#well the steamboat willie version at least

[holographic-murderbot]

[id: A picture of a pen and pencil drawing of mickey mouse from steamboat willie on paper . He is raising his hand in a salute with a speech bubble saying 'Happy New Year ya fucknuts I'm finally public domain'. Mickey also has top surgery scars. End id.]

[mousetrappedcomic]

Mousetrapped #2: "Nothing So Sweet"

The bikini top she wore in Steamboat Willie is still weird to me. Why not give her a shirt?

I should add, I drew a while back and was still getting a feel for the characters. So, I apologize for a weirdly lanky pair of mice.

In the last day, I've had a few people ask what I'm planning for this comic. Honestly? I just want to do a fun adventure comic. I am not interested in a hardcore, gritty, dark version of the characters - although I stand by my belief there was a dark tone to most early cartoons. Will there be dark moments? Yes. But I don't want to do what most people are doing and paint Mickey as a villain or have him go to "extreme" choices for the sake of, "Look, he's public domain now, I can have Mickey Mouse say and do shocking things."

Disney Comics were a huge part of my childhood reading. I still enjoy them greatly. So getting to work with, well, only a couple of the charaters is nice. And I want to just tell fun stories. Will there be some darker tones? At times. Some horror? Everything I do tends to at least dip into horror, but I'd want it to be stuff appropriate from the 1920s.

Plus, my kid watches me draw these and she really enjoys it, so I'm not going to draw anything that would upset her. But she's also a Halloween kid who absolutely loves spooky stuff, so take that how you will. -R.

[alex-the-nonsensologist]

Disney Dreamland - Part 1: World Galleria

I posted about my idea of a Mysteryland a while back and decided to finally post the rest of my ideas for my personal Disney Park (nicknamed Disney Dreamland; may change the name later, who knows). This outline is a mix of ideas and random commentary related to each idea (I tend to blab a lot in my writing. Sorry in advance). Some ideas are half-baked as I only have an idea how I want them to look and feel rather than function, other ideas are intentionally left vague because they are dependent on experts on the subjects (which I am not). Also, I had trouble coming up with nice-sounding names, so that's why you’ll see a lot of names that are just basic descriptions in quotation marks. Would love some feedback wherever possible!

A bit of background, I originally envisioned this park as a Disneyland in New York (it's one of my favorite self-indulgent daydreams), and that led to my park being a sort of homage to the 1964/1965 New York World's Fair by featuring some iteration of all four of the attractions that debuted there, as well as my version of Main Street being a sort of mini World’s Fair. 

Shout-out to @disneylanddilettante , I was inspired to write this after reading her ideal version of Disneyland.

World Galleria

My version of Main Street would be under a lovely glass roof to shield from the weather, and resemble a Victorian arcade. Inspired by Tokyo’s World Bazaar (their equivalent of Main Street), and in homage to similar places throughout Europe’s history, such as The Great Exhibition of 1851, Passage des Panoramas in Paris, Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Italy, etc. 

The architecture would be mostly Victorian with a bit of Turn of the 20th Century. To help carry the theme of “World’s Fair”, international restaurants would be featured here; their building exteriors would follow the Victorian look, but their signage, window displays, and interiors would fully reflect their respective cultures (for example, see Restaurant Hokusai in Tokyo’s World Bazaar).

The entire place would have plenty of ventilation, especially in the summer, to prevent it from feeling like a greenhouse. To help traffic flow, the street would have crossroad branches in the middle like Tokyo does, leading out into Adventureland on the left, and Discoveryland on the right. The parade does not run down this route (more on that later). This allows the center crossroads space to have special decorations for seasonal events, again just like Tokyo does. 

The entire avenue would have accessible second stories to make space for everything. I would also love to have at least one little alcove or mini-courtyard somewhere to relax, containing a small garden with a decorative fountain. 

Disney Dreamland Railroad main station: Victorian style with partial glass ceilings. Other stations will be in each of the five lands, all appropriately themed, and with dioramas in the tunnels teasing each land’s theme / attractions. I also think it would be really neat if the park’s entrance ticket booths were underneath this station.

Great Moments in Storytelling: Successor to Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, one of the four New York World’s Fair attractions. Due to personal reasons, I’m not entirely comfortable making any President, past or present, shown as a celebrity or a friendly buddy. So I decided, how about famous authors instead? Perhaps Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, or all three and more? There would also be a narrative or discussion of some kind, so it’s not just them spouting random popular quotes from their works.

“Mini Disneyland model” : The models of the Storybook Land Canal Boats are a very neat idea, but I personally prefer taking my time to see models up close, not in the blink of an eye from afar. I think it would be really cool to have a scale model of the original Disneyland as an homage, and a learning exhibit.

“Galleria Cinema”: Showcases old Disney shorts, including Steamboat Willie, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, and the Alice Comedies. Maybe on special occasions it could even showcase foreign films, like The Red Balloon.

Penny Arcade: Mutoscopes and other coin-operated games. 

World Emporium shop.

"Snack tin shop": In Asia the parks sell snacks in these absolutely GORGEOUS decorative tins. This shop could sell a variety of international snacks with unique Disney art themed to each region / culture on the tin. 

Wishing You Were Here: Stationary shop and post office. Send postcards to your loved ones. Yearly calendar with exclusive artwork available here (Tokyo’s calendar artwork is ASTOUNDING). 

For restaurants, I would include restaurants with the following cuisines: 

Japanese, as a nod to Tokyo Disney Resort (French and Chinese cuisine will be elsewhere in the park).

Norwegian, Moroccan, and Canadian, as a nod to the remaining countries of EPCOT that won’t have restaurants elsewhere in the park.

Thai, as a nod to Amphibia without specifically being IP themed, though there could be a few hidden references to the show in the decor and menu.

Greek. Interior could be themed to mythology and have a few hidden references in the decor to the animated Hercules.

There won’t be any American cuisine in this area as they can already be found elsewhere in the park.

‘‘ it’s a small world ’’

One of the four New York World’s Fair attractions. In place of the classic Disney castle, here I put "it’s a small world" as my park’s icon. If you think about it, Small World is in its own way a kind of castle, it certainly looks like one, but also a small city. I think it neatly adds on to the theming of World Galleria.  Shout-out to @pureimagineering , who also imagined Small World as a park icon, but for different reasons.

This version’s facade would be castle-sized. Color scheme could be either pastels, or white with various shades of blue, and touches of gold. Entrance and queue would be on the back of the building to leave the front free for live entertainment, and nighttime fireworks and projection shows. The main central garden plaza hub would at least be the size of Tokyo’s, but nowhere near as big as Shanghai's, who only gets away with it because their castle is so dang huge. The hub would be surrounded by a river making it an island, much like Orlando’s hub. Features include a structure inspired by Tower of the Four Winds, and fun topiaries. For my park, the parade would follow a similar route to Tokyo and Shanghai, originating from the west and wrapping around the central hub before exiting eastward. 

There would also be a back garden plaza behind the ride building, with plenty of topiaries, flower gardens, and a little river running through the garden with lovely bridges crossing over it. This area transitions into Fantasyland. There would be an international buffet restaurant and a gift shop placed on the second floor of Small World, above the ride, with the entrance also on the back of the building. The classic clock tower would of course be in front, but there’d also be a smaller version in the back for the people in the queue and the restaurant.

A World of Tastes: International buffet. Interior architecture would resemble the finale room of the ride. Buffet would feature a little bit of something from every single country featured in the ride, with emphasis on cuisine not already featured anywhere else in the park.

‘‘it’s a small world’’ Toy Shop: Does anyone remember the singing Small World Animators’ Dolls that Disney Store released back in 2013 / 2014? I would love to have this store re-release them, as well as mini playset versions (non-singing). The store can of course also sell other Disney character plush, and plush keychains in unique outfits like the ones sold in Tokyo.

The Ride Itself:

I definitely want to have a queue designed by Joey Chou like the one he did for Tokyo’s version’s 2018 renovation. He is pretty much this generation’s Mary Blair. I just love all the kinetic sculptures, the delightful murals, and star-shaped lights dangling from the ceiling. It’s all so adorable and colorful!

For the ride itself, there would be more countries added. For example, Europe could have a few more Eastern European / Slavic countries at the end to transition into Asia. Similar to Hong Kong’s version, the Asia room would also have more dolls and scenes, but rearranged so that the Middle East is in the back to better flow into the Africa room. I would also definitely add the Mandarin and Cantonese versions of the song to Asia’s audio. It would be great if there were more countries represented in Africa, or at least a portion added for the savanna, a marketplace scene, and Mount Kilimanjaro. Maybe also include audio of the song in Swahili and Zulu. I’m not opposed to a North America room, so long as there is decent representation of various Native American tribes, and Canada.

For the ride music, I’d love a version that closely resembled the soundtrack that Paris used to have. I think the instrumentation and vocals from that version is simply top tier joy-inducing. For the finale room I’d use the EPIC orchestral rendition from the Small World finale unit in Tokyo’s Electrical Parade Dreamlights.

While I myself have no problems with the dolls, I am willing for the dolls’ faces to be redesigned to be slightly more cartoony to reduce any uncanny valley.

Controversial opinion, I personally have little issue with most of the Disney character cameos that are in the Hong Kong, California, and Tokyo versions of the ride. Since most of the human characters are portrayed in doll form, and the non-humans match the stylized look of the animals throughout the ride, they tend to blend in rather well and make for a fun Easter Egg game. I will admit, some characters stand out too much, like the Toy Story gang, or had unnecessarily extravagant sets added just for their sake, like Rapunzel who had her whole tower added in Tokyo. As a middle ground, for my version of Small World, I narrowed down the Disney cameos to only 4 specific groups in homage to the movies that Mary Blair had a heavy influence on. 

Alice in Wonderland: I’m a little biased as Lewis Carroll’s Alice is my favorite book. Alice and the White Rabbit fit in well at their current location next to the UK chessboard, and are fine to leave as is. 

Peter Pan: Peter and TinkerBell flying above the audience works just fine as they are decently hidden out of view most of the time. While I think Wendy sitting on the moon is a very cute image, I’ll leave her out to keep the cameos to a minimum.

Cinderella: The current versions stand out a little too much, especially Hong Kong’s where she and Prince Charming have the castle added behind them. For my version, I would only have Gus and Jaq tucked away on the Eiffel Tower (where Mary’s cameo is hanging out), but I would also have the Eiffel Tower rendered in white, blue, and silver in the style of Cinderella Castle.

The Three Caballeros: While Donald, José, and Panchito stand out the most of the four cameos I’ve picked, they were part of a genuine cultural movement as a result of the Good Neighbor policy, not to mention warmly received by Latin America, so they’re perfectly in the spirit of Small World, and I think they’re fine to leave as is.

Starting in the hub, the five themed genre lands of the park, going clockwise, are:

Adventureland

Mysteryland

Fantasyland

Create-It-Land

Discoveryland

[rhys-ravenfeather]

Hey, remember at the beginning of the year when everyone was excited about Mickey Mouse (or at least, Steamboat Willie), entering the public domain?

Well, I'm sure most people are at least somewhat aware of this movie scene:

Fun fact: The people behind Anchors Aweigh, the name of the movie, actually wanted to use Mickey Mouse for the film, but because Disney has always been Disney, they said 'no', and they ended up having to use Jerry instead.

So my proposal: When Mickey enters the public domain fully, someone do a reanimated version of this movie moment that actually has him.

[mysteriousbp]

I feel like Dippy is the least liked canon character in the Fnati community.

And it doesn’t feel like people hate him, it’s feels like people just don’t find Dippy interesting…

In my opinion Dippy feels like he doesn’t belong with the other characters. Its maybe because I was a OG fan and ever other character was in the old versions of Treasure Island and Dippy is a new character in the series.

But in my opinion he doesn’t fit with the themes (that I see the game having) that the Oblitus Casa “new characters” have…

… yes Dippy kinda fits the theme of 1920’s cartoons, but for some reason I feel like he doesn’t fit in there. Maybe it’s because I’m more used to seeing Steamboat Pete and Mickey than Dippy.

But I feel like 1930’s Clarabelle would had fitted better in the game that Dippy. Clarabelle is usually paired with Goofy so she would fit with the theme of the “new characters” being the girls of some of the characters from Treasure Island but also she made her first appearance in Steamboat Willie. Also I feel like Dippy whole having a big open mouth would have fitted Clarabelle better because well…

… this.

But hey, it’s just my dumb opinion.

But seriously why does Dippy has the whole having a big open mouth thing?

[therobotmonster]

gonna be honest though, I don't like thinking about all the data that was fed to these art AIs without the person who made the images permission. It's one thing if it's public domain but otherwise it's in the realm of bad ethics to me. That's what I don't like about most of these AIs.

I strongly disagree.

