The Many Logos of Disney Home Ent.

I'm a long-time Disney VHS collector who is fascinated by the little details that differentiate tapes, from all the different eras of Disney's home media division. In a way, it's kind of odd... Walt Disney Home Video had a logo before Walt Disney Productions proper. Walt Disney's films, up until the mid-1950s, had been distributed …

‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit’ – An Animation Thesis…

My next pick for animation thesis isn't an all-animated film, but it contains a lot of animation... Pure animation, too. Not VFX trickery and lifelike creations. Who Framed Roger Rabbit... A Walt Disney Pictures/Amblin Entertainment film released under Disney's Touchstone banner, spearheaded by Back to the Future trilogy director Robert Zemeckis and executive producer Steven Spielberg, …

The Typography of Disney Animation Logos #3: ‘Dumbo’ and ‘Bambi’

Number three. Now moving onto the last two features that make up the Golden Age of the Walt Disney studios... Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Pinocchio Fantasia Dumbo and Bambi Saludos Amigos, The Three Caballeros, and Make Mine Music Fun & Fancy Free, Melody Time, and The Adventures of the Ichabod and Mr. …

No Songs in ‘Mulan’? That’s Good!

So... No songs in the live-action Disney remake of Mulan... In a recent interview, Niki Caro, the director of Disney's live-action Mulan said that she is aiming to make her version more of a martial arts film, something rougher around the edges. She had apparently commented that the picture wouldn't really have songs in it. …

The Typography of Disney Animation Logos #1: ‘Snow White’ and ‘Pinocchio’

Months ago, I did a post on the various logos that Pixar uses for their films. The interesting thing about Pixar logos? Usually just one is made for any given feature-length film, and minor variants are used on marketing materials. I was able to talk about all of their logos in one post... Walt Disney …

Revisiting ‘TRON: Legacy’…

The other day, Disney shocked me... They announced something TRON-related. A franchise I thought they turned their collective backs on. TRON has had it rather rough in this day and age, though I suppose I should shut up because a sci-fi cult classic that bombed back when it came out getting a sequel was more …

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 …

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 …