In celebration of this weekend's D23 Expo, the Disney fan event, Disney is planning to donate $500,000 and eight million books—ranging from titles for beginning readers to teen series—to First Book, a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing new books to children in need. Last year, First Book distributed a total of 7.5 million books, and Disney's generous donation will allow them to double that number this year.
I was going to write a blog post about Anne Rice's upcoming werewolf book, but like I said: I totally don't care about Anne Rice. So let's look at these Disney Underground prints inspired by the various Disney fairytale adaptations instead, even though I don't really have anything meaningful to say about them, other than
Yet another snippet of Disney Princess news has come my way: a sing-a-long version of Beauty and Beast will be shown in a limited number of theaters on September 29th and October 2nd. Hopefully this will tide fans of the film over until 2012, when the company is apparently planning to re-work the film into 3D.
These oddly melancholy images of obese Disney princesses are popping up all over the Internet. (They're drawn by Aly Bellissimo, the artist behind the questionably-SFW Creepy Miranda blog.) I was originally a little disturbed by the idea of re-imagining these iconic characters as dangerously overweight... but then I realized that none of the original princesses (pictured here) had waistlines bigger than their heads. So I guess if we can handle one type of disturbing body type, we can handle another, right?
Ah, satirical advice from Disney's cartoon princesses! Check out these words of wisdom from "Belle" and "Ariel":
To be fair, I feel like cherry-picking objectionable messages from Disney films is like looking for potentially offensive stuff in the Bible: sure, it's there, but that's not really the whole story...
...although that nuanced viewpoint didn't stop me from grinning over these videos. Somebody should embroider "The lesson here is that beauty is in the eye of the beholder ... as long as the woman is good-looking" on a pillow!
There's a new collection of Disney Couture jewelry out, this time inspired by their take on Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid. I'm usually not a fan of themed jewelry, but something about these octopus earringsdoes sort of speak to me...
I was really irritated when I first heard about Disney's decision to tweak their upcoming movie version of Rapunzel in order to attract more boy viewers. There's already a serious lack of girl-friendly entertainment out there, so Disney's decision felt like a betrayal of their core audience. But now that I've seen the trailer for the movie (which was retitled Tangled, because that's, like, way manly), I'm feeling much better. Tangled looks like a parody of the classic Disney "princess" movies of the past twenty years—the kind of film the minor studios make in an attempt to steal some of Disney's thunder. It's possible the movie will turn out to be better than this smirky and romance-free trailer makes it look... but for now, I'm perfectly content to let the boys have this one.
Clearly, some people see the Disney 'verse in a sexier light than I do--check out J. Scott Campbell's illustrations of pneumatic Disney princesses (I can't believe the Little Mermaid's seashells can rein those suckers in!), and news of MAC Cosmetics' "Venomous Villains" beauty line. Would that really sell? Because I can't imagine wanting to wear eyeshadow like this. Or this. Or this...
And in other news, Disney has decided to go for a more dude-friendly take on the ol' fairytale genre: from here on out (says the Los Angeles Times), they don't want to be "put in a box" by making movies just for girls. Because there are already so many movies out there aimed at females, and Lord knows we'd want to be fair.
Variety informs me that the Disney Channel is planning a Harriet the Spy made-for-TV movie. Unfortunately, they've made some changes: the new version has Harriet as "a movie producer's daughter determined to become the class blogger".
That would be bad enough, but I'm even more concerned by the announcement that "So You Think You Can Dance" contestant Blake McGrath will choreograph. Um, choreograph? Since when are there dance sequences in Harriet the Spy? Have they seriously turned this into some kind of High School Musical-influenced monstrosity? Have they no shame?
Apparently: Well, Disney seems confident enough in the appeal of Jules Verne's classic characters to fast-track the development of a new movie, despite these uncertain economic times. The studio has hired McG to direct a "family film" version of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Captain Nemo, and they're hoping to make the film this year.
According to Variety, Disney's plans for Kingdom Comics are progressing nicely. This new division will develop graphic novels for film adaptation (and turn past live-action films into comics). It will be headed up by actor/producer/writer Ahmet Zappa, former chief executive of Twentieth Television Harris Katleman, and writer/editor Christian Beranek. Naturally, Disney Publishing Worldwide will have the first opportunity to distribute all titles created by this line.
In celebration of this weekend's D23 Expo, the Disney fan event, Disney is planning to donate $500,000 and eight million books—ranging from titles for beginning readers to teen series—to First Book, a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing new books to children in need. Last year, First Book distributed a total of 7.5 million books, and Disney's generous donation will allow them to double that number this year.
