Walt's Era - Introduction

Starting today, we will be running a new series on Yesterday, Tomorrow, and Fantasy. This fairly monumental project will be to watch as many of the theatrical films produced during "Walt's Era" as practicable, in order. It's a project we've been wanting to do for a long time, as our collection of those films has grown exponentially with a Disney Movie Club membership. Now we're finally taking the plunge!

For the format of this project, we owe a debt to FoxxFur of Passport to Dreams Old and New, who did a similar project with the films made in the decade immediately after Walt Disney's untimely passing. On the second Saturday of every month, we will be looking at another handful of films in their sequence of release, reviewing each film and drawing observations from how Disney's cinematic art progresses over time. This will include both feature films (films over 40 minutes) and theatrical shorts (films under 40 minutes) but not the Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, Silly Symphony or other such cartoons that were often packaged with and preceded the films. We will, however, be putting the films in their historical context against those cartoons and what Disney was doing on TV and in theme parks at those times. I'll also include some historical data about the films themselves, letting historical box office returns and that sort of thing factor into my reviews.

Our journey will take us through a 30-year period from 1937's release of Disney's first theatrical film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to 1967's The Jungle Book, the last film which bore the direct influence of Walt Disney. Unfortunately there are a handful of films that we are forced to bypass because they are simply not available, like the People and Places series that ought to have been released alongside the True-Life Adventures in the Legacy Collection. There might even be a small number I'll deliberately skip, since we must face facts that not everything made by Walt Disney was pure gold. Nor can I promise to have something insightful to say about everything... I'm already pretty sure that my review of The Fighting Prince of Donegal will be something to the effect of "Like many films released in 1966, this film was also released in 1966."

I do hope that I may be able to say something interesting some of the time though, and that the exercise of watching them in order will open up some new ways of looking. I heartily invite you to watch along with me and share your own thoughts in the comments. Our series will begin next Saturday with, of course, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. 

Disney Announces "Main Street USA" Movie

BURBANK - In a quiet press release this morning, chairman Alan Horn announced that Walt Disney Studios will begin production on a live-action feature film based on Main Street USA.

Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson will star as Gart Williams, a modern executive who finds himself lost in the fast-paced world of today. Drowsing on his daily commute home, he catches a fleeting glimpse of an idyllic town where the streets are still lit by gas, ladies sport great feathered hats, and the horseless carriage is the newest thing. Was it only a dream, or something more? What is "Main Street USA"?

Main Street USA will continue the tradition of feature films based on Disney theme park attractions, including the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, Tomorrowland, The Country Bears, Tim Burton's Dumbo the Flying Elephant, and Guillermo del Toro's hypothetical Haunted Mansion movie. Brad Bird has been signed on to direct this family action-adventure comedy romance.

"We might as well give him another chance," said Alan Horn. "Besides, we've been kind of doing a volume business lately." Bird was quoted as saying "Yeah, I guess I have to do it." He added "I've got a great sequence planned with Abraham Lincoln riding a Tyrannosaurus, so that'll be cool. Hopefully they don't cut the budget halfway through."

When asked about Disney's marketing strategy for Main Street USA, Horn stated "Well, we don't really know who we make our movies for. I figure we'll just kind of half-ass some advertising that doesn't really tell anybody what it's about or make them want to see it. Maybe we'll do one of those viral campaigns that the kids these days are so into, but only make it accessible to a small group of Disneyland passholders. Disney specializes in doing the impossible, like making a $250 million film and not promoting it."

Disney fans have begun buzzing about possible changes to Main Street USA if the movie proves successful. The website MiceChap has already speculated wildly at a replacement for The Walt Disney Story Featuring Great Moments With Mr. Lincoln And The Disney Gallery, immediately followed by complaints that it will not be an E-ticket simulator ride and that Universal Studios could do it better.

The Story of Rongo

In the garden of Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room, Rongo is portrayed as a playful god with a bounty of tropical fruits and a penchant for flying kites. The real story behind this deity is a little more complex and disturbing than the made-up riff on how he could have discovered electricity if only he had a key lying around.

Rongo.
Photo: University of Wellington.

Disney Enchanted Tales and Magic Kingdoms

Ashley and I recently downloaded two new games from Disney Interactive: Disney Enchanted Tales and Disney Magic Kingdoms. Both follow the pattern of many app games, in which one places buildings and decorations on a playing field in response to missions that get you more tokens with which to buy and place more buildings. For those without patience, they offer special tokens for real money that finish these missions more quickly and allow you to buy special buildings. Not all such games are made equal, so how do these measure up?

Both are enjoyable enough, though Magic Kingdoms offers you more to do at a time. It has become a running joke between us that Enchanted Tales is a game you play for 30 seconds at a time, once every half hour. By the time you collect tokens and set your characters on their various tasks, you've frittered away maybe a minute at most, and you can go do other things. Magic Kingdoms has a short enough turnover that you can play for a little longer before setting one character or another building on an optional four hour mission, slipping on your shoes and coat, and going to work. Of course, you could play Enchanted Tales for longer if you wanted to pay to do so, but who wants to do that?

In Magic Kingdoms, the slightly newer of the two, you have been tasked with cleansing a generic Disney park of an evil curse put on it by Maleficent and replacing the different rides, so you can attract guests, and harvest them for "Happiness" which in turn allows you to lift more of the curse. As you go along, more characters, areas, and rides are unlocked.

Unfortunately, Magic Kingdoms doesn't deliver on the implications of the original D23 announcement, which was that it was essentially a Disney-branded form of Roller Coaster Tycoon. Armchair Imagineers might salivate at the idea of building their own Magic Kingdom exactly the way they want it, with all the rides they want. Magic Kingdoms doesn't allow that. Because of the nature of this type of game, you're stuck building what they tell you to build and doing what they tell you to do, with your only real input being where you place things. I've already had to place my first Pixar attraction, which has already disproved the advertising jargon. No Disney park of my dreams would have a Pixar ride in it.