The way the data is used is fundamentally no different than how a human artist witnessing the artwork would. It's a stylistic and mathematical influence and nothing more. It does not recreate the original artwork. This isn't a collage or photoshopping process. The AI merely "knows" about the works, just like a human artist would. It would be completely bonkers for an artist to claim that other artists were forbidden from learning by looking at his works, and I don't see the AI having access to the same data would be different.

You can't copyright styles. No one owns ideas. Copyright is a temporary patent on a piece of creative work to encourage production. Because just like the AI, the human artist is recreating novel assemblages of the data they have access to.

The output of such AI is absolutely transformative and does not replace the original work, so there's always at least those two legs for a fair use argument, with others coming into play conditionally.

On the standpoint of ethics, however, the real reason I'd make this case:

The public commons has been starved for more than a century due to corporate greed. The temporary nature of copyright has been stolen away by Disney's obsessive need to never, ever let Steamboat Willy fall into the public domain despite Disney having built is entire brand on the backs of the public domain.

The public commons is owed a glut of uncopyrighted material for people to use as inspiration and raw material. That's what AI art is, at least now, legally (uncopyrightable, though more directly human-guided processes are untested legally) and as such I see it as a re balancing of the scales.

Now, let's think of things in the opposite way. Lets imagine that someone comes in and decides these AI projects can't build datasets from search engine data but have to only stick to public domain work or stuff they license.

Well, that tool is now gone from the public use, but every Warner and Disney can use their huge swaths of data to make their own versions for internal use. All the artists are just as impacted, only now just the corps can benefit. They can use it internally, stick it behind a paywall, or let people use it but then claim that they own everything they make because hey, it's all their copyrighted input.

Where I stand, individual artists have way more to gain and far less to lose from this tech than megacorps do.

[keelywolfe]

FIC: Welcome To Backwater ch.2 (spicyhoney)

Summary: Stretch isn’t running away, not really.

He took the bus.

Only to end up in a little town in the middle of nowhere, meeting unusual people, dealing with unexpected happenings, what the hell is going on in this place?

Content:  Spicyhoney, Midwest Gothic

Note:  Just as a heads up, I'd give this story a warning for mild horror and mild gore. None of our boys, but better to let y'all know!

~~*~~

Read Chapter Two ‘Meet and Greet’ on AO3

or

Read it here!

~~*~~

For the next week Stretch spent most of his time trying to figure out the method in the madness to Red’s store management. His first day of ‘training’ pretty much consisted of Red showing up long enough to demo the cash register and then shuffling off to the apartment at the back where he lived. Not that pushing a couple of numbered buttons was that complicated, but that wasn’t the only issue cropping up around here along with the local corn.

First of all, nothing in the shop was priced. All the items were recorded in a ragged notebook with coffee ring stains on the cover, where Stretch got to figure out if an item fell under the category of ‘toilet paper’, ‘paper, toilet’, ‘ass wipers’, or ‘shitty ass wipers’, all written in Red’s sloppy handwriting. The sheer number of items that fell under ‘ass’ and ‘shitty’ were staggering.

Turned out, the little store actually did a fair amount of business. Plenty of Humans stopped in to pick up one or two things rather than drive to the nearest Wally World which according to Granny Collemore, who Stretch was guessing was the unofficial town gossip, was better than a thirty-minute drive away.

“Don’t need to be driving an hour for a little bum tissue,” she bellowed happily, “shopping day is Sunday, we’ll stock up then!”

Stretch nodded as he rang her up, wincing away from her volume. He’d figured out pretty quickly that the old woman was stone deaf, but she didn’t seem to care if all she got was a smile and plenty of nods, so that was fine.

She handed over a wad of cash pulled from a little embroidered change purse that let out a puff of lavender so strong when she opened it that it overshadowed the store’s normal musty smell, hollering the whole time. By the time she left, Stretch knew enough about the local weather patterns to make a rain prediction and that the way someone named Pritchard was hamming on a pretty young’un Eloise meant they’d best they be married soon ‘fore it turned into a shotgun wedding. He nodded along with every proclamation, hurrying around the counter to open the door for her and ended up spending five minutes waiting for her to shuffle her way out, her bunny slippers leading the way.

But as she was leaving, she reached up and gave him a gentle pat on the cheekbone, her wrinkled hand barely able to reach. “You’re a nice boy,” she told him, too loud and with a pink, gummy smile.

Stretch was too startled to flinch away and only managed to mumble a thank you as she headed off into the growing heat of the morning, a hunched figure in a flowery dress and pink slippers, her bag of emergency tp bumping against her hip as she trundled along.

That was another thing. He’d thought that the Humans around here would be distrustful, even malicious, but that wasn’t proving to be the case. Aside from a little surprise when they first saw him, all the customers so far were small-town kindly. Kids came into the shop to raid the nickel-candy rack, their bikes left in piles outside as excited groups came roaring in. Mothers came in with babies wearing only their diapers, fanning themselves and laughing out their, ‘my, isn’t it a hot one today?’ as they bought a half-gallon of milk and some fresh apples to put in the bottom of their strollers.

No one in town seemed to care that he was a Monster past asking his name and maybe it was just ‘cause of Red being a skeleton, too. Could be that Granny Collemore was out there somewhere bellowing that the local shopkeeper had family visiting, who knew? It was sure different than he was used to. The general sentiment in Ebott about Monsters was resentment; over them taking jobs, enrolling in the schools, whatever it was, they didn’t want Monsters doing it.

It was…nice, he decided, to not have someone dislike him on sight.

That was how he spent his mornings. He worked in the shop, idly dusting, putting away the deliveries that a guy in the pickup truck and overalls brought in daily, and borrowing Red’s wifi to listen to soft music on his phone. The calls had trickled to only once a day and the glaring red alert number of his messages kept climbing.

Stretch didn’t look at them, only skipped right over to Spotify and the 'The Wedding Singer Divorce Special pt 2' playlist.

Red came in every day to relieve him at around two. He grunted out something that resembled a hello as he heaved himself up on the stool, leaning his cane against it as he pulled out a battered romance novel from beneath the counter. The creased covered did not in the slightest hide the young, scantily-clad woman caught up in a fiery embrace with her highland Lord.

“be back later,” Stretch said as he hung up his apron. Not that it mattered, wasn’t like Red was his dad or even a friend, not really, and he didn’t care when Stretch came home. A couple times they’d eaten together, takeout from the local diner that was imaginatively called ‘Mama’s’, not ‘Eats’, watched a little but that was it. His lack of idle chitchat was the complete opposite of Blue’s constant stream of chatter and after years of that, the silence was kinda disconcerting, but maybe not in a bad way.

Red didn’t even look up from his book, only pulled a crumpled bill out of his pocket and pushed it across the counter, “pick up some beer at the station, wouldja?”

“sure,” Stretch said, almost grateful for something else to do. It was miles better than sitting the rest of the day in his little room with its faded, floral wallpaper where the air conditioning wasn’t quite able to combat the heat of the mid-afternoon sun. He’d done that once, the first day, and after that made a point of staying out of his room until sundown to give it chance to cool off.

The town itself wasn’t much more than a bunch of ramshackle houses. To the west were fields, the leafy tops of what Stretch was now certain was corn rustling in the wind. Off to the east, the landscape slowly went from flat plains to trees, their wilting leaves yellowing in the heat and ending in a wooded area that surrounded maybe half the town. Shame it was too far away provide much shade unless you went walking right into it. Main street consisted of a few other public buildings; a tractor store right up next to the thrift shop, a little one-room schoolhouse with an attached shed that served as the town library, the Sheriff’s office, and the movie theater.

On the outskirts of town there was also a bar, The Whistling Cow, its glowing neon sign a single point of orange light on dark nights. As much as Stretch wanted a drink, he stuck with filching beer from the cooler Red kept under the counter. Hanging around with strange, drunk humans usually didn't end well for him.

The movie theater was where he’d taken to heading after work. Someone with a sense of humor must’ve named the place, since ‘The Grandeur’ literally only had one theater and maybe thirty seats, if that. The proprietor ran the ticket booth and the concession stand, and in his threadbare uniform with its yellowing shirt, he looked a lot like Lurch's second cousin, once removed.

But he was a nice enough fella and it was a good way to waste some time. Even if the only movies showing were old black and whites, the popcorn was fresh, with real butter, and the added bonus of air conditioning. Besides, the Three Stooges were funny as shit any old day.

That was where Stretch was headed today; the afternoon showing only cost two bucks, then another for popcorn and he was set for a few hours. It was better than trying to get anything to tune in on the television in his overboiled room. With a lot of coaxing, he might manage to get a PBS channel, but there was only so much time a person could spend sweating their way through a staticky version of Sesame Street.

Stretch got to his seat just as the lights were going down, settling in with his popcorn. Before the movie there were a few cartoons, and it was kinda wild to get to see Steamboat Willy chugging along on the big screen again.

Today’s flick was an honest to bitsy silent movie and Stretch watched with a wide grin as Charlie Chaplin slap-schticked his way across the stage. There were a few other people in the seats, at least one of them snoring; probably only came to get out of the summertime heat.

But it wasn’t really the movie he was here for. Not today.

He’d seen her the first time he came. Sitting in the far back row, not that uncommon, some people liked to sit far away. No one else seemed to notice her and that wasn’t strange either. Normally even he didn’t pay much attention to anyone else in the theater, who did? So long as a person was quiet, made no ripples in the pond, no one saw them. Movies were for escapism, not to make new friends.

But this lady. To begin with, her clothes were about a century out of date, with her pink suit and matching pillbox hat, her white gloves, and whenever the house lights came up while they switch the reel, she vanished without even a shimmer of dust motes, only returning once the darkness did.

He’d been back three times so far and she’d been in the theater for every showing. Sitting on her own watching the flick, always in the same seat. This time, Stretch was sitting in the seat next to it. He munched his buttery popcorn and watched as Charlie Chaplin-ed his way through the movie. He didn’t have to wait long.

None of the Humans noticed. The black-and-white light coming from the screen was dim enough that anyone sitting in the audience was nothing but a shadow. Humans tended towards the unobservant side, anyway, none of them had to be as aware of their surroundings as a Monster did, especially one like Stretch with only 5 HP between him and dust.

Besides, there wasn’t any fanfare about it. One minute the chair next to him was empty and the next, a young woman was sitting there, her hands clasped primly in her lap as she looked up at the movie with rapt attention.

“like the movies, huh?” Stretch said, very softly. “always wanted to be an actor myself, but i don’t have the guts for it.”

Waste of a good pun, he didn’t even think the woman had a chance to notice he was a skeleton. She startled, one faintly translucent hand flying to her mouth as if to stifle a scream. Stretch only munched on another piece of popcorn and let her gather her wits or ectoplasm or whatever ghosts had. Wasn’t like he had room to talk, the inside of his skull was as hollow as a drunken apology.

She settled quick enough and asked in a wispy little voice, “you can see me?”

Stretch slouched back and propped his sneakers up on the seat in front of him. “sure. it’s a monster thing. we see things that humans don’t, sometimes.” Or didn’t bother to see, Stretch wasn’t sure which.

“Sometimes they see me,” she admitted. “but they always run away.”

Yeah, Stretch couldn’t really blame them for that one. Humans weren’t used to ghosts, not the way Monsters were, and now that he was sitting up close, he could see the way she flickered a little, that pretty face sometimes flashing onto something else, half still pretty as a picture from an old magazine and the other a bloody ruin. There was a gaping hole on one side of her head, her blonde hair matted into dark clumps, and one blue eye stared out, unseeing. There were flecks scattered on the shoulder of her pink suit, chips of ivory, and Stretch knew enough about bones to recognize skull fragments. Another flicker and it was gone, only a pretty young Human woman looking back at him. The effect was a little off-putting, true, but it wasn’t like she could help it.

Besides, Stretch didn’t have to look. He was watching the movie.

“what’s your name?” he asked, softly.

She hesitated and he wondered if she didn’t want to tell him or if she didn’t know. Her eyes were large, absurdly long lashes sweeping against her cheeks as she considered. When she spoke again her voice was a little stronger, surer, “Doris.”

“doris, my name is stretch,” he told her, “and it is a pleasure to meet you.”

They sat together in silence for a little while. The music coming brightly from the speakers was as cheerful as a carousel, offering happiness and humor when she spoke again abruptly. “I know this is very forward. But. Could you do something for me?”

“maybe,” Stretch said, a little wary. Better not to make promises to unknown ghosts, they could get tetchy.

She smiled, a wry curve of lips as if she could hear his thoughts. “Your popcorn.”

He looked down at the paper cup in his hand, still half-full of buttery kernels. “you want some?” he asked, bemused.

She let out a whispery laugh, like a wind rustling through summer cattails. “No, but. Can I smell it?”

