The Fabulous Disney Babe
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Thanks to MouseHole and Animagic:

So you liked those well-rounded 3D characters in Kingdom Hearts, did you? I watched the Japanese version for over an hour at the NFFC Show and Sale, and was pretty impressed - not bad for a game at all. However, those who have seen Mickey's PhilharMAGIC say that the 3D Disney characters in the film are some of the best they've ever seen. If there wasn't an "on model" version of Mickey and Donald, there certainly is one now.

The plot: Donald Duck, being Donald Duck, decides to steal Mickey's sorcerer's hat - which Mickey, if you've seen Fantasia, "borrowed" from Yensid at one point. That's not mentioned in this film, but the hat continues to cause more trouble than the hapless "borrower" intended - the hat springs to life on its own and drags poor Don through all sorts of mischief, including leading him on a wild goose - er, duck chase through a slew of Disney animated films. Though the moving floor was canned early in development (think Honey, I Shrunk the Audience), audiences will feel, through the huge screen and 3D graphics, like they are flying after Donald and the mad magical hat, both literally and through all sorts of landscapes. Wind effects and sound effects in the theatre, like precursors "Honey..." and "Captain EO" ensure that the audience won't miss a moving floor effect at all. The screen is huge and curved, not a dome as in Soarin' Over California, but those who have seen the film say the sensations are just as good and the suspension of disbelief complete.

Remember Sweating Bullets, the animated film I mentioned months and months ago, with Dolly Parton? Oh, wait, that was at the old gig, wasn't it? Okay, let me look it up. Man, my writing was atrocious. Man, it still is! You won't be able to tell; the Wayback machine is blocked from the site now. Sorry, guess those badly written monkeyfests are history. (Hides disk with old stories on it) Anyway, the film was to star Dolly Parton and Dame Judi Dench - Animagic, the best Animation site on earth that I have to use my high-school Latin to barely begin to understand, has a story about it here.

Dolly.net, a Dolly Parton site, features the following:

I'm not sure if the horses and cows are still in it - looks like it - but what's interesting is that traditional animation will be paired with 3D animation to a scale much bigger than that of Treasure Planet. Hal Holbrook apparently makes an appearance as an Abe Lincoln-type character - made out of a push-broom and assorted junk. I've seen some wild concepts that made sense once I'd seen them - hope this does, because the visual imagery just isn't there for me. Anyone working on this picture - please, email me and explain how this fits in.

Michael Clarke Duncan, who voiced Henry in Disney's The Country Bears, seems to have found himself typecast - he's once again starring in a Disney movie and playing a bruin. This time, he's playing a wise old grizzly bear named Griz. The story takes place in the Pacific Northwest, before European-American explorers discovered the land. Kenoia, a fifteen-year-old Native American boy, loses his father to a mother bear protecting her cubs. Kenoia's gentle father was the chief of the tribe.  When his big brother takes over leadership of the tribe, Kenoia, voiced by Joaquin Phoenix, demands that the new chief immediately form a hunting party to slaughter the mother bear.  The brother refuses at first, and so Kenoia runs into the woods, intent on wreaking revenge on the bear that killed his father.

The spirits of the wilderness (please, please no magical floating leaves) decide to teach him a lesson about his headstrong ways and transform him into a bear, so that he can understand what it's like to be hunted - and he does. After he befriends Griz and learns the way of the bear, he learns that his brother has finally formed that hunting party he so longed for - but they want to eradicate all bears from the land. He has to save his new family and teach his brother about the balance of nature.

Michael Eisner bought ten million dollars worth of Disney stock, in a show of support for the company. It's good to see him do that, as it ties Disney's success more closely to his own. If you haven't yet, I strongly suggest you go to your local library, used book store, or online book store and find the now out-of-print Storming the Magic Kingdom by John Taylor, then look up the issue of Newsweek from Disney-MGM Studios' opening week. The guy up on the crane who thinks an aircraft carrier would "look cool" is the same guy who bought ten million dollars' worth of stock in Disney.  One of the insiders over there keeps telling me: "Michael DOES get it - you'd be shocked at how much he gets it." I hope so. The parks sure could use an injection of Michael's old magic. I know it's difficult with stockholders nipping at your heels, especially when so much of it is investment firms who don't care if Beastly Kingdom is built, but how much gain is made in the dollars and cents, whether it be by cutting costs and damaging the company's reputation with customers in the long run, or making something so wonderful that the world throws money at you just for the privilege of experiencing it.

I read the papers - I see that people are saying that Disney might buy Universal. Funny, all those pink-slipped Imagineers built the IOA rides for Disney, after all, right? I don't see it happening. What I have heard about is something that reminds me of the days when Disney animation was resting on its artistic laurels, and then all of a sudden there was viable competition, named Spielberg. Some top Imagineers tell me that when Jeffrey Katzenberg was with the company, he was a "great friend to Imagineering." How's this for a scenario: Barry Diller, Michael's old boss at Paramount (Storming references the heated screaming matches the two would share, and Michael's frustration that Diller would later damn him with faint praise when he was looking for work) is apparently being tapped to head up Universal's theme parks division. Who is he reported to be considering to help him run the division? Jeffrey Katzenberg. Let the one-upmanship commence! It was good for animation in the late 80s, it will be good for theme parks in the oh-ohs.

I'll have more of the Beauty and the Beast story for you next time, don't fear.

-- Fab

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