these films, I also stopped reading any official Disney blogs and things, on account of them only ever seeming to push Marvel, <i>Star Wars</i>, and Pixar productions. <i>Guardians of the Galaxy</i> and <i>Avatar</i> muscled their way into the theme parks. Pirates of the Caribbean underwent another round of vandalism. The things I got most excited for were Season Four of Paul Rudish's <i>Mickey Mouse</i> cartoons and the new <i>Ducktales</i>. At the risk of being petrified, I am really and truly a classic Disney fan. <b>I hate change and Disneyland should be a museum!</b> Of course there are newer things that I love, but what I love best really is this period of the Thirties, Forties, Fifties, and even the Sixties God help me, or anything recalling those halcyon days of Walt's era. </div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Top Five Animated Feature Films</b></span><br />
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<li style="text-align: justify;"><b><i><a href="http://yesterday-tomorrow-and-fantasy.blogspot.ca/2016/05/walts-era-part-2-fits-and-starts-1940.html">Fantasia</a></i></b> - I don't know if there is more I <b>could</b> say about <i>Fantasia</i> than I already have. Watching all of Walt's films in order has left me more convinced than ever that this is indeed Walt's greatest film and one of the greatest films of all time, if not <b>the</b> greatest (depending on your criteria). <i>Fantasia</i> is a stunning, beautiful, sublime work of pure, genuine art driven by visionary genius. </li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><b><i><a href="http://yesterday-tomorrow-and-fantasy.blogspot.ca/2016/04/walts-era-part-1-snow-white-and-seven.html">Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs</a></i></b> - Prior to this project, <i>Snow White</i> <b>might</b> have been on this list, but towards the bottom, maybe an honourable mention. I recognized its historical significance and do enjoy it quite a bit. But now, having sat down and thought critically about why it works so well, using it as the measuring stick against which all other Disney animated films are judged, I legitimately love it. It really is a great, enduring film in the best traditions of Hollywood's Golden Age. </li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><b><i><a href="http://yesterday-tomorrow-and-fantasy.blogspot.ca/2016/06/walts-era-part-3-war-years-1942-1946.html">The Three Caballeros</a></i></b> - If anyone is under the mistaken impression that Disney's films are formulaic and artistically safe, show them <b>this</b> madness. <i>Fantasia</i> was Walt being daring and inventive in a highbrow artistic format, <i>The Three Caballeros</i> was just throwing caution to the wind in marvellous insanity. </li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><b><i><a href="http://yesterday-tomorrow-and-fantasy.blogspot.ca/2017/02/walts-era-part-11-gala-year-for-disney.html">Sleeping Beauty</a></i></b> - I have a better appreciation now for what <b>doesn't</b> work about <i>Sleeping Beauty</i> than I did before this project. It was an experimental film, but not every experiment can be a complete success. I still can't quite wrap my mind around the choice to have Sleeping Beauty sleep for only about 20 minutes or so. Nevertheless, there is still a lot about this rendition of my favourite traditional fairy tale to love. This one may be here for purely sentimental reasons, though Disney was hardly above appealing to sentiment.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><b><i><a href="http://yesterday-tomorrow-and-fantasy.blogspot.ca/2017/05/walts-era-part-13-disney-in-transition.html">One Hundred and One Dalmatians</a></i></b> - I hadn't seen <i>One Hundred and One Dalmatians</i> for something like 30 years before this project. Now it rounds out the top five of my favourite animated films from Walt's Era. It really is good enough, and charming enough, and simple enough, and original enough to surpass more likely candidates like <i>Peter Pan</i> or <i>Alice in Wonderland</i> which might have otherwise occupied this spot. Watching it like this gave me a much better appreciation for what it was doing than if I had just seen it at random at any time in the last three decades. </li>
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<b>Honourable Mention: <i><a href="http://yesterday-tomorrow-and-fantasy.blogspot.ca/2016/07/walts-era-part-4-post-war-recovery-1947.html">Melody Time</a></i></b> - If I chose <i>Sleeping Beauty</i> for sentimental reasons, I'm choosing <i>Melody Time</i> for funsies. One of <i>Fantasia</i>'s pop-music heirs, it's just a darn fun little movie. Each of the segments has a delight in their own way, whether it's <i>Once Upon a Wintertime</i>'s charm and beautiful Mary Blair stylings, or <i>Blame it on the Samba</i>'s reunion with two of the Caballeros, or <i>Bumble Boogie</i>'s beat, or the hilarious cowboy poetry of <i>The Legend of Pecos Bill</i>. I could watch this movie again and again and again.</div>
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<ol>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><i><b><a href="http://yesterday-tomorrow-and-fantasy.blogspot.ca/2016/11/walts-era-part-8-disneys-greatest-year.html">20,000 Leagues Under the Sea</a></b></i> - Sadly undervalued today, <i>20,000 Leagues Under the Sea</i> was just as significant in Disney's company history as Disneyland was, and originated around the same time. But beyond that, it's a seriously good film. The acting in on point, the drama is gripping, and the Nautilus is a thing of beauty. I love the literature of Jules Verne and despite being well aware of the differences between the original novel and the movie, I cannot shake the movie's imagery from my head. Nor would I want to!</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><i><b><a href="http://yesterday-tomorrow-and-fantasy.blogspot.ca/2016/12/walts-era-part-9-year-of-fess-parker.html">Man in Space/Davy Crockett and the River Pirates</a></b></i> - I had to pick one of the Davy Crockett films for this spot, but after this project I opted for the sequel rather than the original biographical movie. That's because watching <i>Davy Crockett and the River Pirates</i> in tandem with <i>Man in Space</i> sparked my nostalgia for what Disneyland once was, what <b>Disney</b> once was, and all the warm and delighted feelings that come with it. And unlike "The Compleat Life and Times of David S. Crockett", <i>Davy Crockett and the River Pirates</i> is just a fun, simple story. </li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><i><b><a href="http://yesterday-tomorrow-and-fantasy.blogspot.ca/2017/05/walts-era-part-13-disney-in-transition.html">The Absent-Minded Professor</a></b></i> - I'll go off on a limb here (though probably not very far out on one) and argue that <i>The Absent-Minded Professor</i> is Disney's funniest film. It's a great screwball comedy with a great cast that doesn't get too bogged down or outstay it's welcome. It pokes at the zeitgeist in an amusing way, which is fun and nostalgic now, but it's still enduringly funny on its own. </li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><i style="text-align: justify;"><b><a href="http://yesterday-tomorrow-and-fantasy.blogspot.ca/2017/08/walts-era-part-16-disneys-peak-1964.html">Mary Poppins</a></b></i><span style="text-align: justify;"> </span><span style="text-align: justify;">- Here is another case of a film that might have gotten an honourable mention before that is now finding its way into the proper top five. </span><span style="text-align: justify;">Seeing it in context and trying to understand why it's a classic has raised its esteem considerably in my eyes. <i>Mary Poppins</i> is well-rounded Disney entertainment in the vein of <i>Snow White</i> all those years before... Perhaps even the last really classic film of Walt`s era.</span></li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><i><b><a href="http://yesterday-tomorrow-and-fantasy.blogspot.ca/2017/10/walts-era-part-18-life-after-walt-1967.html">The Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin</a></b></i> - If I had to pick a runner-up for funniest Disney film, which I guess is exactly what I'm doing now, it would be this hidden gem. Like my choice of <i>Davy Crockett and the River Pirates </i>above, it easily recalls the Frontierland and exemplifies Ward Kimball's loving eye for Victorian aesthetics. It's a feast for the eyes of any costume lover, and delightful comedy echoing the slapstick days of the silent cinema. And no, it isn't lost on me that almost all my picks here have involved a Victorian-Edwardian setting. It's as though <a href="http://voyagesextraordinaires.blogspot.com/">I liked that kind of thing</a>. </li>
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<b>Honourable Mention: </b><span style="text-align: justify;"> </span><i><b><a href="http://yesterday-tomorrow-and-fantasy.blogspot.ca/2016/10/walts-era-part-7-new-disney-emerges.html">The Vanishing Prairie</a></b></i> - I understand now that this isn't the best <i>True-Life Adventure</i> feature film (that would be <i>The African Lion</i>), but this is the one I enjoy the most. That might simply be my own attachment to the region it's about... I am a born and raised prairie boy, after all. Give me land, lots of land, under starry skies above. A home on the range, where the buffalo roam, where the deer and the antelope play. </div>
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<li style="text-align: justify;"><i><b><a href="http://yesterday-tomorrow-and-fantasy.blogspot.ca/2017/01/walts-era-part-10-disneys-lost-years.html">Paul Bunyan</a></b></i> - I didn't wax poetic about it in my original review for <i>Walt's Era</i>. In fact, based on the brevity of that review, one would be excused for thinking I didn't like it. Yet when I pull together the list of shorts that I've seen across this project, I have to acknowledge that I do like it a lot. Now's my time to make up for a lax review! Storywise, <i>Paul Bunyan</i> is in the form of any great Disney fairytale film or tall tale. There are strong echoes of <i>The Legend of Pecos Bill, The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad,</i> and even <i>Davy Crockett: King of the Wild Frontier</i>. Its "cartoon modern" art style is what really sets it apart, however. A familiar sort of story told in a familiar sort of way becomes an act of vivid artistic exploration. </li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><b><i><a href="http://yesterday-tomorrow-and-fantasy.blogspot.ca/2017/02/walts-era-part-11-gala-year-for-disney.html">Grand Canyon</a></i></b> - The Grand Canyon is a place of unparalleled beauty and mystery. Had it not been for certain turns in America's political landscape, we were planning on taking an extended trip there next year or the year after. Ferde Grofé's <i>Grand Canyon Suite</i> is an equally stunning musical reverie capturing that essence. Disney's short feature <i>Grand Canyon</i> melds the two together, for the first time on screen, to tremendous effect. </li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://yesterday-tomorrow-and-fantasy.blogspot.ca/2017/01/walts-era-part-10-disneys-lost-years.html"><b><i>Mars and Beyond</i></b> </a>- Of the three "Man in Space" episodes/shorts, <i>Mars and Beyond</i> is the most feverishly imaginative. Since there was so little known about the Red Planet to work with, Ward Kimball just let his imagination fly with strange alien life forms and an adorable pastiche of pulp Sci-Fi. The Martian warlord is actually one of my favourite, most obscure, Disney characters. </li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><i><b><a href="http://yesterday-tomorrow-and-fantasy.blogspot.ca/2017/07/walts-era-part-15-clear-sailing-through.html">Disneyland After Dark</a></b></i></li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><i><b><a href="http://yesterday-tomorrow-and-fantasy.blogspot.ca/2017/08/walts-era-part-16-disneys-peak-1964.html">The Golden Horseshoe Revue</a></b></i> - <i>Disneyland After Dark</i> and <i>The Golden Horseshoe Revue</i> share billing here because I like them for largely the same reasons, being invaluable documents of Disneyland's past <b>and</b> connections to the real life history that Disneyland was itself trying to nostalgically recapture. Some might argue that, in some senses, these are also documents of Disney's <b>better</b> days. I think it would be hard to say that Disneyland from this period was objectively better (there was yet no Pirates of the Caribbean or Haunted Mansion) but these certainly portray things that Disneyland isn't really into doing anymore that had their own value. These are also great fun to watch, because of the subject matter but also because of the delivery. These aren't as dry a portrait of Disneyland as the <i>People and Places</i> documentary was. They give as much of an experiential feel for how much fun Disneyland must have been, in addition to what it looked like.</li>
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<b>Honourable Mention: <i>True-Life Adventures</i></b> - It's difficult to pick any one of the <i>True-Life Adventure</i> shorts as a best, but it would be an egregious omission to leave them all out. They were such a significant part of Disney's fabric in the Fifties, inspiring two whole lands in Disneyland (Adventureland and Frontierland) as well as inventing the modern wildlife documentary. So, I'm going to include <b>all</b> of them, as an honourable mention!</div>
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<b style="font-size: x-large;">Top Five "Years"</b><br />
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<li style="text-align: justify;"><b><a href="http://yesterday-tomorrow-and-fantasy.blogspot.ca/2016/11/walts-era-part-8-disneys-greatest-year.html">1954-1955</a></b> - I said it during that review and I'll say it again: 1954/55 was the greatest year in Disney company history. It was the year of <i>20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier, The Vanishing Prairie, The African Lion,</i> and <i>The Lady and the Tramp</i> in theatres, <i>Walt Disney's Disneyland</i> and <i>The Mickey Mouse Club</i> on TV, and the year Disneyland opened. For innovation, creative output, and cultural impact, Disney's never matched it. <i> </i></li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><b><a href="http://yesterday-tomorrow-and-fantasy.blogspot.ca/2016/05/walts-era-part-2-fits-and-starts-1940.html">1940-1942</a></b> - It's undoubtedly stretching the concept of "year" even beyond Disney's lose definition of the term to include the three-year span of 1940-42, but this entry in the series is my second favourite. Here was Disney's first "golden age", in the wake of <i>Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs</i>, which included <i>Fantasia, </i><i>Pinocchio, Dumbo, Bambi, </i>and that charming oddball, <i>The Reluctant Dragon</i>. </li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><b><a href="http://yesterday-tomorrow-and-fantasy.blogspot.ca/2016/06/walts-era-part-3-war-years-1942-1946.html">1942-1946</a></b> - Can I stretch credulity even further? Now up to a four-year period, most wouldn't think of the war years as a great time for Disney, caught up in declining markets and declining fortunes. But lemons, lemonade, and so forth. This period saw <i>Saludos Amigos, The Three Caballeros, Make Mine Music</i>, and <i>Song of the South</i>, which makes for a pretty good slate of moving pictures. </li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><b><a href="http://yesterday-tomorrow-and-fantasy.blogspot.ca/2017/02/walts-era-part-11-gala-year-for-disney.html">1959</a></b> - It was a gala year for Disney and, some might argue, Disney's last really good one. Besides the opening of the Submarine Voyage, Monorail, and Matterhorn Bobsleds, this year saw the release of <i>Sleeping Beauty, Darby O'Gill and the Little People, </i>and <i>The Shaggy Dog</i> as feature films (as well as <i>Third Man on the Mountain</i> and <i>Jungle Cat</i>, the last <i>True-Life Adventures</i> feature). It was also a pretty good year for shorts, including <i>Grand Canyon, Donald in Mathmagic Land, Eyes in Outer Space</i>, and two pseudo-<i>True-Life Adventures</i>. </li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><b><a href="http://yesterday-tomorrow-and-fantasy.blogspot.ca/2016/07/walts-era-part-4-post-war-recovery-1947.html">1947-1950</a></b> - This period of post-war recovery is an archetypal entry for a Top Five "Year". The only first tier Disney classic it produced was <i>Cinderella</i>, but consider the consistent entertainment value of the rest: <i>Melody Time, Fun and Fancy Free, So Dear to My Heart, </i>and <i>The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad. </i>The period, taken as a whole, is quite decent. Now taking this list as a whole, it seems that my favourite period in Disney history is an unbroken stretch from 1937 to 1950, exceeded only by the year 1954/55. Yes, yes, I truly am a classic Disney fan. Maybe Disney can brand <b>that</b>. Classic Disney<sup>tm</sup></li>
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<b>Honourable Mention: <a href="http://yesterday-tomorrow-and-fantasy.blogspot.ca/2017/05/walts-era-part-13-disney-in-transition.html">1961</a></b><span style="text-align: justify;"> - In the interests of fairness then, let me pick an outlier as an honourable mention. The early part of 1961 saw the release of <i>One Hundred and One Dalmatians, The Absent-Minded Professor, The Saga of Windwagon Smith</i>, and <i>Donald and the Wheel</i>, all enjoyable films. The latter half had <i>The Parent Trap, Nikki, Wild Dog of the North,</i> and <i>Greyfriars Bobby</i>, which are all decent films as well. The only film that year I didn't particularly care for was <i>Babes in Toyland</i>. </span></div>
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<span style="text-align: justify;">It's not quite over yet. Join us in a few days for what comes after Walt's Era! </span><br />
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Cory Grosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12141983255020503557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8280650245524507557.post-15710454453974857462017-11-01T00:00:00.000-06:002017-11-01T00:00:00.227-06:00Now's the Time we say Goodbye...<span style="text-align: justify;">This has been a hard decision to make, and has been a long time coming, but after four years of adventures in yesterday, tomorrow, and fantasy, it is time to draw this blog to a close.</span><br />
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We've been on a wonderful journey these past four years, and I'm sure there is still plenty to talk about in regards to the true life inspirations behind Disney films and attractions, but for as much as we've loved doing this blog and having a venue to share our own unique approach to Disney fandom, we just don't have the time to devote to producing the best blog we possibly can anymore. Just on the cusp of finishing a grand project of watching all of Walt Disney's films in order, and the way that this blog has often dominated our habits of reading and traveling and writing and otherwise how we spend our time, <i>Yesterday, Tomorrow, and Fantasy</i> is a lot of work. That would be fine if it was an all-consuming passion (and a revenue-earner), but we also try to lead healthy, balanced lives that don't completely revolve around Disney. That's the essence of what this blog has been about: to explore life beyond Disney. Both Ashley and myself hold down multiple jobs and volunteer for a variety of organizations, as well as carry on interests outside of the Disneysphere. And honestly, after watching <b>all</b> the Disney movies, what else is there really to do?!<br />
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I also wish I could say that the current direction of the Disney company wasn't negatively influencing this decision, but it is. We still love the things we have loved about Disney - the films we've loved, the attractions we've loved, the interest in the company's history, the warm place it's held in our own lives as where we were engaged and honeymooned - but we also recognize that Disney is very much intent on pushing non-Disney IP on us and demolishing or vandalizing everything we actually did love about the parks. Each new development feels like a validation of not centring our lives around Disney, and clearing room for the hours-long line-ups of fans with less discriminating tastes in IP and theme park design. </div>
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Since we still love the things about Disney that we have loved, I may still want to write about them now and then. From now on, you'll find anything I have to say over on my other blog, <i><a href="http://voyagesextraordinaires.blogspot.ca/">Voyages Extraordinaires: Scientific Romances in a Bygone Age</a></i>. In fact, this very day I posted an article about <i>The Island at the Top of the World</i> and Tony Baxter's ill-fated Discovery Bay. The circle for <i>Yesterday, Tomorrow, and Fantasy</i> is coming around... It started more or less as an offshoot of my other blog, where I could write about Disney stuff freely instead of straining connections to Victorian Science Fiction. Now we're streamlining operations again.<br />
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Since <i>Walt's Era</i> isn't quite over yet, November will feature the final chapter, as well as a couple follow-ups on our regular schedule. Our final post will be on November 29th, with a final inspirational word about what we hoped to accomplish with <i>Yesterday, Tomorrow, and Fantasy</i>. And with that...</div>
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M-I-C<br />
See ya' real soon!<br />
K-E-Y<br />
Why? Because we like you!<br />
M-O-U-S-E</div>
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Cory Grosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12141983255020503557noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8280650245524507557.post-80526790448706168862017-10-18T00:00:00.000-06:002017-10-18T00:00:04.337-06:00Ghost Stories from the Plantation<div class="tr_bq">
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The placement of the Haunted Mansion in New Orleans Square is a bit of a mystery in itself. The fundamental reason was simply space: there was room to build it in that far, relatively unused corner of Frontierland. Original plans for a haunted attraction were for the end of one of Main Street's side boulevards, but that never came to fruition. In New Orleans Square, the Haunted Mansion feels both entirely appropriate but oddly groundless. Everyone well knows the historic connections of New Orleans with haunted, supernatural stories. The Crescent City is heralded as America's most haunted municipality, and there is a long tradition of voodoo, spooky bayous, and the dead unquiet amidst Lafayette's atmospheric tombs. Yet at the same time, one is vexed to come up with a single example of any specific tale of terror taking place there (at least predating Anne Rice). </div>
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As a public service, I dug deep to pull a few chilling stories from the American South. Uncle Remus, Mark Twain, and others have their brushes with the supernatural that are perfect to dwell on as Halloween draws near.</div>
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<a name='more'></a>The following excerpt comes from chapter XXXI of Joel Chandler Harris' <i>Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings</i>, titled "The Plantation Witch":<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The next time the little boy got permission to call upon Uncle Remus, the old man was sitting in his door, with his elbows on his knees and his face buried in his hands, and he appeared to be in great trouble. “What’s the matter, Uncle Remus?” the youngster asked. “Nuff de matter, honey—mo’ dan dey’s enny kyo’ fer. Ef dey ain’t some quare gwines on ’roun’ dis place I ain’t name Remus.”</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The serious tone of the old man caused the little boy to open his eyes. The moon, just at its full, cast long, vague, wavering shadows in front of the cabin. A colony of tree-frogs somewhere in the distance were treating their neighbors to a serenade, but to the little boy it sounded like a chorus of lost and long-forgotten whistlers. The sound was wherever the imagination chose to locate it—to the right, to the left, in the air, on the ground, far away or near at hand, but always dim and always indistinct. Something in Uncle Remus’s tone exactly fitted all these surroundings, and the child nestled closer to the old man.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Yasser,” continued Uncle Remus, with an ominous sigh and mysterious shake of the head, “ef dey ain’t some quare gwines on in dish yer naberhood, den I’m de ball-headest creetur ’twix’ dis en nex’ Jinawerry wuz a year ’go, w’ich I knows I ain’t. Dat’s what.”</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“What is it, Uncle Remus?”</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“I know Mars John bin drivin’ Cholly sorter hard ter-day, en I say ter myse’f dat I’d drap ’round ’bout dus’ en fling nudder year er corn in de troff en kinder gin ’im a techin’ up wid de kurrier-koam; en bless grashus! I ain’t bin in de lot mo’n a minnit ’fo’ I seed sump’n wuz wrong wid de hoss, and sho’ nuff dar wuz his mane full er witch-stirrups.”</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Full of what, Uncle Remus?”</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Full er witch-stirrups, honey. Ain’t you seed no witch-stirrups? Well, w’en you see two stran’ er ha’r tied tergedder in a hoss’s mane, dar you see a witch-stirrup, en, mo’n dat, dat hoss done bin rid by um.”</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Do you reckon they have been riding Charley?” inquired the little boy.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Co’se, honey. Tooby sho dey is. W’at else dey bin doin’?”</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Did you ever see a witch, Uncle Remus?”</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Dat ain’t needer yer ner dar. W’en I see coon track in de branch, I know de coon bin ’long dar.”</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The argument seemed unanswerable, and the little boy asked, in a confidential tone:<br />
“Uncle Remus, what are witches like?” </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Dey comes diffunt,” responded the cautious old darkey. “Dey comes en dey cunjus fokes. Squinch-owl holler eve’y time he see a witch, en w’en you hear de dog howlin’ in de middle er de night, one un um’s mighty ap’ ter be prowlin’ ’roun’. Cunjun fokes kin tell a witch de minnit dey lays der eyes on it, but dem w’at ain’t cunjun, hit’s mighty hard ter tell w’en dey see one, kaze dey might come in de ’pearunce un a cow en all kinder creeturs. I ain’t bin useter no cunjun myse’f, but I bin livin’ long nuff fer ter know w’en you meets up wid a big black cat in de middle er de road, wid yaller eyeballs, dar’s yo’ witch fresh fum de Ole Boy. En, fuddermo’, I know dat ’tain’t proned inter no dogs fer ter ketch de rabbit w’at use in a berryin’-groun’. Dey er de mos’ ongodlies’ creeturs w’at you ever laid eyes on,” continued Uncle Remus, with unction. “Down dar in Putmon County yo’ Unk Jeems, he make like he gwineter ketch wunner dem dar graveyard rabbits. Sho nuff, out he goes, en de dogs ain’t no mo’n got ter de place fo’ up jump de old rabbit right ’mong um, en atter runnin’ ’roun’ a time or two, she skip right up ter Mars Jeems, en Mars Jeems, he des put de gun-bar’l right on ’er en lammed aloose. Hit tored up de groun’ all ’roun’, en de dogs, dey rush up, but dey wa’n’t no rabbit dar; but bimeby Mars Jeems, he seed de dogs tuckin’ der tails ’tween der legs, en he look up, en dar wuz de rabbit caperin’ ’roun’ on a toom stone, en wid dat Mars Jeems say he sorter feel like de time done come w’en yo’ gran’ma was ’specktin’ un him home, en he call off de dogs en put out. But dem wuz ha’nts. Witches is deze yer kinder fokes w’at kin drap der body en change inter a cat en a wolf en all kinder creeturs.” </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Papa says there ain’t any witches,” the little boy interrupted. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Mars John ain’t live long ez I is,” said Uncle Remus, by way of comment. “He ain’t bin broozin’ roun’ all hours er de night en day. I know’d a nigger w’ich his brer wuz a witch, kaze he up’n tole me how he tuck’n kyo’d ’im; en he kyo’d ’im good, mon.” </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“How was that?” inquired the little boy. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Hit seem like,” continued Uncle Remus, “dat witch fokes is got a slit in de back er de neck, en w’en dey wanter change derse’f, dey des pull de hide over der head same ez if ’twuz a shut, en dar dey is.” </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Do they get out of their skins?” asked the little boy, in an awed tone. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Tooby sho, honey. You see yo’ pa pull his shut off? Well, dat des ’zackly de way dey duz. But dish yere nigger w’at I’m tellin’ you ’bout, he kyo’d his brer de ve’y fus pass he made at him. Hit got so dat fokes in de settlement didn’t have no peace. De chilluns ’ud wake up in de mawnins wid der ha’r tangle up, en wid scratches on um like dey bin thoo a brier-patch, twel bimeby one day de nigger he ’low dat he’d set up dat night en keep one eye on his brer; en sho’ nuff dat night, des ez de chickens wuz crowin’ fer twelve, up jump de brer and pull off his skin en sail out’n de house in de shape un a bat, en w’at duz de nigger do but grab up de hide, and turn it wrong-sudout’ards en sprinkle it wid salt. Den he lay down en watch fer ter see w’at de news wuz gwineter be. Des ’fo’ day yer come a big black cat in de do’, en de nigger git up, he did, en druv her away. Bimeby, yer come a big black dog snuffin’ roun’, en de nigger up wid a chunk en lammed ’im side er de head. Den a squinch-owl lit on de koam er de house, en de nigger jam de shovel in de fier en make ’im flew away. Las’, yer come a great big black wolf wid his eyes shinin’ like fier coals, en he grab de hide and rush out. ’Twa’n’t long ’fo’ de nigger year his brer holler’n en squallin’, en he tuck a light, he did, en went out, en dar wuz his brer des a waller’n on de groun’ en squirmin’ ’roun’, kaze de salt on de skin wuz stingin’ wuss’n ef he had his britches lineded wid yallerjackets. By nex’ mawnin’ he got so he could sorter shuffle long, but he gun up cunjun, en ef dere wuz enny mo’ witches in dat settlement dey kep’ mighty close, en dat nigger he ain’t skunt hisse’f no mo’ not endurin’ er my ’membunce.” </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The result of this was that Uncle Remus had to take the little boy by the hand and go with him to the “big house,” which the old man was not loath to do; and, when the child went to bed, he lay awake a long time expecting an unseemly visitation from some mysterious source. It soothed him, however, to hear the strong, musical voice of his sable patron, not very far away, tenderly contending with a lusty tune; and to this accompaniment the little boy dropped asleep:<br />
<br />
“Hit’s eighteen hunder’d, forty-en-eight,<br />
Christ done made dat crooked way straight—<br />
En I don’t wanter stay here no longer;<br />
Hit’s eighteen hunder’d, forty-en-nine,<br />
Christ done turn dat water inter wine—<br />
En I don’t wanter stay here no longer.”</blockquote>
<br />
Riverboatmen had their own ghost stories as well, of steamboats that never find their dock and crews that never find respite. This excerpt comes from chapter 17, of Mark Twain's <i>Life on the Mississippi</i>, amidst a discussion of river cut-offs and oxbow lake formation:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The old Raccourci cut-off reduced the river's length twenty-eight miles. There used to be a tradition connected with it. It was said that a boat came along there in the night and went around the enormous elbow the usual way, the pilots not knowing that the cut-off had been made. It was a grisly, hideous night, and all shapes were vague and distorted. The old bend had already begun to fill up, and the boat got to running away from mysterious reefs, and occasionally hitting one. The perplexed pilots fell to swearing, and finally uttered the entirely unnecessary wish that they might never get out of that place. As always happens in such cases, that particular prayer was answered, and the others neglected. So to this day that phantom steamer is still butting around in that deserted river, trying to find her way out. More than one grave watchman has sworn to me that on drizzly, dismal nights, he has glanced fearfully down that forgotten river as he passed the head of the island, and seen the faint glow of the specter steamer's lights drifting through the distant gloom, and heard the muffled cough of her 'scape-pipes and the plaintive cry of her leadsmen.</blockquote>
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A 1922 article in the <i>Sun Herald</i> newspaper of Biloxi, Mississippi recounted the harrowing story of fishermen's encounter with a spirit on Deer Island:<br />
<blockquote>
The fishermen made a camp fire on the sand and were making coffee and getting other 'eats' ready, when suddenly the palmetto bushes began to create much noise despite the stillness of the night. Thinking it was wild hogs the fishermen paid no attention to the bushes, later they glared around and beheld a skeleton standing erect, but without the skull. </blockquote>
<blockquote>
The fishermen, completely surprised, managed to move back some feet but the headless ghost began to follow, and the men stampeded to their boat. They reached their boat, shoved it off the island and made off to the sea leaving all their equipment on the island. </blockquote>
<blockquote>
The next morning they returned to the island and secured their cooking utensils. It was also said that later money was found near the spot.</blockquote>
And who was this apparition?<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Years before the two fisherman saw the headless ghost, a pirate ship landed inside Bay of Biloxi near Deer Island to bury stolen loot and refit for another expedition. The pirate leader with his men landed on the shores of Deer Island to bury the treasure. After the treasure was hidden, the chief exclaimed: </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
'Who wants to guard this treasure?' An inexperienced pirate, not realizing the great mistake, said, 'Me guard the treasure.' </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Just as the last word died away one of the chief lieutenants swung his cutlass and cut the man's head off. Throwing his headless body into the palmettos the pirate gang left the island for the ship. Thus did the headless skeleton appear in later years to protect the buried treasure whenever it seemed in danger.</blockquote>
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Read more here: http://www.sunherald.com/living/article39639327.html#storylink=cpy</div>
Our next excerpt is of a ruinous old plantation house near New Orleans, and comes by way of George Washington Cable's <i>Old Creole Days</i>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
In the first decade of the present century, when the newly established American Government was the most hateful thing in Louisiana—when the Creoles were still kicking at such vile innovations as the trial by jury, American dances, anti-smuggling laws, and the printing of the Governor's proclamation in English—when the Anglo-American flood that was presently to burst in a crevasse of immigration upon the delta had thus far been felt only as slippery seepage which made the Creole tremble for his footing—there stood, a short distance above what is now Canal Street, and considerably back from the line of villas which fringed the river-bank on Tchoupitoulas Road, an old colonial plantation-house half in ruin. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
It stood aloof from civilization, the tracts that had once been its indigo fields given over to their first noxious wildness, and grown up into one of the horridest marshes within a circuit of fifty miles. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The house was of heavy cypress, lifted up on pillars, grim, solid, and spiritless, its massive build a strong reminder of days still earlier, when every man had been his own peace officer and the insurrection of the blacks a daily contingency. Its dark, weatherbeaten roof and sides were hoisted up above the jungly plain in a distracted way, like a gigantic ammunition-wagon stuck in the mud and abandoned by some retreating army. Around it was a dense growth of low water willows, with half a hundred sorts of thorny or fetid bushes, savage strangers alike to the "language of flowers" and to the botanist's Greek. They were hung with countless strands of discolored and prickly smilax, and the impassable mud below bristled with chevaux de frise of the dwarf palmetto. Two lone forest-trees, dead cypresses, stood in the centre of the marsh, dotted with roosting vultures. The shallow strips of water were hid by myriads of aquatic plants, under whose coarse and spiritless flowers, could one have seen it, was a harbor of reptiles, great and small, to make one shudder to the end of his days. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The house was on a slightly raised spot, the levee of a draining canal. The waters of this canal did not run; they crawled, and were full of big, ravening fish and alligators, that held it against all comers. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Such was the home of old Jean Marie Poquelin, once an opulent indigo planter, standing high in the esteem of his small, proud circle of exclusively male acquaintances in the old city; now a hermit, alike shunned by and shunning all who had ever known him. "The last of his line," said the gossips. His father lies under the floor of the St. Louis Cathedral, with the wife of his youth on one side, and the wife of his old age on the other. Old Jean visits the spot daily. His half-brother—alas! there was a mystery; no one knew what had become of the gentle, young half brother, more than thirty years his junior, whom once he seemed so fondly to love, but who, seven years ago, had disappeared suddenly, once for all, and left no clew of his fate. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
They had seemed to live so happily in each other's love. No father, mother, wife to either, no kindred upon earth. The elder a bold, frank, impetuous, chivalric adventurer; the younger a gentle, studious, book-loving recluse; they lived upon the ancestral estate like mated birds, one always on the wing, the other always in the nest. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
There was no trait in Jean Marie Poquelin, said the old gossips, for which he was so well known among his few friends as his apparent fondness for his "little brother." "Jacques said this," and "Jacques said that;" he "would leave this or that, or any thing to Jacques," for "Jacques was a scholar," and "Jacques was good," or "wise," or "just," or "far-sighted," as the nature of the case required; and "he should ask Jacques as soon as he got home," since Jacques was never elsewhere to be seen. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
It was between the roving character of the one brother, and the bookishness of the other, that the estate fell into decay. Jean Marie, generous gentleman, gambled the slaves away one by one, until none was left, man or woman, but one old African mute. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The indigo-fields and vats of Louisiana had been generally abandoned as unremunerative. Certain enterprising men had substituted the culture of sugar; but while the recluse was too apathetic to take so active a course, the other saw larger, and, at time, equally respectable profits, first in smuggling, and later in the African slave-trade. What harm could he see in it? The whole people said it was vitally necessary, and to minister to a vital public necessity,—good enough, certainly, and so he laid up many a doubloon, that made him none the worse in the public regard. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
One day old Jean Marie was about to start upon a voyage that was to be longer, much longer, than any that he had yet made. Jacques had begged him hard for many days not to go, but he laughed him off, and finally said, kissing him: </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Adieu, 'tit frère." </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"No," said Jacques, "I shall go with you." </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
They left the old hulk of a house in the sole care of the African mute, and went away to the Guinea coast together. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Two years after, old Poquelin came home without his vessel. He must have arrived at his house by night. No one saw him come. No one saw "his little brother;" rumor whispered that he, too, had returned, but he had never been seen again. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
A dark suspicion fell upon the old slave-trader. No matter that the few kept the many reminded of the tenderness that had ever marked his bearing to the missing man. The many shook their heads. "You know he has a quick and fearful temper;" and "why does he cover his loss with mystery?" "Grief would out with the truth." </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"But," said the charitable few, "look in his face; see that expression of true humanity." The many did look in his face, and, as he looked in theirs, he read the silent question: "Where is thy brother Abel?" The few were silenced, his former friends died off, and the name of Jean Marie Poquelin became a symbol of witchery, devilish crime, and hideous nursery fictions. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The man and his house were alike shunned. The snipe and duck hunters forsook the marsh, and the wood-cutters abandoned the canal. Sometimes the hardier boys who ventured out there snake-shooting heard a slow thumping of oar-locks on the canal. They would look at each other for a moment half in consternation, half in glee, then rush from their sport in wanton haste to assail with their gibes the unoffending, withered old man who, in rusty attire, sat in the stern of a skiff, rowed homeward by his white-headed African mute. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"O Jean-ah Poquelin! O Jean-ah! Jean-ah Poquelin!" </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
It was not necessary to utter more than that. No hint of wickedness, deformity, or any physical or moral demerit; merely the name and tone of mockery: "Oh, Jean-ah Poquelin!" and while they tumbled one over another in their needless haste to fly, he would rise carefully from his seat, while the aged mute, with downcast face, went on rowing, and rolling up his brown fist and extending it toward the urchins, would pour forth such an unholy broadside of French imprecation and invective as would all but craze them with delight. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Among both blacks and whites the house was the object of a thousand superstitions. Every midnight they affirmed, the feu follet came out of the marsh and ran in and out of the rooms, flashing from window to window. The story of some lads, whose words in ordinary statements were worthless, was generally credited, that the night they camped in the woods, rather than pass the place after dark, they saw, about sunset, every window blood-red, and on each of the four chimneys an owl sitting, which turned his head three times round, and moaned and laughed with a human voice. There was a bottomless well, everybody professed to know, beneath the sill of the big front door under the rotten veranda; whoever set his foot upon that threshold disappeared forever in the depth below. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
What wonder the marsh grew as wild as Africa! Take all the Faubourg Ste. Marie, and half the ancient city, you would not find one graceless dare-devil reckless enough to pass within a hundred yards of the house after nightfall...</blockquote>
<blockquote>
To the Creoles—to the incoming lower class of superstitious Germans, Irish, Sicilians, and others—he became an omen and embodiment of public and private ill-fortune. Upon him all the vagaries of their superstitions gathered and grew. If a house caught fire, it was imputed to his machinations. Did a woman go off in a fit, he had bewitched her. Did a child stray off for an hour, the mother shivered with the apprehension that Jean Poquelin had offered him to strange gods. The house was the subject of every bad boy's invention who loved to contrive ghostly lies. "As long as that house stands we shall have bad luck. Do you not see our pease and beans dying, our cabbages and lettuce going to seed and our gardens turning to dust, while every day you can see it raining in the woods? The rain will never pass old Poquelin's house. He keeps a fetich. He has conjured the whole Faubourg St. Marie. And why, the old wretch? Simply because our playful and innocent children call after him as he passes." </blockquote>
A civic improvement board desired to purchase Poquelin's property, but found an audience with the old man difficult to come by. The board secretary, named "Little White" decided to pay a call under cover of darkness:<br />
<blockquote>
The next day, a little after nightfall, one might have descried this little man slipping along the rear fence of the Poquelin place, preparatory to vaulting over into the rank, grass-grown yard, and bearing himself altogether more after the manner of a collector of rare chickens than according to the usage of secretaries. </blockquote>
<blockquote>
The picture presented to his eye was not calculated to enliven his mind. The old mansion stood out against the western sky, black and silent. One long, lurid pencil-stroke along a sky of slate was all that was left of daylight. No sign of life was apparent; no light at any window, unless it might have been on the side of the house hidden from view. No owls were on the chimneys, no dogs were in the yard. </blockquote>