Oh. “sure.” He held the cup out and she leaned over it, inhaling deeply, or, well, looked like she did, he didn’t think ghosts actually breathed, but who knew? When she bent down twin ribbons of blood ran from both her nostrils, dark and slick. It didn’t drip into the popcorn, couldn’t, it wasn’t present in the same way the little carton was, but he felt his appetite fade. He still politely pretended not to notice.

She leaned back with a happy sigh and all signs of the blood were gone. “Thank you. I go behind the counter sometimes to smell it, but it’s not the same.”

“i bet. gotta be in a paper bucket or it ain’t right.” If she could go out to the concession stand, that meant at least she wasn’t stuck sitting in this one seat. Maybe it was just her favorite. “you get out much?” He jerked his head towards the door, “outside, i mean.”

“No,” She shook her head sadly, and her hair brushed her shoulders. “I have to stay in the theater.”

He nodded sympathetically. That was gonna make this a little harder, but not too much. He liked the movies, anyway. “yeah, it works that way sometimes. but hey, i’ll stop back in and see you again. if that’s okay?”

She brightened visibly, coming sharply into focus like a lens turned on a camera, until the chair behind her only barely showing through. “Would you?”

Now that was a vow he could make and Stretch sketched a cross over his chest with a finger and said solemnly, “i promise.”

Their chat must’ve been getting a little loud. Someone was turning around in the front seats. The room was too dark to see, but he didn’t have to witness a glare to feel it. Stretch slouched down in his seat and took the hint.

Hey, he’d made a friend. Well, most of one and it was the important part. A soul without a body was a lot nicer than a body without a soul, hands down.

Which made him wonder about the gas station attendant, because Mitch made Red seem like a warm, outgoing person.

The ancient artwork on the front window of the gas station showed a shiny, smiling attendant in a tidy uniform, his neatly cut hair almost hidden beneath his cap as he held up a dripping gas nozzle in offering. That guy must’ve gotten promoted out of state, because the only dress code Mitch followed was ‘fuck it, looks clean.’ Long, straggly hair poked out from his dirty baseball cap and, of all things, he was reading the New York Times, the business section.

His saving grace was that his disinterest in all customers was universal. Mitch was an equal opportunity kind of guy; he didn’t give a shit about anyone.

Stretch opened the door carefully so that the cowbell only gave a muted clang. He hesitated inside the door and decided to brave a question. Hey, he’d made one friend today, may as well push his luck. “you got any coffee on?”

It was a pretty safe bet, even as hot as it was. Coffee wouldn’t help with the sweat that was already dampening his shirt from walking over from the theater, but Stretch felt a little unsteady from meeting Doris. He could use a dose of caffeine to shore him up.

Mitch didn’t look up from his paper, but he jerked his chin towards the back wall. “Yep, but the only coffee I got is hot. Ain’t no ‘spressos around here, Slick.”

“Hot is fine.” He didn’t bother correcting him on the name. Started with an S, close enough, they’d be best pals in no time. The carafe of coffee smelled surprisingly fresh, considering that Mitch looked like he’d been holding that chair down for a few hours. There was a plastic basket next to the carafe filled with little coffee mate creamer cups. He added four French vanilla, carrying his murky coffee up to the counter with Red’s six-pack. Beer was one thing they didn’t sell at the store, no alcohol at all, something to do with the liquor laws in this county and Red not paying those skinflint jackholes for a license, not on his ass, thanks much.

He paid for both, picked up his change from where Mitch tossed it unhelpfully on the counter and went outside, fumbling out his smokes on the way.

Stretch sat down on the crumbling curb, drinking his coffee and smoking, letting the caffeine and nicotine wash over him in a twin, soothing rush. He’d been trying to cut down with his funds being on the uncertain side, cigarettes were a pricy vice, and he couldn’t bum any from Red the way he did the beers.

The sun was still high overhead pouring down the heat, coming up off the pavement in shimmery waves. Sweat was rising up on his bones, his t-shirt clinging damply to his ribs and spine. Somewhere nearby, he could hear children playing, the hollow thud of a basketball and their laughter carrying on in the still air. He didn’t have anywhere he needed to be, no one’s expectations to live up to.

When his cigarette was done and pinched out, Stretch climbed back to his feet and headed for the grocery to drop off the beers before they got warm. Again, he went easy on the door, keeping the bell to a faint rattle rather than a clang. It was only when he turned around that he saw the front counter was empty, Red’s book bent open on the counter but no skeleton around to pick it back up.

He set the beers on the counter, calling, “red?”

No reply and that was strangely ominous in a little store where even a short skeleton would be hard pressed to hide.

There was a long hallway in the back that led past a couple storerooms to the apartment Red lived in. He gave the storerooms a glance, just in case Red had a sudden urge to restock the sanitary napkin display, and wasn’t very surprised to find them unoccupied. He saw the door to Red’s apartment was open a crack like it never was and that cranked ominous up to sinister. The lingering sweat on his bones was chilling in the air conditioning, but that wasn’t the only reason a sudden shiver rattled him.

“red?” Stretch called weakly as he pushed open the door.

The living room was small with a ratty plaid sofa and a coffee table littered with beer cans and balled up chip bags, and standing in the center of it was a person who was not Red, not unless he got one hell of a growth spurt while Stretch was gone.

Once, Stretch would’ve just taken a shortcut out, right the hell to the Sheriff station down the road and never had he missed the skill more than when the guy-who-was-definitely-not-Red started to turn around. The instinct to teleport was still there even if the ability wasn’t, fizzling out with an aching pain right in the middle of his chest.

It was only a minor distraction and Stretch blundered over to grab a lamp from a side table, yanking the cord right out of the wall as he brandished it over his head like a club, yelling shrilly, “what the fuck are you doing in here?”

The guy turned around, looking back at him with deep crimson eye lights that flicked briefly up to the lamp before meeting his wild gaze. His voice was as smooth and dark as deep water as he stated coolly, “I believe that’s my question.”

Stretch could stare and the only coherent thought amongst the many tangled ones scrambling through his mind was only two words. Simple. Descriptive.

Oh, shit.

-tbc-

[popculturebuffet]

Mickey Mouse Birthday Shortstravaganza!

It’s Mickey and Minnie’s Birthday! It was 92 Years Ago Today everyone’s faviorite mouse came in on a tide of whistling, romance and animal abuse and swept into America’s hearts and wallets. Okay I am a day late on this, I had a busy day, but hey a belated celebratoin’s still good right? Right? Eh i’m doing it anyway.   Anyway since then he’s been one of animations most iconic characters, and while out of the classic power trio I vastly prefer donald and goofy, they still woudln’t be around without Disney’s big cheese and having not seen a ton of Mickey’s shorts, I felt I owed it to the big eared one to take a look at a bunch of his shorts for his birthday and see how I liked em. If your curious about my previous Donald Duck marathon, it’s CLICK THIS LINK.  Unlike last time all of these shorts are on Disney+ as more of Mickey’s library is on there and one or two of these were added recently, as Disney tends to add a few a month. I do wish there were more on there.. but unlike with say the handful of shows they haven’t put on there, i’m a bit more forgiving here. For one thing, YouTube has all the shorts available from various uploaders and DIsney hasn’t touched them despite Plus’ launch. Given like most companies Disney usually has their bots a cirlcing for their content, this has to be delebrate on there part and it’s a good gesture from the company. So while not in crisp HD like the Plus copies, or as easily avaliable, you can find any short that’s happened. So the shorts not all being up at once isn’t an issue like most of the shows that are absent on Plus. 

They also heavily need to cherry pick their library as some shorts simply haven’t aged well or have offensive stuff. With the exception of “The Beach Picnic”, which has a racist caricature of native americans via ants.. yes really, most of the shorts are fine to show kids, and have aged pretty well. And as my last marathon showed some shorts.. just haven’t. While not you know racist, seriously why is the Beach Picnic on there?, “Donald’s Penguin”, while utterly adorable at first, ends with Donald trying to murder a baby penguin with a shot gun. No amount of content warnings is going to get past one of their beloved icons pointing a shotgun at a baby. While Disney’s self conciousness can be silly, the splash edit and not putting the Darkwing Duck episode “Hot Spells” on plus for instance, this is one time when I can agree with them: if someone is curious about a paticuarlly offensive short or a propoganda one, youtube exists. But given Plus is trying to be all ages and dosen’t have censoring they have to be careful what they put on there, and I can respect that. I don’t think anyone’s crying a river over the fact that the goofy short where his reflection keeps saying “Hey Fat”, over and over while he struggles with his weight isn’t on Disney Plus and thankfully never will be. But seriously get rid of the “Beach Picnic”. It’s not a good short and you already have one batch of native american stereotypes with “Peter Pan”, I don’t think racist ants are the hill you want to die on disney.

So yeah, this time all of these are from Disney Plus, and since I watched them all at once, their in Watch order rather than chronological like last time. So with all that out of the way...

After the cut

1. Steamboat Willie (1928): It’s All Fun and Games Until Mickey Strangles an Innocent Duck Starting from the obvious source, Steamboat Willie was the start of Mickey’s career. And it’s.. okay. The animation is fantastic and the first half is pretty good: Theirs a pretty good gag with one of the cows. But the finale, with Mickey abusing various animals just isn’t that funny A LITTLE rattling of an animal for comedy is fine.. but the things Mickey does here are just sociopathic> And yes I know it was the 1920′s, but even in that lawless, racist, sexist time, they knew better than to strangle a duck, or, in the moment that puts it over the top, remove suckling pigs fromt heir mom and then play a pig’s teats like an insturment to make it squeal musically.. I assure you I did not make this up. That actually happens.  The pacing is also fairly slow at points, with some gags dragged out, though that can be chalked up to having no way to edit the damn thing, so that part I can forgive more.  What makes up for it, like I said, are some good jokes, and some gorgeous animation. Decades later and while clearly made a long time ago, it still looks vibrant and really pops even in black and white. It shows just how talented Disney was and how far the company could go with this medium.  One last thing to note is Mickey’s Early personality. While he’d retain trickster aspects at times, here he bounces between the loveable jolly mouse we’d come to know for the rest of his career who sometimes has a wild streak.. and a total asshole who strangles a duck. It’s just intresting to see such a diffrent side of him,  most of which would end up going to Donald over time. Overall the short is decent, not the best of Disney’s catalogue but worth a watch for the historical significance despite it’s shortcomings, pun unintended. 

2. Thru the Mirror (1936): That Was a Weird One This was easily my favorite of the bunch and as of now, my favorite Mickey Mouse Theatrical Short. Part of it is that it’s entirely bonkers; The film STARTS with Mickey , sound asleep, some how astral projecting as his soul, his spirit or whatever lead shis body and having been reading Alice Thorugh the Looking Glass, goes into a mirror world. But instead of encountring evil goatee mickey, he encounters a bunch of living objects and a bunch of fun set pieces for jokes ensue. He dances with playing cards, fights an army of them, has a sword fight with the king after dancing with the queen which.. no Mickey, bad mickey, your in a relationship and so is she. Bad Mouse bad. It is entirely fucking insane, even including a living nut cracker which.. words can’t.. look

They.. they had to know how this looked right? did the director have a ball busting fetish? I mean okay if he did, nothing wrong with that, but maybe don’t put it in your children’s cartoon.  That being said it does eat the shells which I find creative. And that’s what really makes this one pop. The creativity. Not a single minute is boring, every minute has something intresting going on, but without throwing too muchi n your face. It’s just a wonderful short and one that like Mr. Duck Steps out, i’ll be rewatching a LOTTTT. 

3. Mickey’s Rival (1936): Mortimer: The Original Bro From the same year we have disappointment. Having grown up with the disney classic House of Mouse, I was a huge fan of Mortimer. So when I first saw this, I was happy to see where he came from.. then justifably blocked it out of my mind till this review. While I love mortimer, I love Mickey having a sleazy rival and one diffrent than Pete who has different goals and tactics than the big guy. But his debut just has him as an obnoxious snickering bro.. which to be fair is who he is, but without the venre of charm his later version would have.  Mortimer just spends the short being a pranking douche, and blatantly hitting on Minnie in front of Mickey while their on a date. Which even in an open relationship is a no no, so he has no leg to stand on.. metaphorically. He also walks weird in this one because, and this is true, he’s carying 9 volt batteries in his pants. Yes really. That’s the level of Douche we’re dealing with. Someone so up their own ass they carry batteries int heir pocket instead of money or a mask or children’s trading cards like a normal person or a me.  What makes it frustrating is Minnie just swoons over the guy. And not like “Awww he’s so funny”, I mean romantically then has the gaul to say “your just jealous” when Mickey is understandably fuming over the jackass who swooped in, pranked him, is hitting on his girlfriend in front of him by teasing a bull, and in general is just the worst. Yes.. yes he is. Justifably. Jealousy is an ugly emotion but there’s a line between some dude bro like Mortimer getting mad your friends with someone you could be in a relationship with, boy, girl, neither, both, whatever your into, and Mickey getting mad his girlfriend is chuckling all over her ex who agian, crashed their date and treated him like garbage and is very transparently hitting on her in the middle of it.  It’s also just not a very funny short, outside of the bit pictured and tha’ts more for the sheer aburdity of Mortimer elctifying his pant for a really dumb gag about stealing people’s pants button. He’s very lucky we didn’t see Mickey’s Epic Mickey is what i’m saying. But given he’s a frat bro, the 1930′s version granted but a bro nonetheless,  he’d probably find that hilarious until he noticed the sheer size and scope.  Overall a forgetable, frustrating short. The one bright spot is mickey and mortimer’s cars which have faces and stuff and look neat.. otherwise it was just a waste of my time and the only good thing it did was bringing Mortimer into our lives. And that ain’t nothing. 

