Breaking Down the Later Disney Renaissance, Part 3

Was it possible that the very directors who played a big part in the launching of the Disney Renaissance would be the ones to save it? I'm talking about Ron Clements and John Musker. They joined Walt Disney Productions in the mid-to-late 1970s, getting their kicks on features like The Rescuers and The Fox and …

10 Song Picks of the Month!

Instead of picking from shuffle, I figured I'd use songs that have been my jam recently... 'Standing at the Crossroads of Love' - The Supremes, Where Did Our Love Go? (1964) - I'm a recent Supremes convert. Their vocals, coupled with the production, makes for such a delicate sound. This particular song covers a lot …

Breaking Down The Later Disney Renaissance, Part 2

Before I go on about the latter half of the Disney Renaissance, I'd like to talk about an element that characterized the earlier Renaissance that you don't see very often these days in the land of theatrical animation. This element, I feel, faded away with the very feature I'll be reviewing today... Start with Beauty …

Is Disney Marketing Going a New Route?

Earlier, I had complained about how Disney mishandled a few of their 2015 and 2016 releases. To me, it seemed like their marketing department couldn't handle so many big, tentpole, "event" pictures at once. For every Avengers: Age of Ultron and Inside Out, there would be a Tomorrowland and a Good Dinosaur. The Good Dinosaur …

Before The Blog…

Before the beginning of my main line animation news blog, I had always wanted to add to the commentary of the American animation industry... I started Kyle's Animated World back in February of 2012. I was still 19 at the time, and still learning about the ins, the outs, and the little things about the …

Breaking Down The Later Disney Renaissance, Part 1

Much like the so-called "Dark Age" of Disney Animation that occurred from the late 1960s up until the mid-1980s, the second half of Disney's beloved Renaissance tends to get quite the write off. Like the transitional times of the 70s and 80s, the latter half of the Renaissance and its flaws are due to many …

Photographic Animation

Nearly three years ago, an animation legend weighed in on the state of mainstream American feature animation. The legend in question was Gene Deitch, known for his work with the UPA in the 1950s, the Tom & Jerry cartoons that he was tasked to make in Czechoslovakia after MGM jettisoned their animation studio, and his …

Better To Not Know

Summer 2013... Much like what I do now, I was clawing in the dirt for animation news and the word on the street. Walt Disney Animation Studios seemed to be on some kind of cusp, this was months before the release of Frozen. The Burbank studio only had two legitimate box office hits under their …

Dark Cars: The ‘Cars 3’ Teaser and Its Unexpected Reception

I'm seeing it all over social media... "Wow, Cars took a dark turn..." "Lightning McQueen died?" It's no joke, though. The Cars 3 teaser is unlike many of Pixar's previous teasers, and in terms of the lighting and the aesthetic, the film looks unlike any previous Pixar film. Gone are the vibrant colors of the …

A Whole Other Ocean: A Full Review of ‘Finding Dory’

Arriving thirteen years after its magnificent, underwater predecessor, Finding Dory proved to be a worthy sequel and a very good film in its own right. Finding Dory's main strengths are in its development of Dory. I remember the cries and concerns when it was announced that the Finding Nemo sequel would focus heavily on the …