<blockquote>
He entered the place, and ventured up behind a small cabin which stood apart from the house. Through one of its many crannies he easily detected the African mute crouched before a flickering pine-knot, his head on his knees, fast asleep. </blockquote>
<blockquote>
He concluded to enter the mansion, and, with that view, stood and scanned it. The broad rear steps of the veranda would not serve him; he might meet some one midway. He was measuring, with his eye, the proportions of one of the pillars which supported it, and estimating the practicability of climbing it, when he heard a footstep. Some one dragged a chair out toward the railing, then seemed to change his mind and began to pace the veranda, his footfalls resounding on the dry boards with singular loudness. Little White drew a step backward, got the figure between himself and the sky, and at once recognized the short, broad-shouldered form of old Jean Poquelin. </blockquote>
<blockquote>
He sat down upon a billet of wood, and, to escape the stings of a whining cloud of mosquitoes, shrouded his face and neck in his handkerchief, leaving his eyes uncovered.<br />
He had sat there but a moment when he noticed a strange, sickening odor, faint, as if coming from a distance, but loathsome and horrid. </blockquote>
<blockquote>
Whence could it come? Not from the cabin; not from the marsh, for it was as dry as powder. It was not in the air; it seemed to come from the ground. </blockquote>
<blockquote>
Rising up, he noticed, for the first time, a few steps before him a narrow footpath leading toward the house. He glanced down it—ha! right there was some one coming—ghostly white! </blockquote>
<blockquote>
Quick as thought, and as noiselessly, he lay down at full length against the cabin. It was bold strategy, and yet, there was no denying it, little White felt that he was frightened. "It is not a ghost," he said to himself. "I know it cannot be a ghost;" but the perspiration burst out at every pore, and the air seemed to thicken with heat. "It is a living man," he said in his thoughts. "I hear his footstep, and I hear old Poquelin's footsteps, too, separately, over on the veranda. I am not discovered; the thing has passed; there is that odor again; what a smell of death! Is it coming back? Yes. It stops at the door of the cabin. Is it peering in at the sleeping mute? It moves away. It is in the path again. Now it is gone." He shuddered. "Now, if I dare venture, the mystery is solved." He rose cautiously, close against the cabin, and peered along the path. </blockquote>
<blockquote>
The figure of a man, a presence if not a body—but whether clad in some white stuff or naked the darkness would not allow him to determine—had turned, and now, with a seeming painful gait, moved slowly from him. "Great Heaven! can it be that the dead do walk?" He withdrew again the hands which had gone to his eyes. The dreadful object passed between two pillars and under the house. He listened. There was a faint sound as of feet upon a staircase; then all was still except the measured tread of Jean Poquelin walking on the veranda, and the heavy respirations of the mute slumbering in the cabin. </blockquote>
<blockquote>
The little Secretary was about to retreat; but as he looked once more toward the haunted house a dim light appeared in the crack of a closed window, and presently old Jean Poquelin came, dragging his chair, and sat down close against the shining cranny. He spoke in a low, tender tone in the French tongue, making some inquiry. An answer came from within. Was it the voice of a human? So unnatural was it—so hollow, so discordant, so unearthly—that the stealthy listener shuddered again from head to foot, and when something stirred in some bushes near by—though it may have been nothing more than a rat—and came scuttling through the grass, the little Secretary actually turned and fled. As he left the enclosure he moved with bolder leisure through the bushes; yet now and then he spoke aloud: "Oh, oh! I see, I understand!" and shut his eyes in his hands.</blockquote>
Eventualy a mob forms to dispense with old Poquelin, but are met with a ghastly and shameful surprise:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Swiftly they pass out from among the houses, away from the dim oil lamps of the street, out into the broad starlit commons, and enter the willowy jungles of the haunted ground. Some hearts fail and their owners lag behind and turn back, suddenly remembering how near morning it is. But the most part push on, tearing the air with their clamor. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Down ahead of them in the long, thicket-darkened way there is—singularly enough—a faint, dancing light. It must be very near the old house; it is. It has stopped now. It is a lantern, and is under a well-known sapling which has grown up on the wayside since the canal was filled. Now it swings mysteriously to and fro. A goodly number of the more ghost-fearing give up the sport; but a full hundred move forward at a run, doubling their devilish howling and banging. </blockquote>
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Yes; it is a lantern, and there are two persons under the tree. The crowd draws near—drops into a walk; one of the two is the old African mute; he lifts the lantern up so that it shines on the other; the crowd recoils; there is a hush of all clangor, and all at once, with a cry of mingled fright and horror from every throat, the whole throng rushes back, dropping every thing, sweeping past little White and hurrying on, never stopping until the jungle is left behind, and then to find that not one in ten has seen the cause of the stampede, and not one of the tenth is certain what it was. </blockquote>
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There is one huge fellow among them who looks capable of any villany. He finds something to mount on, and, in the Creole patois, calls a general halt. Bienvenu sinks down, and, vainly trying to recline gracefully, resigns the leadership. The herd gather round the speaker; he assures them that they have been outraged. Their right peaceably to traverse the public streets has been trampled upon. Shall such encroachments be endured? It is now daybreak. Let them go now by the open light of day and force a free passage of the public highway! </blockquote>
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A scattering consent was the response, and the crowd, thinned now and drowsy, straggled quietly down toward the old house. Some drifted ahead, others sauntered behind, but every one, as he again neared the tree, came to a stand-still. Little White sat upon a bank of turf on the opposite side of the way looking very stern and sad. To each new-comer he put the same question: </blockquote>
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"Did you come here to go to old Poquelin's?" </blockquote>
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"Yes." </blockquote>
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"He's dead." And if the shocked hearer started away he would say: "Don't go away." </blockquote>
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"Why not?" </blockquote>
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"I want you to go to the funeral presently." </blockquote>
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If some Louisianian, too loyal to dear France or Spain to understand English, looked bewildered, some one would interpret for him; and presently they went. Little White led the van, the crowd trooping after him down the middle of the way. The gate, that had never been seen before unchained, was open. Stern little White stopped a short distance from it; the rabble stopped behind him. Something was moving out from under the veranda. The many whisperers stretched upward to see. The African mute came very slowly toward the gate, leading by a cord in the nose a small brown bull, which was harnessed to a rude cart. On the flat body of the cart, under a black cloth, were seen the outlines of a long box. </blockquote>
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"Hats off, gentlemen," said little White, as the box came in view, and the crowd silently uncovered. </blockquote>
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"Gentlemen," said little White, "here come the last remains of Jean Marie Poquelin, a better man, I'm afraid, with all his sins,—yes a better—a kinder man to his blood—a man of more self-forgetful goodness—than all of you put together will ever dare to be." </blockquote>
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There was a profound hush as the vehicle came creaking through the gate; but when it turned away from them toward the forest, those in front started suddenly. There was a backward rush, then all stood still again staring one way; for there, behind the bier, with eyes cast down and labored step, walked the living remains—all that was left—of little Jacques Poquelin, the long-hidden brother—a leper, as white as snow. </blockquote>
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Dumb with horror, the cringing crowd gazed upon the walking death. They watched, in silent awe, the slow cortége creep down the long, straight road and lessen on the view, until by and by it stopped where a wild, unfrequented path branched off into the undergrowth toward the rear of the ancient city. </blockquote>
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"They are going to the <i>Terre aux Lépreux</i>," said one in the crowd. The rest watched them in silence. </blockquote>
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The little bull was set free; the mute, with the strength of an ape, lifted the long box to his shoulder. For a moment more the mute and the leper stood in sight, while the former adjusted his heavy burden; then, without one backward glance upon the unkind human world, turning their faces toward the ridge in the depths of the swamp known as the Leper's Land, they stepped into the jungle, disappeared, and were never seen again. </blockquote>
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Read more here: http://www.sunherald.com/living/article39639327.html#storylink=cpy</div>
Cory Grosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12141983255020503557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8280650245524507557.post-27107431233655792622017-10-14T00:00:00.000-06:002017-10-14T00:00:00.157-06:00Walt's Era - Part 18: Life After Walt (1967)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfJzdVvQ28QMfWdbbMLbIDbvhN38_Z1z6u4npwOKrTDqgu8RpMa3FP5BdIlJB7QGy5SlTbQKDFKfnuXReU8EY5p1FkfsTTuzZNIzsukfhU4L6U05FAcDLNDYJZFxlRAg6C8XndAi_6a38/s1600/wlatseralogo1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfJzdVvQ28QMfWdbbMLbIDbvhN38_Z1z6u4npwOKrTDqgu8RpMa3FP5BdIlJB7QGy5SlTbQKDFKfnuXReU8EY5p1FkfsTTuzZNIzsukfhU4L6U05FAcDLNDYJZFxlRAg6C8XndAi_6a38/s320/wlatseralogo1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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The Disney company did not close down shop with the death of Walt Disney. On the contrary, the period after his death was a general period of expansion for the company, particularly concerning its Florida resort.</div>
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Walt Disney World opened on October 1, 1971 with the Magic Kingdom, Contemporary and Polynesian Village Resorts, and Fort Wilderness campground, and steadily added to it throughout the following decade, culminating in EPCOT Center in 1982. A year later, Disney's first international resort, Tokyo Disneyland opened. Ironically, Walt's brother Roy, who took charge and saw the WDW project through in honour of Walt, himself died only a few months after the opening of the "Vacation Kingdom." Under the leadership of Card Walker and Ron Miller, Walt's son-in-law, Disney expanded into new fields of film (including the adult-oriented Touchstone Pictures label) and new types (including such innovative films as <i>Tron</i> and <i>Pete's Dragon</i>). <i>Wonderful World of Color</i> was rechristened to the now more-familiar <i>Wonderful World of Disney</i> in 1968 and The Disney Channel began broadcasting in 1983. For those not willing to wait for television's schedule, Disney released its first videocassettes in 1980. In 1967 alone, less than a year after Walt's passing, both Pirates of the Caribbean and the new Tomorrowland debuted, the latter including Adventure Thru Inner Space, Carousel of Progress, and the PeopleMover. </div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYk89opz_KQ0udFzyVNS9ahQkcFM7msNNPv_rJqp9LMmRlcHshbPlnwadcUI5wK4G8Anws2uMC96Koy0hbmcYpTraJNGd9U44RqnFKKRbTLJXsdPF5wIWsye-2RqDmWoZtni-uGO4XPMw/s1600/wdwopening.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYk89opz_KQ0udFzyVNS9ahQkcFM7msNNPv_rJqp9LMmRlcHshbPlnwadcUI5wK4G8Anws2uMC96Koy0hbmcYpTraJNGd9U44RqnFKKRbTLJXsdPF5wIWsye-2RqDmWoZtni-uGO4XPMw/s400/wdwopening.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px;">Nice jumpsuits. Walt Disney World opens October 1, 1971. Photo: Disney.</td></tr>
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Unfortunately, this experimentation did not regularly pay out box office dividends. Disney's films typically underperformed and during this time, up to 70% of the company's revenue came from the two theme park resorts, Disneyland and Walt Disney World. By 1984, the majority of Disney's theatrical releases were reissues of their classics. 1969 alone saw the re-releases of <span style="text-align: start;"> </span><span style="text-align: start;"><i>Darby O'Gill and the Little People, One Hundred and One Dalmatians, Bambi, Peter Pan, The Incredible Journey, Fantasia</i>, and </span><span style="text-align: start;"><i>Swiss Family Robinson</i>. The Robinsons would find themselves back in theatres in 1972, 1975, and 1981, hardly letting grass grow under their feet. In 1979, Don Bluth lead a mass exodus of animators, practically destroying the department. Unbelievably, the only film to be released under the Disney brand in 1984 was Tim Burton's <i>Frankenweenie</i>, the short that got him fired from the company. </span>This underperformance led to fractured board of directors, a takeover bid by Saul Steinberg, followed by the ousting of Miller and introduction of Michael Eisner.</div>
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What could account for it? For one, there had been diminishing returns in the years preceding Walt's death. The public became less entranced with Disney from the financial loss of 1959-1960 onward, and it's difficult to say that the company wasn't mainly peddling in mediocrity from 1964. The quality of Disney's films into the Seventies was largely consistent with the Sixties, though without the same highlights.<br />
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The blame isn't directly on Roy Disney, Walker, Miller, or the Disney company <i>per se</i>. That consistency might have put them at an even keel had society not changed around them. After the Golden Age of global peace promised by Walt in the Fifties, America's youth now found themselves bitterly divided on the question of Vietnam. The Space Race was won by America on July 20, 1969, and promptly forgotten. The new frontier was not outer space or inner space or liquid space, but a broadening idea of justice at home. The Civil Rights and Black Power movements, American Indian Movement and emergence of Native Americans as a political voice, Second Wave Feminism, the Sexual Revolution and Summer of Love, Woodstock, Stonewall, the anti-war movement, Vatican II, <span style="text-align: start;">post-colonialism, the decline of the British Empire, and the British economic depression that fermented the Punk movement, all transformed Western society irrevocably, let alone the United States. On August 6, 1970, the Yippies took over Disneyland in vain defiance of squaredom. </span><span style="text-align: start;">President Jimmy Carter even took to the airwaves in 1979 to </span><a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/primary-resources/carter-crisis/" style="text-align: start;" target="_blank">chastise Americans for their sense of pessimism and malaise</a><span style="text-align: start;">. This spirit entered into film, perhaps no better exemplified than in the indulgent motion pictures of Stanley Kubrick. Dour spectacles of barbarism and hopelessness like </span><i style="text-align: start;">2001: A Space Odyssey</i><span style="text-align: start;"> and </span><i style="text-align: start;">A Clockwork Orange</i><span style="text-align: start;"> left Disney's productions looking beyond quaint. </span><br />
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<a name='more'></a><b><i><span style="font-size: large;">Monkeys, Go Home!</span></i></b><br />
<b>February 8, 1967</b><br />
<b>101 minutes</b><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIm40yvQf3jhbwcNS36E8U2RAEU6t7_BNLLZVYjlj3yNwVrAWFT-iuemg2z9ogCKAgrBiTcTZ-qX-YGIG3IOWYrE-_e9TC6mW-9axR32dGq2bkf6lu_hT4MF2ikCtQA67EiCKHj9jp_XU/s1600/Monkeys%252C_Go_Home%2521_poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="453" data-original-width="300" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIm40yvQf3jhbwcNS36E8U2RAEU6t7_BNLLZVYjlj3yNwVrAWFT-iuemg2z9ogCKAgrBiTcTZ-qX-YGIG3IOWYrE-_e9TC6mW-9axR32dGq2bkf6lu_hT4MF2ikCtQA67EiCKHj9jp_XU/s320/Monkeys%252C_Go_Home%2521_poster.jpg" width="211" /></a></div>
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Dean Jones does another good job as the comic straight man, Yvette Mimieux is cute as a button, and Maurice Chevalier is his usual jocular self, but this first feature film released after Walt Disney's passing is... well... It's a movie that happened. Maybe if they condensed the good material down to 70 or 80 minutes it would have been better. Which is not to say it's <b>bad</b>, it just never works up enough of a head of steam to be good either. A fair bit of it is built around the idea of chimpanzees being funny doing chimp things, but that entire concept has moderate appeal at the best of times and the chimps didn't really do anything that funny here. Another large part of the film is Mimieux and Jones' characters talking past each other, and her undermining him, rather than talking <b>too </b>each other. As we established with <i>The Ugly Dachshund</i>, that doesn't play very well with me. Overall, <i>Monkeys, Go Home!</i> is as one would expect from the company from 1965 onward. </div>
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<b><br /></b><b><i><span style="font-size: large;">The Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin</span></i></b><br />
<b>March 8, 1967</b><br />
<b>108 minutes</b><br />
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Well <b>that</b> was unexpected! <i>The Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin</i> was as delightful as any of the great Disney films of the Fifties, and then some. This California Gold Rush misadventure captures as much of the tone of a Mack Sennett silent comedy as it does a Fess Parker Western, with a relatively star-studded cast that is on point. We genuinely weren't anticipating to encounter a film this genuinely entertaining this late into <i>Walt's Era</i>, and we were exceedingly glad for it. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIQ7PPS4i9p0glKOG5pRjWtYfKZKp7i-PzztteyXIqGQeikTPa5JhwLvmxvtWnOvJznkM1XHMrQOZaNPaSn7MQtXxlN1JSdyqRXWPuqeZIghp6I28ejdhZFeN2yeMb1ROCSaMNtNbW6D8/s1600/The_Adventures_of_Bullwhip_Griffin_Poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="784" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIQ7PPS4i9p0glKOG5pRjWtYfKZKp7i-PzztteyXIqGQeikTPa5JhwLvmxvtWnOvJznkM1XHMrQOZaNPaSn7MQtXxlN1JSdyqRXWPuqeZIghp6I28ejdhZFeN2yeMb1ROCSaMNtNbW6D8/s400/The_Adventures_of_Bullwhip_Griffin_Poster.jpg" width="193" /></a></div>
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Roddy McDowell stars in the title role, a butler to the newly impoverished Flagg family. The passing of the household's great patriarch, Admiral Flagg, has left a mountain of debt forcing his only heirs, 12 year-old Jack (Bryan Russell, last seen as Emil of <i>Emil and the Detectives</i>) and Arabella (Suzanne Pleshette, herself last seen in <i>The Ugly Dachshund</i>), to sell the mansion and everything within. Jack gets the bright idea to go to California in search of gold, and Eric Griffin pledges to intercept him. Unfortunately, they run afoul of Judge Higgins (played marvelously by Karl Malden), who causes them to remain as stowaways on the ship bound for California. Higgins, for his part, was on the trail of Quentin Bartlett (Richard Hayden, voice of the Caterpillar in <i>Alice in Wonderland</i>), a Shakespearean tragedian with a map to a great motherload in the hills of California. The trio of victims become good friends and work their way through the Golden State, in pursuit of gold and Judge Higgins, in a series of incidents that ultimately leads to a slapstick boxing match between the lithe "Bullwhip" Griffin and the burly bouncer Mountain Ox (Mike Mazurki, Bigfoot Mason in <i>Davy Crockett</i>). Not only is there gold at stake, but the honour of Arabella, Griffin's unrequited love interest who followed them to San Francisco and now works as a saloon singer. </div>
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The closest of any film to the peculiar mania that <i>The Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin</i> offers is Michael Todd's 1956 epic <i>Around the World in 80 Days</i>, perhaps with Blake Edwards' <i>The Great Race</i> or Ken Annakin's <i>Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines</i> (both 1965) as seconds, though far inferior to <i>Bullwhip Griffin</i>. I'm not sure if there is a particular name to the sub-genre of expansive Victorian-Edwardian comedies paying homage to the early silent days of cinema, but these films would fall into it. Whereas <i>The Great Race</i> and <i>Those Magnificent Men...</i> kind of flop around awkwardly to modern sensibilities (due mainly to laboured gender comedy in the former and racial comedy in the latter), and the Oscar-winning <i>Around the World in 80 Days</i> is doing a lot more than comedy, <i>Bullwhip Griffin</i> hits it in just the right spot. It can drag a bit in the middle but otherwise doesn't feel <b>too</b> long to sustain its comedy, and its comedy is genuinely funny. Karl Malden does a near-virtuoso performance as a shifty chimerical villain while stopping just short of too-obvious homage to Simon Legree-style moustache twirling.</div>
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I would be remiss if I didn't mention the debt this film owes to Ward Kimball. Credited as providing "titles and things", Ward's guidance feels like it is present through the entire film. As a borderline lunatic himself and dedicated aficionado of the antiquated, Ward was certainly the resident expert on the kind of tone and sensibilities that <i>Bullwhip Griffin</i> portrays. At the very least, he provides interstitial titles (and some overlay animation) that is every bit as evocative of the Victorian as his moving illustrations for the <i>Man in Space</i> trilogy, which he directed and did animation for. His closing retro-1849 drawing of modern San Francisco, complete with fanciful airships and a truly golden bridge, is a particular visual feast. He was undoubtedly responsible for the handbill-style movie posters as well. Had the director not been listed as latter-day Disney stalwart James Neilson (whose other credits include <i>The Moon-Spinners, Bon Voyage!, Moon Pilot,</i> and episodes of <i>Zorro</i>), I could have sworn that this was Ward's baby from beginning to end. The Sherman Bros. provide the tinkling piano and narrative lyrics for Ward's interstitials.<br />
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I don't think it's the bias of context making this charming movie appear better than it might actually be. This is at least one of the best Westerns of Walt's era, and may even be one of my new favourite Disney movies period. </div>
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<b><br /></b><b><i><span style="font-size: large;">Scrooge McDuck and Money</span></i></b><br />
<b>March 23, 1967</b><br />
<b>16 minutes</b><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivsOKfDGVyfLgDI7hGJzWl3HKBa2Zldsz1pRgoJ0732nO0brYpvN60DteMQrSZc6GM-AhJYgL3teZtwZAXHRx185oXvd2NgYYmsn2kTMoh1495IHx0WP8fRqg3zPHMe23u8-BNPi87e4k/s1600/scrooge4_large1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="281" data-original-width="147" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivsOKfDGVyfLgDI7hGJzWl3HKBa2Zldsz1pRgoJ0732nO0brYpvN60DteMQrSZc6GM-AhJYgL3teZtwZAXHRx185oXvd2NgYYmsn2kTMoh1495IHx0WP8fRqg3zPHMe23u8-BNPi87e4k/s1600/scrooge4_large1.jpg" /></a></div>
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<i>Scrooge McDuck and Money</i> would seem to be the first, and worst, episode of <i>DuckTales</i>... Huey, Dewey, and Louie visit Uncle Scrooge for advice on saving their hard-earned $1.95. In return, he gives them a musical lecture on how money originated and the necessity of keeping it in circulation through investment. This short, Scrooge McDuck's first substantive appearance in animation (preceded only by a few cameos on <i>The Mickey Mouse Club</i>), is an attempt to explain economics in a manner comparable to the way Donald Duck had previously explained math and the wheel. Its first half, about how money was invented, is quite interesting for how it ties the invention first of money and then of credit is part and parcel of human progress, as much as the wheel was. Perhaps it's only a connection I'm noticing in context of the previous films, but it feels almost like it's presenting money and economics as a kind of technology that ought to have an exhibit in Tomorrowland. The second half, on investing, is not overly clear. It says you <b>ought</b> to do it, but doesn't really explain why. It's actually less elucidating than the financial planning song in <i>Mary Poppins</i>. It's almost like the whole system behind investment really is an insensible mess reduced to my giving the investment firm a couple hundred a month because my financial planner says I ought to do it so I can actually look forward to a retirement some day. This obfuscation makes it inferior to the prior Donald Duck films. On another note, I thought it was hard getting used to David Tennant as the voice of Scrooge, having grown up with Alan Young in the role. Apparently Scrooge's first voice as Bill Thompson, who also provided the voice for Mr. Smee, Ranger Woodlore, the White Rabbit, and half the characters in <i>Lady and the Tramp</i>, including Jock, whose voice he uses for Scrooge. </div>
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<b><i><span style="font-size: large;">The Legend of the Boy and the Eagle</span></i></b><br />
<b>June 21, 1967</b><br />
<b>48 minutes</b><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiILSijzWEauwmCkQgdta6mQE4LBm3eUOzo2gszEJKhNFmt_miZYh8YqqeKVNEOPBbz-hm8oqkLJSzbOBsav93iJYNJjkTrBC2GgFePRYQYwtA8AOuk8eI2CNFwWd9RfpziOxsl9B0ba4/s1600/The_Legend_of_the_Boy_and_the_Eagle.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="437" data-original-width="300" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiILSijzWEauwmCkQgdta6mQE4LBm3eUOzo2gszEJKhNFmt_miZYh8YqqeKVNEOPBbz-hm8oqkLJSzbOBsav93iJYNJjkTrBC2GgFePRYQYwtA8AOuk8eI2CNFwWd9RfpziOxsl9B0ba4/s200/The_Legend_of_the_Boy_and_the_Eagle.jpg" width="137" /></a></div>
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Unfortunately, this cinematic adaptation of a Hopi legend is not available on home video. It's baffling me how Disney can't just throw everything they got up on Disney Movies On Demand. Nevertheless, from six minutes of this 48 minute film that someone posted online, it appears to have much in common with films like <i>The Littlest Outlaw</i>. Revolving around a boy rescuing an animal, the main interest seems to be anthropological and geographical in nature. Hopi culture and the picturesque vistas of the American Southwest seem to figure prominently. </div>
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<b><i><span style="font-size: large;">The Happiest Millionaire</span></i></b><br />
<b>June 23, 1967</b><br />
<b>164 minutes</b><br />
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The last live action film with which Walt was personally involved was <i>The Happiest Millionaire</i>, a phenomenally long love letter to the Gay Nineties aesthetic that was so influential on Walt's life and fantasies. In format and content, <i>The Happiest Millionaire</i> mirrors Disney's first true Broadway-style production in <i>Mary Poppins</i>, blending it with the "family saga" trope from <i>Bon Voyage!</i> and <i>Follow Me, Boys!</i>, both of which also starred Fred MacMurray. It was also given plenty of time to tell its saga: the original cut, with an overture and intermission/entr'acte stretches nearly three hours.<br />
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<i>The Happiest Millionaire</i>'s troubles behind the camera are a perfect example of the problems that would come to plague Disney moving forward after Walt's death. Like <i>Follow Me, Boys!</i>, I can sense a spirit of self-reflection in the film, as though <i>The Happiest Millionaire</i> was another example of Walt looking back upon his own life and career. It was Walt who insisted on MacMurray, his film double, for the lead role of true-life Philadelphia philanthropist Anthony J. Drexel Biddle. Originally it was not planned as a musical, but the success of <i>Mary Poppins</i> (as well as <i>My Fair Lady</i> and <i>The Sound of Music</i>) changed Walt's mind on that. The first cut of the film was completed before Walt's passing, Producer Bill Anderson and company COO Card Walker fought bitterly over the final cut, with Walker wanting to trim even more from it than Anderson intended. The critics weighed in and <i>The Happiest Millionaire</i> was axed down to 118 minutes for general release, losing just under an hour of content. The full, original cut was not seen again until the 1980's.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhkPer6LY2-8OT2mVj7I1-jEk-Kf1jIM7ZQSElXt-Z2q3botj_h89ApRNFMNWVlHODU8XuxbXN_yDmCNY17haaoiA2kgo1mwpgpq0D75HLKddydgWcpLxu5SVUWi4YGP8eF5WDxtxOWZw/s1600/The_Happiest_Millionaire_-_1967_-_Poster.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="320" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhkPer6LY2-8OT2mVj7I1-jEk-Kf1jIM7ZQSElXt-Z2q3botj_h89ApRNFMNWVlHODU8XuxbXN_yDmCNY17haaoiA2kgo1mwpgpq0D75HLKddydgWcpLxu5SVUWi4YGP8eF5WDxtxOWZw/s320/The_Happiest_Millionaire_-_1967_-_Poster.png" width="204" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhkPer6LY2-8OT2mVj7I1-jEk-Kf1jIM7ZQSElXt-Z2q3botj_h89ApRNFMNWVlHODU8XuxbXN_yDmCNY17haaoiA2kgo1mwpgpq0D75HLKddydgWcpLxu5SVUWi4YGP8eF5WDxtxOWZw/s1600/The_Happiest_Millionaire_-_1967_-_Poster.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"></a>It's hard to say if cutting it down was the better choice. It is a very, very long movie, and not all of it feels entirely necessary. However, trimming it down might also cause it to lose much of its Gay Nineties charm. If Main Street U.S.A. exploded into celluloid, <i>The Happiest Millionaire</i> is what it would look like. It's got just about everything, including some 3000 gorgeous period costumes and an unaccounted for number of stunning automobiles. The Biddle family drama plays out against the historical backdrop of The Great War, which ended the Edwardian Era and broke Western culture's continuity with the Victorian Era. There are Irish immigrants and Irish pubs and Irish constables, palatial Edwardian mansions, old money and <i>nouveau riche</i>, soda shoppes, <i>Harper's Bazaar</i> (and wonderful <i>Harper's Bazaar</i>-style art for its title screens), and nods to a movement called "Muscular Christianity," which emphasized ideals of physical and moral health, manliness, athleticism, self-sacrifice, discipline, teamwork, and both patriotic and religious duty ("Three men seemed to have struggled within his breast" as one proponent was described, "the devout Christian, the earnest philanthropist, the enthusiastic athlete."). One of its most famous proponents was Theodore Roosevelt, perhaps the most manly man that ever manned, and gave rise to the YMCA.<br />
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Intentionally or ironically, <i>The Happiest Millionaire</i> deals with transitions. It opens with John Lawless (Tommy Steele), and Irish immigrant looking to start a new life in the United States. The plot revolves around Biddle learning to cope with a growing daughter (Lesley Ann Warren in her cinematic debut) finding her own way in the world, and her fiance (John Davidson) trying to find his. As alluded to before, it looks at the conflict between inherited wealth and the <i>nouveau riche</i>, the transition to the automobile, and the transition from the Victorian-Edwardian Era to the modern one. This theme not only arrived in time for Disney's own corporate transition, but for society's. The Summer of Love would come in 1968, as well as the peak of America's involvement in Vietnam. I wonder what one might have thought of Disney putting out a nostalgic Gay Nineties musical lionizing America's involvement in World War One. <br />
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I've always had a soft spot for this film because I love the Gay Nineties aesthetic dearly. <i>The Happiest Millionaire</i> is a visual smorgasbord. Like so many films, this project has helped to contextualize it for me, recognize its flaws and accept criticisms of it, but I still enjoy it tremendously. You just have to, you know, take a break during the intermission, go for a walk, snack-run or liquor-run, something like that. It's a fitting enough film for Walt's final live action production. </div>
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<b><br /></b><b><i><span style="font-size: large;">Disneyland Around the Seasons</span></i></b><br />
<b>Unknown Date, 1967</b><br />
<b>Unknown minutes</b><br />
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This final theatrically re-released episode of <i>Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color</i> is mainly an introduction to Disneyland's new arrivals of 1966: It's a Small World, Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, New Orleans Square, Primeval World, and Fantasy on Parade (and these were already old news by 1967, when Pirates of the Caribbean and Tomorrowland '67 opened). I'm not sure what, if anything, was cut out for its theatrical release, since its only available form is as an episode. Nevertheless, it's once again a valuable glimpse into a golden time for Disneyland and, bittersweetly, one last romp around the park with Walt himself. The episode itself aired on December 18, 1966, just days after he passed away.<br />
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<b><br /></b><b><i><span style="font-size: large;">The Gnome-Mobile</span></i></b><br />
<b>July 19, 1967</b><br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">84 minutes</span><br />
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Nope. Nope, nope, sorry. <i>The Gnome Mobile</i> goes down in my personal hall of infamy, alongside <i>Wreck-It Ralph</i>, as one of the only Disney movies I've actually chosen to stop watching within the first half-hour. This first movie made completely without Walt's involvement is a genuine piece of garbage. </div>
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<b><i><span style="font-size: large;">Charlie the Lonesome Cougar</span></i></b><br />
<b>October 18, 1967</b><br />
<b>75 minutes</b><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOcyw1jziGB8a-9rcJAHJ-qSZxeOl17MWNowP0AU8i7iCmcjbdfqdH0KpxJrVpR2PFCfMJItImS3XgtTh_A0oI7Y5hJsosfVfQRtbQkeuGgjolO3KmIK056oveKdM8DYrZp2sXoxkn9Y0/s1600/Charlie%252C_the_Lonesome_Cougar_poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="456" data-original-width="300" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOcyw1jziGB8a-9rcJAHJ-qSZxeOl17MWNowP0AU8i7iCmcjbdfqdH0KpxJrVpR2PFCfMJItImS3XgtTh_A0oI7Y5hJsosfVfQRtbQkeuGgjolO3KmIK056oveKdM8DYrZp2sXoxkn9Y0/s320/Charlie%252C_the_Lonesome_Cougar_poster.jpg" width="210" /></a></div>
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<i>Charlie the Lonesome Cougar</i> is another example of Disney's post-<i>True Life</i> wildlife films narrated by Rex Allen. The story revolves around "Good Time Charlie", an orphaned cougar cub raised by the forester of a Pacific Northwest lumber company. As much time is paid to documenting the goings on of lumberjacks and lumber mills of the period as to Charlie himself. There isn't much to say about it beyond that... This sub-genre is all good, clean, fun entertainment with a nice bit of cultural and natural interest thrown in. It's nice to see some constancy here, especially after <i>The Gnome-Mobile</i>, but it wouldn't last either. This was Rex Allen's last feature film of this type for Disney. His folksy voice would come up again for similar episodes of <i>Wonderful World of Disney</i> though, finally ending with a narrator credit for 1978's <i>The Shaggy D.A.</i> Oddly, the advertising materials (like the poster here) and some dialogue try to paint Charlie as a hip and swingin' modern youth, which is terribly out of place for Disney. The Beat-like theme song is just awful. Amidst the classic Disney entertainment I'm suddenly confronted with how Disney is quickly going to become as square as it gets. </div>
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<b><i><span style="font-size: large;">The Jungle Book </span></i></b><br />
<b>October 18, 1967</b><br />
<b>78 minutes</b><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlbFwEKpLNhhffg8r8qNJCgo00suI8ThWqoH3zRCTydhcF863eBV5vOd9nGKzyH7zc7-1zW1QRAxdf7-LLVOSfWn2jrGMBRZVzs2d-r_rWvIyVewsig5YCmGhmCZK_n2tuY29mRbYYaDo/s1600/Thejunglebook_movieposter.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="438" data-original-width="288" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlbFwEKpLNhhffg8r8qNJCgo00suI8ThWqoH3zRCTydhcF863eBV5vOd9nGKzyH7zc7-1zW1QRAxdf7-LLVOSfWn2jrGMBRZVzs2d-r_rWvIyVewsig5YCmGhmCZK_n2tuY29mRbYYaDo/s320/Thejunglebook_movieposter.jpg" width="210" /></a>Well, here we go... The final film on our viewing list. <i>The Jungle Book</i> was the last film Walt presided over, having died during production. It is a transitional film, showing his obvious influence while at the same time betraying some of the lack of focus that he would have exerted had been present through its final stages. Nevertheless, it's still an enjoyable film and a fitting end to Walt's life and career.<br />
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A large part of the credit for its success goes to its stellar voice cast. I'm not sure there has actually been a Disney film, at least up to this point, with a better one. Sebastian Cabot, George Sanders, Phil Harris, Louis Prima, and Sterling Holloway as the principle cast (in addition to director Wolfgang Reitherman's son Bruce as Mowgli) do a fantastic job. It's like comfortably meeting up with a gang of old friends. The character animation is also quite good. I've heard that Reitherman really took the opportunity of Walt's death to showcase the animation, allowing scenes to linger simply for the sake of showing the draughtsmanship of Disney's animators at work. Unfortunately, more than a few corners were cut, with obvious recourse to reused animation. <br />
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That overuse of reused animation brings the tone down a bit, but the nature of <i>The Jungle Book</i> excuses it a bit. Walt decreed that it should be primarily a character-driven film rather than a plot-driven one, leading to an episodic feel along a simple, inexorable path from wolf's den to man's village. The most memorable thing about <i>The Jungle Book</i> are its vignettes... "Bear Necessities," "Wanna' Be Like You," "Trust in Me," "Col. Hathi's March," with little recollection of what falls in-between. The finished product is not as fully polished as one would like, though it is oddly reflective of the episodic nature of the original Kipling book. Each episode of the film is snappy and catchy and well done though, which really counts. </div>
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A strong plot is something that would have to wait for Disney's more recent live-action remake. That was, in fact, the strongest part of the remake and legitimized its existence. The company's current fetish for live-action remakes has generally been good, but is at its best when it genuinely adds something overlooked by the original cartoon. <i>Cinderella</i> did that, as did <i>The Jungle Book</i>, whereas <i>Beauty and the Beast</i>, while very slickly produced, was essentially beat by beat. But I digress. The animated <i>Jungle Book</i> doesn't have the same strong plot or emotional arc as the eventual remake, but is still highly enjoyable. As I said, it is a fitting end to Walt's life and career, and to this insane project to watch all of his films in order. </div>
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Stay tuned next month for our conclusion and lists of top films from Walt's Era! </div>
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<br />Cory Grosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12141983255020503557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8280650245524507557.post-53931908619961634872017-10-04T00:00:00.000-06:002017-10-04T00:00:15.387-06:00The Nutcracker Suite<div style="text-align: justify;">
Changing the setting to a forest drifting through the seasons, affected by the movements of nature sprites, was a spark of originality in Disney's <i>Fantasia</i>, but for Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's <i>The Nutcracker Suite</i>, it was perhaps the least tumultuous of its convolutions on the road to becoming a Christmas classic.</div>
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<a name='more'></a>The original story of <i>The Nutcracker and the Mouse King</i> came to Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann, who published his version in 1816. Nutcracker dolls themselves originated in Germany in the 17th century, and by the time of Hoffman had become a popular object of Yuletide decoration. That story was, in turn, adapted in 1844 by Alexandre Dumas, author of <i>The Three Musketeers</i> and <i>Count of Monte Cristo</i>. </div>
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Hoffman's story purported to tell the origin of nutcrackers as a curse fallen upon a winsome young man in an ongoing dispute between mouse and human royalty. Little Marie's favourite doll is the family Nutcracker, whose jaw gets broken when her brother tries to crack a nut that is too big and strong. Pleading to stay up late with the broken Nutcracker, which she has bandaged up, Marie becomes party to a battle between the toys - lead by the injured Nutcracker - and the army of mice lead by the Mouse King. Joining the fray, Marie slips and gashes her arm on the glass of their gigantic grandfather clock. Waking up, bandaged and delirious, her tale of miniature warfare goes unheeded. It falls upon Herr Drosselmeyer, the toymaker and her Godfather, to tell her what happened. Returning to their home with the repaired Nutcracker, he weaves a sordid tale of magic curses.<br />
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It seems that, some distant time past, the Mouse Queen, Madamme Mouserinks, tricked the human Queen into eating the lard meant for the King's sausage. In revenge, the King ordered the court inventor - also named Drosselmeyer - to prepare traps for Mouserinks and her children. He was only too successful, and the Mouse Queen cursed Princess Pirlpat with an engorged head, wide grinning mouth, and cottony beard. Shifting the blame, the King gave Drosselmeyer only four weeks to find a cure.<br />
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Turning to the court astrologer, the two discovered a rather complicated cure: a nearly unbreakable nut, cracked in the mouth of a youth who has never shaved or worn boots, who must hand it to her with his eyes closed, and take seven steps backward without stumbling. They eventually find such a youth in the son of Drosselmeyer's cousin. To entice him, Pirlpat's hand was offered in marriage. Everything goes well until the final step backward, when the Mouse Queen got in the way and he stumbled. The curse transferred to him, and he became the Nutcracker. Revolted by his appearance, the ungrateful Pirlpat had him cast out of the castle.<br />
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Promising to vanquish the Mouse King, son of Mouserinks, the Nutcracker is given a toy sword by Marie, borrowed from one of her brother's toy soldiers. He later appears with the Mouse King's crown and whisks Marie off to the land of dolls. Despite the evidence of the Mouse King's crown, Marie is still not believed. She pledges that no matter what, she would be loyal to the Nutcracker, never to betray him as Pirlpat did. Suddenly, Drosselmeyer's nephew appears at the doorstep and proclaims that she has broken the curse. A year and a day later, they are wed and Marie becomes the queen of the land of dolls.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid9aW08PGOUln7o2SITfe-iMlKJ9OgU5RyXYvp1gRoNflnT1QpFnZwjwy6blu4aSeGF8tuLhNFhq-i4aLFV41aXIlFc7NwntDa9AgAAbnCOeEnul7WKKYXu0qGNa1McPY_0PqSFYu7LkI/s1600/Nutcracker_and_Mouse-king_%25281853%2529_%252814778830311%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="965" data-original-width="800" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid9aW08PGOUln7o2SITfe-iMlKJ9OgU5RyXYvp1gRoNflnT1QpFnZwjwy6blu4aSeGF8tuLhNFhq-i4aLFV41aXIlFc7NwntDa9AgAAbnCOeEnul7WKKYXu0qGNa1McPY_0PqSFYu7LkI/s400/Nutcracker_and_Mouse-king_%25281853%2529_%252814778830311%2529.jpg" width="331" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Nutcracker delivers the Mouse King's crown.<br />From an 1853 US edition.</td></tr>
