Dragon’s Tale

Ilene Woods, the voice actress for Disney’s Cinderella passed away last Thursday at the age of 81. She came from a time when Disney put a lot of work into their movies, and unlike modern day Disney movies (with the exception of The Princess and the Frog), she also sang all the songs for her character in the movie. It’s a shame the world lost an extremely talented woman, but at least future generations will always know how talented she was thanks to the movie.

This is also the 60th year anniversary for the Disney movie. It’s a shame they didn’t do anything special to commemorate the occasion. I first saw the movie in theaters in 1987, as my grandmother said it would probably be the last time it was ever shown in a theater. It was.

I’ll be watching Cinderella tomorrow in honor of Ms. Woods.

Last week the trailer for Disney’s newest animated movie debuted. For those that don’t know, their next animated movie is called Tangled, and is based off the story of Rapunzel. My thoughts? It looks pretty good, but I’m just not a fan of 3D animation (2D animation seems to have more “soul”). They have managed to capture the Disney art style, but the realism they add to the fabrics and hair is rather out of place. Either way, I’ll be catching this movie on Blu-ray. I don’t think it will be bad, I’m really liking the art-style, it’s just very incredibly rare for me to go to a theater to see a movie (like combining my interests into a single movie, like The Princess and the Frog managed to do). Also, as I mentioned before, 3D artwork really is a turn off for me. Animation should have an artist working on it, not a computer rendering everything.

Oh, and if you’re a fan of Disney, make sure you join the Disney Movie Rewards program they have. For my birthday a couple of weeks ago they offered me a free Blu-ray movie (I had to foot the shipping bill, but it was just $2). While the selection was small, there was something I liked, Enchanted. Good movie by the way, so good the live-action Smurfs movie is stealing the plot.

The trailer for Tangled can be seen here at the official site for the movie.

When it comes to Disney, I’m a bit bi-polar. I love them for their classic animated movies (and their most recent 2D animated film), but I hate them for how they act and treat some of their properties.

Here, I couldn’t find any Princess and the Frog merchandise. No soundtrack, no books, no dolls or plushes, yet in the US, they were everywhere. All I managed to find was a $5 bookmark and a few coloring books. All the rest of my collection came from ebay or a friend in the US. My animation cel, which I got off ebay, was given out free to a single zip code in Nevada. The people that received it proceeded to stick them all on ebay and make money off something Disney gave them for free. Now sure, everyone wants to make money, that doesn’t bother me. What bothers me is Disney only made those cels available to a single zip code in the entire US. I can only say “thank goodness” that I bought mine before a majority of the fans found out about them, as they’re going for 4-5 times what I paid now.

I saw 1 TV ad leading up to the release of the movie. There was no fast food promotions.

For a large company like Disney, why did they feel the need to treat The Princess and the Frog in such a manner? Why didn’t it deserve the attention that most of their movies get (like those annoying live action movies, where the commercials are played every commercial break)? Will the DVD release be better, or will all their focus be placed on Alice and Wonderland?

I don’t go to movies on opening days very often, so when I do, that means I really want to see the movie! For months I’d been looking forwards to the release of Disney’s latest animated movie, The Princess and the Frog, and today, it was finally released in theaters. The movie is a bit of a modern twist on the Frog Prince fairy tale, and Disney thankfully didn’t use 3D animation and used a more traditional animation style, which looked very well done. The story was well written, and there is a fairly sad part towards the end that might upset the kids. And finally, the voice acting was top-notch, fitting each character perfectly!

So go see the movie! You won’t regret it. Don’t let classic animation become extinct, please help show Disney that there’s still people that enjoy it. I’ll be busy buying up all the Princess and the Frog merchandise I can find (which has been very… non-existent in Canada..) and awaiting patiently for the DVD.

A few weeks ago when I was watching TV I saw an ad that really surprised me. I guess it wouldn’t have surprised me if I paid attention to DVD news, but it was a commercial for Snow White, coming out on DVD and Blu-ray. I was shocked, were they finally learning that their classic movies should be available to everyone at any given time? Would I be able to buy Cinderella on Blu-ray next year for it’s 60th anniversary? After a quick search on Google, I found out no, they didn’t smarten up.