4. Mickey Down Under (1948): ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

This is a quick one.. because this one was a vacum. I mean I can at least say for Mickey’s Rival it’s interesting.. i’ts not good but it’s interesting. this is just.. Mickey farts around with a boomerang with his dog and then pisses off an ostrich. There’s not really a lot of consequence or intrest is what i’m saying. I can’t even find a good opening to make a letterkenny joke. No one got close to fucking an ostrich here. It’s telling by the fact theirs no gif’s of this one that no one cares and it baffles me this is one of the ones Disney chose to gussy up for D+ release. But still no donald messing around with a robot? 

5. The Band Concert (1935): That’s More Like It.  Okay scooting back a year we have the band concert. This is my third time watching this one and it’s a delight. Like the last one I don’t have a ton to say.. but it’s more because this one is just so good rather than because it wasted my time. It’s got a fun concept and the breakout performance from my boy donald duck as he constantly fucks with the band’s performance by either getting in their faces or hilariously pulling Flute’s out of thin heir. I miss that gimmick for donald, his love of pulling objects out of the either via magic and shenanigans. They should bring it back. Also his shenanigans remind me of opus and that’s never a bad thing. 

Also Horace takes off his shirt. For the Ladies. A Classic for good reason. 

6. On Ice (1935): Donald is a Bastard Man Another great one from the same year. This time around we have what i’ve come to call a Mickey and the Gang Messaround. This is back when Donald and Goofy were supporting characters, so generally each of the big three do something, usually coming together for the climax.  In this case Mickey tries to help Minnie with her skating, with him adorably following her around with a pillow before showing off for her, just really sweet stuff. Goofy’s bit is hilariously dumb, as fitting my boy, as he feeds fish tobaco to get them to spit into a spitoon, and tries to club them, with predictable results. While not the most enivrionmentally friendly just the sheer oddness, the fact it sort of works minus him actually clubbing them, and one of hte fish smacking him in the face all make it work.  The only bit that reallyd osen’t is Donald and pluto... it was present a bit before but here illustrates why I really dread Pluto based shorts. While I don’t hate the dog, he’s a dog I love dogs, most of the gags in his old shorts, and even up to mouseworks are him either being blamed for shit that’s not his fault, a pet peve of mine, or being tourtured in some way...

But dosen’t work at all now. He puts the poor dog on skates and then laughs at him and even sings a song mocking the poor dog, before justifably nearly ending up going over a watterfall, then ending up clubbed in the head. Good. I love donald but good god is he unsympathetic here.. and for some reason they teamed the two up again for more shorts! Why. It’s why I don’t get why Pluto was the star of his own shorts: if this is all they had.. why do it? Was the 30′s, 40′s and 50′s equilvent of a micheal bay audience really that into dog abuse?  So yeah otherwise a good short but that segment drags it down. not Donald’s best work. 

7. Clock Cleaners(1937): This is a Great One Not much to say on this one. It’s pretty good, has some fun set pieces, and some great jokes from all three characters. Mickey deals with a seagull, donald effs with a main spring and Goofy fights some statues. All good clean fun. My lack of brevity is more because I don’t have any jokes rather than this genuinely being bad. It’s pretty good. 

8.. Mickey and the Seal(1948): More Pluto Torture Porn! 

This one’s more of a mixed bag. On the one hand, it is really cute, as a young seal ends up going home with mickey after he visits the zoo to feed them fish. On the other hand.. it’s mostly Pluto chasing after the seal, Mickey being kind of a dick to pluto and not getting he clearly saw SOMETHING in his house, and then teasing him at the end despite him having been right. That being said the ending, with the seal brining back all it’s buddies to mickey’s house, is fricking amazing. ALso the seals in this unvierse who aren’t antrho can speak. That.. that raises a lot of questions I don’t think disney can answer. 

9. Ye Olden Days (1933): Jaunty Dueling Music Now this.. this was a fun one. Mickey and Minnie head to Medivil times, proving that the current shorts tendency to jaunt to various settings isn’t a new thing, and it’ sjust a much of a fun change up here as it was there. Mickey, a wondering minstral, ends up trying to rescue Minnie after her father throws her in a dungeon for not wanting to marry Prince Dippy Dog, who hopes she can learn to love him. I can’t tell if he’s genuine or a dick here. But it’s fun, especially the part where, after Minnie declares she loves mickey which.. it’s been a few hours slow down, they decide on a duel and thus sing some ragtime, 1930′s getting ready for duel music that’s just catchy. if X Of Swords ever gets a movie, I want to use this song. Just.. really good stuff. A fun short with some great gag,s a great concept, and my boy goofy as the villian. What’s not to like? Alright one more. 

10. MIckey’s BIrthday Party (1942): Big Chicken Breasts We end on another all together now, Mickey and the Gang Messaround that was a great note to end on. I did watch another short, Pluto’s Birthday party.. but it was both more of a Pluto short and more Pluto torture nonsense, so yeah, skipping that one, as I ended up one short of my 12 goal because I can’t count, apparently. So Mickey gets 10, but this one’s a good note to go out on. 

Minnie throws a suprise party for mickey which almost turns into a live sex celebration as Mickey clearly is a wee bit horny going in. But it turns into a fun dance party, with Donald throwing out razzes like a good buddy, Goofy making a cake, and some fun gags with a piano they all bought him. It’s a really good short. That’s the problem with Mickey Shorts and doing all D+ ones: There just isn’t the weirdly offensive stuff to talk about there is. He’s not a bad character, but there’s a reason in every short that features all three, Donald and Goofy easily outshine him. Mickey’s not a bad character, but when not in trickster mode, there just isn’t a lot for him to do. It’s why the comics reinvented him, much like they did for donald, into a plucky detective/reporter who reguarly sovles crimes. He’s not bad, and as seen with Ye Olden Days and Thru the Miror, his blank slateness cna be put to good effect and house of mouse gave him more of a personality, but here he’s just the bland good guy to Donald’s loveable scmap and goofy’s loveable dumbass. It’s an issue comedy has to this day: having a lead whose just.. not as intresting as the rest of the ensemble.  There is weirdness to note, as Donald dances with Clara Cluck> That’s not the weird part, he and daisy took a while to be etched in stone. The weird parts are 1. Donald wearing a sombrero and smoking a cigar, and 2. Clara’s MASSIVE boobs.. yes really. Clara Cuck has giant breasts. Like actual boobs that sway around while she dances with donald. it’s.. bizzare. Not terrible, who doesn’t like big chicken boobs but just.. really really weird to see ina  Disney cartoon.But yeah it’s jus ta fun note to end on. 

And that was MIckey’s Birthday special. I enjoyed it even if I had less to say than I thought. If you liked this review, you can comission your own for five bucks, just hit up my pms or my discord , avaliable on request. You can check out my ohter disney reviews in the disney tab on my blog and until next time, ther’es always another rainbow. 

[liskantope]

Some brief (and sometimes not-so-brief) reactions to major Disney films 1937-1967

Around a month ago I made a temporary switch from Netflix to Disney+ with the goal of watching all major Disney movies in order, roughly paced so that one year of Disney film-making equals one day of real life. I should clarify here that by “major Disney movies” I mean mostly just all the animated ones plus a few hybrid live-action/animated ones, and a few of the most popular live-action ones (at least the ones I remember having a song considered good enough to feature on one of the Disney Sing-Along videos, a staple of my video-watching as a kid growing up in the 90′s). I would have been interested to see Song of the South, which I’ve never seen in its entirety, but it’s not included on Disney+ for fairly obvious reasons. As I get further into modern Disney, I’ll probably skip over most of the sequels and other features I strongly expect not to like (with the exception of Belle’s Magical World, which is said to be so legendarily bad that I just have to see what the fuss is about).

This time range of three decades happens to include more or less exactly those Disney productions that Walt Disney himself took a major role in (he died shortly before the final version of Jungle Book was finished). I’d like to do this again in another month, when I will have gotten up through the late 90′s, but honestly this post wound up way longer than I was imagining and took several more hours than I expected (or could really afford), so I’m not promising myself or anyone else that.

Looking at Wikipedia’s list of Disney productions, I’m a little taken aback at what a low percentage of these are animated features, which to me form the backbone of that company’s legacy; visually scanning the list makes the line of animated films look shorter than I had always imagined, but really what this is showing is that Disney produced far more live-action movies than I ever knew about, including (and perhaps especially!) in its early days. Right now I’m continuing on through the 70′s films, but this set of mini-reviews represents the first month of watching and three decades of Disney magic.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, 1937

This is the full-length feature that began them all and which had the burden of defying contemporary skepticism that a full-length animated feature could be taken seriously at all. We are already far beyond the earliest days of animation and have progressed lightyears beyond the quality of “Steamboat Willie”; throughout the film I marveled at the sophistication of the animation with a newfound appreciation of how groundbreaking a lot of the sequences must have been.

I know I watched this at least a couple of times in childhood and I think once when I was a bit older, but even that was long ago.

Snow White is based on one of the simpler classic fairy tales, and the writers had to come up with ways to flesh out this very short story enough to occupy well over an hour. This was done not by exploring the character of Snow White or the Queen or even filling in extra plot details (the fate of the hunter is never addressed) but by spending a lot of time on the dwarfs. The detail spent on individuating them took a lot of work from the animators, but I think their efforts paid off. I can’t say the same about the attention paid to Snow White or the Queen (pretty much the only remaining characters). Snow White has an almost entirely flat personality, with no sense of curiosity or concern whatsoever about the Queen’s designs to have her killed, just having literally only one goal in mind: to marry this Prince who she’d only seen for about two minutes and run away from out of shyness. (This is of course a trend we’ll see with Disney princesses for a long time.) The Queen similarly only has the goal of being “the fairest in the land”. Something about the particular harshness of her voice strikes me as The Quintessential 1930′s Female Villain Voice (“I’ll crush their bones!”), whatever that means -- maybe I got my idea of what this should be from the movie Snow White in the first place.

I still think “Heigh Ho” (which I’ve known well since early childhood) is an excellent song in its utter simplicity, especially when complimented with the “Dig Dig Dig” song (which I did not remember at all until a few years ago when a Tumblr mutual posted the excerpt containing it!). I’m not enormously fond of “One Day My Prince Will Come”, although I did enjoy playing it on the violin at a couple of gigs with one of my musician friends back during grad school -- I was convinced then, and up until watching Snow White just now, that it belonged to Cinderella.

Pinocchio, 1940

This was a favorite movie of mine in earlier childhood; we owned the VHS and I watched it a lot. As a child, I had no sense of one Disney movie coming from a much earlier time than another one; it was only much more recently in life that I understood that Pinocchio really comes from all the way back eight decades ago. Pinocchio taught me the meaning of “conscience” (both in the dictionary sense and in a deeper sense), and it shaped my notion of what fairies may look like -- for instance, my mental picture of the Tooth Fairy, back when I believed in her, was inspired by the Blue Fairy in Pinocchio.

It’s amazing just how much the quality of Disney animated features improved from the first one to this one, the second. It helps that both the story and the characters are far more complex than those of Snow White. The plot from the original book (which I’ve read in Italian and English) was more complex still, of course. There is one gaping hole where it’s never explained how Gepetto somehow found himself in the belly of a whale (I don’t remember whether or how this is explained in the book), but I’ll forgive that.

It’s interesting to see the 1940′s caricature of “bad (early teenage?) boy” shown in the animation and voice of Lampwick. Phantom Strider talks about the turning-into-donkeys scene as a notoriously dark scene for adults who didn’t find it as terrifying when they were children -- count me in as one of those adults! It’s especially terrifying to see the whole mass of boys-turned-donkeys being treated as slaves in the hellhole known as Pleasure Island and realizing that this is never going to be resolved in the movie -- it’s rather unusual in Disney stories for some great evil to be left unresolved with no recompense even for the chief villain. In fact, Pinocchio is pretty much the only Disney story I can think of where the worst villain doesn’t meet some kind of dire fate. Really, the range of Pinocchio’s view is much narrower: it’s just the coming-of-age story of one puppet in his quest for Real Boyhood. (And yes, I still giggle at how intricutely Jordan Peterson analyzes particular scenes from the movie to support his beliefs about neo-Marxism or whatever.)