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For Tchaikovsky's ballet, the Nutcracker's sad backstory was excised. The ballet itself was intended as a two-act accompaniment for a short opera entitled <i>Iolanta</i>, drafted in the wake of Tchaikovsky's success with <i>Sleeping Beauty</i>. The first act of the ballet is roughly equivalent to the beginning of Hoffmann and Dumas' story, but simplifies the whole matter by shrinking Marie (now Clara) down to doll size and having her joining the fight by throwing her shoe at the Mouse King. This alone breaks the curse on the Nutcracker, who takes her to the Land of Sweets. A celebration is staged in her honour, including dances from Spanish chocolate, Arabian coffee, Chinese tea, Russian candy canes, and culminating in a flower waltz and a dance from the Land of Sweets' ruler, the Sugar Plum Fairy.<br />
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<i>The Nutcracker</i> debuted in St. Petersburg on December 18, 1892 to largely negative reviews. Many critics deemed it too chaotic, poorly paced, unfaithful to the original story, and with poor dancing from its cast of mostly children of the Imperial Ballet School. From the disaster, Tchaikovsky was able to tease out a 20-minute long <i>Nutcracker Suite, Op. 71a</i>. which did prove more successful. <i>The Nutcracker Suite</i> became a regular part of orchestral repertoires and was a popular choice for uptempo, Jazz versions among Big Bands of the Thirties and Forties. Productions of <i>The Nutcracker</i> ballet would not resume until 1919, in a new staging that resolved many of the original criticisms.<br />
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<iframe width="320" height="266" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/eB9XNDbMT1U/0.jpg" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/eB9XNDbMT1U?feature=player_embedded" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Freddy Martin's Big Band version of the "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies", c.1942.</span></div>
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By the time of <i>Fantasia</i>, however, <i>The Nutcracker</i> had largely fallen out of favour as a ballet. In the original narration, music scholar Deems Taylor acknowledged that it wasn't much performed anymore. It perhaps bothered few, then, that Walt Disney and his animators put <i>The Nutcracker Suite</i> to such a radically different setting. The only point at which it even remotely touches on the original Christmas setting of Tchaikovsky's ballet is the finale of the "Waltz of the Flowers" when the frost and snow fairies take over.<br /><br /><i>The Nutcracker</i>'s rehabilitation came in the 1950's, when the New York City Ballet began its annual Christmas presentation of the ballet. It spread across the United States and Canada, becoming a seasonal fixture in ballet company schedules. Estimates put up to 40% of an average company's ticket sales being owed to <i>The Nutcracker. </i>Like may auteurs, Tchaikovsky was often ahead of his time. Maligned in its day, <i>The Nutcracker</i> is now the composer's most famous work. <br />
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Cory Grosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12141983255020503557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8280650245524507557.post-61019808950376925212017-09-20T00:00:00.001-06:002017-09-20T00:00:07.326-06:00Casey at the Bat: A Ballad of the Republic Sung in the Year 1888<div style="text-align: justify;">
Written for the <i>San Francisco Examiner </i>in 1888, Ernest Thayer’s <i>Casey at the Bat: A Ballad of the Republic Sung in the Year 1888</i> is a distinctly American comic ballad about that most distinctly American sport. Though having a very definite author and a publication date, like many of America’s faux-tales invented for newspapers and dime novels, Mudville’s ill-starred player has the quality of myth about him. Disney would go on to make him the subject of an animated short in 1946, and homage is paid to him at the Casey’s Corner counter service restaurant in Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom and Disneyland Paris Park. </div>
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<i> Casey at the Bat: A Ballad of the Republic Sung in the Year 1888</i><br />
by Ernest Thayer </blockquote>
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The outlook wasn't brilliant for the Mudville Nine that day;<br />
The score stood four to two, with but one inning more to play,<br />
And then when Cooney died at first, and Barrows did the same,<br />
A sickly silence fell upon the patrons of the game. </blockquote>
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A straggling few got up to go in deep despair. The rest<br />
Clung to that hope which springs eternal in the human breast;<br />
They thought, if only Casey could get but a whack at that –<br />
They'd put up even money, now, with Casey at the bat. </blockquote>
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But Flynn preceded Casey, as did also Jimmy Blake,<br />
And the former was a lulu and the latter was a fake<br />
So upon that stricken multitude grim melancholy sat,<br />
For there seemed but little chance of Casey's getting to the bat. </blockquote>
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But Flynn let drive a single, to the wonderment of all,<br />
And Blake, the much despised, tore the cover off the ball;<br />
And when the dust had lifted, and the men saw what had occurred,<br />
There was Jimmy safe at second and Flynn a-hugging third. </blockquote>
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Then from 5,000 throats and more there rose a lusty yell;<br />
It rumbled through the valley, it rattled in the dell;<br />
It knocked upon the mountain and recoiled upon the flat,<br />
For Casey, mighty Casey, was advancing to the bat. </blockquote>
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There was ease in Casey's manner as he stepped into his place;<br />
There was pride in Casey's bearing and a smile on Casey's face.<br />
And when, responding to the cheers, he lightly doffed his hat,<br />
No stranger in the crowd could doubt 'twas Casey at the bat. </blockquote>
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Ten thousand eyes were on him as he rubbed his hands with dirt;<br />
Five thousand tongues applauded when he wiped them on his shirt.<br />
Then while the writhing pitcher ground the ball into his hip,<br />
Defiance gleamed in Casey's eye, a sneer curled Casey's lip. </blockquote>
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And now the leather-covered sphere came hurtling through the air,<br />
And Casey stood a-watching it in haughty grandeur there.<br />
Close by the sturdy batsman the ball unheeded sped-<br />
"That ain't my style," said Casey. "Strike one," the umpire said. </blockquote>
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From the benches, black with people, there went up a muffled roar,<br />
Like the beating of the storm-waves on a stern and distant shore.<br />
"Kill him! Kill the umpire!" shouted someone on the stand;<br />
And it's likely they'd a-killed him had not Casey raised his hand. </blockquote>
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With a smile of Christian charity great Casey's visage shone;<br />
He stilled the rising tumult; he bade the game go on;<br />
He signaled to the pitcher, and once more the spheroid flew;<br />
But Casey still ignored it, and the umpire said, "Strike two." </blockquote>
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"Fraud!" cried the maddened thousands, and echo answered fraud;<br />
But one scornful look from Casey and the audience was awed.<br />
They saw his face grow stern and cold, they saw his muscles strain,<br />
And they knew that Casey wouldn't let that ball go by again. </blockquote>
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The sneer is gone from Casey's lip, his teeth are clenched in hate;<br />
He pounds with cruel violence his bat upon the plate.<br />
And now the pitcher holds the ball, and now he lets it go,<br />
And now the air is shattered by the force of Casey's blow. </blockquote>
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Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright;<br />
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light,<br />
And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout;<br />
But there is no joy in Mudville — mighty Casey has struck out.</blockquote>
Cory Grosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12141983255020503557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8280650245524507557.post-59097152773439806302017-09-09T00:00:00.000-06:002017-09-09T00:00:01.238-06:00Walt's Era - Part 17: Walt's Last Years (1965-1966)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The end of an era is upon us, in more ways than one. With bizarre prescience, Walt Disney sold WED Enterprises to Walt Disney Productions, finally bringing the future "Imagineering" department into the Disney fold proper. To handle the royalties from his name and the Disneyland Railroad, Walt created the company RETLAW. Yet just as Walt Disney Productions acquired WED, there was talk of General Electric or Westinghouse purchasing the company. And oddly enough, as an ironic footnote, the original Hyperion Rd. studio used by Disney way back in the early days, the studio in which <i style="text-align: justify;">Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs</i><span style="text-align: justify;"> was created, was bulldozed to clear space for a supermarket. </span></div>
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Yet it was also a time of beginnings. The New York World's Fair closed in 1965, and over the course of that year and the next, attractions would slowly begin their migration to Disneyland. It's a Small World opened in Fantasyland with a brand new, more dramatic exterior. Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln took up the Main Street opera house. The dinosaur scenes in Ford's Magic Skyway were excised and placed alongside the DLRR as the Primeval World diorama. In 1967, the Carousel of Progress would become one of the keynote attractions of the 1967 "New Tomorrowland." New Orleans Square would also open in 1966, though absent either of its headline attractions. </div>
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Outside of the original Magic Kingdom, newspapers rooted out that Disney was buying up property in Orlando and Uncle Walt was forced to publicly announce the Florida Project on October 25, 1965. Disney also made its ill-fated bid for the Mineral King Resort and began conceptual work. One of the concepts was an animatronic stage show of musical bears designed by Marc Davis. The last time Davis saw Walt, he had come by to look at these sketches. One particular image - a rotund bear wrapped in a tuba - sent Walt into fits of laughter, and as he finally stepped out of the door, he uncharacteristically bid "goodbye" to Davis. It was more customary for him to say that he'd see you next week or come by tomorrow or something along those lines. Parting with Walt was never final.</div>
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On November 7, 1966, Walt was diagnosed with cancerous tumours in his left lung. Even though surgery could remove the consequences of a lifetime of smoking, he was given only six months to a year to live. He didn't even make it that long. On November 30 he collapsed at home and was taken to the hospital adjacent to the studio. On December 15, at 9:30am, at the age of 65, Walt Disney passed away. </div>
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<a name='more'></a><b><i><span style="font-size: large;">A Country Coyote Goes Hollywood</span></i></b><br />
<b>January 28, 1965</b><br />
<b>37 minutes</b><br />
<b><br /></b><b><i><span style="font-size: large;">Those Calloways</span></i></b><br />
<b>January 28, 1965</b><br />
<b>131 minutes</b><br />
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1965 kicks off with two environmental parables that, in their own way, portray the tension between urban and rural life. The first, a short, deals with a coyote from the Mohave Desert that accidentally finds himself in downtown Los Angeles. The second, and our feature presentation, is ostensibly about a family struggling to create a nature preserve for wild Canada geese against the siren song of hunting resort developers.<br />
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<i>A Country Coyote Goes Hollywood</i> is the more compelling of the two pictures, if for no other reason than its brevity. It is another of the nature pictures narrated by Rex Allen, and is served well by its length. Watching a wild coyote try to make sense of urban life in Griffith Park and its surrounding neighbourhoods is amusing and does not outstay its welcome. The film also touches on an oddly fascinating and counter-intuitive subject, which is Los Angeles' inner-city wildlife. Not only are coyotes found in Griffith Park - home of the Hollywood sign, Griffith Observatory, Greek Theater, Los Angeles Zoo, Autry Museum of the American West, and the Carolwood Pacific Historical Society - but so are mule deer, bobcats, and cougars! After navigating the urban jungle, the country coyote makes his way back to the wild (with some assistance), but perhaps he's got a little of big city life in his blood now...</div>
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<i style="font-style: italic;">Those Calloways</i><i> </i>might have a good movie in there somewhere, but it gets distracted along the way and once it finally gets back on track, my patience is shot. The film begins with a fistfight between young Bucky Calloway (Brandon deWilde) and a town bully (Tom Skerritt) over his crazy father's desire to create a Canada goose sanctuary along the nearby lakefront. This plan intrigues a visiting dandy (Phillip Abbott) who sees the potential of a hunting resort for the well-to-do in this old fashioned Vermont town circa 1920's. Having duly set-up the core story, it then forgets about it for the next hour, absorbing itself with Bucky's attempts to man up and woo the girl (Linda Evans), the father's breaking a leg on the trap line and his drinking, financial troubles, a cabin-raising, and a host of other meaningless filler. Eventually it winds back to the story and could get interesting as the dandy attempts to play up the father into unwittingly helping along the hunters, but it's too late by then. A two hour and ten minute long character drama about a family could have been interesting if the characters were more compelling, but at the heart of it is Brian Keith as the father, pulling his strong, silent, possibly alcoholic and abusive, backwoodsman type. Bucky is apparently a chip off the old block, and his relationship with the girl has uncomfortably abusive tones as well, which detracts from what is apparently supposed to be a significant subplot. <br />
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There's nothing inherently uninteresting about the subject matter, if one considers the lives of people like John Muir, George Bird Grinnell, or Archie Belaney, an early Canadian environmentalist from England who masqueraded as a Native American under the name "Grey Owl." This treatment in <i>Those Calloways</i> sucks the interest out of it though. Had they trimmed it down an hour, stuck to the main plot, and developed it a little better, it would have made a much stronger, more focused film with a more poignant message. As Disney's first movie after <i>Mary Poppins</i>, it must have been a huge disappointment. </div>
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<b><br /></b><b><i><span style="font-size: large;">The Monkey's Uncle</span></i></b><br />
<b>July 14, 1965</b><br />
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<b>87 minutes</b><br />
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Merlin Jones and company return in this episodic pair of ongoing adventures dealing mainly with the Midvale College football team. In the first episode, Merlin must figure out an honest way to cheat so that the football team aren't expelled for academic failure. In the second, he must build a human-powered flying machine to win an endowment that will save both the school and the team. The gang's all here, and a particularly noteworthy performance is given by Leon Tyler as the flying machine's guinea pig. The Beach Boys also famously duet with Annette for the title song, penned by the Sherman Brothers. It's all in good fun, and more of the same from <i>The Misadventures of Merlin Jones</i>. </div>
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<i style="font-style: italic;">The Monkey's Uncle</i><i> </i>is also notable as a closing chapter in the Disney careers of Tommy Kirk and Annette Funicello. This was the final film that either made with the company. I charted out their careers in the previous review of <i>The Misadventures of Merlin Jones</i>, so all that's left to say is that Annette's moving on is almost as much an end of an era as Walt's own passing. </div>
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<b><br /></b><b><i><span style="font-size: large;">That Darn Cat!</span></i></b><br />
<b>December 2, 1965</b><br />
<b>116 minutes</b><br />
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As if Annette leaving wasn't bad enough, <i>That Darn Cat!</i> marks Hayley Mills' departure from the company. Like the last two Annette films, this is also an attempt by Disney to cash in on the genre of teen movies. Literally, one of the characters is a surfer dude and they go watch a surf movie. <i>That Darn Cat!</i> does it better than the <i>Merlin Jones</i> movies though, in my opinion, and is a very entertaining film.</div>
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The best Disney films are more rounded, and <i>That Darn Cat!</i> is no exception. The central plot is not simply a bunch of kids capering around, antagonizing the squares. It's a kidnapping case where the best lead is a Siamese cat (in fact, the same feline actor as in <i>The Incredible Journey</i>). The FBI have to set up a sting, trailing this cat around in the hopes that its nightly prowls lead them back to the kidnap victim. Against that inherently comic story you have the various subplots of Hayley Mills' relationship with the surfer dude, and her sister's relationship with a creep played by Roddy McDowell, and the nosy neighbour played by Elsa Lanchester. The capering works well when there is a solid framework for it to act around (and a surprisingly serious and adult one, for Disney, being a couple of hoodlums calmly discussing how they are going to kill their victim and dispose of the body). For her final Disney film, Mills is in true form as an inexplicably British All-American Girl who easily manipulates everyone around her into doing her bidding.
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Notable for her departure, <i>That Darn Cat!</i> is also notable as Dean Jones' first Disney film. Charming as a hapless straight man, Jones' excellent comic timing made him a valuable asset to this film and many more to come. Jones would go on to be Disney's new go-to lead actor through the remainder of the Sixties and the Seventies. I'm getting ahead of myself, but several of my favourite films from after Walt's era star Dean Jones. </div>
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<b><br /></b><b><i><span style="font-size: large;">Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree</span></i></b><br />
<b>February 4, 1966</b><br />
<b>26 minutes</b><br />
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Disney fans take Winnie the Pooh for granted now. He's as much a fixture in Disney as Mickey himself, and for a good long while has out-earned the company's mascot in profits. It's not difficult with TV show after TV show and direct-to-video film after direct-to-video film. I actually know the intro song to <i><a href="https://youtu.be/BdKnojhNBeI">The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh</a></i> cartoon as well as I do the original Sherman Bros. theme, and watched <i><a href="https://youtu.be/4fYCnZB_X7M">Welcome to Pooh Corner</a></i> religiously as a child (both of these dating myself). About the only time Pooh seems particularly resented is when he displaces a beloved theme park attraction, yet his ride is also the best one in Tokyo Disneyland!<br />
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Yet there was a time when Pooh was new, and it was Disney's job to introduce him. Even by the Sixties, the books by A.A. Milne were relatively unknown in the United States, <i>Winnie-the-Pooh</i> having been published in the UK in 1926. Rather than drive straight ahead into a feature film, Walt opted to start with a string of animated shorts that wold eventually be collected into a feature film in 1977. The first of these was <i>Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree</i>, which does indeed begin with introductions to each of the characters before launching into Pooh's health problems.</div>
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If <i>One Hundred and One Dalmatians</i> figured out the best uses of xerography in animation and a new pop art style to go with it, <i>Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree</i> figured out how to use them in the form of Disney's classic fairy tales. The Pooh stories aren't Mediaeval folk tales in the sense of a Grimm or Perrault, but this short captures the sensibilities of how Disney adapted them, right down to the similar beginning, with a book being opened. In keeping with the new house style, it goes further than simply pulling the book down from the library shelf and opening it's cover... Ingeniously, we see the pages of the book itself being animated and the characters interacting with the words and creases on the pages.</div>
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What makes this so ingenious, besides some serious "fourth wall" type breaks, is that the Pooh stories are all transcriptions of Christopher Robin's adventures with his stuffed animals. It is a child's world of imagination come to life. So Disney's animators played fast and loose with that premise, having them move in and out of that world. They live both within the Hundred Acre Wood and on the printed page. It might have even been nice to see them crawl off the page and into Christopher Robin's room to grab things they needed for the story, like the balloon Pooh uses to float up to the honey tree. Still, it's pretty smart not to deliver this as a straightforward fantasy story, artistically.<br />
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I should hope that I don't need to explain by now how well suited such a flight of childlike imagination is suited to Disney and Disneyland!</div>
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<b><i><span style="font-size: large;">The Ugly Dachshund</span></i></b><br />
<b>February 4, 1966</b><br />
<b>93 minutes</b><br />
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Man, I hate movies like this. Dean Jones stars opposite Suzanne Pleschette as a husband and wife who get into all sorts of dog-related problems because they can't just sit down and talk to each other. Unless you're really trying to do a character drama about how egotism, pride, and lack of communication break apart marriages and destroy lives, it's just a cheap way to drive a conflict. Over and over again I wanted to yell at these two to suck it up and talk to each other. Seriously, the plot would have been resolved in five minutes if they did that, and it's no fun sitting for an hour and a half waiting for them to figure that out. </div>
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<b><br /></b><b><i><span style="font-size: large;">Lt. Robin Crusoe, U.S.N.</span></i></b><br />
<b>June 25, 1966</b><br />
<b>110 minutes</b><br />
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It had a few moments, but overall, <i>Lt. Robin Crusoe, U.S.N. </i>is a comedy deadzone. Dick Van Dyke stars in this modern remake of <i>Robinson Crusoe</i> that just flops around and dies on screen. The pacing is so poor that nothing ever builds up enough momentum to be funny, then it switches into awkward Sixties gender "comedy" that is very dated today, and then into unbelievably denigrating racist caricatures that makes anything in a previous Disney Western or island movie look practically progressive in comparison. About the only thing this film had going for it was a half-decent soundtrack to add into one's home Tiki bar iTunes mix (if one can even find it). I wish the content of the film could have lined up better with the Hawaii location shooting and fanciful Tiki idols. The saddest part of all was that this film was Walt's only story credit (as "Retlaw Yensid"). He not only approved this... he scripted it. </div>
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<b><br /></b><b><i><span style="font-size: large;">Run, Appaloosa, Run</span></i></b><br />
<b>June 29, 1966</b><br />
<b>47 minutes</b><br />
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This was a welcome palate cleanser... Though technically released a few days after <i>Lt. Robin Crusoe, U.S.N.</i>, <i>Run, Appaloosa, Run</i> was the preceding short shown in general distribution. The contrast between the two films could not be more stark. Whereas <i>Robin Crusoe</i> is a largely anti-entertaining mess with boorish racial caricatures, <i>Run, Appaloosa, Run</i> is a much more compelling docu-drama portraying the Nez Perce Native American tribe with relative sympathy (despite casting non-Nez Perce and even non-Native American actors in some of the major roles). </div>
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The short, narrated once again by Rex Allen, follows the troubled life of an Appaloosa colt named Holy Smoke. After losing his mother to a cougar just days after his birth, Holy Smoke survives and is trained by Mary Blackfeather (Adele Palacios) of the Nez Perce to run the dangerous Hell's Mountain Relay. She hopes to be the first woman to run the race, and through victory to being glory, prize-money, and business to her tribe. Unfortunately the winds of necessity blow in and Holy Smoke is blown out to a big city dude, and from him to a rodeo rider, and from him to a rodeo clown, until he finally ends up back in Mary's hands. Reunited the two take on the bloodthirsty, cutthroat relay...</div>
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Larry Lansburgh was the film's story writer and director. His wife Janet acted as screenwriter. The subject matter was right up Lansburgh's alley: a former stuntman who found his way to the Disney Studio after a bad accident, he was part of Disney's South American goodwill tour, produced <i>The Littlest Outlaw</i>, and directed <i>Stormy the Thoroughbred, Cow Dog, The Wetback Hound, The Horse with the Flying Tail, The Tattooed Police Horse</i>, and several episodes of the Disney TV show (in addition to an episode of <i>Lassie</i>). Often the animals in his films ended up in pleasant retirement as his own ranch. </div>
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Lansburgh's eye for interesting stories about horses and the West as struck gold again with this glimpse into the proud horse-breeding traditions of the Native Americans of Idaho. The Nez Perce tribe acquired the venerable Spanish horse early on (there are even cave paintings in Europe resembling the Appaloosa), and used them to great effect in conflicts with the expanding United States. Sadly for them, the Nez Perce lost the war with the US in 1877, and most of their horses along with. It took dedicated breeders to maintain the bloodlines of this horse, named for Idaho's Palouse River, until 1938 when an official breed registry could be established. Today, the Appaloosa is one of the most popular horse breeds in the United States, is the official state horse of Idaho, and mascot for the Florida State Seminoles athletic program. It's a venerable breed worth of, at least, a high-caliber short like <i>Run, Appaloosa, Run</i>. <i> </i> </div>
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<b><i><span style="font-size: large;">The Fighting Prince of Donegal</span></i></b><br />
<b>October 5, 1966</b><br />
<b>110 minutes</b><br />
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<b><i><span style="font-size: large;">Follow Me, Boys!</span></i></b><br />
<b>December 1, 1966</b><br />
<b>131 minutes</b><br />
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The last film to be made during Walt's lifetime is oddly poignant, as an <i>It's a Wonderful Life</i>-style generational drama about the influence one man's life can have. Fred MacMurray stars as Lem Siddons, an itinerant Jazz musician in 1930 who decides to put down roots in the small, Main Street U.S.A. village of Hickory. Getting a job as a clerk in the general store, he immediately begins wooing Vida (Vera Downey), the clerk in the neighbouring bank. In his pursuit, he ends up forming a Boy Scout troop and becoming a positive, transformational force in the lives of the community and, specifically, succeeding generations of the town's boys. In particular, he takes the troubled youth nicknamed "Whitey" (Kurt Russell) under his wing. By the end... two hours, twenty minutes, and twenty years later... we see just how deep the roots he set have grown.<br />
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The parallels with Walt's life are unmistakable. Walt has identified with MacMurray's go-to middle aged character many times over, and this version's career spans the same length of time as Walt's own. The scope of their lives is obviously different, from Hollywood mogul to small town Scout troop leader, but Lem's life was a lot like the one that Walt wanted. With all the magnificent capital and creativity at his disposal, the opening act of Walt's dream kingdom was a recreation of small town U.S.A. It was a conceptual space that he returned to often in film. He even envied his family for leading that kind of life:</div>
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So I think happiness is contentment but it doesn't mean you have to have wealth. But all individuals are different. Some of us just wouldn't be satisfied with just carrying out a routine job and being happy. Yet I envied those people. I had a brother who I really envied because he was a mailman. But he's the one that had all the fun. He had himself a trailer, and he used to go out and go fishing, and he didn't worry about payrolls and stories and picture grosses or anything. And he was the happy one. I always said, "He's the smart Disney."</div>
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<i>Follow Me, Boys!</i> feels a lot like Walt's own idealized retrospective on his life, in its most idealized setting and his most idealized self. I wish I had Lem's ability (or writers) to say exactly the right thing at exactly the right moment, unfailingly. I suppose it's being that idealized retrospective might excuse how needlessly long it is, then.<br />
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The fault of <i>Follow Me, Boys!</i> is that there is a solid 80 minute movie in there, bookended by two half-hour episodes that are entertaining enough but strained our patience. There is a key point, in the middle of the film, where an incident leads Whitey to attempt to run away and Lem to attempt to quit the Boy Scouts but they agree together to stick around. That would have been the ideal spot to end it, dramatically. Most of the key incidents of the remaining half (like the Boy Scouts obtaining the land for their camp) could have been folded into the preceding half, and the finale could have been a "20 years later" jump. That might actually have had more emotional punch than us sitting there watching the decades go by, and feeling it. We didn't really need to know <b>what</b> exactly happened, only that decades have passed and Lem made his influence felt. </div>
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Nevertheless, <i>Follow Me, Boys!</i> is an entertaining, moving, fitting, and oddly prescient ending to 1966 and Walt Disney's life.</div>
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<i>Walt's Era</i> is not quite over yet. The end of Walt's life was not the end of his influence. In the next chapter, we look at the films released immediately after his passing, which had been in production during the last year of his life. The following chapter will be the grand conclusion to <i>Walt's Era</i>. </div>
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Cory Grosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12141983255020503557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8280650245524507557.post-7222028632164268752017-09-06T00:00:00.000-06:002017-09-06T10:35:02.261-06:00Walt Disney, Roy Rogers and the Sons of the Pioneers<div style="text-align: justify;">
Nowadays not only is one hard-pressed to discern the difference between Country and Western music, the latter having been subsumed into the former, but one would likely be challenged to find any Country music that sounded like Country and not just weak pop music with a Southern accent. One quick way to tell Western music is the relative absence of said accent and the obligatory slide-guitar. The handiest rule of thumb is that Country music comes from east of the Mississippi while Western comes from that vast, wide country to the west. The two genres have different geographic and ethic origins, and vastly different styles when one's ear is tuned to them. </div>
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Among the most popular Western acts of all time were the Sons of the Pioneers. They still are, as a matter of fact. Though none of the original members remain, the Sons of the Pioneers are a designated national treasure and the longest reigning commercial musical troupe. Their origins go back to 1933 when a handsome gent named Leonard Slye joined up with Tim Spencer and Bob Nolan to form "The Pioneer Trio." The announcer felt that these fresh-faced youngsters weren't old enough to pass off as pioneers, so he bestowed upon them a new nom-de-guerre. In the next three years, Hugh and Karl Farr, and Lloyd Perryman joined up. During the war, Ken Carson replaced Lloyd Perryman, who had been drafted and continued with the group thereafter. Pat Brady was brought in to replace Slye when he went off to a new career in motion pictures. You might be more familiar with Slye's stage name: Roy Rogers.</div>
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Born in Cincinnati in 1911, Slye was introduced to film through the Sons of the Pioneers. Almost immediately after forming, they began appearing in Hollywood variety films, wherever a cowboy-twinged harmony group was required to support Gene Autry, Dick Foran, Bing Crosby, or Charles Starrett. Slye's first credited appearance in film was in support of Gene Autry, going by the machismo-laden name "Dick Weston." When Autry took off during a contract dispute, Slye was given a new name and thrust into the spotlight as a replacement. In 1941 the Sons of the Pioneers were contracted by Republic Pictures for their Western B-grade pictures starring Roy. Their reunion began in <i>Red River Valley</i> that year and they frequently guest-starred on television's <i>Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Show</i> 20 years later, with some 45 films in between (as well as supporting John Wayne in such films as <i>Rio Grande</i> and <i>The Searchers</i>). </div>
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The movie-going experience in that era was significantly different from the experience today. Before the advent of television, a single ticket could buy a full afternoon's worth of newsreels, cartoons, serials, headlining feature films, and hour-long, programme-padding "B-pictures" (as contrasted to the A-list headline film). These were quickly written, expediently shot, cheap to produce, and generally considered disposable. Watching them back-to-back today, in the copious number of Roy Rogers' films available on <a href="https://archive.org/details/movies?&and[]=subject%3A%22Roy%20Rogers%22&and[]=collection%3A%22feature_films%22">Internet Archive</a> or public domain DVD collections, the astute viewer can pick out when they even used the same plot, only switching out the characters names, location, and Macguffin! </div>
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No one was a bigger hero of the B-movie Western than Roy Rogers, and no one better exemplifies the Western's blurred line between fact and myth than him. One may speak pejoratively of how Fess Parker played essentially the same character in every movie he made under the Disney banner, a point he himself came to realize. Rogers, on the other hand, literally did play himself. Regardless of the setting, time, occupation, or any other consideration, Roy Rogers was the character. Trigger was the horse. Gabby was the sidekick. Having control over the licensing of his likeness and silken voice, it is said that no other name of the time was as well-known - or marketable - save for Walt Disney himself. The Roy Rogers brand, the character, came to stand for the most upright, honest American values carried over from a rugged and bygone era. Yet the man was a celebrity made possible by Hollywood glitz and glamour (as glitzy as his <a href="https://www.pinterest.com/pin/411727590908322728/">sequined outfits later in life</a>). His films betray this duplicity: a regular plot-driver finds Rogers framed up and unjustly on the run from the law, or using disguise and deception on behalf of justice. Just as regularly he acts the very agent of the frontier's domestication that he and the Sons of the Pioneer bemoan in song, whether working for the railroad, or to bring peace between the ranchers and townsfolk, or to round-up outlaws so good decent folk can settle. For a simple singing cowboy, Roy Rogers was a paradox. On screen and in life he was a man of great integrity, but his films are a metatextual layering of everything as upright, rugged and honest as a non-alcoholic cocktail.</div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "trebuchet" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small; line-height: 18.2px;">Roy, Trigger, and the Sons of the Pioneers</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "trebuchet" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small; line-height: 18.2px;">doing what they do best in <i>Hollywood Canteen</i> (1944)</span></span></span></div>
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Just as the stars of Roy Rogers and the Sons of the Pioneers were rising, Disney was having a tough time. Though <i>Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs </i>catapulted Walt and his company to even greater fame, follow-up features like <i>Pinocchio</i> and especially <i>Fantasia</i> failed to capture the same popularity. The animator's strike of 1941 tensed up the studio at the same time that World War II shut off the European film market. In order to survive, Disney slimmed down its cinematic offerings, releasing a string of "package films" that anthologized shorter subjects. </div>
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<i>Saludos Amigos</i> and <i>The Three Caballeros</i> came out during the war, as a product of Walt's Latin American goodwill tour and post-strike vacation. These begat <i>Make Mine Music</i> in 1946 and <i>Fun and Fancy Free</i> in 1947, the latter comprised of two straightforward half-hour cartoons and the former being essentially a pop-music <i>Fantasia</i>. At the time, pop-music meant Benny Goodman, Nelson Eddy, Andy Russell and the Andrews Sisters. Disney looked to refine the format of <i>Make Mine Music</i> with 1948's <i>Melody Time</i>. Donald Duck and José Carioca of the Latin American films returned in <i>Blame it on the Samba</i>, the Andrews Sisters narrated <i>Little Toot</i>, Freddy Martin and His Orchestra provided the <i>Bumble Boogie</i>, and Roy Rogers and the Sons of the Pioneers sat around the campfire telling the story of Pecos Bill to <i>Song of the South</i>'s Bobby Driscoll and Luana Patten.</div>
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One of Disney's tallest tales,<i> Pecos Bill </i>is also one of the best possible introductions to the work of Roy Rogers and the Sons of the Pioneers. This piece, the climax of <i>Melody Time</i>, begins with a melancholy ballad entitled <i>Blue Shadows on the Trail</i>. The song, comparable to the Sons' two biggest hits <i>Tumbling Tumbleweeds</i> and <i>Cool Water</i>, was also released in 1948. The animation in this portion is slight, meditatively touring us around the moonlit mesas of an idealized, romantic American Southwest. Ken Carson supplied the eerie whistling.</div>
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In the midst of this animated landscape, Ub Iwerks' special processes bring us around the live-action campfire of Roy Rogers, Trigger and the Sons of the Pioneers explaining to Bobby and Luana why coyotes howl at the moon. It has to do with ol' Pecos Bill and his fateful meeting with Slue-Foot Sue.<br />
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Pairing Roy with Pecos was, probably unwittingly, very appropriate. Pecos Bill is a significant example of "fakelore", the phenomenon of a newly invented story taking on an artificial history as genuine folklore. The first Pecos story was written by Edward O'Reilly and published in <i>The Century Magazine</i> in 1917. These stories were eventually compiled into a single volume, <i>The Saga of Pecos Bill</i> in 1923. O'Reilly insisted up and down that his Pecos Bill stories were transcribed from authentic tales told by cowboys around the campfire, but folklorists have as yet been unable to find any historic mention of Pecos outside of his original articles. The tallest tale about Pecos is that he <b>is</b> a tall tale!<br />
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To tell Pecos Bill's legend, Roy slips into cowboy storyteller mode, a unique narrative style that is folksy, quick-witted and extremely engaging. This story segues into the big number, a jaunty rendition of Pecos Bill's self-titled song. Controversially, a part of that song involving Bill rolling a smoke while riding a tornado was cut from the last DVD release over concerns about undue influence on children (the questionable portrayals of Native Americans, however, were left behind). If there is any doubt, I can only recommend the audio version performed by the cast for RCA-Victor records. It has moments even more inspired and drop-dead hilarious than in the film, and it is freely available from the incomparable <a href="http://www.kiddierecords.com/">Kiddie Records Weekly</a>. A copy can be streamed or downloaded <a href="http://www.kiddierecords.com/2005/index.htm">here</a>.</div>
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The Sons of the Pioneers wouldn't return to the Disney fold until 1961, and then it was to be fronted by Rex Allen. Though not a member of the group, Disney Legend Rex Allen had been working steadily for the company since 1956, starring in everything from live performances on the Disneyland television series to narrating feature films to (afterwards) providing Father's voice for the Carousel of Progress to recording albums for Buena Vista Records. It was only natural that they would pair him with the Sons of the Pioneers for the short <i>Saga of Windwagon Smith</i>.</div>
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<i>Windwagon Smith</i> was the story of a sea captain (who looked suspiciously like Kirk Douglas' Ned Land from <i>20,000 Leagues Under the Sea</i>) who fit a Conestoga Wagon out with a deck and sails, whereupon the wind carried it along the Santa Fe Trail. After striking an agreement with the Westport town council, Admiral Smith constructs a massive "prairie clipper" that takes him to a fated meeting with a Kansas twister. Throughout, the Sons of the Pioneers provide their musical stylings and distinctive voices to the townsfolk. </div>
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By the 1960's, the film market had changed sufficiently that the Walt Disney Company began to phase out their long tradition of animated shorts. Television had shifted the production of lower quality animation and short features towards <i>Wonderful World of Color</i>, which debuted on NBC in 1961 in place of ABC's <i>Disneyland</i> (which itself had aired since 1954). <i>Wonderful World of Color</i> became a venue for those classic shorts to be seen again in the relatively new medium, and consequently diminished their box office draw. Though one of the last shorts to be produced, <i>Windwagon Smith</i> is cut from very old cloth. As a classic tall tale it hearkens all the way back to Pecos Bill, Davy Crockett and Paul Bunyan. </div>
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A year later, the Sons of the Pioneers supported Rex Allen once again in <i>The Legend of Lobo</i>. By this point, Disney had replaced their series of straightforward nature documentaries - the beloved <i>True-Life Adventures</i> - with wildlife dramas narrated by Rex Allen. The series began with <i>The Hound Who Thought He Was a Raccoon</i> in 1960, a short which preceded the last <i>True-Life Adventure</i> film <i>Jungle Cat</i>. These films were generally, excuse the term, good-natured and regularly featured wildlife interacting in different (but regularly humourous) ways with humankind.<br />
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<i>The Legend of Lobo</i> was patchier on the humour, considering that it was based on the real experiences of Ernest Thompson Seton in capturing the historical Lobo in the 1890's. Lobo's pack had turned to feasting on settlers' cattle, and a $1000 bounty was placed on his head. Seton decided to give it a turn, and what was supposed to be an excursion of a few weeks turned into a four-month ordeal. Eventually Lobo was captured... lured in with the pelt of his mate Blanca, who herself finally trapped and killed just prior. The great wolf died of his injuries and broken spirit, but his death was not in vain. Seton published <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3031/3031-h/3031-h.htm#link2H_4_0001">a written account of Lobo</a> in 1898 and dedicated the remainder of his own life to wolf conservation. Before his passing in 1946, Seton wrote "Ever since Lobo my sincerest wish has been to impress upon people that each of our native wild creatures is in itself a precious heritage that we have no right to destroy or put beyond the reach of our children."<br />