It seems like only a select few Disney movies are subjected to the Vault, to be specific, their “best-sellers”. Now Snow White was the very first to be released on DVD, and it’s time to start the cycle all over again on Blu-ray, Snow White being the first, with Fantasia and Fantasia 2000 being released March 2010, and then Beauty and the Beast October 2010 (at least I want that one).

Now some of this actually holds true to their “we take the movie away for 7 years and then release it again”, although until now, Fantasia was never included in the Vault, so who knows what else they’ll stick in there in the future. Also, with a bit of rough calculations, I can expect to buy Cinderella on Blu-ray sometime in 2015. Awesome! I mean, it’s bad enough that I missed out on the DVD release and either have to buy a bootleg on Ebay or download the movie, for the movie’s 60th anniversary, they won’t even release it on Blu-ray (they released Pinocchio on it’s anniversary, taking it out of the Vault prematurely).

So, whenever I have the extra money, I’ll be buying  multiple Snow White Blu-rays. When Fantasia is released, I’ll be buying up as many Fantasia Blu-rays I can find. I’m going to play Disney’s idiotic little game and make a profit off them. When Snow White goes back into the Vault, I just wait a few years and sell the Blu-rays on Ebay. I mean heck, if a DVD bootleg goes for $30 on Ebay, just imagine what a real disc will go for.

If anyone else would like to make money (and who doesn’t), I encourage you to do the same. Let Disney work for you and help you pay some bills. Sure, it will take some time, but in the end, that time will net you a bit of extra money!

One of the most shocking news story’s this week has been Disney buying Marvel Entertainment for $4 billion. I think it’s safe to say no one saw this kind of thing happening, and in the end, it could benefit both companies. I can just imagine just what the minds at Pixar and Marvel could come up with if they wanted to make a movie.

Disney has been having trouble lately with money, Pixar being the only thing that’s keeping them alive. Most people don’t understand how something like that happens, but to those that pay close attention to what’s going on, it’s very simple to see. Disney’s live action movies aren’t very popular and don’t do very well in theaters or DVD sales. Race to Witch Mountain and Bedtime Stories both come to mind. Those movie stars don’t exactly come cheap, and after you throw in the special effects, you’ve got quite the bill. Sure, they might turn a bit of a profit, but it’s simply not enough to keep them going, specially since Disney has the habit of releasing these movies almost back to back. You’d think they’d learn from Pixar that one movie a year is good enough. Yes, make that one movie really well written with top-notch acting, then you’ve got your hit that will make a ton of money.

Of course their “Disney Vault” doesn’t help them very much either. The Disney Vault is what they call “retiring a movie”, pulling it off the market in an attempt to keep the movie “fresh” for new generations. You get a year to buy one of their classic animated movies, then they take them all back and “lock” them away until they decide it’s time for a new audience to see them. Sure, a year is a lot of time, but depending on the situation, you can miss out on buying it, or your family can grow and you want to show your son or daughter one of your favorite movies, but since you didn’t think to buy the movie because, you know, you thought you could go to the store at any time and buy a DVD, you’re out of luck.

Of course the other reason they do this is to create a collector’s item. The supply is gone, but the demand is still there. People that want the DVD now have to pay more for it.

But it’s not in any stores.

It’s not at any Disney stores.

It’s only on Ebay.

And it’s being sold by someone in China, and the packaging looks a bit off..

Bootlegs. Yes, Disney pulling their DVDs from the stores to keep them “fresh” leads to bootleggers selling pirated DVDs of all your favorite Disney classics, or people just plain making their own bootlegged DVD. The only way to get your favorite movie is to now buy a DVD off Ebay that someone else made, and looks pretty much like the original, except it costs way more because bootleggers are the only people supplying the product that people want.

So you see, Disney is in trouble and needs more help when it comes to money. They need Pixar, and they’re going to need the money that Marvel can generate with their movies and comics, because it’s either smarten up and stop making live-action movies like Race to Witch Mountain, or keep pumping them out and using profit to pay for them. I’m going to hope that The Princess and the Frog does well in theaters so Disney will see that they should stick to 2D animation, and they’ll let Marvel and Pixar do their own things, and become a stronger company.