Disney+ heads many of the descriptions of the older movies with “This program is presented as originally created. It may contain outdated cultural depictions.” I’m a little surprised they don’t do this with Pinocchio, given what appears to me a rather derogatory depiction of Gypsies.

“When You Wish Upon a Star” has become a timeless hit, for good reason. And I still find “Hi Diddle Dee Dee” extremely catchy.

Fantasia, 1940

I saw this one multiple times growing up (for earlier viewings, I was not allowed to see the final number “Night on Bald Mountain”). My mom, for her part, saw this in theaters at the age of around 4 (even though it originally came out long before she was born) and thought for years afterwards that there was no such film in real life and her memory of seeing it had been just a pleasant dream.

I have nothing much more to say about this one except that, representing a very different approach from most animated films, Disney or otherwise, 1940′s or otherwise, it succeeded exquisitely. The “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” number was particularly perfection; it was as though the composer originally had every motion of the story in mind when writing the music. At the same time, having the main character appear in the form of Mickey Mouse in some way seems to cheapen the effect.

The Reluctant Dragon, 1941

I watched this for the first time, not having known it existed. There isn’t really much to say. All that stuck in my mind was one of the shorts, “Baby Weem” (amusing in a disturbing way), and the longer segment which gives the movie its title (also amusing, in a different kind of disturbing way). It was especially interesting to see a 1940′s cartoon portrayal of a very effeminate man, or should I say, male dragon.

Dumbo, 1941

I saw this maybe two or three times growing up, and not in very early childhood. It was never one of my favorites. Later on, I learned that it was done very low-budget to make up for major financial losses in the Disney franchise. This definitely shows in the animation. However, if there’s one thing I can say in praise of Dumbo, it’s that it’s incredibly daring in its simplicity, not only to have such elegantly simple animation but in having a mute title character (instead the main “talker” in the film is the title character’s best friend, who had much more of a New York accent than I’d remembered).

In some ways I find this film incredibly cold and dark by Disney standards, for reasons I can’t entirely explain, and I remember feeling this way even on earlier watchings when I was much younger. The stark cruelty of the humans running the circus, as well as the elephants other than Dumbo and his mother, just really gets to me. (I vividly mis-remembered one of the lines I found most memorable in childhood as “From now on, Dumbo is no longer one of us.” The actual line is, “From now on, [Dumbo] is no longer an elephant”, which in a way, is even more chilling.) In this regard, there was no need to make a modern, woker remake of Dumbo containing an explicit anti-animal-exploitation message -- the 1941 version conveys this message loud and clear. Now that I’m writing this, I suppose it could be argued that this is another instance of what I described under “Pinocchio” of leaving a major evil unresolved in a Disney film. And apart from that, while the ending for Dumbo is meant to be a very happy one, as an adult I find it incredibly naive: Dumbo is now super internationally famous for his extraordinary gift and is entering the life of a child celebrity, and it’s just going to be smooth sailing from now on? I hate to say it, Dumbo, but your troubles are only just beginning. (I was glad to see Dumbo reunited with his mother in the last scene, however, which I hadn’t remembered happening at all.)

“Look Out For Mr. Stork” is a skillfully-written song I’d completely forgotten about for two decades or so but remember knowing well when I was young. I still think “When I See an Elephant Fly” is a fantastic song, especially with all its reprises at the end -- I’d had some bits of it confused in my memory but had kept the main chorus with me over all the years. Now it’s widely decried as racist, or at least the characters who sing it are decried as racist caricatures. For whatever my opinion is worth, I’m inclined to disagree with this, in particular on the grounds that the crows seem to be the most intelligent, witty, and self-possessed characters in the movie. I’m also pretty sure I heard critical things about it over the years which are false. For one thing, not all of the crows are played by white actors -- only the lead crow is, while the rest of the voices are members of a black musical group called the Hall Johnson Choir. Also, I’m not clear that the lead crow was actually named Jim Crow by the time the movie came out (no name is given in the movie itself). Now an earlier, much more forgettable song featuring black men singing about how they like to work all day and they throw their pay away... yeah that seems awfully racist.

Bambi, 1942

I have surprisingly little to say about this one -- it’s just very distinct from other Disney films of the time, in its story’s lack of magical elements, its characters all being animals and animated in to realistically model animals’ movements, its lack of musical numbers, and its plot reaching the same level of simplicity as that of Snow White. Not to mention actually having a benevolent character die, which I don’t think had been done up to that point. I remember watching this a couple of times as a kid; I was never terribly eager to watch it again and I feel the same way now, despite having majestic beauty that I can really appreciate.

The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, 1949

This is the first of Disney’s animated features that I never had seen before. What a strange movie, or should I say, two smaller, unrelated movies rolled into one. I liked Mr. Toad’s half better than Ichabod’s half, or at least I found it more entertaining. I was brought up with the book The Wind in the Willows and recall seeing a non-Disney animated rendition of it (which was better and somewhat more thorough than this half-movie-length rendition). I was kind of excited when the “The Merrily Song” started because it unlocked a song from my early-childhood memory that I’d forgotten about for more than twenty years but knew from one of the Disney Sing-Along videos. I still think it’s a not half bad song, especially with the harmony.

The Ichabod story was not at all what I expected, not being familiar with the original book version (I had always assumed that Ichabod must be the name of a villain). I found it completely boring until the final horror sequence. As a child I would have found the courtship part even more boring (at least now I can muse on how man-woman courtship dynamics were shown in the late 40′s), and I would have found the horror part at the end very scary (in fact, maybe this is the reason my parents never showed the movie to me). It is a little shocking in being the only Disney story I’ve seen so far with a decidedly unhappy ending.

Cinderella, 1950

This one I only ever saw once or twice as a child. This is not counting a very vivid memory I have from around age 6 or 7 when I was watching a part of it over at another family’s house and their child, who was almost my age and nonverbal autistic, rewound and repeated the same 2-minute sequence involving the mice for probably about an hour (I was impressed because I at the time didn’t know how to work the controls of a video player).

I suppose this could be considered the second in the main trifecta of the most conservative fairy tale princess stories that Disney did in the earlier part of its history. I think one can argue that Cinderella has the strongest and most fleshed-out character out of those three princesses. I like the spirited internal strength she reveals in her very first scene. That said, like the other earlier princesses, she seems to have one singular goal in life, and that is to find her true love, not, say, to escape her abusive stepmother and stepsisters.

My reaction to this movie is overall positive. The mice were fun (I also like how their voices seemed a lot more like how mice “should” talk than in most other Disney cartoons); the dynamic between Cinderella and her evil relatives, and the dynamic between the stepmother and stepsisters themselves, was shown in a rounded way; and the fairy godmother is a great character despite having only one scene. The character of the king is pretty odd (very selfish yet his main dream is of getting to play with his future grandchildren) while not especially memorable or well fleshed out. There are certainly some great classic songs in this one -- not the most stellar that Disney has ever produced, but solid.

Alice in Wonderland, 1951

I was curious about what I would think of this one, since we owned the video of this at my home growing up and I watched it many times during childhood but as I got older I fell in love with the original Lewis Carroll books which, together, I often consider my favorite work of written fiction ever. I had not seen the Disney film Alice in Wonderland for around two decades, although I made the mistake of catching parts of more modern, live-action adaptations of the story more recently. I wondered what I would make of the old animated Disney adaptation after getting to know the books so well.

There is simply no way that any movie can recreate the true flavor of the books, but Disney’s Alice in Wonderland does a fine job of creating the general nonsensical, sometimes bewildering dream atmosphere, and, perhaps more importantly, capturing the essence of Alice’s personality. I give a lot of credit to Katherine Beaumont for this -- she has the major girl’s role in the next movie on this list as well, but she especially shines as Alice. Two other very distinctive voices, Ed Wynn as the Mad Hatter and Sterling Holloway as the Cheshire Cat, also add a lot to the cast of characters.

While mixing around some of the scenes of the original book Alice in Wonderland, with some scenes of Alice Through the Looking Glass inserted, the progression of the plot is a long, dreamlike sequence of strange situations with only a few common threads, true to the original first book (Looking Glass had a little, but only a little, more structure). In the movie, everything breaks down at the end with many of the previous scenes and characters swirling together and Alice frantically trying to wake herself up. One could object that this is not how the dream ends in the book Alice in Wonderland, but there is a similar sort of breakdown at the end of the dream in Looking Glass and it feels very real somehow, as in my experience this is sometimes how vivid dreams disintegrate.

Oh, and did you know that Alice in Wonderland has a greater number of songs in it than any other Disney film? There are nearly 25 that made it into the film, even if lasting just for seconds, with a around 10 more written for the film that didn’t make it.

So, does the Disney film do a good job of conveying one of my favorite books of all time, within the confines of being a children’s animated film? I would say yes. For reasons I described above, and from the fact that it manages to avoid working in a moral lesson for Alice, or depicting Alice as a young adult, or manufacturing an affair between Alice and the Hatter (ugh), like some film adaptations, I would say that this classic Disney version is the best Alice in Wonderland adaptation that I know of.

Peter Pan, 1953

Although I never knew this one super well, this movie has a special place in my heart from the way the flying sequence enchanted me in early childhood. I have to differ with the YouTuber Phantom Strider when he dismisses the 40′s/50′s-style song “You Can Fly” as just not doing it for him, because that song along with the animation of the characters’ journey to Neverland had a major hand in shaping my early-childhood sense of magic and wonder and yearning. I distinctly remembering a time, around age 6, when I just didn’t see much point in watching other Disney movies, or movies at all, which didn’t have flying in them, because what could possibly top the sheer joy and freedom of feeling able to swim through the air? I’ve had hardly any exposure to Superman, and so the kind of bodily flight I imagined in fantasy or performed in dreams was almost entirely shaped by Peter Pan. (At the same time, the crocodile in Peter Pan influenced my nightmares at the same age.)

I only ever saw this one a few times, but I distinctly remember the most recent of them being when I was a teenager, perhaps even an older teenager, and I remember thinking at the time that it was a pretty darn solid Disney movie. I still think the same now, while granting that some aspects of the movie seem a little antiquated and certain sequences with the Native Americans are quite cringe-worthy from the point of view of modern sensibilities. Only a couple years ago, when visiting my parents’ house, I finally took down the book Peter Pan from the shelf and decided to give it a read and found it a beautiful although slightly strange and offbeat story. In particular, I was shocked at how nasty and vengeful Tinker Bell was (particularly in trying to get Wendy killed), when I had remembered her as sweet and naive in the movie. It turns out I was wrong about the movie -- Tinker Bell tries to get Wendy killed there also! -- but somehow the tone is moderated well enough that in this version I never really feel horrified at her behavior, nor do I feel disturbed at the situation of the Lost Boys in the way the book made me view them. The song of the lone pirate who sings about how a pirate’s life is short, right before Captain Hook fires his gun and we hear a dropping sound followed by a splash, is one of the more masterful executions of dark humor that I’ve seen in Disney animation for children.

While most of the songs in Peter Pan, considered as songs on their own, are pretty good, I think the best one is the one whose lyrics didn’t make it into the film: “Never Smile at a Crocodile”.

Lady and the Tramp, 1955

Despite being more obscure than most of the old Disney animated classics, I used to know this one quite well since we had it in our home. I’ve always considered The Great Mouse Detective as the most underrated Disney film of all time, but I think it has serious competition here. Lady and the Tramp is an absolute gem. While not quite as Disney-fantasy-ish with its lack of magic and other fairy tale elements, in my opinion Lady and the Tramp is, in most ways, superior to everything else on this list save Mary Poppins. Beautiful animation which shows Lady and most of the other animals moving realistically in a way we haven’t seen since Bambi*. Everything visually and conceptually framed from the dogs’ points of view. Great voice acting. Consistently solid dialog without a single line too much or missing. A story evoking the dynamic between humans and pets, class inequality, and deep questions about the place of each of us in society and choices between a stable existence among loved ones and striking out to seize life by the horns. Our first female lead who stands on her own two four feet and whose sole goal isn’t to get kissed by her true love (one could argue that Alice was the earlier exception, but she is a little girl whereas Lady is actually a romantic female lead). When Lady is approached by her two best (male) friends in a very awkward (perhaps especially from a modern sensibility) but sweet scene where they offer to be her partner, Lady makes it clear that she doesn’t want or need a husband just for the sake of having a husband to make babies with -- her standing up for her own wants in this way doesn’t in the least turn into a Moral Stand that dominates the movie. Excellent music all the way through.

Oh, and this movie was my very first introduction, in early childhood, to the Italian language (”Bella Notte”), which some 25 years later sort became my second language of sorts.