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Disney's film was shot around the stunning countryside of Sedona, Arizona. Though cowboys and wolf-hunters terrorize Lobo and his kin throughout, the only voice to be heard is Allen's, narrating the story while the Sons of the Pioneers pluck their guitars.<br />
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The relationship between Walt and Roy... Roy Rogers that is, along with the Sons of the Pioneers... was not extensive. It is interesting to see, however, where two of the most popular and well-known figures in entertainment in their period collaborated. </div>
Cory Grosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12141983255020503557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8280650245524507557.post-64177519661205599742017-09-02T00:00:00.000-06:002017-09-02T00:00:02.225-06:00What Makes a "Classic" Attraction?<div style="text-align: justify;">
Recently, <a href="https://youtu.be/_plbWTzAyl4">Rob Plays posted a video</a> in which he questioned the criteria for what makes a Disney attraction a "classic." Usually, when listing classics, there is a short list that most fans would agree upon - the Haunted Mansion, Pirates of the Caribbean, Enchanted Tiki Room, Peter Pan's Flight, Space Mountain, Dumbo the Flying Elephant, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, Jungle Cruise, Country Bear Jamboree, etc. - but when that short list is dissected, a universal criteria of what makes a "classic" is not forthcoming. It almost seems to be a case where the concept of a "classic" can be analyzed out of existence. Cynically, in the comments to his video, I suggested that this was a follow-up to a <a href="https://youtu.be/I5wz_D5AFaw">previous video </a>by Rob Plays in which he explained his view that no Disney attraction should be immune from vandalism or destruction. If there is no such thing as a "classic," after all, then that can't be used as an argument against whatever ill-conceived busywork Imagineering has gotten up to.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlkNqUjQRmSHiMdcrPikrEMgEbfd8oOQPEBIzKkfq2La_clAoPXqZKEXVpISSScacxBGCpdouYJwiYTagzWw-lAYnX8Q06CF5SUWpQRoS2lJQRmFYPtzDCOJAkyb9wLg_R2vsyKlq85Js/s1600/DSC02155-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlkNqUjQRmSHiMdcrPikrEMgEbfd8oOQPEBIzKkfq2La_clAoPXqZKEXVpISSScacxBGCpdouYJwiYTagzWw-lAYnX8Q06CF5SUWpQRoS2lJQRmFYPtzDCOJAkyb9wLg_R2vsyKlq85Js/s400/DSC02155-2.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">But what is a classic, REALLY?</td></tr>
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I would agree that a "classic" is a nebulous concept... Not because there is no such thing, but because what makes a particular attraction a classic is different from what makes another attraction a classic. The way in which the Enchanted Tiki Room is a classic is different from the way in which Space Mountain is a classic. There is no universal rule that applies to all classics. Instead, I would argue, there is an interplay of different criteria in varying strengths and combinations that result in an attraction achieving classic status. Some of these criteria may sound familiar to readers of <a href="http://yesterday-tomorrow-and-fantasy.blogspot.ca/search/label/Imagineering">my previous articles on Imagineering</a>... What makes an attraction a classic is not too far removed from what makes an attraction <a href="http://yesterday-tomorrow-and-fantasy.blogspot.ca/2017/05/what-makes-something-disney.html">"Disney"</a> and, more so, what makes an attraction <a href="http://yesterday-tomorrow-and-fantasy.blogspot.ca/2014/08/disneyland-should-be-museum.html">great</a>. </div>
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<a name='more'></a>One of these criteria is historicity. Simple longevity itself may not be a criteria, but a particular place in Disney history may be. It would be hard to argue that what remains of Disneyland's "Class of '55" are not classics: Snow White's Scary Adventure, Peter Pan's Flight, Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, Storybook Land Canal Boats and Casey Jr. Circus Train, Dumbo the Flying Elephant, Mad Tea Party, King Arthur Carrousel, Jungle Cruise, Mark Twain Riverboat, Autopia, Main St. Cinema, Main St. vehicles, and the DLRR. These are the opening day attractions, and should be considered sacred. There are other attractions in which Walt had a personal hand, like the "Class of '59": Matterhorn Bobsleds, Submarine Voyage, Monorail, and Alice in Wonderland. There are ones attached to significant events in Disney history, like those designed for the 1964/65 New York World's Fair: Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, It's a Small World, Carousel of Progress, and Primeval World. There are firsts of their kind, like the Enchanted Tiki Room and Main Street Electrical Parade. There are also the last projects Walt was involved in, like Pirates of the Caribbean and New Orleans Square. One might also qualify Walt Disney World's "Class of '71", including Space Mountain, Country Bear Jamboree, and the Hall of Presidents. This is where it might be useful to distinguish between "original classics" like these and "modern classics" like Big Thunder Mountain Railroad and Splash Mountain, which may not have the historicity but become classics on other points.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKRQT-SEXcUc-IWzPm4v6uuGU6ce0EPlU3EOMAinHjmAbeL9frJHf8Pmrlt5KqpnAROJCy4sFQBYuWCxFzX_v1WvqpRIHd82H4kaCAOMO5dkWSAGCeADV1Q2W-8a5j2FxstUAnfZcg5us/s1600/DSC05203.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKRQT-SEXcUc-IWzPm4v6uuGU6ce0EPlU3EOMAinHjmAbeL9frJHf8Pmrlt5KqpnAROJCy4sFQBYuWCxFzX_v1WvqpRIHd82H4kaCAOMO5dkWSAGCeADV1Q2W-8a5j2FxstUAnfZcg5us/s400/DSC05203.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Four classics in one shot.</td></tr>
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Another criteria, applying even more to "modern classics," is artistic excellence. How <b>good</b> of an attraction is it? How <a href="http://yesterday-tomorrow-and-fantasy.blogspot.ca/2017/04/theme-vs-decoration.html">well conceived and executed is it</a>? How coherent is it, and how emotionally and intellectually stimulating? How well does it <a href="http://yesterday-tomorrow-and-fantasy.blogspot.ca/2014/06/form-and-content-in-disneyland.html">shape guest experience and communicate its story</a>? How well does it <a href="http://yesterday-tomorrow-and-fantasy.blogspot.ca/2014/06/spectatorship-and-experientialism-in.html">place the guest at the centre of the experience or story, rather than as a passive spectator</a>? How well does it <a href="http://yesterday-tomorrow-and-fantasy.blogspot.ca/2016/07/requiem-for-tower.html">reinforce the theme of its surroundings</a>? These are the questions I've spent most of my writing on Imagineering talking about, and I've linked to the articles answering each question.</div>
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A good attraction does not, necessarily, become a classic on that strength alone. As much as I love 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Journey to the Center of the Earth in Tokyo DisneySea, being my two favourite Disney attractions anywhere or anytime, I acknowledge that they are not classics. They are fantastic attractions and <b>ought</b> to be classics, but they lack that certain<i> je ne sais quoi </i>that translates to being instant modern classics. It might just be that they are over in Asia, away from the awareness of most non-Asian fans, but then Mystic Manor <b>has</b> accelerated to the status of instant modern classic. Twilight Zone Tower of Terror was considered a modern classic, mainly for its quality, but Little Mermaid not so much, largely because it lacked in quality. It's rare that a <b>bad</b> attraction will become a classic, but being a good one is no guarantee of achieving classic status on its own.<br />
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Raising the difference between 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Mystic Manor brings up another criteria. That criteria is originality. Originality, more so than being based on an established IP, tends to elevate attractions to classics. If one considers the list of widely acknowledged classics, they're almost all original concepts developed by WED/Imagineering: Haunted Mansion, Pirates of the Caribbean, Jungle Cruise, Space Mountain, Country Bear Jamboree, Big Thunder Mountain, Enchanted Tiki Room, It's a Small World, the original Journey Into Imagination, Spaceship Earth, Mystic Manor, Expedition Everest... Only a relatively small number are based off established IP, and in some cases that connection is practically irrelevant. Nobody is a fan of Splash Mountain because they're such huge fans of <i>Song of the South</i>, or a fan of Mr. Toad's Wild Ride because <i>The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad</i> is a top-tier classic animated film. The Tower of Terror made me a fan of <i>The Twilight Zone</i>, not the other way around. The appeal of Peter Pan's Flight is more in what it does than in what film it is based on.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJuzBallHb4fcVIrjxLtbSJ4etb0IbWyFAfcAF6rzH-PLAcajMdT8b5h5FJndH_lumItKONVDtdM7xpLnKn2VAlLqY879e7fE7yy2YHBfpBS3oNuZuuCdJxPiEs353PFLkiews1Wc36hY/s1600/DSC01421.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJuzBallHb4fcVIrjxLtbSJ4etb0IbWyFAfcAF6rzH-PLAcajMdT8b5h5FJndH_lumItKONVDtdM7xpLnKn2VAlLqY879e7fE7yy2YHBfpBS3oNuZuuCdJxPiEs353PFLkiews1Wc36hY/s400/DSC01421.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">One of the most famous scenes in all Disney fandom,<br />and it's not found in any movie.</td></tr>
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<br />The relationship between classics and IP franchising is almost directly inverse. I can pretty much guarantee that Radiator Springs Racers, Guardians of the Galaxy Mission: Breakout!, and Pandora will never become classics. No matter how well done they are (and your mileage varies), they are based on IP and that is more detrimental to long-term status as classics. If it wasn't for the resurgence of interest in <i>Star Wars</i> in the mid-Nineties, Star Tours would have been shuttered long ago. I can't imagine anyone mentioning the Galaxy's Edge First Order attraction in the same breath as Haunted Mansion. I can't even imagine anyone mentioning the film it's based on in the same breath as better films from the series. Nor can I imagine Shanghai Disneyland's custom-built, movie-themed Pirates of the Caribbean being regarded as a classic like the original (even though the original is whittling away its status with each movie-based addition and politically correct vandalism). <br />
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Rob Plays, to his credit, did bring up the problem that fans of an IP-based attraction tend to be fans of the IP more than the attraction. So another criteria for a classic is that it has its own status among guests and the fan community. Reflecting the concept of the "art world," is the attraction critically acknowledged as a classic? If you ask people for a list of classics, do the same attractions keep appearing on everyone's list? And does Disney itself acknowledge this status through merchandising and events? Which attractions and characters within those attractions are you always seeing souvenirs for? Haunted Mansion and Pirates of the Caribbean definitely have this going for them, as did the Tower of Terror. Every fifth anniversary of the Enchanted Tiki Room sees another round of Tiki mugs and SHAG prints. An occasional figure set or pin does not meet this criteria, but a consistent marketing campaign, responding to a very real interest by fans, does. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsetm-tEjQt01lYCkIu_Xv5iH8lzF6W2Ic-9ifdo2jeYG8I4CaZTtOmeQ6ri_INfFo-FR6w86jbUq3euH3aDGJiHG-aVeScHUIX2432ARGZbH35OzXIFgSheT1HsaSAkkGOIUAJGOimtg/s1600/HMstorefront.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="940" data-original-width="681" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsetm-tEjQt01lYCkIu_Xv5iH8lzF6W2Ic-9ifdo2jeYG8I4CaZTtOmeQ6ri_INfFo-FR6w86jbUq3euH3aDGJiHG-aVeScHUIX2432ARGZbH35OzXIFgSheT1HsaSAkkGOIUAJGOimtg/s400/HMstorefront.jpg" width="288" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">64 objects for sale in a special storefront for a <br />
50 year old attraction might reasonably signify a "classic."</td></tr>
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These are, I think, the four most significant criteria in assessing whether an attraction is a "classic": historicity, artistic excellence, originality, and status among fans. I'm sure there are more criteria, and if you think of them, mention them in the comments. As it stands, these four criteria may weave together in different strengths and combinations, that can be compared. For example, Peter Pan's Flight is <b>more</b> of a classic than Snow White's Scary Adventures. They both share the same historical cachet as opening day attractions, but Peter Pan's Flight does something more original than Snow White's Scary Adventures, which is essentially a carnival ghost train. That would explain why Peter Pan's Flight's lines are significantly longer than Snow White's Scary Adventures', and why they thought nothing of getting rid of the latter in Walt Disney World, while the former is an opening day attraction in every park but Hong Kong Disneyland. Haunted Mansion is <b>more</b> of a classic than Space Mountain because it is a better attraction. There's <b>more</b> to it than Space Mountain's indoor roller coaster. But then contrast Space Mountain to California Screamin'... It's not a contest.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwj3locAQsrRHTxLLiSghm0GblssX3XCAR8fIfv_k_CHFvV0jmS-S_kgz1mqYZtQ6rEgZb339jHDI_ynOMSGV4uIqg4au3CQ-vXffYFAk9OluskiD9TdWzRVXoYmcMev3l91mWAec3ek0/s1600/DSC05922.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwj3locAQsrRHTxLLiSghm0GblssX3XCAR8fIfv_k_CHFvV0jmS-S_kgz1mqYZtQ6rEgZb339jHDI_ynOMSGV4uIqg4au3CQ-vXffYFAk9OluskiD9TdWzRVXoYmcMev3l91mWAec3ek0/s400/DSC05922.JPG" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Check out that instantly recognizable profile!</td></tr>
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Should a classic be inviolate though? Rob Plays raises the question of Walt Disney's Carousel of Progress, which is an acknowledged classic but no longer bears any but the most cursory similarity to its original form. Can it still qualify as a classic?<br />
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This enters into the larger debate over refurbishing attractions and <a href="http://yesterday-tomorrow-and-fantasy.blogspot.ca/2016/09/disneyland-will-never-be-completed.html">what actually qualifies as an improvement</a>. If we understand and (rightly) accept that theme parks are an organic art form that naturally invite improvement over time, then we can judge changes to classics on the basis of how it respects and reinforces the things that made the attraction a classic to begin with. Mainly this has to do with the question of artistic excellence: how have changes to an attraction actually enhanced its artistic excellence? The addition of Marc Davis' vignettes to the Jungle Cruise certainly improved the attraction as a whole, as have the new effects in the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. The addition of Disney characters to It's a Small World is, at least, an indifferent change, but the addition of the America scene diminished it. Movie characters, inappropriate projection effects, clips from the film score, an increasingly incoherent story, and now politically correct vandalism have irreparably damaged Pirates of the Caribbean so much that it only has a tenuous grasp on even being a good attraction anymore. Yet Constance and the Hatbox Ghost are good additions to the Haunted Mansion. New projection effects in the Fantasyland darkrides and DLRR dioramas have by-in-large improved them. The very nature of the Carousel of Progress requires progress so it doesn't become a petrified artifact.<br />
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Status as a "classic" is indeed a valid argument when assessing whether or not Imagineering should be fussing with an attraction. It takes a bit of intellectual work to tease out exactly what makes these widely agreed upon classics deserving of their status, but that doesn't nullify that status. If anything, it reinforces it: a classic attraction, above all, is one that can sustain good critical analysis. These are attractions that people can build websites and books around, and carry on conversations about for decades. They have something more going on than just a fun ride or a hip IP. </div>
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Cory Grosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12141983255020503557noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8280650245524507557.post-10068498180886503542017-08-23T00:00:00.001-06:002017-08-23T00:00:22.637-06:00The Story of Koro<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjP7TmXoZ3-TvzPVcys-lasOqGO3LWes61-pcsW_olgNVGfokfmZF272aBvF3ITk7LjsYdSD1p4Uy-9lzoAbeo2Z1mD5uRnHEpuUgLRhEbj8BKQGB3J2OgiVF57Yuj99SQYVYN01fKivJM/s1600/EnchantedTikiGodsLogo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="155" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjP7TmXoZ3-TvzPVcys-lasOqGO3LWes61-pcsW_olgNVGfokfmZF272aBvF3ITk7LjsYdSD1p4Uy-9lzoAbeo2Z1mD5uRnHEpuUgLRhEbj8BKQGB3J2OgiVF57Yuj99SQYVYN01fKivJM/s400/EnchantedTikiGodsLogo.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Dubbed the "Midnight Dancer", poor Koro laments that his status as a statue in the Enchanted Tiki Room lanai prevents his feet from moving. Nevertheless, with his drum he entertains the other gods and helps them have a "big time." Known in Tahiti as 'Oro, he was considered the supreme deity and patron of the Arioi, a religious sect who prepared dances, dramas, and songs for the large festivals. In peacetime, 'Oro could be gracious, but his fundamental character was a god of war demanding human sacrifice.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixKIfnxbVaLZ9zOaEZAmyApV9fFXBeuCDFumUk6xR4nI3BHOwl0x8YWot2Q99dzc6NIvp6LmEEwpZAT43KFjvPAxjhg-S4Vg9DypRpCZenq84TFiueybd3uNUpX-6TTG1r5HrRftShaoc/s1600/koro2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="529" data-original-width="378" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixKIfnxbVaLZ9zOaEZAmyApV9fFXBeuCDFumUk6xR4nI3BHOwl0x8YWot2Q99dzc6NIvp6LmEEwpZAT43KFjvPAxjhg-S4Vg9DypRpCZenq84TFiueybd3uNUpX-6TTG1r5HrRftShaoc/s400/koro2.jpg" width="285" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">An idol of 'Oro, wrapped in woven coconut fibre.<br />This type of effigy is called a To'o.<br />Photo: Wikimedia Commons.</td></tr>
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<a name='more'></a>'Oro began life as the child of Ta'aroa - the Tahitian version of Tangaroa - and Hina tu a uta. His birthplace was the sacred site of Taputapuatea on the island of Raiatea, which became a major political and religious centre whose influence spread across the entirety of Polynesia. Already established by 1000 CE as a complex of <i>marae</i> (stone platforms used as temples) where priests and oceaneers would share knowledge of the cosmos and navigation, Taputapuatea reflected 'Oro's status as both a god of war and a god of peace.<br />
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In the distant past, warring factions gathered at Taputapuatea for one of the greatest events in Polynesian history, the drafting of the Fa'atau Aroha. Translating to "friendly alliance", the Fa'atau Aroha was a great peace that freed up the islanders of Tahiti to become colonizers of the Pacific. In the wake of the Fa'atau Aroha, explorers reached the three distant corners of the Polynesian Triangle: Hawaii, Aotearoa (New Zealand), and Rapanui (Easter Island). Stones from Taputapuatea were taken along with these daring oceaneers and added to marae built on each of the new islands they possessed, forming a lasting link between diverse Polynesian cultures. Unfortunately the Fa'atau Aroha was eventually broken when the leaders of the two great alliances, the Aotea (East) and Aouri (West), were killed. The golden age age of Polynesian seafaring came to an end.<br />
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Taputapuatea became a major pilgrimage site, but after the arrival of Europeans and missionaries, it fell into disrepair. Maori scholar Te Rangi Hīroa, also known by his English name of Sir Peter Henry Buck, visited Taputapuatea in 1929 and left with a deep melancholy:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I had made my pilgrimage to Taputapu-atea, but the dead could not speak to me. It was sad to the verge of tears. I felt a profound regret, a regret for — I knew not what. Was it for the beating of the temple drums or the shouting of the populace as the king was raised on high? Was it for the human sacrifices of olden times? It was for none of these individually but for something at the back of them all, some living spirit and divine courage that existed in ancient times of which Taputapu-atea was a mute symbol. It was something that we Polynesians have lost and cannot find, something that we yearn for and cannot recreate. The background in which that spirit was engendered has changed beyond recovery. The bleak wind of oblivion had swept over Opoa. Foreign weeds grew over the untended courtyard, and stones had fallen from the sacred altar of Taputapu-atea. The gods had long ago departed. </blockquote>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhosry2xPUB49qZezmkqs9GguYYahaY7Cshx8EUwNvB_gsiEKAockWNu_kyCc9voWgg0feN5SF41ozjn0AiVDeJVQQ0pBjFt_6qS2BVVArppN7kKDgbbCRoOMfCZsWAeMi64o-C2sKOr5o/s1600/koro1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="800" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhosry2xPUB49qZezmkqs9GguYYahaY7Cshx8EUwNvB_gsiEKAockWNu_kyCc9voWgg0feN5SF41ozjn0AiVDeJVQQ0pBjFt_6qS2BVVArppN7kKDgbbCRoOMfCZsWAeMi64o-C2sKOr5o/s400/koro1.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Taputapuatea. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.</td></tr>
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The Arioi had the privilege of preparing dances, dramas, and songs in worship of 'Oro. Whereas Tahitian society was clearly stratified, membership in the Arioi was egalitarian and open to anyone willing to commit themselves to it. That said, the sect had its own structure mirroring that of the society at large, though much more fluid. Only the highest orders of the Arioi were reserved for the highest members of the nobility (a<i>riki</i>).<br />
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Each island had its own variation on the basic caste structure, but they all followed roughly the same pattern. At the top were the nobility (a<i>riki</i>), the landowners, and it was from this class that the kings (a<i>riki rahi</i>) were chosen. The a<i>riki rahi </i>were typically of the firstborn sons and before European contact, Tahiti had one for each of the eight tribes. Freemen (<i>raatira</i>) were the strata of small landowners, merchants, craftsmen, and artists. At the bottom were serfs (<i>manahune</i>) who tilled the fields of the a<i>riki</i> and gave up the majority of their agricultural goods to them. The structure mirrors the feudalism of Mediaeval Europe, and the main escape from it was the Arioi. <br />
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The permeability of Arioi hierarchy may have been one of the reasons why they were forbidden to have children. Promiscuity was permissible so long as an Arioi was unmarried. As soon as they became married, other dalliances stopped. Nevertheless, if an Arioi found themselves with child, that child would either be aborted or killed at birth. This habit is particularly interesting given the importance of fertility in Tahitian ritual, and besides keeping the bloodlines of the cast system pure, also demonstrates that freedoms come with responsibilities and sacrifices. To enjoy the privileges of the Arioi, one had to sacrifice family and a family line. To enjoy family and a family line, one had to give up being an Arioi. <br />
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Becoming an Arioi required "possession" by 'Oro: a trance-like state in which a person would feel compelled to force their way into an Arioi meeting. Suitable candidates were judged on their beauty, knowledge of Tahitian religious precepts, and skill in recitation, acting, and dance. Initiates received a special ankle tattoo and rights to wear a special kind of <i>tapa</i> cloth. As they rose in the ranks, the tattoo was added to, becoming ever larger.<br />
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A major role for the Arioi were the performances during major festivals in which the a<i>riki</i> charitably distributed goods amongst the people. Though society was highly stratified and even authoritarian in many respects, the status of the a<i>riki </i>wisely depended on their mollification of the lower castes. Great celebrations were held in which the a<i>riki</i> gave away goods to other members of the tribe, to build their reputation of generousity and curry the favour of those they stood over. An integral part of these celebrations were songs, dance, and dramas organized and performed by the Arioi. These celebrations and performances also provided opportunity for some ribald critique of authority, lending the Arioi a jester-like or "fool's festival"-like social function. Most of all, their role was to maintain tradition, performing the stories of the gods in a pre-literate culture.<br />
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The age of the Arioi and 'Oro worship came to an end with the arrival of Christian missionaries in the 19th century, who could not decide which they found more offensive: the pagan worship, the promiscuous sexuality, or the destruction of children. When Captain Cook visited Tahiti in 1777, he witnessed a human sacrifice at Taputapuatea in which a prisoner was bound and his head caved in with a mace. Taputapuatea had assumed its prominence as a meeting place and worship site because it was said to have been the birthplace of 'Oro himself. He was also said to have spent a good deal of time on Bora Bora, on Mount Pahia, from which he searched across the islands for a suitable bride. Taking the form of a handsome warrior, he found one in the beautiful maiden Vairaumati, who he would visit every morning by descending on a rainbow. Eventually, they would have a son and 'Oro would elevate her to the status of a goddess. <br />
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Nowadays, poor Koro sits, immobilized, in the Enchanted Tiki Room lanai. But like his followers, the provides the music for the gods' great celebrations. </div>
Cory Grosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12141983255020503557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8280650245524507557.post-75088917470113611332017-08-12T00:00:00.000-06:002017-08-24T22:26:20.188-06:00Walt's Era - Part 16: Disney's Peak? (1964)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfJzdVvQ28QMfWdbbMLbIDbvhN38_Z1z6u4npwOKrTDqgu8RpMa3FP5BdIlJB7QGy5SlTbQKDFKfnuXReU8EY5p1FkfsTTuzZNIzsukfhU4L6U05FAcDLNDYJZFxlRAg6C8XndAi_6a38/s1600/wlatseralogo1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfJzdVvQ28QMfWdbbMLbIDbvhN38_Z1z6u4npwOKrTDqgu8RpMa3FP5BdIlJB7QGy5SlTbQKDFKfnuXReU8EY5p1FkfsTTuzZNIzsukfhU4L6U05FAcDLNDYJZFxlRAg6C8XndAi_6a38/s320/wlatseralogo1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Did Disney reach its peak in 1964?<br />
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On the WED Enterprises side of things, this year was the start of the 1964-65 New York World's Fair, with its four WED-designed exhibits: Carousel of Progress, It's a Small World, the attraction that would become Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, and Ford's Magic Skyway which would add Primeval World to Disneyland and pioneer advancements leading to the Peoplemover and omnimover system. This was also the year that Marc Davis applied his hand to improving the Jungle Cruise, land was secretly being bought up in Florida, and the original plans for an Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow were being drafted. On September 14 of this year, Walt also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Not bad.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">A tram shuttles passengers past It's a Small World and Rolly Crump's</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Tower of the Four Windsat the 1964-65 New York World's Fair. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Progressland, home of the Carousel of Progress, sits in the background.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Photo: Disney.</span></td></tr>
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In film, 1964 was the year of <b>the big one</b>... Disney's best film of the period and, indeed, one of the best Disney films of all time. After years of production, <i>Mary Poppins</i> finally graced movie screens to universal acclaim (except by the book's author, of course). After it's 1960-61 reorientation, which had already produced a goodly sum of classic films, Disney released one that is widely regarded as Walt's own <i>magnum opus</i>.<br />
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Yet unlike what I considered the best year of "Walt's Era", 1954-55, the New York World's Fair and <i>Mary Poppins</i> were about all that happened. The remainder of the films released in 1964 are okay, generally... Decent, but not exceptional, which has been a bit of a running theme for this period. And if <i>Mary Poppins</i> was Walt's peak cinematic accomplishment, then what's left? It has been argued that Walt at least <b>appeared</b> to have lost interest in film by this point. With this film in the can, was there anything more he <b>could</b> do with the medium, especially in a period where the studios slipped into a reliance on relatively inexpensive live-action films? If we take <i>Mary Poppins</i> out of the equation, are we taking a cold, hard look at an unexceptional future for the Disney Studios? </div>
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<a name='more'></a><b><i><span style="font-size: large;">A Tiger Walks</span></i></b><br />
<b>March 12, 1964</b><br />
<b>91 minutes</b><br />
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Well this is a bad way to start out... <i>A Tiger Walks</i> is technically available on DVD through the Disney Movie Club, but I'm afraid I won't be ordering in a copy at this stage of the game (and with the Canada-US exchange rate being what it is). Furthermore, for some inexplicable reason, it has not been made available for digital rental via the usual channels. As a result, we'll have to take a pass on this. It stars Brian Kieth as a small town sheriff torn between his duty to protect the citizenry from an escaped circus tiger and the pleading his daughter, an animal rights activist who would rather see it re-captured. It is also notable as the last film of Sabu, the Indian-American actor most famous for his role as Mowgli in the 1942. Apparently it didn't do well in theatres, and that's that.</div>
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<b><br /></b><b><i><span style="font-size: large;">The Misadventures of Merlin Jones</span></i></b><br />
<b>March 25, 1964</b><br />
<b>91 minutes</b><br />
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It hasn't been unusual for Disney to re-release episodes of <i>Walt Disney's Disneyland</i> and <i>Wonderful World of Color</i> into theatres. Already we've passed <i>Davy Crockett: King of the Wild Frontier</i>, <i>Davy Crockett and the River Pirates</i>, and <i>The Sign of Zorro</i> as feature films and a handful of theatrical shorts like <i>Man in Space</i>. It is slightly more unusual for a pair of episodes to be edited together into a feature film without ever having aired on television, but that seems to be exactly what happened with <i>The Misadventures of Merlin Jones</i>. Though never confirmed by Disney, the rumour goes that NBC gave such a warm reception to the two episodes that Disney got the idea to pull them from the home market and throw them into theatres. The reception they got on the silver screen was also extraordinary, making <i>The Misadventures of Merlin Jones</i> a surprise hit.</div>
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Given who was in it, what it was, and what was going on at the time, maybe it shouldn't have been that surprising. <i>The Misadventures of Merlin Jones</i> reunited Tommy Kirk and Annette Funicello as students of Midvale College who run amok of the jocks and the squares and get into all sorts of hi-jinx. Tommy stars as the title character, a mad scientist in the vein of Fred MacMurray, but obviously as a teenage keener instead of a befuddled middle-aged man. Annette is his long-suffering girlfriend who mostly has to get him out of trouble with the local judge who rapidly alternates between being Merlin Jones' nemesis and best buddy and back again. Besides Disney's <i>An Escapade in Florence</i>, the pair had been making name for themselves with another studio and a particular kind of film it specialized in. </div>
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<i>The Misadventures of Merlin Jones</i> is, in a sense, Disney's response to the teen "beach party" movies produced by American International Pictures. An upstart studio specializing in low-budget drive-in fare, AIP's two most popular products were a string of Edgar Allan Poe-inspired horror movies starring Vincent Price and teenage bikini, beach, and surf-culture musicals starring Annette and Frankie Avalon. The first of these was <i>Beach Party</i> in 1963, and its success lead to AIP drafting a seven year contract with Annette. The following films were <i>Muscle Beach Party </i>(1964), <i>Bikini Beach</i> (1964), <i>Pajama Party</i> (1964),<i> Beach Blanket Bingo</i> (1965) and <i>How to Stuff a Wild Bikini</i> (1965). In a particularly weird confluence of forces, Vincent Price also starred in a similar film for AIP called <i>Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine</i> (1965). Walt was in the odd position of having to ask to borrow Annette back for <i>The Misadventures of Merlin Jones</i>.<br />
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Tommy Kirk co-starred with Annette in <i>Pajama Party</i> but his career was taking an unexpected, very sharp downturn. The secret of his homosexuality was exposed and Disney felt compelled to let him go once the filming of <i>Merlin Jones</i> wrapped up. The success of <i>Merlin Jones</i> ensured that the divorce between Tommy and Disney would not be wholly absolute, but the conservative film industry of the time took its toll on Tommy's mental and physical health. That's the future, however. Right now, Tommy and Annette revive their charm and chemistry in a couple of fun little capers.<br />
<i><br />The Misadventures of Merlin Jones</i> managed to tap into the same teen screwball comedy zeitgeist as Annette and Tommy's films for AIP. Perhaps its not as risque, since this is Disney after all and Walt had already communicated to a departing Annette that she ought not to expose her *gasp* navel in those beach movies she was doing. It doesn't reach the same feverish consistency of <i>The Absent-Minded Professor</i>, but it is still pretty enjoyable and only made to look better by the company surrounding it at this point in Disney's cinematic output. <i> </i></div>
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<b><i><span style="font-size: large;">The Three Lives of Thomasina</span></i></b><br />
<b>June 4, 1964</b><br />
<b>97 minutes</b><br />
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As Ashley observed at the conclusion of <i>The Three Lives of Thomasina</i>, it is a surprisingly deep film. What might otherwise seem to be another cutesy Disney animal movie ends up overflowing with themes of death and renewal, tradition and modernity, science and emotion, love and loss, and small town politics. It has a lot going on in a rather heavy hour and a half. </div>
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Though the cat Thomasina gets the name billing, the events that befall her are merely the structure upon which the human drama is set. The main part revolves around Dr. Andrew MacDhui (played by Patrick McGoohan in his second role for Disney after <i>The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh</i> for television), an embittered veterinarian in a small Scottish town in 1912. For a vet he betrays a startling lack of empathy and a all-too ready willingness to euthanize people's pets. This understandably turns the town against him, who were already mistrustful of this university educated man and his high-fallutin' book-learnin'. Contrasting him is "Mad Lori" MacGregor (Susan Hampshire), a lovely maiden living alone in a croft in the woods, where she happily works on her weaving and tending to sick animals, enjoying the privacy afforded to her by gossipy rumours about her being a witch. When the townsfolk no longer trust MacDhui, they return once again to the old ways of the witch in the wood.</div>
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The two eventually come to a head over the well-being of MacDhui's daughter, played by Karen Dotrice in her first role for Disney. An accident struck down her cat Thomasina, who contracted tetanus from the injury. Rather than deal with the complex medical and emotional issue, MacDhui simply had the cat put down. To his daughter's mind, it was both her cat and her father who died that day, and the rift between them eventually claims her own health. Only by learning to reconcile head and heart, and the discovery that Thomasina survived the failed euthanasia attempt, can he hope to win back his daughter's life and devotion. <br />
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Joining Dotrice is Matthew Garber as another of the town children. <i>The Three Lives of Thomasina</i> unleash the children to put their own spin on the film's events. As adult viewers we can understand the human drama at play, but the children take a different perspective that can sometimes be frustrating. For example, it is Garber and the boys who work to turn the townspeople against MacDhui with slanderous rumours. Yet they can be charming, like when they hold a funeral procession for Thomasina, complete with bagpipes. Following this is a strange dream sequence in which Thomasina visits cat Heaven and its patron goddess Bast. The strength of Dotrice and Garber's performances led Disney to contract them for another film he was making: <i>Mary Poppins</i>. <br />
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<i>The Three Lives of Thomasina</i> feels longer than it actually is, perhaps because it is dealing with such heavy material. Unfortunately it falls short of actually <b>saying</b> anything substantial about the issues it brings up. At least reconciliation comes when these dialectic poles are reconciled to each other, showing the importance of being a well-rounded, multifaceted person. Though MacDhui has the most to learn, the film does not patronize us by making him the only one with something to learn. Even the lovely "Mad Lori" learns the value that veterinary science can offer. </div>
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<b><br /></b><b><i><span style="font-size: large;">The Moon-Spinners</span></i></b><br />
<b>July 8, 1964</b><br />
<b>118 minutes</b><br />
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James Bond exploded onto the screen in 1962 with the film <i>Dr. No</i>. Beyond merely another spy film, <i>Dr. No </i>and its sequel <i>From Russia With Love</i> (1963) captured something essential and aspirational about the time period. They featured exotic and glamorous settings like Jamaica and Turkey, exclusive casinos and international chess tournaments. They featured fast cars, neat gadgets, and beautiful women. Bond was the sort of person that every man wanted to be and every woman wanted to be with. These films blended Cold War anxiety with the ethos of the Swinging Sixties, Jet Set, and Cool Britannia, to creatre a new cinematic icon. Later in 1964, the third Bond film, <i>Goldfinger</i>, would establish and petrify the Bond formula that has been in force over the last 50 years, 24 films, and six actors. <i>Goldfinger</i>, an elaborate heist movie at heart, introduced some of the most iconic Bond images like Shirley Eaton painted head-to-toe in gold, the Aston Martin, Bond strapped to a table to be bisected by a laser while bantering with his captor, and women with names like "Pussy Galore." Bond was, in many ways, the archetypal hero of his time and the movies became a licence to print money.</div>
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I'm not sure that, amidst all this success, that anybody really thought to ask "Gee, I wonder how Walt Disney would do one of these films?"</div>
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<i style="font-style: italic;">The Moon-Spinners</i><i> </i>is basically Disney's take on the Bond-style thriller. Set in exotic Crete, it almost begins like any other Disney film set in one of the globe's more picturesque locales. It even has the same sort of ethnographic footage, in this case a Cretan wedding. But it does not take long for Hayley Mills, playing her usual sort of character, to get caught up in a nefarious and potentially deadly plot involving stolen jewels. Peter McEnery stars opposite Mills as the disgraced bank employee under whose watch the jewels were stolen, looking to clear his name by apprehending the culprits. When the action picks up the scenes rapidly start shifting between Greek Orthodox churches, rocky coastlines, the catacombs beneath ruined temples, the mansions of British consulates, and even a posh villains' lair. This particular lair is the sumptuously decorated private yacht of Pola Negri, the silent film star who was enticed out of retirement by Walt. </div>
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Does it work? Well, it's not <b>bad</b>. <i>The Moon-Spinners </i>a decent family-friendly version of a James Bond-type film, which is fine for a family audience. That, however, kind of misses the mark of a James Bond-type film. Trying to be both a Disney film and a Bond-type film and not fully successfully being either makes it a bit of an oddball within the Disney oeuvre. </div>
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<b><i><span style="font-size: large;">Mary Poppins</span></i></b><br />
<b>August 29, 1964</b><br />
<b>139 minutes</b><br />
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What could I possibly have to add about <i>Mary Poppins</i>? It is Walt Disney's most lauded film, receiving a whopping 13 Academy Award nominations: Best Picture, Director, Actress, Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Art Direction, Costume Design, Sound Mixing, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Original Song, Score, and Adapted Score. It was Walt's only Best Picture nomination, though it didn't ultimately take away the Oscar (in the end it won five). Still, that's impressive, and <i>Mary Poppins</i> is widely considered Walt Disney's personal best. The company even made a movie about the making of the movie, and is currently filming a disingenuous 50-year later sequel. It has also been the only film predating the "Disney Renaissance" to be made into a Broadway musical, which shouldn't be surprising because, at heart, it <b>is</b> the first of Disney's Broadway-style musicals. Disney has specialized in musicals since forever, but <i>Mary Poppins</i> is the first to consciously follow that particular form. It is even reflected in the theatre marquee-style movie poster. </div>
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I would feel just awful saying anything bad about it, or even insufficiently exultant. There are a lot of people to whom that would be tantamount to blasphemy. Besides Dick Van Dyke's accent, pretty well everything about <i>Mary Poppins</i> is, well, practically perfect in every way. Watching it for the first time since reading the book, I have a renewed appreciation for how much of its success is owed to Disney. Despite P.L. Travers' objections, <i>Mary Poppins</i> was a fine book spun into pure gold by the team of Walt, the Sherman Brothers, scriptwriters Bill Walsh and Don DaGradi, and director Robert Stevenson. I'm particularly surprised by the last name on the list there. Robert Stevenson was Disney's workhorse director, whose underwhelming work during the Thirties reduced him to TV work by the time Walt picked him up in the Fifties. Many of his films for the company are darn good - <i>The Absent-Minded Professor, Darby O'Gill and the Little People, In Search of the Castaways, The Misadventures of Merlin Jones, </i>and later <i>The Love Bug, That Darn Cat!, Blackbeard's Ghost,</i> and <i>Bedknobs and Broomsticks</i> - but nothing that makes you sit up and notice any great directorial talent on display. The Academy Award nomination for Best Director is a something of an overdue recognition. </div>
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The <i>Mary Poppins</i> book has a lot of charm to it, and lots of interesting and ideas and episodes. There are good parts, but no real story to hang a hat on. Disney provided that story, and the heart that Travers herself lacked. Mary Poppins' mission to "save Mr. Banks" was wholly invented by Disney; it was not in the book. They turned the eponymous character from a mainly comic character, vain, arbitrary, and often cruel (much like Travers), to someone genuinely charming, entrancing, and even heroic in her own way. Julie Andrews gives what could easily be argued to be her career defining performance. If anything comes close, it would be Maria in <i>The Sound of Music</i>. Accent aside, Dick Van Dyke is a perfect counterpoint to the prim Poppins, who can swing between manic pratfalls and gentle wisdom with ease. The kids are fine, Glynis Johns is funny enough in a role that wasn't really necessary, at least not to the extent of having it's own song, and David Tomlinson does a stellar job as the Edwardian patriarch being forced kicking and screaming into a character arc. They needed a character that was definitively British and Edwardian, and in Tomlinson's performance they found him. It's kind of nice to see <b>that</b> version of a character that might have otherwise been played by Fred MacMurray.</div>