Magic Kingdoms aesthetics are fine for the most part, if a bit too cutesy in some places. It's a chunkier, more plastic looking, "Little People" version of a Disney park. It actually seems to most closely resemble the concept art for Shanghai Disneyland's tacky "Mickey Avenue." The rides are an amalgam of attractions from different parks, with a few generic classics (Space Mountain) and some specific references (Alice's Curious Labyrinth, the Disneyland Paris It's a Small World facade, Mickey's Fun Wheel). I just wish these aesthetics were applied to a game more like Roller Coaster Tycoon, with more flexibility and creativity.

Even though Enchanted Tales can only be played for 30 seconds at a time, it is a much cuter game with a more robust aesthetic. The premise is that after the "Happily Ever After," a little girl's quilted bedspread comes alive with magic, on which these fairy tales continue to unfold never-ending. The game allows you to choose from two stories, Beauty and the Beast and Frozen.

Being who we are, we of course chose Beauty and the Beast. Missions give you tokens with which to buy buildings and decor for Belle's village and the Beast's castle, which are stitched into the quilt. The characters are rendered in a charming, cartoony style, while the buildings and decor have a very cute quilted look. A close inspection of the trees and sheep show that they are sewn together like living dolls. It's an absolutely darling concept. The missions are filled with little jokes and references that make them equally adorable. For example, you can make Gaston "stomp around wearing boots" or make the bookseller "match wits with Gaston" in a chess game.

 
Between the two games, we've found Enchanted Tales to be the more engaging thanks to these sorts of references and the more ingenious aesthetic. Magic Kingdoms is also being judged against what one thought it was going to be versus what it actually ended up being, which is a hard stick to be measured by. We had no preconceptions coming into Enchanted Tales, to its benefit. Our interest in Magic Kingdoms is already waning, but we'll probably still keep playing both until we reach that point in all such games where you've done everything and gotten everything that you don't need to pay for and there's nothing left to do but tap on a bunch of buildings to collect tokens that you can't spend anyways.

Songs from the Tiki Room - Let's All Sing Like the Birdies Sing

Let's all sing like the birdies sing... Boo bububoo bububooo...

As I noted the last time we took a look at a song from Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room, Imagineers did not operate in a cultural bubble. They were very attuned to the popular music and trends of their times, especially those they grew up with. To the exception of The Tiki, Tiki, Tiki, Tiki, Tiki Room, written by the incomparable Sherman Brothers, most of the music sung by the birdies were actually popular Big Band Era hits.

Let's All Sing Like the Birdies Sing was first written in 1932, by the team of songwriter Tolchard Evans and lyricists Stanley Damerell and Robert Hargreaves, along with Harry Tilsley. The first recording of the song was by Henry Hall, the English Big Band leader most famous for The Teddy Bears' Picnic.

Like many songs of the time, the Max Fleischer Studio made Let's All Sing Like the Birdies Sing into the focal point of an animated short. Released in 1934 as part of their Screen Songs series, it was directed by Dave Fleischer and starred Artie Dunn and Les Reis performing the title song. Screen Songs were a continuation of the Fleischers' Song Car-Tune series, which included the first animated films with synchronized sound, released in May of 1924 (predating Steamboat Willie by four years). Each of the Car-Tunes and Screen Songs featured a sing-along sequence inviting the crowd to join by following the bouncing ball. The tradition continues with the invitation to sing like the birdies, at least at the Disneyland USA version of the attraction.

 

Snow White, the 1916 film

In 1916, the very first screen adaptation of the Brothers Grimm's iconic fairy tale Snow White flickered across the nickleodeon screens all over America. In one of these darkened theatres in Marceline, Missourri, the film left an indelible impression on the mind of a young patron by the name of Walt Disney. When young Walt would come of age, the memories of this magical film inspired him to return to the story of the fair-skinned princess and her companions as the subject for the first ever feature-length animated film.

To say that the 1916 version of Snow White inspired the 1937 Disney version is an understatement, for the inspiration runs deep. So deeply, in fact, that it would not be inappropriate to say that Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is an outright remake of the silent film. Similarities reach out further than the common source material, as there are some conventions in the silent film that echo two decades later.

However, this original version is considerably different in its own way. At the expense of dwarven sing-alongs, the story is more fully developed. A full half of the film passes before Snow White escapes the Queen's death plot in the shadows of the Dwarves' forest. In that time we are introduced to Snow White's true mother, the ugly stepmother Queen Brangomar turned beautiful by the witch Hex on the condition of receiving Snow White's still-beating heart, Prince Florimond the love interest, Snow White's gaggle of handmaidens, Berthold the huntsman and his family. As you may glean simply by the fact that these characters have names, we enter more richly into the world of Snow White than in other versions.

We also have here a version that is truer to the Brothers Grimm version than later renditions. That has pluses and minuses, however. The incomparable romance of the young woman's sexual awakening with love's first kiss was the invention of that boy from Marceline. The Grimms were far more practical.

But don't take my word on it. Watch the complete silent film version of Snow White for yourself...

Brer Rabbit and Brer Bear

Disney's maligned classic Song of the South features three animated sequences pulled from various writings of Joel Chandler Harris. The story of Brer Rabbit's Laughin' Place is derived from one of his last books - Told by Uncle Remus: New Stories from the Old Plantation - while the other two come from his first, Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings. We already looked at the story of the Tar Baby. This time, we're looking at the story of how Brer Rabbit tricked Brer Bear... minus the musical introduction.

From chapter XXIII...