Criticisms? Well, the baby was animated rather stiffly and unnaturally, but that was like half a minute of the movie at most. And there’s the whole segment with the Siamese cats, which produced a great song purely music-wise (fun fact: Peggy Lee provided the voices of the cats) but nowadays comes across as rather racist. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about it, but I will say that I’m sure in the minds of the creators this was no different than having animals of all other nationalities (Scottish, Russian, Mexican) appearing in the film with voices reflecting the respective accents.

*There may be a few exceptions, like Peggy, who seems to be modeled after the musician Peggy Lee and moves like a sexy human woman. The way that human sex appeal is conveyed through the animals’ movements in this movie is quite impressive: my mom confesses to having somewhat of a crush on Tramp growing up and not quite understanding how that could be possible when, well, he’s a dog.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, 1954, and Old Yeller, 1957

I don’t want to say about these movies, as they don’t really fall under the category of animated classics. I just want to say that, while I saw each of them once growing up, on seeing them again I recognize each as a great movie in its own adult point of view way that is not necessarily very Disney-ish.

Sleeping Beauty, 1959

I think this was the movie I was watching at the time I decided it would be fun to write a bunch of mini-reviews for Tumblr, as my reactions were changing a lot as I was watching. I went into the movie very curious, because while I only remembered enough of the fairy tale story to know that it was another of the very simple ones, and I remembered the one song as a waltz by Tchaikovsky, and I knew I had seen the movie once (and probably only once) as a kid, I couldn’t remember anywhere near enough to possibly fill a full movie time. What was actually going to happen in this hour-and-a-quarter long film?

I wasn’t watching long before I came up with the description “spectacularly forgettable”, in part to justify why I’d managed to forget practically all of my one previous viewing. The story doesn’t have much substance and feels sillier than even the other fairy tale Disney plots, like even minor twinges of critical thought, even granting the magical rules of the universe, are liable to make the plot topple. There is some filler to flesh out the movie, but (unlike with Snow White’s dwarfs) none of it is as amusing as the creators seemed to think it was. The only characters with actual personality are rather boring -- the capers between the members of royalty and the jester are a bit on the annoying side in my opinion. Maleficent seems to have no motive whatsoever. She actually calls herself something like “the mistress of evil” later in the movie. This is pretty black-and-white even by Disney standards, where the bad guys usually at least want to think that they’re on the right side of things or justified in their aggressive behavior. Aurora (the title character) has the least personality of all the Disney princesses. Literally all I can say to describe her is that she has the Disney Princess Trifecta of characteristics: she has a good singing voice; she is friends with all the “nice” animals; and her only goal in life is to be reunited with her True Love who she met once for all of a few minutes. The reason why I couldn’t remember any songs other than the Tchaikovsky one is that there aren’t any.

The one thing I consciously really enjoyed while watching was the fact that the score throughout was Tchaikovsky; the idea of having one work of classical music as the entire score seems like a bold one for a Disney film. As I was digesting the movie afterwards (and watching the short documentaries supplied on Disney+ helped here!), I came to realize that this classical music backdrop was complimented in quite an interesting way by a fairly unique animation style. I had been disappointed by the animation early in my watching, disliking how a lot of the figures in the beginning castle scene (for instance, various people’s faces), looked very “flat” somehow. But I’ve come to see this as part of a style where everything looks almost like a series of cut-outs superimposed on each other, to incredibly beautiful effect in a lot of the outdoor scenes.

My conclusion? If you watch this the same way you watch most Disney animated movies -- focusing on plot, characterization, action, and meaning of the main story -- it will just be kind of forgettable at best. But if you watch it as more of a purely visual and musical piece of art without trying to make much “sense” out of it (so, more like I would watch a ballet), you may find it uniquely beautiful among Disney classics.

One Hundred and One Dalmations, 1961

Whew -- what a complete and utter contrast from its predecessor! I can hardly imagine a film that’s still distinctively Disney while being more different from Sleeping Beauty in every aspect.

I remember seeing One Hundred and One Dalmatians a handful of times in childhood (when I was around 5 and it had just come out on home video, my mom almost bought it for me but decided to go with Beauty and the Beast instead explaining that it had better music -- I grew up knowing the preview for Dalmatians that showed at the beginning of our Beauty and the Beast VHS than the dalmatians film itself). I remembered a number of scenes very distinctly, including a lot of the Horace and Jasper bickering and Cruella smashing one of their bottles of beer into the fire and knew Lucky’s line after getting stuck behind in the snow almost word for word, while I had entirely forgotten all of the country/farm characters and entire sequences involving them. I had forgotten, but soon remembered, the television scenes including the Kanine Krunchies jingle. (Some years later, I think as an older teenager, I read the original book with some interest.)

Although I wasn’t around in 1961, everything about this movie’s style strikes me as very contemporary -- the animation in particular seems like the current style for 60′s cartoons. Something about the dialog and humor feels that way as well, as though it closely represents a sort of 60′s young-people-in-London culture that I’ve never seen myself (I was struck for instance by Cruella being asked how she’s doing and cheerfully answering, “Miserable dahling as usual, perfectly wretched!”). It was a little strange and offputting to see television so prominently featured in Disney animation from so long ago, and to see such a decrepit bachelor pad (with the accompanying lifestyle and attitudes) as Horace and Jasper’s in a children’s movie. The crazy driving in snow at the end startled my adult sensibilities (as I now have some memorable experiences driving in snow) in a way that didn’t affect me as a child -- scenes like that just didn’t feel like Disney after having just watched all the previous films. All in all, these novel features made the whole movie a wild ride.

I’m bemused by the fact that, despite taking place in London (which I hadn’t remembered -- I thought it took place in America), the only accents which are fully British are those of the villains Cruella de Vil, Horace, and Jasper.

Main criticisms: I found all the stuff with Rolly being characterized by his body shape and only ever thinking about food to be in poor taste (although not surprising for the times). And while “Cruella de Vil” is a great jazz number, the movie has no other music to speak of -- my mom was quite right to choose Beauty and the Beast over it.

(I realized when finishing this review that this is the only one of all the movies in the list that I’d actually enjoy seeing again sometime soon. Not sure what to make of that. Something about it is more interesting than most of the others? Especially the human-centric parts?)

The Sword in the Stone, 1963

I never saw this movie until later childhood or maybe even early teenagerhood, when I quite liked it. On watching it again, I was overall pretty disappointed. This movie has some decent songs and some fun aspects to the story, but a lot of it is kind of weak and forgettable and it’s all just sloppily done.

The story has a clear moral message which is generally pro-education and about reaching one’s full potential, but in my eyes it comes out kind of muddled because the story shows Wart ending up as a legendary king only out of the arbitrary happenstance that that happens to be his divine destiny. Merlin’s motives seem kind of inconsistent as well, with him sometimes seeming to support Wart in his desire to become a squire, then flying off in a rage when Wart chooses squirehood over fulfilling a “greater” destiny, then joyfully returning after Wart pulls the sword from the stone and is now set on the fixed path to being king, even though this involved exactly zero change of attitude on Wart’s part. The message that actually comes across looks more like, “We have to just follow whatever fate has in store for us” than “We must strive to be the best we can be”. And, it arguably even comes across as subtly disrespectful to more mundane lifestyles and career paths.

The animation is not great by the high standard of full-length Disney features (I noted how I especially disliked how tears were shown). Wart’s voice seems to change a lot, sometimes broken and sometimes not yet broken. I found out after watching that this is because the character was played by three different actors, sometimes with more than one of those actors in the same scene! This was purportedly because the voice of the first actor cast for the role started to change, but then why does Wart sometimes sound like his voice has already changed anyway? Sloppiness all around.

Still, some parts of The Sword in the Stone are fun even if none of it is stellar, and it entertained me more when I was younger, so worth watching once, especially if you’re a kid, I guess?

Mary Poppins, 1964

I came into this one far more familiar with it than with most of the other Disney movies, including the ones I watched many times when I was young, so it feels a little strange to try to summarize a similar-length review of it. Mary Poppins is in my book without a doubt one of the top three Disney movies of all time, in some respects the very best, and certainly the masterpiece of Walt Disney himself, the culmination of literally decades of determination on his part to turn Pamela Travers’ children’s works into a movie. (I would feel sorrier for Travers about how strongly Disney twisted her arm to turn her books into a movie whose style was entirely antithetical to hers, if it weren’t for the fact that the Disney version of the story is just way better than her rather weak set of stories. I give Travers ample credit for having created an amazing character in the person of Mary Poppins, but for coming up with good stories, not so much.)

I didn’t see the full movie Mary Poppins until later childhood (although I knew many of the songs) and it quickly became a favorite of mine. I went a gap of a number of years without seeing it before I copied the soundtrack from someone when I was in college, which spurred me to go out and rent it (back when Blockbuster was a thing) and so I managed to reconnect with it at the age of 20. More recently I’ve become somewhat of a Mary Poppins enthusiast -- feeling pretty alone among my generation in this regard, with the possible exception of the theater subculture -- having seen probably most or all of the documentaries there are on its production and learned a ridiculous amount of trivia about it, not to mention knowing the whole soundtrack pretty much in my head.

Mary Poppins seems to be Disney’s longest children’s classic, at 2 hours and 19 minutes. All it lacks, really, is an animal-themed or classic fairy tale atmosphere and a proper villain. But what can you get out this movie? Stellar child acting (especially for that period) and excellent performances all around, apart from some awkward but endearing aspects of Dick Van Dyke’s acting (while his singing and physicality is superb). A complex and multi-layered story combining magic, comedy and a little tragedy, appreciable in equal measure from a child’s level and from an adult’s level. Revolutionary special effects which include the first extended hybrid live-action and animation sequence. Timeless words and phrases which have permanently entered the lexicon. One of my favorite extended musical sequence of all time in any movie (”Step In Time” takes up 8 minutes and change, and I’m glad they didn’t go with the “common sense” measure of cutting this “unnecessarily long” number). The Sherman brothers at their very best, in a musical soundtrack that easily scores in my top two out of all Disney movies (the other one being The Lion King). A beautiful message (among several big messages) about the little things being important (or at least, that’s a very crude summary), exquisitely encapsulated in the most beautiful song of the movie, “Feed the Birds” (this apparently became Walt Disney’s favorite song ever, and I’m pretty close to feeling the same way -- I’m determined that one day when I finally have a piano I’m going to learn to sing it along with the piano). I could go on and on here.

If I try really hard I can come up with the sole nitpick of feeling that maybe the parrot head on the umbrella’s handle shouldn’t only reveal itself as a talking parrot head in only one scene right at the very end -- this should have been shown at least once earlier. Even granting that, this film is still practically perfect in every way.

The Jungle Book, 1967

(Let’s get the Colonel Hath in the room out of the way first: “The Jungle Book” is a terrible title for a movie. You know, when you base a movie on a book you don’t have to give it the same title as the book...)

I saw The Jungle Book several times as a kid and, despite not considering it nearly as good as Mary Poppins, similarly reconnected with it in adulthood (particularly the soundtrack). Only several years ago I found myself thinking of getting hold of a double album of classic Disney songs that I thought I’d heard about but couldn’t seem to find online. It soon occurred to me that mostly what I really wanted was some of the songs of The Jungle Book, so I got that movie’s soundtrack instead. I soon learned for the first time that The Jungle Book’s songs were written by the Sherman Brothers*, precipitating an “Ah, that explains why I remember them as so good!” moment. (“I Wanna Be Like You” seems like the clear winner among the songs.) Of course hearing the soundtrack made me curious about the movie, which I did eventually get hold of several years ago; thus I had seen this film exactly once already since childhood.

It says a lot about the music and the overall technique behind this film that I still look back on it as one of the great classics, considering how weak the story is. In particular, I consider a story arc to be pretty flawed when characters that seem significant and/or memorable come in without really living up to their expected big role: the wolves who raised Mowgli play a crucial role in the beginning before more or less disappearing (and it doesn’t entirely make sense to me why Bagheera, rather than they, is guiding him to the man village), and King Louie (who is a well-formed character that I particularly enjoy watching) really ought to come back into the story later somehow (an alternate, and much more complex, ending had him make a reappearance). The villain Shere Khan is not especially well developed in terms of his character and motives, but I do enjoy his menacingly bass voice. Still, the voice acting, the action, the animation, and the overall setting are all very solid here.

I’ll end with some random observations about the song “That’s What Friends Are For”. I think the likeness of the vultures to the Beatles was mostly lost on me as a kid (along with the recognition that this movie came out in the Beatles’ heyday). More interestingly, even when I was old enough to understand how vultures eat, the fact that every single line of the song is a clever macabre double-entendre went completely over my head. I do think it was a very obvious mistake, by the Obvious Standards of Cinematography, to give Shere Khan the last line of the song and begin that line with the “camera” on him, rather than have his voice come in “off-camera” and Mowgli and the vultures looking thunderstruck before panning to him, but maybe I shouldn’t be pushing for overdone techniques here.