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It was a smooth move by Disney to transplant the story into the Edwardian Era as well. I've already documented, over and over again, how smitten Walt was with the Gay Nineties aesthetic, and it is well-used here. There's no way to tell why Disney didn't simply set it in the modern day or the time the book was written, the Thirties, except that maybe having lived through the Thirties, they weren't as romantic a time for him as the Victorian-Edwardian. A que might have been taken by Poppins herself, who more closely resembles someone from that time period. It may have been a deliberate choice on the part of Travers to have had her protagonist seem somewhat out of date for the Thirties. Walt put her right back in date, and quite fashionably so at that. <br />
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The two major sequences of the film - "Jolly Holiday / Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" and "Chim Chim Cher-ee / Step in Time" - are just knockouts. If I had any real complaint, it's just that it takes so long to get there. At two and a half hours, <i>Mary Poppins</i> is a little bloated. The "Jolly Holiday" doesn't even start until nearly an hour in. Thankfully it doesn't <b>feel</b> that long, except in unnecessary songs like "Sister Suffragette" and "Fidelity Fiduciary Bank", which may only be a couple minutes at a time but make the whole finished product seem longer than it needs to be. Even with those, <i>Mary Poppins </i>manages to move along at a fair clip. </div>
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So is <i>Mary Poppins</i> Walt Disney's best film? It certainly is for this time period... Has the studio been declining into mediocrity in the last few years <b>because</b> they were investing so much time, talent, and energy into <i>Mary Poppins</i>? If so, it certainly paid off. <i>Mary Poppins</i> almost feels like it's coming out of nowhere, as if a different studio made it. It doesn't fit in with the Thomasinas and Merlin Joneses the company is making now. It almost feels like something Biblical, a Moses from Sinai, face gleaming with Divine light and fury, descending from glory into a benighted world. Is it Walt's best live-action film up to this time? It's hard to say... Compared to what, <i>20,000 Leagues Under the Sea</i>? <i>Davy Crockett</i>? <i>Swiss Family Robinson</i>? <i>Pollyanna</i>? <i>Song of the South</i>? <br />
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Of any of those films, <i>Mary Poppins</i> probably delivers the best Disney formula most successfully. I noted when reviewing <i>Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs</i> and <i>20,000 Leagues Under the Sea</i> that the best Disney films are the most extravagantly produced and most well-rounded. <i>Mary Poppins</i> has that in spades, even more so than <i>20,000 Leagues</i>. It has more songs, and better ones, than most other live-action Disney films. It has comedy and pathos, and if not action it at least has a sense of adventure inside chalk paintings and atop London rooftops. Those rooftops lend an air of mystery, or even sublimnity. There is plenty of magic and whimsy, and character drama. It doesn't directly have a romantic angle - poor Bert got himself friendzoned - but the "Jolly Holiday" is nevertheless a love song sort of sequence. <i>Mary Poppins</i> has it all, and is done very well.<br />
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It would be apples and oranges to compare <i>Mary Poppins</i> to <i>20,000 Leagues</i>, my favourite live-action Disney film. I would agree that it is more Disneyish than <i>20,000 Leagues</i>, more family friendly and possessing more diversity in its offerings and more real heart. For me it's really more of a taste issue at that point. I have slightly more taste for Victorian Science Fiction than for Broadway musicals. We're getting into the differences between "best" and "favourite". But on either chart, <i>Mary Poppins</i> is right up there. </div>
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<b><i><span style="font-size: large;">The Tattooed Police Horse</span></i></b><br />
<b>December 18, 1964</b><br />
<b>48 minutes</b><br />
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The short feature preceding <i>Emil and the Detectives</i> was another documentary on the subject of horses. This time around, it's the world of harness racing and a fictional standardbred named Jolly Roger who journeyed from racetrack to street patrol and back again. The horse's story is interesting enough, and if you are familiar with the world of harness racing then apparently several big names from the time make cameo appearances, but it is surprisingly dull. Usually Disney documentaries are a little jazzier in their presentation.</div>
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The tattoo in question, by the way, is the tattoo placed on the inside lip of a racing horse to identify them and their pedigree. So the title is meant to denote the odd situation of a pedigreed racing horse serving with the police. </div>
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<b><br /></b><b><i><span style="font-size: large;">Emil and the Detectives</span></i></b><br />
<b>December 18, 1964</b><br />
<b>92 minutes</b><br />
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I've never done an extensive study on the genre of the boys adventure movie, but I imagine it's been around for some time. The archetypal modern one is <i style="text-align: justify;">The Goonies</i><span style="text-align: justify;">, and I gather that was a fairly intentional tribute to the boys adventure films from the past. The ones I'm most familiar with are those by Czech auteur Karel Zeman, the visual effects maestro famous for adaptations of Jules Verne and other Victorian Scientific Romances. </span><i style="text-align: justify;">Journey into Prehistory</i><span style="text-align: justify;"> (1955) and </span><i style="text-align: justify;">The Stolen Airship</i><span style="text-align: justify;"> (1967) feature a gaggle of boys making off in wild adventures into the prehistoric past or aboard fantastic flying machines, respectively. </span></div>
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Disney's <i>Emil and the Detectives</i>, adapting a 1929 German children's novel, falls roughly into the same category. Young Emil Tischbein has gotten his grandmother's money stolen by a wolf in a checkered suit, and it's up to him and a group of boy detectives to try and get it back. The attempt embroils them in an even bigger plot to steal millions from a bank. This plot naturally lends itself to some satire of Film Noir tropes, the on location shooting in post-war Berlin was interesting, and overall it was more enjoyable than we were expecting. I doubt it would ever warrant a second viewing though. </div>
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<b><i><span style="font-size: large;">The Golden Horseshoe Revue</span></i></b><br />
<b>Date Unknown, 1964</b><br />
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Now <b>this</b> is more like it! <i>The Golden Horseshoe Revue</i> is the <b>real</b> wildest ride in the wilderness, and this episode of <i>Wonderful World of Color</i> turned theatrical short is the only filmed documentation of Disneyland's longest-running, best-beloved live act. What an act it was! Wally Boag supplies uproarious humour juxtaposed with Betty Taylor's grace and incredible set of pipes, peppered with slapstick and pratfalls and dancing girls, oh my. In this special, ostensibly to celebrate the show's 10,000th performance, the dynamic duo is joined by Ed Wynn, Gene Sheldon, and Annette. Wynn's contribution is especially poignant as he recollects the times he performed on the actual Vaudeville stage in the 1910's and '20's. Much like <i>Disneyland After Dark</i> before it, we're watching more than a cinematic document of Disneyland's early years. We're catching a then-living link with history, the early days of a new art form. In <i>Disneyland After Dark</i> it was Louis Armstrong reuniting with the Young Men of New Orleans to recreate Jazz aboard Disney's Mississippi riverboat, and here it is a Vaudeville veteran remembering the crucible of modern American showbusiness. Walt's nostalgia for his own younger days has preserved for us an inestimable record of the Vaudeville, saloon show type, connected to the people who experienced it firsthand. <br />
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For Disney nerds though, it's the only official video documentation of the original Golden Horseshoe Revue that matters most of all. Beginning on opening day, July 17, 1955, the Golden Horseshoe Revue ran until 1986. It went through a number of different performers in that time, of course, but excepting a three-year stint at Walt Disney World getting the Diamond Horseshoe Revue going, Boag retired in 1982. Let that sink in for a second... After starting in 1955, he didn't leave the role until <b>1982</b>. The show itself only went on four more years without him. Betty Taylor did even one better. She actually closed the show down, performing all the way from 1956 to it's last show. In a strange twist of fate, she passed away in 2011, one day after Wally Boag did. The film <i>Golden Horseshoe Revue</i> first aired on <i>Wonderful World of Color</i> in 1962, was edited into a theatrical short for the UK market in 1963, and then brought to US theatres in 1964. The only other official documentation that comes close is a 1957 Disneyland Records album <i>Slue-Foot Sue's Golden Horseshoe Review</i>, now available on iTunes. </div>
<b><br /></b>Cory Grosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12141983255020503557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8280650245524507557.post-84453236621073024742017-08-09T00:00:00.003-06:002017-08-09T00:00:00.208-06:00J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan <div style="text-align: justify;">
The character of Peter Pan was first developed by J.M. Barrie in his 1902 adult novel <i>The Little White Bird</i>. In this semi-autobiographical tale, the narrator tells his young ward David about a week-old infant named Peter who overhears his parents discussing their future hopes for his adult life. This all sounds rather dreadful to him, so Peter absconds to Kensington Gardens where he encounters the various fairy folk who make this London park their home. These few chapters in <i>The Little White Bird</i> inspired Barrie to write a full theatrical play entitled <i>Peter Pan; or, the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up</i> in 1904. The chapters in <i>Little White Bird</i> were slightly rewritten and published as the book <i>Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens</i> in 1906. </div>
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Though published to capitalize on the success of the play, <i>Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens</i> is not a prequel to <i>Peter Pan</i>. Rather, it is a first draft of sorts. Barrie would revisit many of the themes and situations in that short story, not the least of which being the flying boy who refuses to grow up. Kensington Gardens would become Neverland, though Peter does allude to having spent some time in the Gardens when he first decided not to age. Maimie, the girl who develops an affection for Peter, becomes Wendy. Finally, in 1911, Barrie rewrote his play as a novel. <i>Peter and Wendy</i> became the definitive literary version of the story that has inspired countless adaptations on stage and screen since.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>The script of the play was not published until 1928, and stagings are seen infrequently today. More common are the 1953 Disney animated feature film and the 1954 Broadway musical, which originally starred Mary Martin in the role of Peter. This latter version was aired for television in 1955, 1956, and 1960 (and more recently recast and performed again in 2014). Another notable adaptation was the 1923 silent film, for which Barrie wrote a screenplay but which ultimately chose to adapt his original play instead. This version, like most, maintained the play’s tradition of casting a woman in the role of Peter. Disney's film breaks with that tradition by casting Bobby Driscoll as the voice of the boy who never grows up. </div>
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Another tradition originating with the play and carried on through subsequent adaptations was the same actor portraying both Captain Hook and Mr. Darling. In Disney's animated film, the incomparable radio actor Hans Conried provided the voice for both characters without being burdened by the heavy make-up required of stage actors. Original drafts of the play were absent the dashing pirate, simply on the count that he was not necessary. Any pretense of evil was ably supplied by Peter Pan himself.</div>
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Barrie understood children too well to be sickeningly sentimental about those little angels. One can see from the flippancy with which they talk about killing and other misadventures that Barrie portrays Peter and the Lost Boys as true children, who may be alternately sweet and cruel, filled with wonder and curiousity at one second while horrid and bloodthirsty the next. He may have idealized childhood but certainly not children. Like Andersen and his mermaids, Barrie sees that being in a primordial, pre-moral state does not make one sinless, but merely ignorant that they are sinning. In fact, Barrie supplied mermaids of his own to reflect this.<br />
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If you shut your eyes and are a lucky one, you may see at times a shapeless pool of lovely pale colours suspended in the darkness; then if you squeeze your eyes tighter, the pool begins to take shape, and the colours become so vivid that with another squeeze they must go on fire. But just before they go on fire you see the lagoon. This is the nearest you ever get to it on the mainland, just one heavenly moment; if there could be two moments you might see the surf and hear the mermaids singing. </blockquote>
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The children often spent long summer days on this lagoon, swimming or floating most of the time, playing the mermaid games in the water, and so forth. You must not think from this that the mermaids were on friendly terms with them; on the contrary, it was among Wendy's lasting regrets that all the time she was on the island she never had a civil word from one of them. When she stole softly to the edge of the lagoon she might see them by the score, especially on Marooners' Rock, where they loved to bask, combing out their hair in a lazy way that quite irritated her; or she might even swim, on tiptoe as it were, to within a yard of them, but then they saw her and dived, probably splashing her with their tails, not by accident, but intentionally. </blockquote>
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They treated all the boys in the same way, except of course Peter, who chatted with them on Marooners' Rock by the hour, and sat on their tails when they got cheeky. He gave Wendy one of their combs. </blockquote>
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The most haunting time at which to see them is at the turn of the moon, when they utter strange wailing cries; but the lagoon is dangerous for mortals then, and until the evening of which we have now to tell, Wendy had never seen the lagoon by moonlight, less from fear, for of course Peter would have accompanied her, than because she had strict rules about every one being in bed by seven. She was often at the lagoon, however, on sunny days after rain, when the mermaids come up in extraordinary numbers to play with their bubbles. The bubbles of many colours made in rainbow water they treat as balls, hitting them gaily from one to another with their tails, and trying to keep them in the rainbow till they burst. The goals are at each end of the rainbow, and the keepers only are allowed to use their hands. Sometimes hundreds of mermaids will be playing in the lagoon at a time, and it is quite a pretty sight.</blockquote>
Kensington Gardens may have wormed their way onto Storybook Land Canal Boats, but Neverland as a whole reflects this truth about the child psyche. The island is a manifestation of the Edwardian child's interior world of the imagination, and what is it filled with? Pirates, so-called "savages" and "cannibals", wild creatures, and other harrowing things. Nor is it simply the interior world of boys, filled as they are with rats and snails and puppy dog's tails. This far-off land's fairies and mermaids aren't exactly sugar and spice and everything nice. A precondition of meeting Peter, laid out in the novel’s final words, is for a child to be "gay and innocent and heartless." That is an apt description of childhood, Neverland, and Peter himself. </div>
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<i>Peter and Wendy</i> has an air of tragedy about it, as Barrie manages to idealize childhood flights of fancy while at the same time recognizing the imperative not only to grow up, but to mature in the process. Towards the end of the novel, careful literary allusions are made to the idea that Captain Hook is really what Peter Pan would become if he merely got older without complementary moral, spiritual, and intellectual development. Her escapades in Neverland are what impart wisdom and maturity on young Wendy.<br />
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By two bells that morning they were all stirring their stumps; for there was a big sea running; and Tootles, the bo'sun, was among them, with a rope's end in his hand and chewing tobacco. They all donned pirate clothes cut off at the knee, shaved smartly, and tumbled up, with the true nautical roll and hitching their trousers. </blockquote>
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It need not be said who was the captain. Nibs and John were first and second mate. There was a woman aboard. The rest were tars before the mast, and lived in the fo'c'sle. Peter had already lashed himself to the wheel; but he piped all hands and delivered a short address to them; said he hoped they would do their duty like gallant hearties, but that he knew they were the scum of Rio and the Gold Coast, and if they snapped at him he would tear them. His bluff strident words struck the note sailors understand, and they cheered him lustily. Then a few sharp orders were given, and they turned the ship round, and nosed her for the mainland. </blockquote>
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Captain Pan calculated, after consulting the ship's chart, that if this weather lasted they should strike the Azores about the 21st of June, after which it would save time to fly. </blockquote>
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Some of them wanted it to be an honest ship and others were in favour of keeping it a pirate; but the captain treated them as dogs, and they dared not express their wishes to him even in a round robin. Instant obedience was the only safe thing. Slightly got a dozen for looking perplexed when told to take soundings. The general feeling was that Peter was honest just now to lull Wendy's suspicions, but that there might be a change when the new suit was ready, which, against her will, she was making for him out of some of Hook's wickedest garments. It was afterwards whispered among them that on the first night he wore this suit he sat long in the cabin with Hook's cigar-holder in his mouth and one hand clenched, all but the forefinger, which he bent and held threateningly aloft like a hook.</blockquote>
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Despite his sympathy with children, Barrie also presents parents as sympathetic figures and almost as soon as the Darling children get to Neverland they want to return to their mothers' bosom. Part of Peter's malevolence is rooted in his rejection of the nurturing relationship between children and their parents. <br />
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'Listen, then,' said Wendy, settling down to her story, with Michael at her feet and seven boys in the bed. 'There was once a gentleman——' </blockquote>
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'I had rather he had been a lady,' Curly said. </blockquote>
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'I wish he had been a white rat,' said Nibs. </blockquote>
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'Quiet,' their mother admonished them. 'There was a lady also, and——' </blockquote>
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'O mummy,' cried the first twin, 'you mean that there is a lady also, don't you? She is not dead, is she?' </blockquote>
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'Oh no.' </blockquote>
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'I am awfully glad she isn't dead,' said Tootles. 'Are you glad, John?' </blockquote>
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'Of course I am.' </blockquote>
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'Are you glad, Nibs?' </blockquote>
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'Rather.' </blockquote>
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'Are you glad, Twins?' </blockquote>
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'We are just glad.' </blockquote>
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'Oh dear,' sighed Wendy. </blockquote>
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'Little less noise there,' Peter called out, determined that she should have fair play, however beastly a story it might be in his opinion. </blockquote>
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'The gentleman's name,' Wendy continued, 'was Mr. Darling, and her name was Mrs. Darling.' </blockquote>
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'I knew them,' John said, to annoy the others. </blockquote>
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'I think I knew them,' said Michael rather doubtfully. </blockquote>
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'They were married, you know,' explained Wendy, 'and what do you think they had?' </blockquote>
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'White rats,' cried Nibs, inspired. </blockquote>
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'No.' </blockquote>
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'It's awfully puzzling,' said Tootles, who knew the story by heart. </blockquote>
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'Quiet, Tootles. They had three descendants.' </blockquote>
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'What is descendants?' </blockquote>
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'Well, you are one, Twin. </blockquote>
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'Do you hear that, John? I am a descendant.' </blockquote>
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'Descendants are only children,' said John. </blockquote>
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'Oh dear, oh dear,' sighed Wendy. 'Now these three children had a faithful nurse called Nana; but Mr. Darling was angry with her and chained her up in the yard; and so all the children flew away.' </blockquote>
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'It's an awfully good story,' said Nibs. </blockquote>
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'They flew away,' Wendy continued, 'to the Neverland, where the lost children are.' </blockquote>
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'I just thought they did,' Curly broke in excitedly. 'I don't know how it is, but I just thought they did.' </blockquote>
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'O Wendy,' cried Tootles, 'was one of the lost children called Tootles?' </blockquote>
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'Yes, he was.' </blockquote>
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'I am in a story. Hurrah, I am in a story, Nibs.' </blockquote>
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'Hush. Now I want you to consider the feelings of the unhappy parents with all their children flown away.' </blockquote>
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'Oo!' they all moaned, though they were not really considering the feelings of the unhappy parents one jot. </blockquote>
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'Think of the empty beds!' </blockquote>
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'Oo!' </blockquote>
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'It's awfully sad,' the first twin said cheerfully. </blockquote>
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'I don't see how it can have a happy ending,' said the second twin. 'Do you, Nibs?' </blockquote>
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'I'm frightfully anxious.' </blockquote>
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'If you knew how great is a mother's love,' Wendy told them triumphantly, 'you would have no fear.' She had now come to the part that Peter hated. </blockquote>
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'I do like a mother's love,' said Tootles, hitting Nibs with a pillow. 'Do you like a mother's love, Nibs?' </blockquote>
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'I do just,' said Nibs, hitting back. </blockquote>
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'You see,' Wendy said complacently, 'our heroine knew that the mother would always leave the window open for her children to fly back by; so they stayed away for years and had a lovely time.' </blockquote>
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'Did they ever go back?' </blockquote>
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'Let us now,' said Wendy, bracing herself for her finest effort, 'take a peep into the future'; and they all gave themselves the twist that makes peeps into the future easier. 'Years have rolled by; and who is this elegant lady of uncertain age alighting at London Station?' </blockquote>
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'O Wendy, who is she?' cried Nibs, every bit as excited as if he didn't know. </blockquote>
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'Can it be—yes—no—it is—the fair Wendy!' </blockquote>
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'Oh!' </blockquote>
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'And who are the two noble portly figures accompanying her, now grown to man's estate? Can they be John and Michael? They are!' </blockquote>
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'Oh!' </blockquote>
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'"See, dear brothers," says Wendy, pointing upwards, '"there is the window still standing open. Ah, now we are rewarded for our sublime faith in a mother's love." So up they flew to their mummy and daddy; and pen cannot describe the happy scene, over which we draw a veil.' </blockquote>
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That was the story, and they were as pleased with it as the fair narrator herself. Everything just as it should be, you see. Off we skip like the most heartless things in the world, which is what children are, but so attractive; and we have an entirely selfish time; and then when we have need of special attention we nobly return for it, confident that we shall be embraced instead of smacked. </blockquote>
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So great indeed was their faith in a mother's love that they felt they could afford to be callous for a bit longer. </blockquote>
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But there was one there who knew better; and when Wendy finished he uttered a hollow groan. </blockquote>
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'What is it, Peter?' she cried, running to him, thinking he was ill. She felt him solicitously, lower down than his chest. 'Where is it, Peter?' </blockquote>
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'It isn't that kind of pain,' Peter replied darkly. </blockquote>
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'Then what kind is it?' </blockquote>
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'Wendy, you are wrong about mothers.' </blockquote>
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They all gathered round him in affright, so alarming was his agitation; and with a fine candour he told them what he had hitherto concealed. </blockquote>
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'Long ago,' he said, 'I thought like you that my mother would always keep the window open for me; so I stayed away for moons and moons and moons, and then flew back; but the window was barred, for mother had forgotten all about me, and there was another little boy sleeping in my bed.' </blockquote>
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I am not sure that this was true, but Peter thought it was true; and it scared them. </blockquote>
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'Are you sure mothers are like that?' </blockquote>
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'Yes.' </blockquote>
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So this was the truth about mothers. The toads! </blockquote>
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Still it is best to be careful; and no one knows so quickly as a child when he should give in. 'Wendy, let us go home,' cried John and Michael together. </blockquote>
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'Yes,' she said, clutching them. </blockquote>
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'Not to-night?' asked the lost boys bewildered. They knew in what they called their hearts that one can get on quite well without a mother, and that it is only the mothers who think you can't. </blockquote>
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'At once,' Wendy replied resolutely, for the horrible thought had come to her: 'Perhaps mother is in half mourning by this time.' </blockquote>
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This dread made her forgetful of what must be Peter's feelings, and she said to him rather sharply, 'Peter, will you make the necessary arrangements?' </blockquote>
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'If you wish it,', he replied, as coolly as if she had asked him to pass the nuts.</blockquote>
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More sentimental adaptations portray Peter as simply whimsical. More mature ones imbue him with the air of a trickster or tempter figure. Disney's <i>Once Upon A Time </i>television series was one of the few to make him an outright villain, driven to selfish, evil deeds by his disordered desire to reclaim his youth. </div>
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However he is portrayed, Peter Pan remains emblematic of everything anarchic, chthonic, and charming about children. He does not grow up, because children don’t grow up. Yes,<b> a child</b> will grow up into an adult, but<b> children </b>never grow up. They're always the same age.</div>
Cory Grosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12141983255020503557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8280650245524507557.post-74053519436760590572017-08-05T00:00:00.000-06:002017-08-05T00:00:12.164-06:00Post-Mortem on Pirates and the New Rivers of America<div style="text-align: justify;">
While Ashley and I were off on our own vacation the last few weeks, traversing the vast Canadian prairies to visit her family in Manitoba and seeking out every museum and heritage site along the way, a tonne of Disney Parks news broke. Most significantly, the altered Pirates of the Caribbean in Disneyland Paris re-opened and Fantasmic, the Rivers of America, and the Disneyland Railroad returned to Disneyland U.S.A. Having written articles on little more than the <i style="text-align: justify;">Disney Parks Blog</i><span style="text-align: justify;"> posts about </span><a href="http://yesterday-tomorrow-and-fantasy.blogspot.ca/2017/07/requiem-for-pirates-of-caribbean.html" style="text-align: justify;">Pirates of the Caribbean</a><span style="text-align: justify;"> and the </span><a href="http://yesterday-tomorrow-and-fantasy.blogspot.ca/2016/01/the-new-rivers-of-america.html" style="text-align: justify;">Rivers of America</a><span style="text-align: justify;">, it seems worthwhile to revisit the subjects now that the finished products have debuted.</span></div>
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<a name='more'></a>First the bad: Pirates of the Caribbean somehow came out worse than we could have possibly conceived. While I was resignedly nonplussed, Ashley was actually <b>livid</b> at the changes supposedly wrought for her benefit as a woman of delicate constitution, as all women evidently are. </div>
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The issue was, of course, that the original auction scene depicted female victimization in a transgressively humourous manner. In the dynamic of the scene as conceived by Marc Davis, the ladies of the town were being rounded up for sale to rowdy, raunchy pirates, the terror offset by the manner in which each woman reacts to the spectacle. The focal points were the larger woman on the docket at the moment and the infamous redhead. The larger woman seems, if not excited by the prospect of being auctioned off, at least passingly optimistic at getting a husband. The redhead upstaging her, on the other hand, has used her sexual prowess to take control of the situation. Undoubtedly a woman of ill repute herself, the cries of "we wants the redhead" have duly informed her that each man at the auction is, in reality, wrapped around her finger. The quiet smirk on her face tells us so. Without having to say a word, she is the most empowered figure in this tableaux.</div>
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Now... now she is not. Ironically, the attempt to conventionally empower her by making her a pirate and giving her lots of weapons has reduced her to voicelessness. In the auction for the loot of the villagers, which the pirates are inexplicably supposed to be bidding for instead of, y'know, stealing, the redhead is reduced to a mere armed guard. The pirates still cry (<i>en français</i>) that they wants the redhead, but without the charged and transgressive sexuality of the original scene - a dynamic space where sexual roles are inverting and nothing is quite as it seems at first glance - the redhead is merely smiling vacantly at sexual harassment. She doesn't even say a word in her own defense; the auctioneer speaks for her. She is reduced to an empty, expressionless, voiceless, vacuous non-entity. Rather than empowered, she's now a prop. This colourful, adjective-laden description <b>still</b> failed to capture the full depth of Ashley's outrage, mind you ("It's not that you didn't try," she adds).<br />
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Disneyland Paris also threw an awkwardly cackling Barbossa animatronic as the new focal point of the skeleton at the helm scene... <b>the skeleton at the helm scene</b>... because you might as well wreck two iconic scenes for the price of one. All that's left is to figure out how to neuter the prison scene, which I imagine Imagineering is thinking hard about as we speak. </div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">New Pirates of the Caribbean, Disneyland Paris. Video: <i>DLP Welcome</i>.</span></div>
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From the bad to the middling: a newly restructured Fantasmic returned to the Rivers of America waterfront to mixed results. While the basic storyline remains the same, new video projection mapping effects and set pieces have altered its tone considerably. It is certainly epic in scale, much bigger, grander, more spectacular, and infinitely more manic. Pacing has essentially disappeared in a visual and auditory assault. That's not necessarily bad though, it just <b>is</b>. It's a smaller price to pay for the marvelous application of more recent technology that that originally designed for the show. </div>
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More questionable is the appearance of a costumed Sorcerer Mickey earlier on in the show and the loss of the Evil Queen's transformation. These are subtle changes that undermine the drama in subtle ways. The premature appearance of Sorcerer Mickey dilutes his climactic appearance at the end of the original show. Writing out the Evil Queen's transformation not only loses a cool scene, but the new transition gives this disquieting impression that the Disney Villains are just a manifestation of Mickey's dark subconscious. There was more drama implicit to the idea that Mickey was fighting off the Villains' attempt to take over his mind. </div>
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Worst, of course, was changing out the <i>Peter Pan</i> sequence for <i>Pirates of the Caribbean</i>. I'm really, really just over <i>Pirates of the Caribbean</i> at this point. Four of the five movies are awful, the original rides have been irredeemably ruined, and its spreading out its tendrils to wreck everything around it too, starting with Tom Sawyer Island and now Fantasmic. <i>Peter Pan</i> was tonally excellent material for Fantasmic, as a colourful classic fairy tale with charismatic characters in Peter, Hook, Wendy, Smee, and the Crocodile. Now it's just more bloody Jack Sparrow.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">The new Fantasmic. Video: <i>Attractions 360</i>.</span></div>
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Okay, with that out of my system, on to the good: the new Rivers of America backwaters and DLRR route came out surprisingly well. I had originally expressed that I wasn't particularly offended to begin with, partly as resignation to changes I can't do anything about and relief that at least they didn't get rid of the Rivers of America completely. The peaks aren't as towering behind the train as they maybe should be, but I'm sure the whole thing will look better once the trees grow in and the cliffs of "Galaxy's Edge" rise up behind it. I do wonder about the seeming wide-open spaces behind Big Thunder Mountain though... Those would have been the perfect places to add in some homages to Nature's Wonderland, or even a family of backwoods bears having a little jamboree. </div>
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Surprising to me were the new effects for the Grand Canyon and Primeval World dioramas. Video projection mapping was put to use again to animate the painted backdrops, adding shafts of sunlight, thunderstorms, luminous sunsets, and volcanic explosions. This is exemplary "plussing," where the experience of a vintage attraction was actually <b>improved</b> by new technologies and ideas instead of needlessly fussed with and diminished. Kudos to Imagineering for <b>that</b>.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">A ride on the DLRR. Video: <i>Inside the Magic</i>.</span></div>
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Once again, Imagineering's uneven track record manifests itself. Some changes are really quite good, some are more hideous than we could even anticipate. That's about it. I'm not confident that I have any grand pronouncements to make about it in conclusion. It is what it is. At least Imagineering's wholesale abandonment of California Adventure to "Disney's Universal Studios" makes the choice to not go there anymore that much easier! That's a... plus?</div>
Cory Grosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12141983255020503557noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8280650245524507557.post-38027260768792362292017-07-26T00:00:00.001-06:002017-07-26T00:00:05.575-06:00The Original Films of the Main Street Cinema<div style="text-align: justify;">
I've long believed that Main Street USA at Disneyland USA should be treated like a genuine land unto itself rather than merely a pretty mall to speed through on one's way in and out of the park. The charming Victorian atmosphere, exquisite detail, and variety of things to do make it well worth the time to investigate, from the Disney Gallery to Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln to the Penny Arcade to the Disneyland Railroad to the Dapper Dans to the Emporium dioramas to the Main St. vehicles. Merchandising demands consistently wear away at the integrity of Main Street - Oh to see the Penny Arcade as it once was! Even to see it as I first saw it! - but one of the park's true gems has remained more or less inviolate. That gem is Main Street Cinema.</div>
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Where other Disney parks have closed down their cinemas or turned them into shops (or never had them to begin with), Disneyland's remains a quiet respite from crowds and weather where one can watch classic Mickey Mouse cartoons of a bygone age. Yet when the park opened, and for a good many years thereafter, it was not Mickey who emblazoned the cinema's six screens, but the greatest films of the silent era. Of course, none of these films would have been shown in a theatre at the turn of the century when Walt was growing up... Some of them were even made after Walt had already grown and moved to Hollywood! Nevertheless, they still achieve Main Street's desired effect, which was not a documentary verisimilitude, but rather, a nostalgic reminiscence of everything "old timey."</div>
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Main Street Cinema had a rotating series of films it showed. Every so often, the marquee changed and a different set of sign boards were put out on the sidewalk to tempt passersby to spend an A-ticket. Yes, at one time the ticket booth was actually in use (not merely deluding poor guests who didn't notice that the person inside was a mannequin, as I have seen happen several times). For that A-ticket, guests could experience limitless thrills, chills, pathos, and excitement as they watched clips from classic comedies, cartoons, and dramas.</div>
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Presented below are a few of those films, as could be identified from old photos of the cinema and are readily available online.</div>
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<i>Gertie the Dinosaur</i> was first released in 1912 as a Vaudeville act with a live component by its creator, the great illustrator Winsor McCay. A recreation of that show was performed as a part of the <i>Walt Disney's Disneyland</i> episode <i>The Story of the Animated Drawing</i>. In 1914, a roadshow version was produced, which you see here. Though not the first animated cartoon, <i>Gertie the Dinosaur</i> is notable for having the first real character created specifically for an animated cartoon.</div>
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<i>The Great Train Robbery</i> (1903) was the first Western film ever made and one of the only films shown at Main Street Cinema that young Walt might have seen in Marceline. The cinema also regularly showed another Western - <i>Dealing for Daisy</i> (1915) - with the original cowboy star William S. Hart, whose name was synonymous with the genre during the silent era.</div>
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Another film which Walt could have conceivably seen, though it predated him by a few years, was <i>Fatima's Coochie-Coochie Dance</i>, an 1896 Edison recording of Fahreda Mazar Spyropoulos' belly dancing. Fahreda, who danced under the stage name "Fatima", made the "Hoochie Coochie Dance" famous at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Edison restaged the dance for film, though the footage had to be blocked out at points to appease the censors. For the Gay Nineties, this was quite the scandal!<br />
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<i>A Dash Through the Clouds</i> (1912) is a sordid tale of jealousy and revenge from the comedic director Mack Sennett, who made ample use of an aeroplane, which was still relatively new technology. Another Mack Sennett comedy shown in the Main Street Cinema was 1914's <i>The Noise of Bombs</i>.<br />
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The theme of train robberies was revisited in 1912's <i>A Girl and Her Trust</i> by D.W. Griffith. The film is a short morality tale just predating Griffith's landmark, controversial, <i>Birth of a Nation</i>, and is notable for both the high-speed locomotive chase in its climax and for a courageous heroine far removed from the many simpering female leads of the time.</div>
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Then there was the cinema's greatest lover, the sensation who could be known simply as Valentino. Trained as a dancer and theatrical performer, the Italian-born Rudolph Valentino moved to Hollywood after World War One and began working bit parts. Eventually, his undeniable charm and good looks propelled him into super stardom. He featured in a string of silent megahits including <i style="text-align: justify;">Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse</i><span style="text-align: justify;"> (1921), </span><i style="text-align: justify;">Blood and Sand</i><span style="text-align: justify;"> (1922), </span><i style="text-align: justify;">The Sheik</i><span style="text-align: justify;"> (1921), </span><i style="text-align: justify;">Son of the Sheik</i><span style="text-align: justify;"> (1926), and </span><i style="text-align: justify;">The Eagle</i><span style="text-align: justify;"> (1925), which was shown at Disneyland. In the latter, Valentino stars as a Cossack soldier who runs afoul of the Czarina and becomes a dashing masked outlaw. Sadly, Valetino's star was cut down in its prime. He died in 1926 at the age of 31, one of the first of Hollywood's stars whose mystique grew because of their untimely passing.
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<span style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: justify;">Lon Chaney was one of the great stars of the silent era, who was admired for his incredible make-up skills. Unlike a Valentino, Chaney was virtually unrecognizable from role to role. His two most famous personas were as the Phantom of the Opera and the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Both films - 1925's <i>Phantom of the Opera</i> and 1923's <i>Hunchback of Notre Dame</i> - were shown at the Main Street Cinema.</span></span></div>
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<span style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: justify;">Another classic horror film of the silent era was <i>Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde</i> (1920) starring John Barrymore. Nicknamed "The Great Profile", Barrymore was a more recognizable star who still managed to contort himself convincingly into the role of the good doctor's villainous alter ego. Of any clip, the Main Street Cinema probably aired one of the transformation sequences, but there is also an incredibly creepy dream sequence with a superimposed spider with the face of Mr. Hyde that would have sent chills up the spines of Disneyland's guests.</span></span></div>
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More films showed at Main Street Cinema during its rotations than are readily available online. Gloria Swanson's 1918 melodrama <i>Shifting Sands</i> was one (clips from it were used, decades later, in the film <i>Sunset Boulevard</i>), the 1924 Will Rogers comedy <i>Two Wagons: Both Covered</i> was another, as were the 1915 short <i>The Heart of a Waif</i>, and some indeterminate comedy shorts starring one of the silent screen's great duos, Mabel Normand and Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle. Buster Keaton, whose career also began as a partner to Arbuckle, was also featured in one of his talkies (presumably on mute in the Main Street Cinema), the 1934 picture <i>Allez Oop</i>. </div>
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I'm not sure of when Disneyland switched out silent films for early Mickey cartoons. If I had to guess, I would say 1978 for Mickey's 50th anniversary. Regardless of exactly when, the point is that they did. In one sense, it is a loss for Main Street's verisimilitude, but on the other, it is a gain for sharing Mickey's early exploits with willing guests who take a few minutes away from the rides to quite down and chill out in an old fashioned movie house. </div>
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Cory Grosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12141983255020503557noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8280650245524507557.post-49197377434520756742017-07-12T00:00:00.000-06:002017-07-12T00:00:00.159-06:00A is for AtomIn my research on Disney's <i>Our Friend the Atom</i>, I came across this interesting little film from 1952. Titled <i>A is for Atom</i> and produced by General Electric, it covers essentially the same ground, in almost the same way, as Disney's later episode of <i>Walt Disney's Disneyland</i>. It doesn't have the same production values behind it, but it does have a lot of nice, mid-century modern style and the same unenviable task of making atomic power seem less frightening than it (rightly) did.<br />
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<br />Cory Grosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12141983255020503557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8280650245524507557.post-6538611357871999782017-07-08T00:00:00.000-06:002017-08-03T12:40:51.017-06:00Walt's Era - Part 15: Clear Sailing Through the Early Sixties, Part 2 (1963)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfJzdVvQ28QMfWdbbMLbIDbvhN38_Z1z6u4npwOKrTDqgu8RpMa3FP5BdIlJB7QGy5SlTbQKDFKfnuXReU8EY5p1FkfsTTuzZNIzsukfhU4L6U05FAcDLNDYJZFxlRAg6C8XndAi_6a38/s1600/wlatseralogo1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfJzdVvQ28QMfWdbbMLbIDbvhN38_Z1z6u4npwOKrTDqgu8RpMa3FP5BdIlJB7QGy5SlTbQKDFKfnuXReU8EY5p1FkfsTTuzZNIzsukfhU4L6U05FAcDLNDYJZFxlRAg6C8XndAi_6a38/s320/wlatseralogo1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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This year brought a generally good slate of films... Mostly nice, solid, and some classic pictures like <i>Sword in the Stone</i> and <i>The Incredible Journey</i>... but once again the biggest advancement for Disney was in the theme parks. 1963 was the year that Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room debuted, revolutionizing the art of mechanical animation. The attraction still astonishes and enchants me every time I see it today, even with all the improvements in audio-animatronics in the past 50-some years. I can only imagine what a bolt from the blue it must have seemed like in 1963. </div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWYZ2TiUI4mTE_BDh4fLAZr7P_yxlkp0CQF33qXuiZ2UIN3LDq5ug7gakotLSMgfOssrx9jm6dS4rTXj5Sb-WK3NA3sp2AKCpyhptm6F_IZzmZZhCa5Swsx-zFvMVdRCCtDLO62jj_Y8o/s1600/tikiroom.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWYZ2TiUI4mTE_BDh4fLAZr7P_yxlkp0CQF33qXuiZ2UIN3LDq5ug7gakotLSMgfOssrx9jm6dS4rTXj5Sb-WK3NA3sp2AKCpyhptm6F_IZzmZZhCa5Swsx-zFvMVdRCCtDLO62jj_Y8o/s400/tikiroom.jpg" width="318" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Walt visits the Enchanted Tiki Room. Photo: Disney.</td></tr>
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On the business side of things, Walt began scoping out locations for the future Walt Disney World, settling on Florida. An assortment of false-front companies started buying up the necessary land, hoping to keep it under wraps to suppress avaricious real estate inflation. Walt also extended his 1953 contract with Walt Disney Productions, which included his ownership of the DLRR, Monorail, royalties from his name and WED creations, and this newest enchanted attraction. Even today, the attraction is formally known as Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room, as a nod to the day when it was personally owned by Walt Disney and charged a separate admission fee of 75 cents. </div>
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<a name='more'></a><b><i><span style="font-size: large;">Son of Flubber</span></i></b><br />
<b>January 18, 1963</b><br />
<b>100 minutes</b><br />
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<span style="text-align: justify;">It's no easy thing to do a worthwhile sequel, and reportedly Walt Disney was only interested in a sequel for </span><i style="text-align: justify;">The Absent-Minded Professor</i><span style="text-align: justify;"> because there were unused gags that were worth taking a chance on. Otherwise, as we all know, "you can't top pigs with pigs." This is a rare example of a sequel made during Walt's Era. It was ostensibly preceded only by </span><i style="text-align: justify;">The Three Caballeros</i><span style="text-align: justify;"> and </span><i style="text-align: justify;">Davy Crockett and the River Pirates</i><span style="text-align: justify;">, and even then it's tenuous to consider those sequels, such was Walt's distaste.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijbaxeOmm9b59EGwQwuKDMiXdptwSFLxbhhkT_LvVOqfQDs-6nWNQWsWina4K6lsutbFGFKkBIHMx_UP4nkBDiSopJ_71be2JwOK5BpGfpzmAfkQT33KsABm1TGDEIHT91HdiMdswEbt4/s1600/Son_of_Flubber_-_1963_-_Poster.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijbaxeOmm9b59EGwQwuKDMiXdptwSFLxbhhkT_LvVOqfQDs-6nWNQWsWina4K6lsutbFGFKkBIHMx_UP4nkBDiSopJ_71be2JwOK5BpGfpzmAfkQT33KsABm1TGDEIHT91HdiMdswEbt4/s320/Son_of_Flubber_-_1963_-_Poster.png" width="212" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijbaxeOmm9b59EGwQwuKDMiXdptwSFLxbhhkT_LvVOqfQDs-6nWNQWsWina4K6lsutbFGFKkBIHMx_UP4nkBDiSopJ_71be2JwOK5BpGfpzmAfkQT33KsABm1TGDEIHT91HdiMdswEbt4/s1600/Son_of_Flubber_-_1963_-_Poster.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a>For the most part, <i>Son of Flubber</i> plays it pretty safe in retreading the first film. Alonzo Hawk (Keenan Wynn) is once again in the financial driver's seat, holding imminent loan default and demolition over the heads of Medfield College, until Professor Brainard (Fred MacMurray) can come up with an inventive solution that somehow or other involves Medfield winning the big game - football this time around - while the smarmy Professor Shelby (Elliot Reid) once again tries to put the moves on Brainard's wife Betsy (Nancy Olsen). The unused gags are pretty good and it's familiar, fun fare in the same vein as the original.</div>
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What <b>really</b> makes the film justify it's existence is the first act, which sets up the remaining recycling. It seems that the Professor's exclusive deal with the Pentagon has left him in arrears. Money for the invention is not forthcoming, and everyone else wants to get their hand in. Brainard flies home from Washington to discover Betsy being wooed by executives making a pitch for everything from Flubber toothpaste to Flubber soda-pop. Part of their pitch is an advertising sizzle reel featuring Wally Boag pratfalling across a "Flubberoleum" floor. When they discover that the military has the rights to Flubber locked up, who should come calling but Bob Sweeny as an IRS man who, among other things, is proud of locking up his own mother and is taking notes on possible tax evasion by the newspaper delivery boy. The satire flies fast and thick against government and industry. </div>
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<i>Son of Flubber</i> (so named in parody of the various and sundry "son of..." and "daughter of..." Sci-Fi and Horror movies) was a success for the company, so it was a good bet. Luckily the cast and material was strong enough to make it a enjoyable return to the world of the Absent-Minded Professor. </div>
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<b><br /></b><b><i><span style="font-size: large;">Miracle of the White Stallions</span></i></b><br />
<b>March 29, 1963</b><br />
<b>93 minutes</b><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMqecUYN6azl1rFM-Pdjq-6kFvsbFFhtMrVqIx6n8oXu-wjybdIDUopP2UygKkFXR8bRcYr2eMI1lW7WozTnmS_36Lqh4as7ACqoAvPaEiCJ8J4yM4jBG3kmJyOY-5bKdlyw5p6ECuKTw/s1600/Miracle_of_the_White_Stallions_-_Film_Poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; display: inline !important; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMqecUYN6azl1rFM-Pdjq-6kFvsbFFhtMrVqIx6n8oXu-wjybdIDUopP2UygKkFXR8bRcYr2eMI1lW7WozTnmS_36Lqh4as7ACqoAvPaEiCJ8J4yM4jBG3kmJyOY-5bKdlyw5p6ECuKTw/s320/Miracle_of_the_White_Stallions_-_Film_Poster.jpg" width="204" /></a><br />
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Unfortunately this film was not readily available when it came time to do this review. While it is available on DVD, I don't happen to have said DVD or real inclination to order it from the Disney Movie Club at the current Canadian-American dollar exchange. For some unknowable reason, it's not posted for streaming rental either. </div>
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I'm a bit bummed out by that, because I would have liked to see it. The story is inspired from the true story of the rescue of the world-famous Lipizzaner stallions from the Nazis. It seems to fall in the same class of film as the previous <i>Almost Angels</i>, as a docu-drama about a great cultural institution (in that case, the Vienna Boys Choir) shot gloriously on location. I could frankly care less about the WWII story, but would love to see the footage of the Lipizzaners showjumping. </div>
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<b><br /></b><b><i><span style="font-size: large;">Yellowstone Cubs</span></i></b><br />
<b>June 1, 1963</b><br />
<b>48 minutes</b><br />
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<span style="text-align: justify;">Like the previous film, </span><i style="text-align: justify;">Yellowstone Cubs</i><span style="text-align: justify;"> is one of those on-location docu-dramas that is sustained more by the setting than the story, at least for me. The plot of this post-</span><i style="text-align: justify;">True-Life</i><span style="text-align: justify;"> wildlife film narrated by Rex Allen revolves around a mismatched pair of black bear cubs who are separated from their mother, getting into all sorts of hi-jinks while their mother braves the park rangers in pursuit. It's cute and I suppose if someone is seeing it for the first time they might get caught up in that.</span><br />
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I, however, was not seeing this for the first time. <i>Yellowstone Cubs</i> is one of my sleeper favourite Disney films because it was shot live, on-location, in that jewel of America's crown, Yellowstone National Park. As a docu-drama about Yellowstone, it is glorious in its footage of mid-century National Parks tourism. Allen, himself a former parks ranger, runs us through the various and sundry procedures of park life, including an extended sequence about why <b>you're not supposed to feed the wildlife</b>. Every year, there is incident after incident of people getting too close to bison, elk, and bears in Yellowstone, and in a sense it is even more distressing when you can see that the NPS has been trying to drive home wildlife safety messages for over 50 years. </div>
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If I was going to be critical of the film, it would simply be for a lack of footage. There are no panning shots of the Old Faithful Inn's cavernous lobby, alas, though we do see the mother bear skulking around the staircase and fireplace. The adventure mostly takes place around the geyser basin, with Old Faithful and Castle Geyser being the most prominent. I love what there is and just want more.</div>
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<i>Yellowstone Cubs</i> has been a departure from the Rex Allen wildlife films so far. Granted, the Sedona region wasn't much to sneeze at in <i>The Legend of Lobo</i>, but the wilderness in these films is typically indistinguishable as a scenic locale. I suppose the fact that they bothered to have it in a distinguished locale makes me want to see more of it. I was kind of feeling the same way about the Grand Canyon in <i>Ten Who Dared</i>. "I want more!" probably isn't a bad criticism for a film, and I do turn back to this film any time I want a quaint little reminder about our own trip to Yellowstone that feels too long ago now. </div>
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<b><i><span style="font-size: large;">Savage Sam </span></i></b><br />
<b>June 1, 1963</b><br />
<b>103 minutes</b><br />
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<i>Yellowstone Cubs</i> was certainly the more enjoyable part of this double-bill. Disney picks up the Western again with <i>Savage Sam</i>, a sequel to <i>Old Yeller</i> that makes use of all the maudlin melodrama left out of its much superior predecessor. Pa (Fess Parker) and Ma (Dorothy McGuire) are conveniently off to see ailing old Grandma, excusing their absence. That leaves Tommy Kirk and Kevin Corcoran to annoy each other and the viewer, with Uncle Beck (Brian Keith) to drop in occasionally to ensure they don't kill each other, and Jeff York to eat their rations. But just as we worry that we'll be stuck watching two teenage boys for 103 minutes, a gang of Apache horsenappers show up to send the picture veering off into traditional Western territory. </div>
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The film actually picks up considerably when Corcoran isn't on screen... This was the movie that finally broke Ashley and inspired in her a loathing for him comparable to my own. The only entertaining thing about his presence is watching his pubescent voice drop between the filming on location and the later voice-over dubbing. The real highlights, however, are recognizing a few faces and voices. Slim Pickens is part of the posse chasing down the Apache, who kidnapped Corcoran and Tommy Kirk's love interest, as is Royal Dano, the voice and face-model for Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln. Pat Hogan, who played Red Stick in <i>Davy Crockett</i>, is also back. Still, they can't really redeem the movie. It underperformed at the box office, and despite a few moments, it's just not a particularly good film. Who knows what prompted Walt to go with a sequel this time around, except that the author of the original <i>Old Yeller</i> novel, Fred Gipson, published <i>Savage Sam</i> the year before. I guess a sequel that is itself based on a book is good enough? Well no. No it's not. </div>
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<b><br /></b><b><i><span style="font-size: large;">Summer Magic</span></i></b><br />
<b>July 7, 1963</b><br />
<b>109 minutes</b><br />
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I have a soft spot for Main Street U.S.A. This gateway to Disneyland hits me in a couple important places. For one, it is the gateway to Disneyland (and Disneyland Paris, Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom, and Tokyo Disneyland in its fashion). It is the first thing I see when entering and the last thing I see when leaving. Main St., as much as the castle, tells me that I'm in Disneyland. I enjoy treating Main St. U.S.A. as its own land, not merely a mall to get through on the way to the rides. I love the cinema and the penny arcade and the dioramas in the Emporium, and the Walt Disney Story, and the exhibits in the train station, and the vintage vehicles, and just enjoying the atmosphere. The Gay Nineties setting was also an historically important milieu for the Disney company, which I discussed at length on <a href="http://voyagesextraordinaires.blogspot.ca/2016/11/walt-disney-and-gay-nineties.html" style="text-align: justify;">my Victorian Sci-Fi blog</a><span style="text-align: justify;">. Pursuant to the fact that I have a Victorian Sci-Fi blog, I also love the Gay Nineties, Main St. U.S.A. aesthetic tremendously. When I "enjoy the atmosphere" of Main St. U.S.A., it's not merely a passive appreciation of ambiance. I'm studiously taking mental notes and copious photos for home decor inspiration. Add </span><a href="http://voyagesextraordinaires.blogspot.ca/2017/01/harry-grant-darts-futuristic-air-travel.html" style="text-align: justify;">some airships</a><span style="text-align: justify;"> and </span><a href="http://timetunnel.bigredhair.com/boilerplate/intro.html" style="text-align: justify;">Boilerplate-style automata </a><span style="text-align: justify;">and it would be my own personal paradise. </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-vlL39SpMOEUBaicaeV6oiNGOXbJpQSfUMRWs2hyI0_YzddFepvOJTPLy9fIcDXGOM8HLn-9Gp2f3kvnnRWkrfu6T3sy0MaUnHmt8lsgloPk-mnHC9w6w_RX18jSUlTcwa1JqgfE6mOA/s1600/Summer_Magic_%2528theatrical_poster%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-vlL39SpMOEUBaicaeV6oiNGOXbJpQSfUMRWs2hyI0_YzddFepvOJTPLy9fIcDXGOM8HLn-9Gp2f3kvnnRWkrfu6T3sy0MaUnHmt8lsgloPk-mnHC9w6w_RX18jSUlTcwa1JqgfE6mOA/s320/Summer_Magic_%2528theatrical_poster%2529.jpg" width="211" /></a></div>
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One of the films falling into that milieu is <i>Summer Magic</i>, the next vehicle for Hayley Mills as an all-American girl with an inexplicable British accent. No explicit year is given for the events of the film, just the joke "Place: Boston. Time: Rag", but it has all the quintessential Gay Nineties stuff... Ladies in fetching clothes and giant hats, ragtime music, classic automobiles, a kid in a Buster Brown outfit, a high-ballin' steam train, lawn parties, croquet, and small town charms. This time around, Hayley's family, headed by Dorothy McGuire, falls into hard times with the death of the patriarch. They are reduced to humble means and forced to move to the town of Beulah, Maine. There, they fall under the wing of Burl Ives as the incorrigible, irrepressible Osh Popham, the town's all-purpose carpenter, postman, constable, caretaker, jack-of-all-trades. The problem is that the house that Osh is letting them live in doesn't technically belong to him... He's merely the property manager, acting on his own initiative to help out a charity case, until the actual owner comes calling. </div>
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There's no particularly deep or meaningful message to <i>Summer Magic</i>, even an implied one, like the reassurances I pointed out in <i>Pollyanna</i> several months ago. It's just a lot of things that happen to some fairly charming characters, and it's pretty fun. Though 109 minutes, it doesn't generally feel to be outstaying its welcome. The Sherman Brothers are helping that along with a nice, though fairly obscure, selection of songs reminiscent of their work on <i>A Symposium on Popular Songs</i> and the album <i>Tinpanorama</i>. They're trying their hand at ragtime once more, and a few folk songs which sound perfect when sung by Burl Ives. And for <i>Ren and Stimpy</i> fans, the song "Ugly Bug Ball" begins with Ives declaring that "The little critters of nature, they don't know that they're ugly." I just about died the first time I heard that, discovering that it was an actual line in an actual movie. </div>
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Less than a fully-fledged film, <i>Summer Magic</i> is more of a tribute to the romantic myth of the Gay Nineties. Perhaps I'm falling into the same problem I had with <i>Yellowstone Cubs</i> where I'm underselling the story because I liked the setting so much and have seen the film enough times to not be affected by that story. Someone watching it afresh, and especially someone not hampered by my love for the the Gay Nineties aesthetic, would probably get more caught up by the story, for good or ill. Given that it's not overly profound or moving, and not exactly regarded as a Disney classic, I suspect that enjoying the setting is key to enjoying the film. Maybe that's why the movie poster made the choice to advertise completely on the strength of Hayley Mills and downplayed that it was set sometime around 1900? </div>
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<b><i><span style="font-size: large;">The Incredible Journey</span></i></b><br />
<b>November 20, 1963</b><br />
<b>80 minutes</b><br />
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<i>The Incredible Journey</i><span style="text-align: justify;"> is </span><b style="text-align: justify;">the</b><span style="text-align: justify;"> quintessential Disney wildlife adventure film. Of all those movies shot on-location, narrated by Rex Allen, featuring animals cavorting around doing animal things, this is the most well-known and well-received. So much so that it may even be rightly considered a Disney classic in itself, not merely the best of one of Disney's weird little sub-genres. </span><i style="text-align: justify;">The Incredible Journey</i><span style="text-align: justify;"> stands up there with the first tier of Disney live-action films like </span><i style="text-align: justify;">Mary Poppins, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Pollyanna,</i><span style="text-align: justify;"> and </span><i style="text-align: justify;">Davy Crockett</i><span style="text-align: justify;">. It even warranted a remake by Disney in the Nineties, and watching this version still weirds Ashley out. </span><i style="text-align: justify;">Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey</i><span style="text-align: justify;"> (1993) is the version she knows from childhood. Being a bit older than her, it was a bit after my time. </span></div>
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The plot is so simple that it defies much analysis. John Longridge has offered to take care of the three pets belonging to a family of friends while they are away. Far flung in Ontario, Canada's cottage country, Longridge takes off for the start of duck hunting season and the animals take the opportunity to make tracks back for home. Luath the Golden Labrador is the natural leader with the implacable drive to return to his family, no matter that old Bodger the Bull Terrier is not quite up to the task of traversing 250 miles. Tao the cat could really care less either way. The film follows their escapades as they fall in and out of trouble, including Tao being swept away in a river, a kindly but clueless hermit who intended to feed his guests but couldn't understand why they refused to sit at the table, an errant porcupine, bears and lynx, and the terrifying range of mountains that separates the final 40 miles of the journey home. </div>
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All the right pieces are in place, learned over the previous Rex Allen-narrated animal features, and in perfect balance. The footage of Ontario (with some Pacific Northwest thrown in because forests on the Canadian Shield are not quite monumental and forbidding enough) is spectacular, especially in the opening autumnal sequence. Like <i>Big Red</i>, I enjoyed the contemporary Canadianess of it. The wilderness themes of Canadian film and identity are there, but not caricatured beneath fur traders and Voyageurs. Animal footage is perfectly timed and executed, with no extraneous material, and that lingering curiousity about how exactly they film a movie like this. They could have done with more convincing human actors... The animals were more lively than they were. Nevertheless, it is a decent, solid film. The simplicity is what commends it, and it is what it is, no more, no less. It might not go on a list of my personal <b>favourite</b> Disney films, but I would easily put it on a list of the objectively <b>best</b> Disney films of this time period. </div>
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<b><br /></b><b><i><span style="font-size: large;">Sword in the Stone</span></i></b><br />
<b>December 25, 1963</b><br />
<b>79 minutes</b><br />
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At a point near the end of <i>The Sword in the Stone</i>, when Kay and Sir Ector were attempting to pull the eponymous weapon from its housing, it occurred to me that this is actually the "boys" version of <i>Cinderella</i>. The essential throughline is the same: a child of high estate is brought low and mistreated by their caregivers, but a magical guardian appears and, through a plot device, raises the child to royalty. Cinderella lives out the little girl's dream of becoming a princess, and Arthur lives out the dream of becoming a king and a knight. Well, that was the dream before pirates became the big deal, at any rate. </div>
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<i>The Sword in the Stone</i> has a little more philosophical heft to it than <i>Cinderella</i>, as Merlin takes Arthur under his wing and teaches him life lessons through magical transformations. It's also a bit of a sausage party, with only two women to speak of, one of whom is a squirrel. No matter what, I always feel sorry for her as well, thanks to the manipulative animation and the knowledge that she will die a spinster, the mate she imprinted upon actually being a human. It's tragic.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhB3SZ4b-QAfhBUzmBHg89hdSENPOjyDeHjc9E1D8Gad-572H4tIKW20OLQVgFP2lm3x3KX7WXKEDX_1MNijgihi0qm-OckxDrVXdCTAMajvL_nB7g16N2hyvnFPhy1d0B4qqOsw79dBWg/s1600/SwordintheStonePoster.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; display: inline !important; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhB3SZ4b-QAfhBUzmBHg89hdSENPOjyDeHjc9E1D8Gad-572H4tIKW20OLQVgFP2lm3x3KX7WXKEDX_1MNijgihi0qm-OckxDrVXdCTAMajvL_nB7g16N2hyvnFPhy1d0B4qqOsw79dBWg/s320/SwordintheStonePoster.JPG" width="208" /></a></div>
I could do without Merlin's constant denigration of the Middle Ages, which were actually a far more inventive and progressive time than outdated ideas about the "Dark Ages" suggest, but at least he admits that the modern world is a mess as well, after his stint in 20th century Bermuda. Of all the characters in <i>The Sword in the Stone</i>, Merlin is easily the most full of character. Perhaps that is why he's the only one to have appeared much since, including leading the charge in Walt Disney World's Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom interactive game. Archimedes the owl is more like an extension of Merlin, and the only other character to come close is Mad Madame Mim. Unfortunately she is not in <i>The Sword in the Stone</i> for nearly long enough, and her presence is superfluous. The wizard's duel is a highlight, but serves no actual narrative purpose. It just feels like they needed some climactic battle with a villain because that's a thing.</div>
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That aside, I actually like <i>The Sword in the Stone</i> a great deal. It's a nice return to the pure Mediaeval milieu that's actually surprisingly rare in Disney films. The last time it popped up was <i>Sleeping Beauty</i>, and before that were the live-action films shot in England: <i>The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men</i> and <i>The Sword and the Rose</i>. Fairy tales actually set in the High Gothic are infrequent or obscured beneath layers of artistic licence, which is too bad because they really were a beautiful time. Monty Python has done our perception of the Middle Ages a great injustice... When visiting the The Musée national du Moyen Âge in Paris, I was so overwhelmed with the beauty, craftsmanship, ornateness, and sheer sublime weight of history that I actually had to sit down and shut my eyes. I simply could not take it anymore. Coming awfully close was Notre-Dame de Paris, my spiritual home away from home. I've expressed my love of Victorian aesthetics earlier on, and one of its great conveniences is that Gothic Revivalism was a huge part of Victorian-Edwardian art and architecture, especially here in Canada where the British and French influence has been so strong. Why choose? </div>
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Whereas <i>Sleeping Beauty</i>'s pop-art style didn't work as well as was likely intended, <i>Sword in the Stone</i>'s works well. This is Disney's first animated feature since <i>One Hundred and One Dalmatians</i> and Xerography is in full force. Now that they've figured it out, it's come together better here than in that 1959 film. Sadly, this is also a benchmark of sorts. <i>Sword in the Stone</i> was the final animated feature film released before Walt Disney's death. It was not the last he would be involved in, that distinction going to <i>The Jungle Book</i>, but it was the last to enjoy his guidance all the way through. At least it paid off well for Disney, being a box office success in its day. </div>
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<b><br /></b><b><i><span style="font-size: large;">Disneyland After Dark</span></i></b><br />
<b>Unknown Date</b><br />
<b>47 minutes</b><br />
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The <i>Walt Disney Treasures</i> collection of DVDs curated by Leonard Maltin is without a doubt the best home video series ever released by Disney. The inexplicably defunct line was a goldmine of vintage material and these days is priced greater than their weight in gold on the resale market. But when the first series came out, it was met with some controversy. The <i>Disneyland U.S.A.</i> set, in particular, received criticism for promising uncut, original broadcast versions of key early episodes of the Disney anthology series (<i>Disneyland</i>, followed by <i>Wonderful World of Color</i>) but delivering on edited, trimmed down copies. One of those to suffer the worst was <i>Disneyland After Dark</i>, which cut several performers' sets.<b> </b></div>
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Luckily I have a copy of the original broadcast version, taped long ago off The Disney Channel's <i>Vault Disney</i> series. Comparing the two, I think a fair argument could be made that what ended up on the <i>Walt Disney Treasures: Disneyland U.S.A.</i> set was actually the <b>theatrical</b> version of the episode. Like many episodes of the television series, <i>Disneyland After Dark</i> made its way to theatres after its airing on April 15, 1962. By May 25th of the same year it had its silver screen debut in the UK. In 1963, at an undetermined date, <i>Disneyland After Dark</i> was projected onto American screens. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiex_gdcZLqsILnDqI36axSY3GW7kOKHrFH48-iOYnF6YjAfqS04_VI0SSvLrjQ9Kwbs1h2Dbi6nOB-HdpkfinYxicAr4ywEVFlflbBt7klfWlf6q3MZPdElBIZHHg7vG0D8dE6JM39cDw/s1600/disneylandafterdark.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiex_gdcZLqsILnDqI36axSY3GW7kOKHrFH48-iOYnF6YjAfqS04_VI0SSvLrjQ9Kwbs1h2Dbi6nOB-HdpkfinYxicAr4ywEVFlflbBt7klfWlf6q3MZPdElBIZHHg7vG0D8dE6JM39cDw/s320/disneylandafterdark.jpg" width="214" /></a></div>
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Unlike previous theatrical re-releases of <i>Disneyland/Wonderful World of Color</i> episodes, <i>Disneyland After Dark</i> was not a science or adventure story, but one of the company's self-promotional pieces. It was <b>so</b> entertaining, however, that the theatrical release was fully warranted. The main appeal of the episode is the glimpse of Disneyland in the early Sixties. Though at this moment in time there was yet to be the Enchanted Tiki Room, Pirates of the Caribbean, or Haunted Mansion, one still gets a sense of Disneyland at the height of its nostalgic charm. Granted the performances were staged, but they still capture the feeling of what an evening at Disneyland must have been like at the time.</div>
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The chances of catching Annette or Louis Armstrong playing on any given night were probably very slim, but the vignette of the Elliot Brothers Orchestra playing the Carnation Plaza Gardens was undoubtedly like what a "Date Nite at Disneyland" event was very much like. The Royal Tahitians were the regular performers at the Tahitian Terrace restaurant that used to overlook the Jungle Cruise where Aladdin's Oasis wastes space today. And the Young Men of New Orleans were one of two "house bands" performing Jazz and Dixieland favourites along the Rivers of America (the other being the Strawhatters). </div>
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Some of the performances in <i>Disneyland After Dark</i> I could take or leave. It's nice seeing Annette or the Osmond Brothers Quartet, but I have no idea who Bobby Rydell is. I would have died and gone to Heaven to have seen Satchmo play with the Young Men of New Orleans aboard the Mark Twain Riverboat though. Sure, the Mark Twain was replaced with a set for the sequence, but let my fantasy slide. The amount of history, and talent, in that segment (the longest single performance in the episode) is unbelievable. Two of the members of the Young Men of New Orleans - Johnny St. Cyr and Kid Ory - performed with Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong in a band called the "Hot Five" in the Twenties in New Orleans, during the birth of Jazz. Kid Ory even wrote the staple anthem "Muskrat Ramble", which was performed in <i>Disneyland After Dark</i>. When Armstrong quips that they are going to "reee-cree-ate" he's not joking. We're watching the men who practically <b>invented</b> Jazz. And to see them aboard the Mark Twain Riverboat? Oh man... I'm feeling lightheaded just thinking about it. Did all them white folks clapping out of sync in the crowd have any idea what they were actually watching?</div>
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Oh yeah, the crowd is half the fun in this film. Sometimes I got a bigger kick watching them than the actual performer, like the guy who apparently doesn't know who Bobby Rydell is either, or the young man adjusting his glasses for the Royal Tahitian dancers (a clip which made it's way into the Disneyland 50th anniversary film with Steve Martin). Don't think anyone, in the entire episode, actually clapped with anything resembling a rhythm. At one point during Satchmo's performance, there were six or seven different people on the screen and not a one of them were clapping on the same beat.</div>
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The rest of the delight is simply the time capsule of Disneyland in the Sixties. The Dapper Dans also perform amidst Main St. storefronts that no longer exist. The Disney-Alweg Monorail delivers guests from the Disneyland Hotel, Jungle Cruise boats go by in the night, Main St. shimmers, Tomorrowland is actually lively, and overhead, Fantasy in the Sky booms. Now that I've finished watching the film, I want to pop in my vinyl LPs of <i>Echoes of Disneyland</i> (Dee Fisher on Main St.'s Wurlitzer organ), <i>Date Nite at Disneyland </i>(the Elliot Bros.), or Louis Armstrong. The fact that I want to do that demonstrates how intrinsic music is not only to Disney's films, but Disney's theme parks as well. The sounds take us back there as readily as the sights do. Of course, I'd trade all that in to actually <b>be</b> in Disneyland this evening. Shall we make a date in four (or eight) more years? </div>
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Cory Grosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12141983255020503557noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8280650245524507557.post-25437265635551135282017-07-01T00:00:00.000-06:002017-08-29T09:21:19.133-06:00Requiem for Pirates of the Caribbean<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixbHiuG5o__Wk7OUN15AmtnriAc3g5OHigTgFp6Gz2BAH5qMar-pCb1b5Hdfcv5PN54CIKjboDD9UDhhUAVQAyh0N4UoxS65ALsfFrr0DYF_VP0TN00hbfxV3wjV3CVAEAMk4Bs1QBXKw/s1600/piratesauctionconcept.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="322" data-original-width="900" height="142" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixbHiuG5o__Wk7OUN15AmtnriAc3g5OHigTgFp6Gz2BAH5qMar-pCb1b5Hdfcv5PN54CIKjboDD9UDhhUAVQAyh0N4UoxS65ALsfFrr0DYF_VP0TN00hbfxV3wjV3CVAEAMk4Bs1QBXKw/s400/piratesauctionconcept.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"We wants the grandfather clock!" Image: Disney.</td></tr>
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I had already stopped reading the largely depressing spectacle that is the <i style="text-align: justify;">Disney Parks Blog</i><span style="text-align: justify;"> some months ago, so I had to hear about this through the grapevine. I would imagine that it says a lot right there that the major source for official news is depressing enough for me to stop reading it. When I hear people attempt to defend Disney when they do things like this by saying "You just have to trust Disney, they know what they're doing," I see no evidence to support that claim.</span></div>
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If somehow you have not heard about this, the current refurbishment of the Disneyland Paris version of Pirates of the Caribbean will include not only Jack Sparrow, Davy Jones, Blackbeard, and Barbossa (inserted unceremoniously into the scene with the skeleton at the helm, because at this point why not?), but an altered auction scene in which it is not wenches up for sale, but the villagers' loot. Because, after all, why would pirates be looting loot themselves when they could just buy it? Furthermore, these changes are not limited to Disneyland Paris: they are set to be introduced to rides in Disneyland and Walt Disney World in 2018. The offending post can be <a href="https://disneyparks.disney.go.com/blog/2017/06/new-pirates-set-to-join-the-crew-of-pirates-of-the-caribbean-at-disneyland-paris-july-24/">read here</a>. The comments are golden.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4hRYhfUSxRmDp76EVxd0-CIZf4ttwlztWasU9dcarDIpyoYvdCdhbonMRhioNipi8m-6svDCSW_7dI2txHqfTg9h9BJZAzXXA3BzT7GWJDxs2lxAWmu-ccjqskZ_LGwqd-aTj2umCyV0/s1600/piratesbarbossaconcept.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="841" data-original-width="900" height="371" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4hRYhfUSxRmDp76EVxd0-CIZf4ttwlztWasU9dcarDIpyoYvdCdhbonMRhioNipi8m-6svDCSW_7dI2txHqfTg9h9BJZAzXXA3BzT7GWJDxs2lxAWmu-ccjqskZ_LGwqd-aTj2umCyV0/s400/piratesbarbossaconcept.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Concept art of Barbossa in the skeleton at the helm scene,<br />
like a moustache on the <i>Mona Lisa</i>. Image: Disney.</td></tr>
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Presumably the changes were undertaken with the idea of making the ride more politically correct in respects to the status of women. Really, this is a logical trajectory after the alteration of the scene where pirates were chasing women. After the vandalism perpetrated to the ride through the addition of Jack Sparrow as the entire ride's focal point, inappropriate projection effects of Davy Jones and Blackbeard, and ill-fitting clips from the film soundtrack, the ride no longer has artistic or narrative integrity anyways. I can't really muster outrage for the Disneyland and WDW versions of the ride, because they have already been irredeemably wrecked. </div>
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What I'm most upset about is the vandalism to the Disneyland Paris version. Though the layout of the attraction is different, it was the last remaining version that retained the spirit and intent of the original. The movie-based vandalisms had not yet been applied, and all the original show scenes were intact, including the pirates chasing the women. When we rode it on our trip to Paris in 2013, I actually began tearing up because I had forgotten what an amazing ride Pirates of the Caribbean <b>used</b> to be. When all the elements work together in a coherent whole, it is one of the best themed attractions ever designed. Or was. <br />