* An exception is “Bare Necessities”, which was written by Terry Gilkyson, the original songwriter Disney received submissions from, who wrote two hauntingly beautiful other numbers which were deemed not Disney-ish enough to be put in the film.

Some general stray observations:

These older Disney films love gags involving alcoholism and drunkenness, a bit of a questionable emphasis given that the audience is children. This trend continues into the 80′s at least, but I don’t think one sees it much in modern Disney movies.

Watching these animated films I often find myself flinching as characters’ heads smash into things or gigantic objects smash over their heads, feeling almost surprised when they come out of it pretty much fine. I guess this a staple element of cartoon action throughout the decades, but I can’t recall a more recent Disney animated film where we see this (guess I’ll soon find out!)

There is a certain style of vocal music, with unified rhythm and lyrics but complex harmony and a capella, which seems to have been immensely popular in the 40′s and 50′s and distinctively appears in practically every single one of the 40′s and 50′s films above (“You Can Fly” is a typical example). I recognize it also from some non-Disney-related old records my parents have that were passed down to them. I’m curious about whether this style has a name.

For years I thought the Sherman Brothers did only the soundtrack for Mary Poppins and Bedknobs and Broomsticks, only discovering they did The Jungle Book songs rather recently as I explained above. It turns out they were involved in most of the major Disney films around that period, including The Sword in the Stone and The Aristocats (although not its best-known number “Everybody Wants to Be a Cat”).

There is a particularly sad instrumental passage, played by the string section starting with a minor-key violin melody going downward and joined by lower string instruments, which I knew well from my Jungle Book soundtrack (partway through “Poor Bear”) but was surprised to hear in desperately sad moments of several of the other movies around that time (including One Hundred and One Dalmatians and Robin Hood, or at least a close variant of this passage with slightly different endings). I have no idea who wrote this or how it came to be reused so many times.

I knew the name Bruce Reitherman as the voice of Mowgli in The Jungle Book, but in watching all of these other features back to back I’ve noticed that there are some other Reithermans in the front credits of quite a few of them.

[prohibitionprincesses]

Just Drawn That Way

Los Angeles, California 

The 1940s seems to be the decade when many famous cartoon characters took on the iconic looks we know them by today: Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, Feelix the Cat. 

When Detective Eddie Valiant met Jessica Rabbit, it was 1947. Naturally, Jessica reflected the beauty standards of the '40s femme fatale. But it's a well known fact that Toons can be much older than they look, and as mentioned above, some of them have also changed their looks. Was Jessica "drawn that way" from the get-go, or did she have her own Steamboat Willie phase? Here, we will suppose that Jessica Rabbit is as old as Mickey and Bugs. But unlike her husband's comedic crowd, Jessica doesn't have much of a place on the big screen in the 1920s. This is a time when Toons are expected to be funny, not sexy. Even Betty Boop won't debut until the 1930s. In regards to the idea of an attractive female, Olive Oyl and Minnie Mouse are more parody than pandering (at least for the human audience; no doubt they have male Toon lining up at their doors with marriage proposals). "Rubber hose animation" is the style of the realm, and most of the successful Toons in show-biz have immigrated from the funny papers. In fact, in the book "Who Censored Roger Rabbit," Jessica and her husband were both immigrants from the morning funnies. And we will presume the same is true for the couple in this continuity as well. But where does a sex symbol like Jessica fit into the 1920s? On the cover of Vougue magazine, showing human women the new ludicrous beauty standards to strive for. Contrary to the hourglass figure and full lips she'll adopt for the '40s, '20s-Jessica has the body of a tube noodle, and everything from her figure to her makeup is long and thin. It's particularly important for someone in the entertainment business to look good, as the masses are now, for the firs time, turning to the media for examples of how they should look. And as films are silent in the '20s, looks are currently about all the movie stars, human or Toon, can provide. Once the talkies are invented and Toons literally find their voices, Jessica will finally make her big break. By then, her look will have changed considerably to match the changing desires of her male audience. But she's never bad; she's just always drawn that way. AN: Flapper versions of Jessica Rabbit tend to keep her 1940s look, and that's fine; I recall reading somewhere that nostalgia for the Roaring Twenties resulted in a few throwback '20s themed parties during the Great Depression, and presumably a little later as well. But, I thought it would be interesting to draw Jessica as the 1920s would draw her. I Googled covers of Vogue magazines from the '20s, as well as Art Deco pieces, for references. The film reel behind her is clipart.

[eb-the-gamer]

BEFORE YOU READ, KNOW THIS REVIEW POST HAS SPOILERS FOR BENDY AND THE INK MACHINE!!!!

@bendysstudio @themeatly--official

I have played Bendy and the Ink Machine in full now. What do I think?

Well...

The game was good, for sure, you can tell they put a ton of love, especially now with the polish added by updates, the incorporation of fan music, and the attempts at keeping everything engaging throughout the chapters. 

However, It could be really improved upon...

STORY - By far the strongest of Bendy’s points is its narrative, old cartoons are Organically creepy in a lot of ways because of a few factors, among these are the contrasting aspects of the imperfections of movement and the oftentimes unnoticed details in things like wrinkles and textures (as examples, Pete chewing Tobacco from Steamboat Willie, and the infamous cab colloway dancing ghost from Betty Boop.), so it makes a ton of sense to utilize that as a horror concept. The game throws us a steady stream of questions from almost the start of the first chapter, but while a lot is answered, there is a lot unanswered or not followed through on and it can be hard to ignore when you think about it ESPECIALLY by the end. Were the employees really all corrupted by the ink, what is Henry’s purpose, why did henry not know about his own messages if he’s written them while looping everything over and over, and how could he see or write them without the glass tool (and what with?), what is up with the animatronics and cages you set up. the game kind of shrugs at a lot; its by no means a dealbreaker because of what the story does explore about the studio, but it is noticeable.

9/10 - Amazing - The game’s big draw, though some questions are not all answered in a meaningful way, what the story does cover is still really interesting and worth playing through.

 DESIGN - Bringing actual life to something like a cartoon but failing so hard is a really great idea, and a lot of the time the game shows us the hubris in the want vs. the reality of the consequence; the monsters and places the game creates reflect it well. Everything looks like its made from the sunbleached, aged paper artists used and everything is a wonderfully messed up reflection of life at the studio and the cartoons within, particularly with the projectionist, butcher gang and the unnamed giant hand (I’ll call him Lil’ Handful). the world of Joey Drew productions is a really cool, realized one. simple but slightly barren and “off” work offices giving way for the bigger, detailed and mysterious places in the lower levels. I will however knock some of the update decisions, particularly with Sammy and Bendy himself. they originally looked blobby, as the updates came, they both got more defined in shape - respectively looking more muscular and emaciated looking, which took away from the toonish aspect of the it. Where once were feet that looked like strange melted stubs going into the floor, are just...solid feet and where once was something that looked like a melting candle trying to retain a shape is what is more or less a thin ink zombie (complete with limp). Bendy’s final form is also lackluster for me, I love the Muggshot (Sly Cooper series) tiny dangle-legs and walking around on hands thing; but its threatening, not as scary or horrifying as something that's stopped trying to be likable could’ve been taken. Everyone else is pretty good though especially the butcher gang and boris, who stayed pretty much the same and kept design elements in all forms through the production. Text for audio logs could have been bigger at times too. all in all, design is solid, but something was definitely lost as more polygons and detail were added for certain characters.

9/10 - amazing!- a great use of elements from animations of the past used in a 3d space, just the right amount of cartoon goofiness and uncanny details, though some designs were fixed when they weren’t broken.

CHARACTERS - Not much to say, I like em all, (Henry is delightfully levelheaded to the extreme, Boris is a cutie, Bendy is a threatening silent presence...) except maybe that one obnoxious guy in recordings, Wally Franks, and even then, he’s not AWFUL (I’d compare him to Fleem from Smallfoot, intentionally made to get on a nerve at least a little), the most interesting character for me Bertrum, the architect who calls Joey out on his bullcrap, and Alice Angel, both versions of her - but the manic first variant you meet first is interesting to listen to and learn about in particular. Boris is kind of lackluster, while he is nice and the reveal of him and other toons being made en masse is awesome, it also means we don’t get much time with them. Sammy sort of just comes and goes twice, and Tom!Boris and Allison I felt got the shaft and should have been established earlier for a connection. Joey is a jerk who suddenly becomes somewhat good in the last acts, which confuses me - since there was no in between those two points that's explained...

7/10 -  Good - characters are great to listen to and watch, and if the game had had more time to focus on a lot of them, that might have made them feel more complete.

SOUND - sound, music and voiceacting is well done, lots to appreciate from the creepy gurgles, to the odd stuttery sound of a projector. though there are occasionally some bad bits of soundmixing and audio. some recordings that you can find in the game stand out, there’s one that's really hard to listen to in chapter 5 because the character speaks in a really gravelly voice, in addition to the fuzzy audio effect and the ambient noise surrounding it.

8/10 - Great! - I only wish there was more! aside from one or two recordings, everything and one sounded nice, and the unease of silence is used equally well.

CONTROLS AN’ GAMEPLAY - They’re standard first person fair, responsive for sure, though sometimes the sensitivity of the controls can raise by themselves (I don’t know if that's by design, since it was at the same point as markiplier, right before a section involving being stealthy is taken on, which might actually be really clever if its true. Combat can also be wonky, but Its passable since its not a main focus, except for one REALLY obnoxious enemy gauntlet in the last chapter, if there were defined checkpoints between each wave, I’d be more inclined to let it go. Puzzles are pretty standard as well, lots of fetching, but other stuff such as playing minigames and stealth crop up to shake it up. Stuff is unlocked after everything is said and done in the story, and while it is cool narratively (messages written by henry on previous loops) and as a view of the progress the game (though, the Archives are missing a lot of info on characters like Alice and Bertrum), it just feels like its not enough for a repeat playthrough, difficulty settings and maybe achievements for unconventional but creative actions in-game, working towards something big at the end might’ve helped in that regard (here’s hoping that's the case for the console releases next month)

7/10 - Good! - its standard stuff with an occasional misshap, but there is variety to it and its simply fun for me to play.

OVERALL - The gameplay is serviceable, and aside from the main story there’s not too much reason to play the game again, but its still a solid experience the whole way through, and the time and effort of the people who made the game really shines and makes it worth playing. maybe wait for the console release, in case they add anything to that, but theres not one excuse not to play it.

[lessereus-blog]

Medieval stasis and how to gun it down.

TV tropes defines ‘medieval stasis’ as when ‘time advances, (while) history doesn’t’. This can be technically present in almost every genre if the work of fiction allows, but is primarily present in fantasy and science fiction. Think of the series Futurama, a show about a man (Phillip J Fry), who gets frozen and sent one thousand years into the future. The show deals with his (often hilarious) reactions to the futuristic setting and characters. But now imagine that instead of waking up to a world of hovercars and robots, he woke up to a fairly normal New York setting. Maybe his family are dead, maybe the political situation has changed completely, but Bender is your average alcoholic human, and Zoidberg is just a man with multiple birth defects. This change in time can still be played for drama and comedy of course, but not in the same way.

This is medieval stasis.

Of course, in some fiction, this can be done well. In certain fantasy world, magic might cause technology to stagnate. After all, who needs steam ships when you have apparition? Who needs guns when you can make motherfucking fireblasts at the flick of a wrist? Another example could be in certain science fiction dystopias, such as 1984, where ‘even technological progress only happens when its products can in some way be used for the diminution of human liberty.’ Sometimes a lack of technology and science can show where something has gone disastrously wrong in the past.

Medieval stasis isn’t a trope that can really ruin a work of fiction, since most stories don’t focus on the march of technology. You wouldn’t expect Danarys Targaryian to roll up to Westeros in a dragon-powered spaceship, because it isn’t necessary to the story, and would change the tone of the series in its entirety. In fact, you could argue that the series has a sort of inversion, where technology has been lost to time, resulting in a regression of technology. This, of course, is the fall of Valyria, and the loss of Valyrian steel. But I digress. The point I’m making, is that medieval stasis can be a subtle little trope, something hard to pin down in fiction, something that isn’t even necessary to fight most of the time.

But when it’s removed from a story, it can result in more drama, and some absolutely brilliant moments. Naturally, one of the best works of fiction to display this is Avatar: The Last Airbender, which has several parallels to real-world history in terms of how technology progresses, even within the short span of the series. To the unaware viewer, the series might at first appear to be set in a medieval style oriental world with basic fantasy technology such as swords, canoes, and stone walls. However, evidence to the contrary becomes clear almost immediately, with the introduction of the banished prince Zuko’s ironclad, steam-powered ship. This immediately sets the series in a parallel to the 1800s industrial revolution, as shown by the first real world ironclad ship, which was born in 1859. The first steam-powered ships also came about in the 1800s, and Zuko’s ship even uses a slightly less primitive design with a propeller presumably at the back instead of the front (think steamboat willie). However, this doesn’t inherently move the series out of medieval stasis. If nothing new was invented at all throughout the show, then there’d be no way to tell how long things have been this way. Perhaps steam-power has been around for millennia. Perhaps it was invented around the same time as fire, spears, and picking the fleas from your ass.