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The usual tonedeaf, clueless interviews with Imagineering (including dusting off Marty Sklar) came with the news. One particular nugget, from Kathy Magnum, Sr. VP of Imagineering, sums up the entire problem: "Our team thought long and hard about how to best update this scene." Any thinking Disney fan knows the appropriate response to this: "WHY?!" The scene didn't need updating. Keen to vandalize the work of their predecessors, they decided to needlessly destroy one of the ride's most iconic scenes and replace it with... nothing. A wry and witty scene that everyone understood was based ultimately in the fact that pirates were bad people is being replaced by a nonsensical scene in which nothing really happens. The new redhead pirate just stands there, the former auctioneer just stands there, and I guess the guys across the shore will be just be sitting there. There is no joke implicit to this scene, and nothing memorable about it. Though I guess in a ride where the highlight is now catching a glimpse of a Jack Sparrow animatronic just standing there, we're expected to take the redhead pirate just standing there as a memorable moment. I'm not even confident that, with this accumulation of changes, what Magnum herself described as "the standard for the theme park industry for half a century" even qualifies as a <b>good</b> attraction anymore.<br />
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Some might retort that Disney has to keep changing in order to keep drawing guests, just like how the curators at the Louvre make little changes to the <i>Mona Lisa</i> every year to keep it fresh. I've already <a href="http://yesterday-tomorrow-and-fantasy.blogspot.ca/2014/08/disneyland-should-be-museum.html">wasted my time and breath</a> addressing that particular argument though. Great works of art are timeless <b>because</b> they are great. They don't need to be made "fresh," they don't need to be "updated" to remain relevant. No, I don't hate change: I hate the wanton destruction of great, beautiful, important things.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoT9-iaCpMQG-8op4zxUU0IIvEyAMcQr0tPUkeiAMDn7Vl7tbB1LunjOqzZcAJXkKQ7ua9fWJ_KdmKsF991TX28NNVBJDdSCDj04Dj_3ilrszV3U2whzlvOWupvLYtxurfaQIpDj76EeI/s1600/monalisapunk.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="615" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoT9-iaCpMQG-8op4zxUU0IIvEyAMcQr0tPUkeiAMDn7Vl7tbB1LunjOqzZcAJXkKQ7ua9fWJ_KdmKsF991TX28NNVBJDdSCDj04Dj_3ilrszV3U2whzlvOWupvLYtxurfaQIpDj76EeI/s320/monalisapunk.jpg" width="273" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Our team thought long and hard about how to best update the<br />
<i>Mona Lisa</i>. The painting has always represented great<br />
Da Vinci storytelling, but it's a story you can<br />
continue to add fun to," said curators at the Louvre.</td></tr>
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Some time ago, I watched a video on the question of what would be <a href="https://youtu.be/I5wz_D5AFaw">the "last straw" to finally make you stop going to Disneyland</a>. It occurred to me that if it was anything, it would probably be something that, on it's own, appeared kind of petty and silly. That's because my growing dissatisfaction with Disney is really a death by a thousand small cuts. It's not the addition of Jack Sparrow to Pirates of the Caribbean on its own, or the loss of the Court of Angels on its own, or the truncating of the Rivers of America on its own, or the loss of Big Thunder Ranch on its own, or even the loss of the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror on its own (though that was certainly enough to swear me off California Adventure)... It's the cumulative effect of turning Disneyland into a place that is increasingly alien, inartistic, and unpleasant.<br />
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Could <b>this</b> be the last straw? I don't know. But I do wish that when we took our last trip to Disneyland in 2015 that I knew about all the changes that would come in the past year and a half. I would have spent more time savouring what would be lost, understanding the very real possibility that our last trip could well be our <b>last</b> trip.<br />
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<br />Cory Grosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12141983255020503557noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8280650245524507557.post-37558074003689752792017-06-28T00:00:00.000-06:002017-06-28T00:00:00.173-06:00The Brave Little TailorEmploying Mickey Mouse in the title role of the <i>Brave Little Tailor</i> (1938) was a natural, as both characters share a good deal in common. Both are small but plucky, solving problems through wit and guile rather than brute strength or political power. In the original fairy tale transcribed by the Brothers Grimm in their 1812 anthology, the valiant tailor suppresses seven flies in one strike and sets off to brag about it. Responding to his unwarranted pride, a giant takes him for more powerful than he actually is, and the tailor is not about to correct him. Eventually the tailor is taken before the king and is charged with several missions designed to get rid of him, but which the tailor succeeds at tremendously. Everybody seems to want to be rid of the little braggart who seems to have no sense of his own insignificance, and at every stage he outsmarts them.<br />
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In many ways, <i>The Valiant Little Tailor</i> reads like a farce… A comedy of errors in which the hero is not too shrewd to be conquered, but too daft to know that he ought to be. Unlike in Disney's cartoon short, where Mickey is frightened and reluctant but overcomes out of desperation, this tailor is totally unflappable because he just doesn't know any better. That said, we may derive a good lesson about self-confidence here. Cunning can take you far, and as the saying goes, it's not bragging if you can back it up.<br />
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Disney's <i>Brave Little Tailor</i> was voted the 26th greatest cartoon of all time by the animation industry and nominated for an Academy Award (which it lost to another Disney film, <i>Ferdinand the Bull</i>). Today, references to the short can be seen in the Sir Mickey's shoppes in Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom and Disneyland Paris Park. The following translation of the original German story was by Margaret Hunt, for the two-volume publication <i>Grimm’s Household Tales</i> in 1884.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The tailor confronts a giant. Illustration by Arthur Rackham.</td></tr>
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One summer's morning a little tailor was sitting on his table by the window; he was in good spirits, and sewed with all his might. Then came a peasant woman down the street crying, "Good jams, cheap! Good jams cheap!" This rang pleasantly in the tailor's ears; he stretched his delicate head out of the window, and called, "Come up here, dear woman; here you will get rid of your goods." The woman came up the three steps to the tailor with her heavy basket, and he made her unpack the whole of the pots for him. He inspected all of them, lifted them up, put his nose to them, and at length said, "The jam seems to me to be good, so weigh me out four ounces, dear woman, and if it is a quarter of a pound that is of no consequence." The woman who had hoped to find a good sale, gave him what he desired, but went away quite angry and grumbling. "Now, God bless the jam to my use," cried the little tailor, "and give me health and strength;" so he brought the bread out of the cupboard, cut himself a piece right across the loaf and spread the jam over it. "This won't taste bitter," said he, "but I will just finish the jacket before I take a bite." He laid the bread near him, sewed on, and in his joy, made bigger and bigger stitches. In the meantime the smell of the sweet jam ascended so to the wall, where the flies were sitting in great numbers, that they were attracted and descended on it in hosts. "Hola! who invited you?" said the little tailor, and drove the unbidden guests away. The flies, however, who understood no German, would not be turned away, but came back again in ever-increasing companies. Then the little tailor at last lost all patience, and got a bit of cloth from the hole under his work-table, and saying, "Wait, and I will give it to you," struck it mercilessly on them. When he drew it away and counted, there lay before him no fewer than seven, dead and with legs stretched out. "Art thou a fellow of that sort?" said he, and could not help admiring his own bravery. "The whole town shall know of this!" And the little tailor hastened to cut himself a girdle, stitched it, and embroidered on it in large letters, "Seven at one stroke!" "What, the town!" he continued, "The whole world shall hear of it!" and his heart wagged with joy like a lamb's tail. The tailor put on the girdle, and resolved to go forth into the world, because he thought his workshop was too small for his valour. Before he went away, he sought about in the house to see if there was anything which he could take with him; however, he found nothing but an old cheese, and that he put in his pocket. In front of the door he observed a bird which had caught itself in the thicket. It had to go into his pocket with the cheese. Now he took, to the road boldly, and as he was light and nimble, he felt no fatigue. The road led him up a mountain, and when he had reached the highest point of it, there sat a powerful giant looking about him quite comfortably. The little tailor went bravely up, spoke to him, and said, "Good day, comrade, so thou art sitting there overlooking the wide-spread world! I am just on my way thither, and want to try my luck. Hast thou any inclination to go with me?" The giant looked contemptuously at the tailor, and said, "Thou ragamuffin! Thou miserable creature!"</blockquote>
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"Oh, indeed?" answered the little tailor, and unbuttoned his coat, and showed the giant the girdle, "There mayst thou read what kind of a man I am!" The giant read, "Seven at one stroke," and thought that they had been men whom the tailor had killed, and began to feel a little respect for the tiny fellow. Nevertheless, he wished to try him first, and took a stone in his hand and squeezed it together so that water dropped out of it. "Do that likewise," said the giant, "if thou hast strength?" "Is that all?" said the tailor, "that is child's play with us!" and put his hand into his pocket, brought out the soft cheese, and pressed it until the liquid ran out of it. "Faith," said he, "that was a little better, wasn't it?" The giant did not know what to say, and could not believe it of the little man. Then the giant picked up a stone and threw it so high that the eye could scarcely follow it. "Now, little mite of a man, do that likewise." "Well thrown," said the tailor, "but after all the stone came down to earth again; I will throw you one which shall never come back at all," and he put his hand into his pocket, took out the bird, and threw it into the air. The bird, delighted with its liberty, rose, flew away and did not come back. "How does that shot please you, comrade?" asked the tailor. "Thou canst certainly throw," said the giant, "but now we will see if thou art able to carry anything properly." He took the little tailor to a mighty oak tree which lay there felled on the ground, and said, "If thou art strong enough, help me to carry the tree out of the forest." "Readily," answered the little man; "take thou the trunk on thy shoulders, and I will raise up the branches and twigs; after all, they are the heaviest." The giant took the trunk on his shoulder, but the tailor seated himself on a branch, and the giant who could not look round, had to carry away the whole tree, and the little tailor into the bargain: he behind, was quite merry and happy, and whistled the song, "Three tailors rode forth from the gate," as if carrying the tree were child's play. The giant, after he had dragged the heavy burden part of the way, could go no further, and cried, "Hark you, I shall have to let the tree fall! " The tailor sprang nimbly down, seized the tree with both arms as if he had been carrying it, and said to the giant, "Thou art such a great fellow, and yet canst not even carry the tree!"</blockquote>
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They went on together, and as they passed a cherry-tree, the giant laid hold of the top of the tree where the ripest fruit was hanging, bent it down, gave it into the tailor's hand, and bade him eat. But the little tailor was much too weak to hold the tree, and when the giant let it go, it sprang back again, and the tailor was hurried into the air with it. When he had fallen down again without injury, the giant said, "What is this? Hast thou not strength enough to hold the weak twig?" "There is no lack of strength," answered the little tailor. "Dost thou think that could be anything to a man who has struck down seven at one blow? I leapt over the tree because the huntsmen are shooting down there in the thicket. Jump as I did, if thou canst do it." The giant made the attempt, but could not get over the tree, and remained hanging in the branches, so that in this also the tailor kept the upper hand.</blockquote>
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The giant said, "If thou art such a valiant fellow, come with me into our cavern and spend the night with us." The little tailor was willing, and followed him. When they went into the cave, other giants were sitting there by the fire, and each of them had a roasted sheep in his hand and was eating it. The little tailor looked round and thought, "It is much more spacious here than in my workshop." The giant showed him a bed, and said he was to lie down in it and sleep. The bed was, however, too big for the little tailor; he did not lie down in it, but crept into a corner. When it was midnight, and the giant thought that the little tailor was lying in a sound sleep, he got up, took a great iron bar, cut through the bed with one blow, and thought he had given the grasshopper his finishing stroke. With the earliest dawn the giants went into the forest, and had quite forgotten the little tailor, when all at once he walked up to them quite merrily and boldly. The giants were terrified, they were afraid that he would strike them all dead, and ran away in a great hurry.</blockquote>
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The little tailor went onwards, always following his own pointed nose. After he had walked for a long time, he came to the court-yard of a royal palace, and as he felt weary, he lay down on the grass and fell asleep. Whilst he lay there, the people came and inspected him on all sides, and read on his girdle, "Seven at one stroke." "Ah!" said they, "What does the great warrior here in the midst of peace? He must be a mighty lord." They went and announced him to the King, and gave it as their opinion that if war should break out, this would be a weighty and useful man who ought on no account to be allowed to depart. The counsel pleased the King, and he sent one of his courtiers to the little tailor to offer him military service when he awoke. The ambassador remained standing by the sleeper, waited until he stretched his limbs and opened his eyes, and then conveyed to him this proposal. "For this very reason have I come here," the tailor replied, "I am ready to enter the King's service." He was therefore honourably received, and a separate dwelling was assigned him.</blockquote>
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The soldiers, however, were set against the little tailor, and wished him a thousand miles away. "What is to be the end of this?" they said amongst themselves. "If we quarrel with him, and he strikes about him, seven of us will fall at every blow; not one of us can stand against him." They came therefore to a decision, betook themselves in a body to the King, and begged for their dismissal. "We are not prepared," said they, "to stay with a man who kills seven at one stroke." The King was sorry that for the sake of one he should lose all his faithful servants, wished that he had never set eyes on the tailor, and would willingly have been rid of him again. But he did not venture to give him his dismissal, for he dreaded lest he should strike him and all his people dead, and place himself on the royal throne. He thought about it for a long time, and at last found good counsel. He sent to the little tailor and caused him to be informed that as he was such a great warrior, he had one request to make to him. In a forest of his country lived two giants, who caused great mischief with their robbing, murdering, ravaging, and burning, and no one could approach them without putting himself in danger of death. If the tailor conquered and killed these two giants, he would give him his only daughter to wife, and half of his kingdom as a dowry, likewise one hundred horsemen should go with him to assist him. "That would indeed be a fine thing for a man like me!" thought the little tailor. "One is not offered a beautiful princess and half a kingdom every day of one's life!" "Oh, yes," he replied, "I will soon subdue the giants, and do not require the help of the hundred horsemen to do it; he who can hit seven with one blow, has no need to be afraid of two."</blockquote>
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The little tailor went forth, and the hundred horsemen followed him. When he came to the outskirts of the forest, he said to his followers, "Just stay waiting here, I alone will soon finish off the giants." Then he bounded into the forest and looked about right and left. After a while he perceived both giants. They lay sleeping under a tree, and snored so that the branches waved up and down. The little tailor, not idle, gathered two pocketsful of stones, and with these climbed up the tree. When he was half-way up, he slipped down by a branch, until he sat just above the sleepers, and then let one stone after another fall on the breast of one of the giants. For a long time the giant felt nothing, but at last he awoke, pushed his comrade, and said, "Why art thou knocking me?" "Thou must be dreaming," said the other, "I am not knocking thee." They laid themselves down to sleep again, and then the tailor threw a stone down on the second. "What is the meaning of this?" cried the other. "Why art thou pelting me?" "I am not pelting thee," answered the first, growling. They disputed about it for a time, but as they were weary they let the matter rest, and their eyes closed once more. The little tailor began his game again, picked out the biggest stone, and threw it with all his might on the breast of the first giant. "That is too bad!" cried he, and sprang up like a madman, and pushed his companion against the tree until it shook. The other paid him back in the same coin, and they got into such a rage that they tore up trees and belaboured each other so long, that at last they both fell down dead on the ground at the same time. Then the little tailor leapt down. "It is a lucky thing," said he, "that they did not tear up the tree on which I was sitting, or I should have had to spring on to another like a squirrel; but we tailors are nimble." He drew out his sword and gave each of them a couple of thrusts in the breast, and then went out to the horsemen and said, "The work is done; I have given both of them their finishing stroke, but it was hard work! They tore up trees in their sore need, and defended themselves with them, but all that is to no purpose when a man like myself comes, who can kill seven at one blow." "But are you not wounded?" asked the horsemen. "You need not concern yourself about that," answered the tailor, "They have not bent one hair of mine." The horsemen would not believe him, and rode into the forest; there they found the giants swimming in their blood, and all round about, lay the torn-up trees.</blockquote>
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The little tailor demanded of the King the promised reward; he, however, repented of his promise, and again bethought himself how he could get rid of the hero. "Before thou receivest my daughter, and the half of my kingdom," said he to him, "thou must perform one more heroic deed. In the forest roams a unicorn which does great harm, and thou must catch it first." "I fear one unicorn still less than two giants. Seven at one blow, is my kind of affair." He took a rope and an axe with him, went forth into the forest, and again bade those who were sent with him to wait outside. He had not to seek long. The unicorn soon came towards him, and rushed directly on the tailor, as if it would spit him on its horn without more ceremony. "Softly, softly; it can't be done as quickly as that," said he, and stood still and waited until the animal was quite close, and then sprang nimbly behind the tree. The unicorn ran against the tree with all its strength, and struck its horn so fast in the trunk that it had not strength enough to draw it out again, and thus it was caught. "Now, I have got the bird," said the tailor, and came out from behind the tree and put the rope round its neck, and then with his axe he hewed the horn out of the tree, and when all was ready he led the beast away and took it to the King.</blockquote>
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The King still would not give him the promised reward, and made a third demand. Before the wedding the tailor was to catch him a wild boar that made great havoc in the forest, and the huntsmen should give him their help. "Willingly," said the tailor, "that is child's play!" He did not take the huntsmen with him into the forest, and they were well pleased that he did not, for the wild boar had several times received them in such a manner that they had no inclination to lie in wait for him. When the boar perceived the tailor, it ran on him with foaming mouth and whetted tusks, and was about to throw him to the ground, but the active hero sprang into a chapel which was near, and up to the window at once, and in one bound out again. The boar ran in after him, but the tailor ran round outside and shut the door behind it, and then the raging beast, which was much too heavy and awkward to leap out of the window, was caught. The little tailor called the huntsmen thither that they might see the prisoner with their own eyes. The hero, however, went to the King, who was now, whether he liked it or not, obliged to keep his promise, and gave him his daughter and the half of his kingdom. Had he known that it was no warlike hero, but a little tailor who was standing before him, it would have gone to his heart still more than it did. The wedding was held with great magnificence and small joy, and out of a tailor a king was made.</blockquote>
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After some time the young Queen heard her husband say in his dreams at night, "Boy, make me the doublet, and patch the pantaloons, or else I will rap the yard-measure over thine ears." Then she discovered in what state of life the young lord had been born, and next morning complained of her wrongs to her father, and begged him to help her to get rid of her husband, who was nothing else but a tailor. The King comforted her and said, "Leave thy bed-room door open this night, and my servants shall stand outside, and when he has fallen asleep shall go in, bind him, and take him on board a ship which shall carry him into the wide world." The woman was satisfied with this; but the King's armour-bearer, who had heard all, was friendly with the young lord, and informed him of the whole plot. "I'll put a screw into that business," said the little tailor. At night he went to bed with his wife at the usual time, and when she thought that he had fallen asleep, she got up, opened the door, and then lay down again. The little tailor, who was only pretending to be asleep, began to cry out in a clear voice, "Boy, make me the doublet and patch me the pantaloons, or I will rap the yard-measure over thine ears. I smote seven at one blow. I killed two giants, I brought away one unicorn, and caught a wild boar, and am I to fear those who are standing outside the room." When these men heard the tailor speaking thus, they were overcome by a great dread, and ran as if the wild huntsman were behind them, and none of them would venture anything further against him. So the little tailor was a king and remained one, to the end of his life.</blockquote>
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The End</blockquote>
<br />Cory Grosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12141983255020503557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8280650245524507557.post-88743369283387624092017-06-14T00:00:00.000-06:002017-06-14T10:32:37.804-06:00Château de la Chatonnière<div style="text-align: justify;">
Not far from Azay-le-Rideau and its famous château in the Loire Valley is the Château de la Chatonnière. No castle, this is a charming country estate that brings to mind the humble home of Cinderella. The current owner Béatrice de Andia has employed the services of master gardener Ahmed Azéroual to surround the château with stunning thematic gardens on the ideas of science, romance, and fragrance. Unfortunately during our visit in May of 2013 we were too early to appreciate the gardens in full bloom. The trade-off was made with having virtually the entire estate to ourselves. Much like the Château d'Ussé that we visited on the same day, this charming villa is off the beaten path and decidedly worth the visit.
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Cory Grosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12141983255020503557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8280650245524507557.post-81660398183353062412017-06-10T00:00:00.000-06:002017-08-24T23:32:29.628-06:00Walt's Era - Part 14: Clear Sailing Through the Early Sixties, Part 1 (1962)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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1962 is another landmark year in this series, in a certain way. This is the first year that not only lacks an animated classic, but lacks any kind of classic to speak of. There isn't even anything that might be called a minor, cult classic among Disney fans "in the know". The films are not <b>bad</b>, but not a one of them is on most people's top 10, or top 20, or maybe even a top 30 list. <i>In Search of the Castaways, Moon Pilot, The Legend of Lobo, Big Red</i>, etc. are pretty okay films and on the balance, 1962 was a pretty okay year. There are no truly awful films - even <i>Bon Voyage</i> has its merits - at the expense of nothing truly outstanding. Luckily the company also re-released <i>Pinocchio</i> and <i>Lady and the Tramp</i> to offset things.</div>
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Behind the scenes, WED moved from the Disney studios to Glendale as construction began on New Orleans Square in Disneyland. The Swiss Family Treehouse also opened this year, adding the second actual attraction to Adventureland and its first expansion since opening day. Walt Disney Productions renewed its contract with Walt and WED Enterprises. Walt received some $3500 per week plus another $1666 in deferred payments and a percentage of profits from the films, with an additional $1500 going to WED. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQeSX2NvlbwQYuyLUHvAQ60YaLzg1oFh7VrpykiLe6_VazmGBQLxTFZTt0JRmCJfSc8w4uNubZtAajTnlNkoOcg4phqkWTdRnceCwkKXacHHU63IQdRWIPM_TXPSll3Fi_T9uil33dl8k/s1600/swissfamilytreehouse.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQeSX2NvlbwQYuyLUHvAQ60YaLzg1oFh7VrpykiLe6_VazmGBQLxTFZTt0JRmCJfSc8w4uNubZtAajTnlNkoOcg4phqkWTdRnceCwkKXacHHU63IQdRWIPM_TXPSll3Fi_T9uil33dl8k/s400/swissfamilytreehouse.jpg" width="326" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Swiss Family Treehouse, circa 1962.</td></tr>
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<a name='more'></a><b><i><span style="font-size: large;">Moon Pilot</span></i></b><br />
<b>February 9, 1962</b><br />
<b>98 minutes</b><br />
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Disney makes their third attempt at Science Fiction with <i>Moon Pilot</i>, which is really more of a satirical farce in the vein of <i>The Absent-Minded Professor</i> but without its same non-stop, screwball style of comedy. Tom Tyron, seen previously on <i>Walt Disney Presents</i> as Texas John Slaughter, stars as a hapless Air Force Captain who inadvertently volunteers for America's first manned lunar orbiting mission. Brian Keith, now one of Disney's regular contract players, is his perpetually screaming commander trying to make sure that this politically expedient launch goes off without a hitch. Edmond O'Brien plays the incompetent FBI-by-any-other-name agent employed to keep an eye on the errant astronaut. And French actress Dany Saval makes her American film debut as Lyrae, an alien chasing Tyron around San Francisco to try and save him from catching the space madness in America's under-engineered, inadequately-protected rocket capsule. Tommy Kirk also makes a brief guest appearance.</div>
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Though not as consistently manic or funny as <i>The Absent-Minded Professor</i>, <i>Moon Pilot</i> still has its moments and is generally entertaining overall. The main targets are the Air Force, FBI, aerospace program, and Beatniks. Legend has it that the FBI protested the insufficiently dignified portrayal of the film's "Federal Security" agency. The Science Fiction elements are largely limited to Saval's accent, the lion's share of the film being shot on location in San Francisco. Following from my observation in last month's review of <i>The Absent-Minded Professor</i>, it's unsurprising that another Disney Sci-Fi film would be so low on the Sci-Fi elements. <i>Moon Pilot</i> is actually closer to a comedy version of the <i>Man in Space</i> trilogy than <i>20,000 Leagues Under the Sea</i> or, in many ways, <i>The Absent-Minded Professor</i> itself. Then there is the ambiguous ending... Does he have space madness or not?</div>
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Like many of the films this year, it would be an overstatement to say this film is underappreciated. I don't expect that enough people have even <b>seen</b> it to build any kind of consensus.<br />
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<b><br /></b><b><i><span style="font-size: large;">Bon Voyage</span></i></b><br />
<b>May 17, 1962</b><br />
<b>130 minutes</b><br />
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<i>Bon Voyage</i> is Disney's great paean to middle-class, middle-American values, a love-letter to France, and one of the better extended arguments against having children. Fred MacMurray stars once again as Disney's go-to befuddled middle aged man who has finally been able to give his wife (played by <i>Pollyanna</i>'s Jane Wyman) their long dreamt of trip to France, persistently pushed back because of the arrival of one child after another. The children in question are played by Deborah Walley, Tommy Kirk at his most insufferably angstridden and rude, and Kevin Corcoran at his most insufferably Kevin Corcoranish. The holiday goes awry in every possible way as the children do their damnedest to undermine and destroy their parents' happiness, as an erstwhile sexual predator hounds Wyman. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6-nQdN_A9WuAnLxShqPfUyuI8XXkAQUrgMI_hb3l0NxCO9GhIrRGiGHNCeQ_XZovu-mTElbF_X7l42Y0LpF34c-4mc_Ge9OeiFxE5SKWzoZKrcQ89EBYy69LSJwPEXDRpxKbe96mW9Gc/s1600/MPW-53687.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6-nQdN_A9WuAnLxShqPfUyuI8XXkAQUrgMI_hb3l0NxCO9GhIrRGiGHNCeQ_XZovu-mTElbF_X7l42Y0LpF34c-4mc_Ge9OeiFxE5SKWzoZKrcQ89EBYy69LSJwPEXDRpxKbe96mW9Gc/s320/MPW-53687.jpg" width="210" /></a>It sounds dreadful on paper, but there's a surprising amount of maturity and nuance in it. MacMurray finds himself befuddled and frustrated at every turn as, for example, he misses going to the Louvre one day after another because of his kids' hijinks. Sometimes he acts inexcusably: when your wife is coming to you to take her home from a party because she is practically being sexually assaulted by some creep, <b>you take her home</b>. You <b>do not </b>act jilted and jealous and like she's wronging you. But other times he carries himself with a certain amount of enviable aplomb. In one scene, a well put together woman in a streetside cafe takes him for a wealthy American and tries to woo him, and he lets her down with gentle grace and civility. At another time, Tommy Kirk gets himself in trouble with a young lady and her mother who clearly lie in wait for wealthy Americans to "take advantage" of her "virtue". MacMurray's quick wit saves the day, though we're left with the lingering question of what exactly Kirk's character did with her. His biggest challenge is his teenage daughter and her confusing relationship with a gloomy, troubled young son of truly wealthy, divorced, socialite parents (played by Michael Callan). He eventually figures out that he has to let her fly on her own, make her own decisions, and trust that he and his wife have raised her to make the right ones. </div>
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My opening line might sound facetious, but I actually didn't intend it to be so, and the reason why has a lot to do with Disney. There is a lot of social inertia behind looking down one's nose at middle-class, middle-American, middle-aged values. Both Tommy Kirk and Michael Callan provide a voice for that in the movie, as well as the Boston socialites that Wyman's character went to school with. Classism and regionalism can take on new vocabularies every generation - today it dons the robes of identity politics - but is still, at heart, a disdain for the "tacky", suburban, "plebeian rabble". Disney is often included in this disdain... Shortly after Disneyland first opened, Julian Halevy penned a <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/july-17-1955-disneyland-opens-in-southern-california/">scathing critique</a>:<br />
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<span id="socialHighlighted" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: 0px; margin: 0px; max-width: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-align: start; vertical-align: baseline; width: 0px;"><span style="color: #a39f98; font-family: "mercury display a" , "mercury display b";"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 20px;"><i></i></span></span>As in the Disney movies, the whole world, the universe, and all man’s striving for dominion over self and nature, have been reduced to a sickening blend of cheap formulas packaged to sell. Romance, Adventure, Fantasy, Science are ballyhooed and marketed: life is bright-colored, clean, cute, titivating, safe, mediocre, inoffensive to the lowest common denominator, and somehow poignantly inhuman. The mythology glorified in TV and Hollywood’s B films has been given too solid flesh. By some Gresham’s law of bad art driving out good, the whole of Southern California and the nation indivisible is affected. The invitation and challenge of real living is abandoned. It doesn’t sell tickets. It’s dangerous and offensive. Give ’em mumbo-jumbo. One feels our whole mass culture heading up the dark river to the source—that heart of darkness where Mr. Disney traffics in pastel-trinketed evil for gold and ivory.</span></blockquote>
<span id="socialHighlighted" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: 0px; margin: 0px; max-width: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; width: 0px;">One would think that Walt ran over his cat. This in turn, prompted <a href="http://epcotexplorer.tumblr.com/post/24544948234/ray-bradburys-love-letter-to-disneyland-the">a letter by Ray Bradbury</a>, which sarcastically lead off with "'</span><span style="text-align: justify;">Sirs,' it said, 'like many intellectuals before me I delayed going to Disneyland, having heard it was just too dreadfully middle-class. One wouldn't dream of being caught dead there.'" Several years ago now, </span>I read an article on Steampunk that began with an assertion of hipster credibility, bemoaning "Disney and suburban
grandparents" as a tripartite axis of uncool. <span id="socialHighlighted" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: 0px; margin: 0px; max-width: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-align: start; vertical-align: baseline; width: 0px;"></span><br />
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Canadian philosophers Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter identify this disdain as <a href="https://this.org/2002/11/01/the-rebel-sell/">the critique of mass society</a>, the conviction that one's highest fulfilment comes by distinguishing oneself as an individual against the seething masses of supposed conformists. It is the opposite of <a href="http://www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com/post/23536922667/sonder">"sonder"</a> ("the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you'll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.") and is, sadly, as Heath and Potter prophesied over a decade ago, one of the driving forces in our current social, political, and financial economy. The palpable contempt for middle-class, middle-American, middle-aged values drove one of the greatest political upsets in American history: the sublimely vengeful act of voting in Donald Trump for president.<br />
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As a Goth and preoccupied with fairly traditional liberal concerns (multiculturalism, anti-war, pro-labour, civil liberties and human rights, challenging gender norms, being as Canadian as possible under the circumstances, etc.) it would have been easy to collapse into that same critique of mass society, and I must confess that I undoubtedly skirted its fringes many times, in retaliation against real or perceived slights against me. It's fairly normal to want acceptance. It's more difficult to accept others who are unlike yourself, especially when you feel justified in not doing so.<br />
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A love for one of that Axis of Uncool - Disney - helped save me from it. "I go right straight out for the adult," Walt once famously said. "As I say, for the honest adult. Not the sophisticates. Not these characters that think they know everything and you can't thrill them anymore. I go for those people that retain that something, you know, no matter how old they are; that little spirit of adventure, that appreciation of the world of fantasy and things like that. I go for them. I play to them. There's a lot of them. You know?" Another time, he declared that "I don't pose as an authority on anything at all, I follow the opinions of the ordinary people I meet." He did so with good reason too:</div>
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The public has been my friend. The public discovered Mickey Mouse before the critics and before the theatrical people. It was only after the public discovered it, did the theatrical people become interested in it; and did the critics become interested. Up to that time, the critic wouldn't have bothered using any space, you see? So it all comes down that newspapers and people who write for newspapers are only interested in people after the public is interested. The key to it is the public.</blockquote>
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What was his secret to reaching the mass public? "Well, we like a little mystery in our films, but there's really no secret about our approach. We're interested in doing things that are fun — in bringing pleasure and especially laughter to people. And we have never lost our faith in family entertainment — stories that make people laugh, stories about warm and human things, stories about historic characters and events, and stories about animals." Walt could reach the public because he was sensitive to their needs, wants, ambitions, fears, and hopes. He refused to look down his nose at them. "Why do we have to grow up? I know more adults who have the children's approach to life. They're people who don't give a hang what the Joneses do. You see them at Disneyland every time you go there. They are not afraid to be delighted with simple pleasures, and they have a degree of contentment with what life has brought — sometimes it isn't much, either." </div>
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It's hard to argue with the success he managed to build by treating these tacky, unsophisticated, middle-class, middle-American, middle-aged, Caucasian, cisgendered, family types seriously. And it is hard not to be beguiled by its kindly simplicity. He makes an implicitly confident and compelling case that this dignity and sympathy <b>really is</b> the way that people <b>ought</b> to be treated, regardless of their adjectives, pronouns, dialect, sexuality, gender identity, region, religion, or class. Maybe we really ought <b>not</b> to be mocking people for trying to live decent, healthy, happy lives, as though that makes them some kind of deviant. It's one of the tragedies of the current Western political climate that we increasingly treat decency as deviance, and decreasingly treat individuals as worthy of dignity and sympathy out of mistaken notions of "privilege."<br />
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<i>Bon Voyage</i> gives us an interesting insight into a Disneyfied, Hollywoodized version of this middle-class, middle-American family and its challenges. In that respect, its genuinely fascinating and one can easily feel as Callen does at the film's close, wishing we could kind of have a caring family like that or holding onto the one we may have been blessed with, and recognizing it for the blessing it is. </div>
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<b><i><span style="font-size: large;">Big Red</span></i></b><br />
<b>June 13, 1962</b><br />
<b>89 minutes</b><br />
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"I liked it. I didn't expect to like it, no offense, but I liked it." That was Ashley's assessment immediately after watching <i>Big Red</i>. Two things contributed to that impression that we could both agree on. The first was that it was a Disney dog movie that didn't end in tragedy. The second was its very Canadian sensibilities. </div>
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Walt only did a small handful of movies filmed and set in Canada. <i>White Wilderness</i> was a wildlife documentary in the <i>True-Life Adventure</i> series, and we've already seen <i>Nikki, Wild Dog of the North</i>. The latter was fairly typical of an American "Northwoods" film, replete with fur trading Voyageurs in thick French accents set against the backdrop of endless spruce forest. About the only thing it was missing was a Mountie. To Disney's credit, he did actually venture to film in Canada, in the vicinity of Banff National Park. Most Hollywood "Northerns" tended to film in the region of Lake Tahoe in California's Sierra mountains. Good enough, I suppose, when all one needs to communicate is rugged, forested wilderness to suggest Canadianess. </div>
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<i>Big Red</i>, and a fifth Canadian film to follow soon enough, is a radical departure for the time. There is rugged wilderness, to be sure... The actual rugged wilderness of rural Quebec, filmed on location. The actors are Canadian as well. No Mounties with Brooklyn accents here. In fact, no Mounties here, period. Or Voyageurs. This is not a story about the Klondike Gold Rush or the days of fur traders or Indigenous peoples. On the contrary, it is a fully contemporary story about a show dog who takes the prize at the Montreal dog show, is purchased by a dog breeder, and forms a special attachment to the boy who works for him. There's nothing overtly Canadian about it, which is the most Canadian thing about it. It's like we're normal people who happen to be Canadian! The only time Canadianess hits you in the face is a moment towards the end of the movie when a Canadian National Railways train is stopped on the tracks by a moose, which is actually the sort of thing that could still happen in Canada today (with <a href="http://calgary.ctvnews.ca/moose-runs-through-downtown-calgary-1.512039">surprising</a> <a href="http://globalnews.ca/news/2703953/moose-on-the-loose-in-north-calgary-tranquillized/">frequency</a>). </div>
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Another subtle Canadianism that one might not pick up on if they're not Canadian, and not from eastern or central Canada specifically, is the mix of English and French. The young boy can speak "Franglish" (also know as "Franglais" depending on one's original tongue) but loses the English part when under stress, which is pretty much how it goes in French Canada. Meanwhile, the wealthy English dog breeder who has an estate in rural Quebec could not speak French, which was also par for the course in the province. That may be slightly less true now, but historically, cities like Montreal could be very segregated by language. The linguistic mix is a comfortably normal Canadian trait. </div>
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That story about a boy and his dog is your standard Disney heartwarming fare, and there really isn't much to say about it besides that. It's sweet, but leaves some points dangling, resulting in a bit of a hollow absence where more heart should be found. Ashley added in the comment that it's a comfortable movie, and there's nothing wrong with a nice, comfortable movie. The dogs are adorable, and after our debates over <i>Greyfriars Bobby</i>, Ashley now wants a red English Setter of her own. </div>
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<b><br /></b><b><i><span style="font-size: large;">Almost Angels </span></i></b><br />
<b>September 26, 1962</b><br />
<b>93 minutes</b><br />
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If narrative films of wildlife replaced the <i>True-Life Adventures</i>, I wonder if films like <i>Almost Angels</i> could be said to have replaced the <i>People and Places</i> series? The plot is fairly standard stuff about persevering, working hard, and excelling at one's chosen discipline despite naysaying family members. The interest is sustained by this plot being draped upon the Vienna Boy's Choir and the gorgeous location shooting in Austria. It is reminiscent, in a way, of <i>The Littlest Outlaw</i>, insofar as the film's strength is in the cultural pageant of its setting. As a Disney film it is quite weak - and probably no surprise that it was paired with <i>The Lady and the Tramp</i>'s 1962 re-release in a double-bill - but it has nice music and nice backdrops. </div>
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<b><br /></b><b><i><span style="font-size: large;">The Legend of Lobo</span></i></b><br />
<b>November 9, 1962</b><br />
<b>67 minutes</b><br />
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Apparently the pairing of Rex Allen with the Sons of the Pioneers in the previous year's short <i>The Saga of Windwagon Smith</i> was successful enough for a repeat performance in <i>The Legend of Lobo</i>. Allen resumes his duties as narrator to post-<i>True-Life</i> narrative wildlife films, only this time accompanied by America's Western music institution on the soundtrack and background vocals. Allen's narration is interspersed with song, as the tales rises up to folk song status. </div>
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The film was based on the accounts of Ernest Thompson Seton, a wolf-hunter who became an early conservationist after his encounter with the legendary wolf Lobo. Extraordinarily intelligent, Lobo had consistently managed to defy attempts on his life by poison, trap, and bullet. In 1894, Seton was lured by the $1000 bounty on the wolf into a four-month-long ordeal. Lobo's downfall was Seton's execution of his mate, whose body and scent were used to lure the wolf into a trap. Afterwards, Seton hung up his wolf-hunting gear and pledged himself to the preservation of wildlife. He realized that humans had no right to persecute such intelligent, emotionally-developed animals.</div>
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Disney's adaptation manages to end on a higher note, as one would expect. Though one again has to wonder how such films were shot... Were they trained wolves? Was it genuine nature photography with some staging? Lobo and his pack were played by genuine wolves apparently running free in the stunning surrounds of Sedona, Arizona... How does one go about managing that? </div>
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And yes, the scenery is as breathtaking as the story itself. How could it not be? The gorgeous red deserts of Arizona, the mesa, the ancient cliff-dwellings, and open range are practically characters unto themselves. Into this world, it is humans that are the interlopers. <i>The Legend of Lobo</i> is told from the perspective of the wolves, and by default the landscape itself. Humans are only a small, small presence there, for as much trouble as they make for it. It is an excellent way of making a conservation film that subtly plays to sympathies without beating you over the head. </div>
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<b><i><span style="font-size: large;">A Symposium on Popular Songs</span></i></b><br />
<b>December 19, 1962</b><br />
<b>19 minutes</b><br />
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Ludwig Von Drake makes his first theatrical appearance in this animated short, but the real stars are the Sherman Brothers. Richard and Robert knock it out of the park in this loving tribute to American musical history, which more often than not was a direct homage to their father, the early 20th century popular composer Al Sherman. Their approach to satirizing ragtime, crooners, and doo-wop was to simply write workable, straightforward songs in those genres that happen to have humourous subject matters. The strategy worked so well that the songs were rerecorded, supplemented, and released on a Disneyland Records album in 1965 called <i>Tinpanorama</i> (another homage to their father and Tin Pan Alley, the New York music industry of which he was a part). </div>
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Each song is animated with stop-motion work that is, sadly, crude even by 1960's standards. The Sixties were the great age of stop-motion. Harryhausen was still producing his best work, and had himself been active since the mid-Fifties. Gumby had been airing for several years, and in two more years, Rankin-Bass would debut the holiday classic <i>Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer</i>. Disney's occasional run at stop-motion is poor in comparison, and betrays the marks of a side-hobby that the company could never be bothered to invest in. Some of the designs are charming and whimsical (I love the guy playing the piano during the song "Puppy Love is Here to Stay") but the quality of the work is primitive even and especially by Sixties standards. </div>
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<b><i><span style="font-size: large;">In Search of the Castaways</span></i></b><br />
<b>December 19, 1962</b><br />
<b>98 minutes</b><br />
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It's difficult for me to be wholly objective about <i>In Search of the Castaways</i>, since it hits me right in my love for the works of Jules Verne. I already wrote a lengthy piece several months ago <a href="http://yesterday-tomorrow-and-fantasy.blogspot.ca/2017/03/jules-vernes-in-search-of-castaways.html">comparing this film to the original novel</a>, and <a href="http://voyagesextraordinaires.blogspot.ca/2016/12/scientific-romances-in-atomic-age.html">another on my Victorian Science Fiction blog <i>Voyages Extraordinaires</i></a> placing it in the wave of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells adaptations that crested in the wake of Disney's <i>20,000 Leagues Under the Sea</i>. Typically, that's how I tend to view <i>In Search of the Castaways</i> as well: one in a string of adaptations like <i>The Mysterious Island, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Five Weeks in a Balloon, The Time Machine, First Men in the Moon, </i>and <i>Around the World in 80 Days</i>. </div>
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Viewed in that light, <i>In Search of the Castaways</i> is an odd choice. Despite coming from the same pen as <i>20,000 Leagues</i> it is a very different film. Rather than a robust Science Fiction story like <i>From the Earth to the Moon</i> or <i>Off on a Comet</i> might have yielded, Disney opted for one of Verne's non-Sci-Fi adventure stories and then rendered that in the form of a family musical starring Hayley Mills and Maurice Chevalier! The story is one of Verne's globetrotters in which the children of the marooned Captain Grant convince a wealthy shipping owner to help them trace the 37th parallel in search of him, crossing the Andes, Australia, and New Zealand's Maori country. Somehow, though not being Science Fiction, it still manages to be even more fantastical with a plethora of credibility-straining scenes... Perhaps the most improbable being the expedition trapped by alligator-infested floodwaters in a giant flaming tree that also has a leopard in it, which is quickly doused and ripped asunder by a cyclone. This was after an earthquake in the Andes caused them to go bobsledding through a glacier on a collapsed boulder from which the young boy flew off and down a gorge only to be caught by a giant condor which was subsequently shot down by a conveniently timed Patagonian native. Ironically, the episode in the tree is actually taken directly from the book!</div>
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I've rarely thought about <i>In Search of the Castaways</i> in light of Disney's <i>oeuvre</i>... How and where it sits in the company's own catalogue, besides the cultural fetish of Jules Verne movies. In that respect, it's a fascinating coalescing of several trends in Disney films up to this point. It was Hayley Mills' third film for the company, following on the heels of <i>Pollyanna</i> and <i>The Parent Trap</i>, and should certainly be understood as another vehicle for the young star. By extension, it fits into Disney's trend towards films centred on young actors, like <i>Toby Tyler </i>and <i>Old Yeller</i>. Joining Mills are Keith Hamshere as her brother and Michael Anderson Jr. as her paramour. The adults - Maurice Chevalier and Wilfrid Hyde-White - provide some guidance, comic relief, and the means for the children to have their adventure.</div>
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The Victorian setting of <i>In Search of the Castaways</i> plays well to the resurgence of Gay Nineties imagery in films of the time, and especially those peddled by Disney. Rather than something relatively domesticated like <i>Pollyanna</i>, this Victorian reminiscence is played out against exotic locales and its dangers. Though of a much lower budget and therefore relying more heavily on Peter Ellenshaw's matte paintings, this aspect echoes films like <i>Swiss Family Robinson </i>and<i> Kidnapped</i>. The closing act in New Zealand even adds in some of the Polynesian, Tiki flair that was ascendant in mainstream culture and Disney's studios. </div>
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The last ingredient is music by the Sherman Brothers (who had so ably provided <i>In Search of the Castaways</i>' pre-show, <i>A Symposium on Popular Songs</i>). The score was composed by William Alwyn but the Shermans supplied a trio of songs that warranted their own Disneyland Records single release. Their magic works again in <i>In Search of the Castaways</i>.<br />
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What is the net effect of all these pieces? Well, <i>In Search of the Castaways</i> was the best-received Disney film of the year and came in third in the US box office for 1962, behind <i>Laurence of Arabia</i> and John Wayne's <i>The Longest Day</i>, and ahead of Marlon Brando's <i>Mutiny on the Bounty</i> and <i>To Kill a Mockingbird</i> (the only other Disney film of the year to get on the chart was <i>Bon Voyage</i> which came in at #10). At the risk of letting my lack of objectivity carry me away, it is definitely the best film Disney made in 1962, and one of the best in several years, barring <i>One Hundred and One Dalmatians </i>and <i>The Absent-Minded Professor</i>. <br />
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<i>In Search of the Castaways</i> is not a cinematic masterpiece in any particular respect, but it is highly enjoyable and criminally underappreciated. Nobody's life will be particularly <b>impoverished</b> by never having seen it, but it's odd that it's not better known than it is. It may be that it has been overshadowed by Hayley Mills' and Jules Verne's other films. Disney never tried this particular formula again either. In the years to come, we'll see the same fracturing of these different ingredients into disparate films once more, though it does have a certain <i>rapport</i> with another Victorian-Edwardian Sherman Brothers family musical Disney would release. After all, who would remember <i>In Search of the Castaways</i> when <i>Pollyanna, The Parent Trap, </i><i>20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, </i>and <i>Mary Poppins </i>are on your lips? </div>
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<b><i><span style="font-size: large;">Escapade in Florence</span></i></b></div>
<b>Unknown date, 1962</b><br />
<b>81 minutes</b><br />
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A bit of unfinished business closes out this pretty okay year, in the form of a 2-part episode of <i>Wonderful World of Color</i> edited into a single 81 minute film. <i>Escapade in Florence</i> is not unlike previous oddball Disney films that benefit the most from the setting, as in the case of <i>The Littlest Outlaw</i> or <i>Almost Angels</i>. In this, it's a mad chase around the gorgeous city of Florence. It is inestimably improved, however, by the presence of Tommy Kirk and Annette Funicello as the two leads... A pair of American kids who get mixed up in a ring of art thieves. It's nice to see Annette back in action in a fuller role opposite Kirk, which was narrowly missed in both <i>The Shaggy Dog</i> and <i>Babes in Toyland</i>. Sadly, while having her is great, the film does expose the weakness of Annette's singing. Several songs pepper the film, which pair Annette with actual singers, and the difference goes beyond striking to actually painful. She will always be <b>the</b> Disney girl, so have mercy on her, but yikes. It's not enough to bring down the film as a whole, and it's still... well... pretty okay. </div>
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Cory Grosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12141983255020503557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8280650245524507557.post-86884769260910825942017-05-31T00:00:00.001-06:002017-05-31T09:33:20.864-06:00Songs from the Tiki Room - Barcarolle <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>You stay off'a my back and I'll stay off'a your back!</i><br />
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When the Enchanted Tiki Room went down in the early Nineties for a refurbishment, its sometimes tolerance-testing 17 minute duration was trimmed to a taut 12 minutes by the exclusion of the peaceful <i>Barcarolle</i> number. Borrowed from Jacques Offenbach's opera <i>Tales of Hoffman</i>, the <i>Barcarolle</i> offered a calming interlude after the explosive introductory song <i>The Tiki, Tiki, Tiki, Tiki, Tiki Room</i>. It was, however, an unspectacular use of the attraction's signature audio-animatronics. <b>Any</b> use of audio-animatronics in 1963 was astonishing, and the <i>Barcarolle</i> served a proper function in the pace of the show, but 30 years later it simply tried the patience of audiences eager to get out and ride the Haunted Mansion or the Indiana Jones Adventure.<br />
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A barcarolle is a type of folk song sung by Venetian gondoliers or music in that same style. In <i>Tales of Hoffman</i>, which is regularly described as one of the most popular melodies in opera, the barcarolle is a piece entitled<i> "Belle nuit, ô nuit d'amour"</i> and is sung between the Venetian courtesan Giulietta and Hoffman's muse Nicklausse, disguised as a male companion. In the opera, the pleasant melody underlines something sinister: Hoffman believes that Giulietta is in love with him, but in fact she is seducing him under orders from Hoffman's enemies. <br />
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Most uses of the song outside of <i>Tales of Hoffman</i> have employed this contrast in melody and intent. For example, in the film <i>Life is Beautiful</i> (1997), it contrasts the height of European culture with the collapse into fascism. Disney evidently thought that it just sounded nice, and previously used it in the 1931 <i>Silly Symphony</i> cartoon <i>Birds of a Feather.</i><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Birds of a Feather</i> (1931)</span></div>
<br />Cory Grosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12141983255020503557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8280650245524507557.post-11132108022602175612017-05-20T00:00:00.000-06:002017-05-20T00:00:00.801-06:00What Makes Something "Disney"?<div style="text-align: justify;">
Not very long ago,<a href="https://passport2dreams.blogspot.ca/2017/04/making-it-disney.html"> FoxxFur at <i>Passport to Dreams</i> </a>posed the question of what makes a themed attraction, themed space, or theme park distinctively "Disney" in contrast to other amusement parks, rides, and spaces. What does it mean when we criticize something made by Disney of not being "Disney" enough? What do we mean when we say the so-called competition doesn't measure up to Disney, or has "out-Disneyed" Disney? Since I take my cues from <i>Passport to Dreams</i> apparently, which frankly isn't a bad place to take them from, I've been given pause to think seriously about what that means. </div>
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There is a very elementary sense in which I take something to be "Disney", which is that it draws from Disney branded intellectual property... Rides, attractions, and spaces that are drawn either from the rich catalogue of the Walt Disney Studios, or are themselves original creations of WED Enterprises/Walt Disney Imagineering. This forms a great deal of my objection to the infiltration of non-Disney IP into Disney parks. There was a joke that Disney didn't buy Pixar for $7,400,000,000; Pixar bought Disney for -$7,400,000,000. The same joke could be made for Lucasfilm and Marvel. Unfortunately, while I don't <b>hate</b> <i>Star Wars</i> or <i>Indiana Jones</i>, I'm really not very fond of Marvel or Pixar. Though one could make a reasoned argument that <i>Star Wars</i>' "A Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far, Far Away" has suitable parallels with "here you leave today and enter the worlds of yesterday, tomorrow, and fantasy," there is a profound sense in which Marvel and Pixar <b>do not belong</b> in a Disney park, beyond my own feelings that they are interminable corporate products verging on anti-art that are all the more obnoxious because they are so popular and consistently shoved in my face. I will get into those reasons soon enough.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEHk14yYYMhan2Oo-wVs3O32ahYyWez_HjOhX33XacX61Pu5alKENf7MouUpxsZUYFYuKsQ-IS2hzw8scNaUjXp3soN4ADM5_3ForelWG6mFzmCGNTRP4K4zTCVlSh_VDmmmAxhsBNt28/s1600/DSC02080-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEHk14yYYMhan2Oo-wVs3O32ahYyWez_HjOhX33XacX61Pu5alKENf7MouUpxsZUYFYuKsQ-IS2hzw8scNaUjXp3soN4ADM5_3ForelWG6mFzmCGNTRP4K4zTCVlSh_VDmmmAxhsBNt28/s400/DSC02080-2.jpg" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pretty "Disney", I think.</td></tr>
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This might explain why I consider rides based on <i>Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs</i> or <i>Peter Pan</i> to be sufficiently Disney, but it doesn't explain Haunted Mansion, Mystic Manor, Pirates of the Caribbean, Enchanted Tiki Room, Expedition Everest, Big Thunder Mountain, Country Bear Jamboree, and so forth. It may even get muddier when considering attractions based on different non-Disney sources, like Tom Sawyer Island or Journey to the Center of the Earth. I am not so troubled by those because I see Imagineering's relationship to theme parks as comparable to Walt Disney Studios' relationship to film. A theme park adaptation of a Jules Verne book is just as reasonable as an animated film adaptation of a Brothers Grimm story, and an original theme park attraction is just as good as an original screenplay. To me, the act of being created by Imagineering makes an original or adapted attraction a Disney IP. </div>
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Yet when people talk about something being "more Disney", they don't mean simply the IP involved. Well, some might, which is how we get things like Mickey's Fun Wheel with a giant Mickey Mouse head slapped on it. Generally though, something <b>more</b> is implied by the term than just identifiable characters. There is an implication of quality, of a certain standard and a certain effect, that a themed space has to reach to be considered sufficiently "Disney". </div>
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Some of FoxxFur's conclusions echo those I made not very along ago either, in my recent piece on <a href="http://yesterday-tomorrow-and-fantasy.blogspot.ca/2017/04/theme-vs-decoration.html">theme vs. decoration</a>. In that editorial, I outlined the difference between the elements that combine to create an immersive alternate world and merely affixing decorative elements to a thing. In the Disney context, FoxxFur coined the term "slap a Mickey on it" to describe when "more Disney" means simply attaching more Disney IP to something. The iconic Mickey Mouse head becomes simply a decorative motif that fails to create a sense of immersive theme, unless the immersive theme is "Look! Disney owns this!" Once again, Mickey's Fun Wheel is a perfect epitome of this principle. Imagineering literally did slap a Mickey on it in response to customer surveys wanting California Adventure to be "more Disney."<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiidwyy0mk8rsYYkfLz3BqDmMHezTpXFtyzDyg9qhNxxgefQNr65ySvSJTsaWMCkcENjWaVbkHNivLue66s3kkuzwbL173fS_o70UtxiqakrL5mVIuvB4Qyajt2hf-Rq3qsf6TIpaBbY8k/s1600/funwheel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiidwyy0mk8rsYYkfLz3BqDmMHezTpXFtyzDyg9qhNxxgefQNr65ySvSJTsaWMCkcENjWaVbkHNivLue66s3kkuzwbL173fS_o70UtxiqakrL5mVIuvB4Qyajt2hf-Rq3qsf6TIpaBbY8k/s400/funwheel.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Look how Disney this is! Can't get more Disney than this!!<br />
Photo: Wikimedia Commons.</td></tr>
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FoxxFur even goes further, beyond deliberate theme to a sense of harmonious design in general. The core of her thesis is that "on a basic level, that to make something 'Disney', it needs urban planning, attention to detail, and a sense of harmony. That sense of harmony is crucial..." Slapping a Mickey on it, she points out in multiple examples including the concourse of the Contemporary Resort, has never worked to create a sense of harmonious design. I would go one further than FoxxFur even, and say that what makes something "Disney" is not only harmonious design married to urban planning and attention to detail, but the quality of creating a <b>heightened experience</b>. It's not simply a well-designed space, but a space that draws one into "the worlds of yesterday, tomorrow, and fantasy."<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQqYz9W6-FC0EMNRfHsslrtdsgzxNZQNA6Ps_fxI-eV-j06ymQf4WWIQW6mT-EiATDf_pqiWZ5Qsz_8Fs11XsnzUwmopZs7DF66vloDp969zFh1XSow_ukm9tHLWJ6tZA7ukqaiACXYVw/s1600/DSC01044.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQqYz9W6-FC0EMNRfHsslrtdsgzxNZQNA6Ps_fxI-eV-j06ymQf4WWIQW6mT-EiATDf_pqiWZ5Qsz_8Fs11XsnzUwmopZs7DF66vloDp969zFh1XSow_ukm9tHLWJ6tZA7ukqaiACXYVw/s400/DSC01044.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This is what makes Disney "Disney."</td></tr>
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There are no end of "Main Street USA's" out there. Many of the buildings found along Disney's versions have true-life inspirations, and one could see them and ones very much like them in any given "historical village" dotting the Western hemisphere. Yet Disney creates the heightened experience of the ideal Main Street USA, the most perfect one. Main Street USA isn't a realistic recreation of a turn of the century American town, but rather, a dream-like, nostalgic distillation of one into its essential, perfected form. This is true, over and over again, throughout the parks. </div>
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Frontierland, for example, is not a truthful recreation of the Old West, but a fantastic, idealized one. We may debate which version does it better as well, and I would argue that Disneyland Paris' is a serious contender. The heightened ideal of the Old West is further accented by an overarching story tying the land together, truly creating a separate, immersive world above a mere pastiche of tropes and elements. I could argue the same of Disneyland Paris' Adventureland as well. Its expansive colonial tropics goes beyond having a Swiss Family Treehouse or a Pirates of the Caribbean ride to having the whole worlds these places occupy. The Swiss Family Robinson's entire island is there, and across from the fort being sacked by pirates is the Jolly Roger and Skull Rock, crossing over the realms of adventure and fantasy. The only problem is what Disneyland Paris lacks: the Enchanted Tiki Room, Jungle Cruise, Country Bear Jamboree, Splash Mountain... My Platonic ideal of a Disney theme park would basically be Disneyland Paris with all the attractions it's missing.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Disney in content and execution.</td></tr>
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The absence of the Enchanted Tiki Room is especially hard-hitting. Though understandable in the European context, where Tiki has never been a big thing like in the United States. Tiki culture is distinctively reflective of the "more Disney" ethos. It is, by its very nature, a heightened experience. Each Tiki bar, at home or in public, is creating a fantasy world around the ideal of Polynesian romance. Between the Enchanted Tiki Room, Polynesian Village Resort, and Trader Sam's, there is little wonder that Disney and Tiki should be so entwined.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6JfTFVnm6CaPY4JrabF1BEEfuprHW8GTHc0TbyymQLLEEl97bieS4WU8nZ17ibRHD0adB7FWgcpIK8gBxrfyb8o-7jVFkBGPGQCp3wKTAEyigCkyitzF3XY4B0yW1IiP-NZd_frX4xVw/s1600/DSC07067-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6JfTFVnm6CaPY4JrabF1BEEfuprHW8GTHc0TbyymQLLEEl97bieS4WU8nZ17ibRHD0adB7FWgcpIK8gBxrfyb8o-7jVFkBGPGQCp3wKTAEyigCkyitzF3XY4B0yW1IiP-NZd_frX4xVw/s400/DSC07067-2.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This one even has mermaids! The Sip 'n Dip in Great Falls, Montana.</td></tr>
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Grizzly Peak and Disney's Wilderness Lodge are both pastiche of America's National Parks without being a copy of any particular one. Wilderness Lodge does an excellent job, as do all the moderate and deluxe Disney hotels, of drawing the theme of the public spaces into the rooms themselves. One does not always find that in the real thing, where the hotel rooms are disappointingly generic in contrast to the beauty and historic character of the hotels themselves. We were actually quite pleasantly surprised by the charmingly rustic appearance of our room at the Old Faithful Inn, which harmonized with the rest of the hotel and the natural vista our window looked out onto. That sense of heightened ideal and romance found in Grizzly Peak and Wilderness Lodge is what makes them "more Disney" to me than, say, a Carsland. This in turn leads to why I think Marvel and Pixar are inappropriate to a Disney park, beyond my just plain not liking them.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCY3mfx9gany9IfW-myjOX6fGP-v6CYBc1PbTRJ9HuFy1RQOjMXWlCYUOulFbUsgNLQhtIu9wcazHhWIrrd-beUEN1A2yxtR8i4YqIYcMzPs1QGZtOod33FGfBILXPD8Ak_Netp5hEZwk/s1600/DSC07624.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCY3mfx9gany9IfW-myjOX6fGP-v6CYBc1PbTRJ9HuFy1RQOjMXWlCYUOulFbUsgNLQhtIu9wcazHhWIrrd-beUEN1A2yxtR8i4YqIYcMzPs1QGZtOod33FGfBILXPD8Ak_Netp5hEZwk/s400/DSC07624.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Even the <b>sink</b> in our room at Old Faithful Inn was photogenic!</td></tr>
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Whereas Disney parks are about worlds of yesterday, tomorrow, and fantasy, Marvel and Pixar are very contemporary. Films in both franchises are set in the world of today, thus violating the sense of fantasy and heightened experience that I argue is the core of the "Disney" experience. Marvel would be a triple-whammy of awful, as a non-Disney IP set in the modern day that necessarily involves <a href="http://yesterday-tomorrow-and-fantasy.blogspot.ca/2014/06/spectatorship-and-experientialism-in.html">sitting in a cart to watch someone else have an adventure</a>. If there was any genre that I think is diametrically opposed to the entire form and substance and purpose of a theme park, it would be the superhero story.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwDCmripFy8LOq9b1Wk2yDPUZf_f8JWBf7tBhyphenhyphenEXxJvQW-KEoAWKHq86cDGeCMLOapwSZraCXL4gRwGKE521peDhbU-6qoHXNHSqQGBvr0Am3lLOFB9Er8QTJo4asjx-9rfgRmFuqOBh4/s1600/daredevil-costume-image.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwDCmripFy8LOq9b1Wk2yDPUZf_f8JWBf7tBhyphenhyphenEXxJvQW-KEoAWKHq86cDGeCMLOapwSZraCXL4gRwGKE521peDhbU-6qoHXNHSqQGBvr0Am3lLOFB9Er8QTJo4asjx-9rfgRmFuqOBh4/s400/daredevil-costume-image.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Here you leave... today?...<br />
(To be fair, The first Netflix <i>Daredevil</i> series is the only Marvel thing I've genuinely liked)<br />
Photo: Disney/Marvel.</td></tr>
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What makes Grizzly Peak "more Disney" than Carsland is trickier. The contemporary reference point for Carsland is Route 66, but not the Route 66 of a nostalgic yesteryear. It is the dilapidated Route 66 of today. Do you know what is better than visiting the recreation of today's dilapidated Route 66 in a Disney theme park? Driving the actual Route 66, today. It's the same problem affecting Dinoland USA in Animal Kingdom. While it is charming in its own way if you're into silly roadside attractions (as I am), Dinoland is "less Disney" because it is recreating something that actually exists, in the modern day, in its authentic form. Doing so loses a sense of heightened experience. Grizzly Peak has the challenge that visiting an actual National Park is <b>better</b> than visiting Grizzly Peak. But with California Adventure's renovations, Grizzly Peak has been made "more Disney" by being themed to the nostalgic milieu of the Fifties-Sixties Great American Road Trip. It's not the references to Brownstone National Park or Camp Inch that make it "more Disney", but rather the nostalgic romanticism. </div>
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This all raises two other tricky questions: can a non-Disney property be "Disney"? And can a non-themed space be "Disney"? <br />
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To be clear, I have never thought that the "competition" was actual competition. The arrival of Harry Potter into Universal's Orlando resort goosed its attendance by about three million, where it plateaued. That attendance boost still placed it well below Disney Hollywood Studios, the worst and "least Disney" of the four Walt Disney World parks. What put Disney fans on notice was the quality of The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. Unlike Universal's typically scant awareness of the concepts of themed design, these lands were flawlessly realized, completely immersive environments. They might even qualify as being "more Disney" than a lot that Disney actually makes. It is naive, however, to think that Wizarding World is better than Disney's best... It signifies Universal <b>finally</b> catching up to what Disney has already done in Tokyo DisneySea, Animal Kingdom, etc. Considering that most of the Wizarding World is a shopping experience, Universal nailed how to turn the shopping itself into a themed experience. This is not only true of performance-based attractions like Olivanders, but also the selection of merchandise. We joked that if Disney had gotten the licence, the merchandise would have been all been tchotchkes of Mickey Mouse dressed as Harry Potter. Instead, Universal themed the merchandise to the subject matter, in most cases making it movie prop accurate. The shopping supports the heightened experience by allowing the guest to theme<b> themselves</b> to it, bedecked in robe and wand, drinking Butterbeer and eating Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirmXqVelV5hrqncVRwrZm7vhlRnLS57Orhl8niUWVxB4njtOdfzB6KlfYmKrGCyRqAwAD3v4XCLBSSDqmZImdQtosD3gMPyMiTBtm0acwejMzFLWVqMZUGuoRx4_rRucMKfrYSleLnXOc/s1600/DSC09148.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirmXqVelV5hrqncVRwrZm7vhlRnLS57Orhl8niUWVxB4njtOdfzB6KlfYmKrGCyRqAwAD3v4XCLBSSDqmZImdQtosD3gMPyMiTBtm0acwejMzFLWVqMZUGuoRx4_rRucMKfrYSleLnXOc/s400/DSC09148.JPG" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The quintessential Wizarding World of Harry Potter experience.</td></tr>
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I already mentioned that Tiki culture reflects the "Disney" heightened experience, and one could argue the same of certain parts of Las Vegas. Usually that connection is strained and capricious, as when Ray Bradbury called out Julian Halevy for making it, but insofar as resorts in Las Vegas have embraced the principles of themed design they have managed to reflect the same fantasy reality peddled by Disney. Nor does the "more Disney" principle have to limit itself to physical spaces. Two of my favourite video games - <i>Red Dead Redemption</i> and <i>Bioshock Infinite</i> - reflect this amidst the copious bloodshed of violent shoot-em-ups. They each create an idealized open world, the Old West and a Main Street-like flying city circa 1912, that mirror what Disney does at its best and how it does it.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Red Dead Redemption</i>, or Frontierland: The Game.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">It even has a runaway mine cart roller coaster!</span></div>
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What about non-themed spaces then? Downtown Disney recently transformed into a themed space as Disney Springs, but was it "Disney" before? Or what of FoxxFur's example in the Contemporary Resort? The Contemporary was never supposed to be a themed space, and like much of the original Walt Disney World, was not tied to corporate cross-branding. It did have a decorative scheme based in the Southwest US, typified by Mary Blair's Grand Canyon moasic, but it wasn't meant to invoke a heightened experience of being at the Grand Canyon. The Contemporary was meant, however, to express the heightened ideal of "contemporariness". It was supposed to be "now-not-yet", the hippest of the present day, so hip that it's slightly futuristic. Basically, the same drive as behind Tomorrowland or Epcot's Future World. Here I might make a radical proposition: Tomorrowland is not themed. It is decorated to appear futuristic but is not itself themed to a particular time or place. Magic Kingdom's Tomorrowland did eventually get itself themed, but even that was tenuous at best. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Original concourse of the Contemporary Resort. Is this Disney?<br />
Photo: Disney.</td></tr>
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FoxxFur's notion of harmony plays a greater part here, where an idealized architecture, excellent planning, and cleanliness play a more significant part in making a space "Disney" that isn't overtly themed. Downtown Disney <b>is</b> "more Disney" than an average mall or Universal's Citywalk by those principles Disney brought to creating it. Ironically, Disney fails at this in some sad examples. The Hollywood Studios theme parks spring to mind as spaces where Disney threw out all concepts of good planning and good theming. The best that the original Disney Hollywood Studios has to offer is the "main street" leading up to the Great Movie Ride and the slight offshoot to Tower of Terror. There it recreates the ideal Hollywood of the Twenties and Thirties, as does Buena Vista Street at California Adventure. After that it loses the plot and devolves into a Universal Studios style morass. The only reason the soundstage aesthetic works at Universal Studios Hollywood is because <b>those are actual soundstages</b>.<br />
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Aside from Disney-specific content, what makes something "Disney" is not isolated to Disney itself. Disney sometimes even fails at it, quite spectacularly even. At its best, what Disney excels at... what exemplifies Disney at its most "Disney"... is creating harmonious, well-designed, immersive, <b>idealized </b>worlds. Even critics recognize this when complaining that Disney is "fake". They may have a <b>too acute</b> sense of the idealized, heightened experience that Disney is trying to create. That idealized experience will never replace reality, but Disney "Disneys" best when it is creating or recreating experiences that are impossible in the modern day. Moonlight flights above Neverland in a pirate ship, Captain Nemo's secret volcano base, Belle's enchanted village, sailing down the rivers of America in the golden age of riverboats, a mansion teeming with happy ghosts, a rollicking room of chanting Tikis, a sleek monorail speeding through a futuristic hotel... This is Disney at its most "Disney". </div>
Cory Grosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12141983255020503557noreply@blogger.com3