No, the definitive moment when the show moves away from medieval stasis is in the episode ‘The Northern Air Temple’, where we first meet the Mechanist, the inventor who first invents the hot-air balloon in order to aid the Fire Nation’s war effort against the Earth Kingdom. At first this seems like a one-off gimmick for the single episode, never to be brought up again. But then the episode ends with one of my favourite lines from the show, as a Fire Nation war minister stands by the wreckage of a war balloon, and says:

“This defeat is the gateway to many victories.”

And that it does.

Well, one at least.

Later, in the brilliant two-parter ‘The Day Of Black Sun’, not only do the Fire Nation bring out the War Balloons once again, about two seasons later, but they’ve updated them and improved them. Now they have full-fledged zeppelins, capable of conducting their own version of the Blitz. This was a completely unforeseen development, which led to a major defeat for The Avatar, destroying one of the last remaining hopes for the world.

This is a brilliant example of how escaping medieval stasis can create drama for your story. One moment, your characters are fighting with their standard weaponry, and then suddenly their opponents pull out a weapon so unexpected that it creates a whole new obstacle to face. Something that could be realistically invented, but still couldn’t be easily predicted by our heroes. This could come in the form of new armaments for infantry, such as a new type of metal, or the creation of a gigantic superweapon, like the Death Star. This is a nice way to create drama and drive the plot, but is also a good way to make the world feel lived in, changing, evolving along with the characters.

The Avatar example goes even further when you look at its sequel series The Legend Of Korra, where we see how the same technology has changed even further over time. Airships, which were a purely military technology back in the first series, are now used for commercial reasons (such as freight). This, along with other technological changed to the settings, shows how a lack of mediaeval stasis can distinguish two different stages of a world’s history. You put both series side-by-side and you could easily see them s completely unrelated, save perhaps for the fight scenes and character designs.

So just by following the development of a single machine we’ve brought in a number of dramatic moments, made the setting feel lived in and changing, and divided the world’s history into two distinct eras. Without these changing machines, the series would still be pretty amazing, since it still has a great plot and brilliant characters (Zuko Zuko Zuko) to back them up. But while it would still be good, the little things in a story can do wonders for the world it occupies. And just like the real world, technology can often be the driving force for something incredible.

[upontheshelfreviews]

As a lifelong Disney fan I can’t understate how much of an impact Mickey Mouse has had on me. In childhood, he was an icon and friend – instantly recognizable, a source of joy and entertainment, a hero and a role model. I know this is making me sound like one of those cheesy sponsors reading off a cue card, but when you’re talking about a mouse, expect plenty of cheese to be involved.

In the spirit of Mickey celebrating his 90th birthday, I’d like to share with you my 20 favorite shorts he starred in. Why 20? Because I couldn’t narrow it down to ten and I like to go nine steps beyond as opposed to one.

There were only two rules I set while making this list:

Mickey is the main focus, or at the very least he must be given as much to do as the other characters he shares the cartoon with. There’s a lot of great shorts out there that has Mickey’s name in the title – Mickey’s Parrot, Mickey’s Circus, Mickey’s Birthday, Mickey and the Seal, Mickey���s Christmas Carol, etc. – or has his face in the intro that advertises it as his adventure, but upon watching you find they’re really about Donald, Goofy or Pluto or literally anyone else but him.

Shorts only, no segments from full-length films or direct-to-video works. This means no Mickey and the Beanstalk from Fun and Fancy Free or various bits from Mickey’s Once/Twice Upon A Christmas, but sadly no Sorcerer’s Apprentice from Fantasia. I thought of excluding any short that ran over the usual length of five to seven minutes to about twenty, but that made my job even harder.

Now before we get to the countdown, here are a few Honorable Mentions:

Mickey, Donald and Goofy in The Three Musketeers – If I were including full-length films on the list, this would be in the top five, bar none.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice from Fantasia – It would easily take the number one spot if it didn’t overlap with the #2 rule.

Plane Crazy – The mouse’s first appearance on the silver screen, though he wouldn’t make as quite a splash until his sound debut in Steamboat Willie a few years later

Orphan’s Benefit – One of my favorites as a kid. It made me laugh something fierce and still does, though a large part of it has to do with Donald and Goofy’s segments, hence why it’s only an honorable mention. Also, did you know that the color one we’re mostly familiar with is actually a remake of an earlier black and white version?

Mickey’s Delayed Date – Pluto and Mickey tussle for attention in this outing.

Haunted House – Spooky and atmospheric. Classic Disney nightmare fuel.

The Gorilla Mystery – Mickey plays Minnie’s white knight yet again as he goes to-to-toe with a dangerous gorilla.

Two-Gun Mickey – An American Tail: Mickey Goes West.

Mickey’s Surprise Party – After Minnie’s dog spoils the cookies she was making for Mickey, he saves the day with some shockingly transparent corporate sponsorship. At least I take comfort in the fact that Mickey’s favorite cookies are the same as mine.

Hansel and Gretel – Mickey and Minnie stumble upon a treacherous witch to the ominous strains of Danse Macabre.

Mickey’s Cabin – Mickey outwits Pete and his dimwitted cousin with a little reverse psychology when they hold him hostage in his winter cabin. Hilarity ensues.

Croissant – Mickey’s first short in the modern style proved you can’t keep a mouse on a mission down.

Yodelberg – Continuing with the previous short, it’s modern Mickey at its most fast-paced and stylish fun.

Shanghaied – It’s up to Mickey to save the day and Minnie again, this time from Pete and his dastardly crew of pirates.

Mickey’s Christmas Carol – Mickey’s first cartoon in 30 years has him slightly out of the spotlight, but still got him back in the public eye for good.

20. Mickey’s Trailer

This gets the lowest spot because the first half mainly focuses on jokes surrounding Donald and Goofy in their cool little mechanical trailer. But when it reaches the second half? That’s when things really kick into high gear. Goofy obliviously unhitches the trailer as they’re traveling through a perilous mountain pass and it’s up to Mickey to keep his vacation from reaching an untimely end. It’s amazingly suspenseful, with plenty of close calls from oncoming vehicles, trains and cliff sides. They still manage to sneak in a few decent moments of slapstick, but not at the cost of any of the tension. My only wish is that we could have seen Mickey and Donald’s response to Goofy’s cheerful “Well, I brought ya down safe and sound, a-hyuck!” at the very end. No doubt it would have been hilariously karmic.

19. Mickey’s Mechanical House

Coming from the Mickey’s Mouse Works/House of Mouse era of cartoons, we get a whimsical story in Seuss-esque rhyme, narrated by John Cleese no less. Sick of the inconveniences of his old abode, Mickey moves into a sleek totally automated house. He quickly learns, however, that easy modern conveniences aren’t what make a good home. Unlike the other cartoons made in this time, the art style goes for a 50’s retro look that pays homage to the likes of UPA. I especially appreciate the cameo from the iconic Mars robot from the famous Disneyland episode Mars and Beyond. That’s how you know this short was made by real old-school Disney fans. The story is charming, the gags are clever, and it earns this spot on the countdown.

18. Giantland/Gulliver Mickey

Yes, I know I’m cheating here due to this being a tie, but I found these two shorts to be similar enough that I felt they were both worthy of the same place on the list. Each one begins with Mickey telling a story to his…younger counterparts? Nieces and nephews? Godchildren? They all refer to him as “Uncle Mickey” and they all look like him so maybe they’re really…no, best not to think of the implications.

Anyway, Mickey makes himself the hero of each tale, firstly in the role of Jack in Jack and the Beanstalk (no doubt somewhat inspiring his future gigantic adventures in The Brave Little Tailor and Fun and Fancy Free), then of him being the giant washed up on the shores of Lilliput. There’s some good action all around, and plenty of creativity in showing the giant’s world, Mickey’s storytelling and how the Lilliputians attempt to subdue their captive.

17. Magician Mickey

Mickey’s putting on a magic show, but he’s constantly heckled by a disbelieving Donald. Little does the duck realize he’s messing with the Sorcerer’s Apprentice himself, and Mickey uses all his mystic powers to troll back at him. Even though it’s arguably Donald’s short as much as it is Mickey’s, he does provide the main source of the conflict, and Mickey does not hold back when providing some good old magical vengeance. He remains the perfect showman throughout, and the tricks he plays to get back at Donald are inventive and hilarious. I admit, I still crack up at the running gag where Donald attempts to go in one of his unintelligible tirades and spits out an entire deck of cards. Just goes to show you don’t mess with the mouse, especially when he’s in magician mode.

16. Steamboat Willie

Ah, the one that started it all. Well, technically it was Plane Crazy and The Galloping Gaucho, but Steamboat Willie was what really thrust Mickey into the limelight. It may be simplistic by today’s standards, but this short is nothing…short of iconic. It establishes everything you need to know about the character of Mickey Mouse – inventive, friendly, helpful, but not without a strong mischievous streak. Being one of the first cartoons to have fully synchronized sound certainly helps. It not only pushed the popularity of “talkies” but introduced the world to what would become one of the most recognizable characters of all time. How could I not include it on the list? I already wrote an entire article on its significance, so if you want to know more, feel free to go read it.

15. The Mad Doctor

When people talk about the darkest moments in Disney animation, there’s a reason why this short is often brought up. The Mad Doctor goes for straight-up horror, and pulls no punches. Mickey must work his way through a creepy castle to save his beloved dog Pluto before he becomes the next victim of the titular doctor’s dangerous experiments. There’s lots of shadows, spooky living skeletons, and booby traps galore that threaten Mickey along the way. It’s perfect fare for Halloween.

Without giving away the ending, it’s the kind I’d normally call a bit of a cop out, but I don’t see how they could have worked their way around it. This short was deemed so scary upon release that it was banned not only in the UK, but in Nazi Germany, which really says something. It didn’t frighten me that much when I was a kid, but there’s a pervading sense of dread that makes it unlike any other Mickey Mouse cartoon ever made. Its impact on the canon was strong enough that the Mad Doctor was made one of the main antagonists of the Epic Mickey video game. And getting to take him out after all these years is one of the most satisfying game moments you’ll ever experience.

14. Around the World in 80 Days

Now for something a bit lighter. Some of the best shorts made for Mickey’s Mouse Works and House of Mouse were the “Mouse Tales”, two-part adaptations of classic novels with Mickey and the gang filling in the roles. This is a simplified but still fun take on Jules Verne’s famous globetrotting adventure. Instead of a wager between high society gentlemen and a robbery caper mixup however, Mickey must circumnavigate the globe in order to claim an inheritance and save his orphanage. Goofy and a rescued native princess-turned-love interest Minnie (there’s no way around some of the more dated aspects of this story, is there?) help him along the way, but they also have to deal with a meddling Scrooge McDuck, who’d do anything to get his feathers on the fortune. They manage to squeeze in some great jokes, usually involving Mickey’s deadpan reactions to Goofy’s cluelessness. It’s a decent retelling that hits all the beats and will probably get kids interested in checking out the original story.

13. Ye Olden Days

Nothing like a good old-fashioned medieval romance to warm your heart. Humble minstrel Mickey attempts to rescue fair damsel Minnie when she refuses to marry foppish Prince Dippy Dawg – that’s Goofy’s early moniker to those not fluent in early Disney – and winds up engaging in a joust for her hand. Mickey and Minnie may not be the most fascinating couple in film history, but their earnest devotion to each other shows why their relationship has stood the test of time.

When I was rewatching this to see if it deserved a spot on this list, I was particularly impressed by how spirited Minnie was – she does not take her arranged marriage lying down, slapping the self-absorbed prince in the face while declaring “Never!” and fighting her captors every step of the way as she’s dragged to the tower as punishment. Plus, it’s her intervening on Mickey’s behalf that saves him from the guillotine and allows him to engage in trial by combat. Mickey, ever the underdog, uses his size and cleverness to his advantage, outdoing the prince in all his regalia with nothing but a spear, a suit of armor fashioned from a potbelly stove, and an intrepid donkey. I really don’t have anything to say other than this short’s simplicity and sweetness never fails to win me over.

12. The Pointer

An expertly animated adventure for Mickey and his loyal canine, even if the idea of the Mouse going hunting wouldn’t fly today. I just love Mickey and Pluto’s interactions; they remind me so much of me and my dog and the time we spent together (though let it go on record that I never have or most likely will engage in hunting for sport). This isn’t a case of the pet being smarter than the master like in future shorts, either. Those always aggravated me because of how they really dumbed down Mickey. Both are on equal footing here, and both get into equal amounts of trouble.

The moment where Mickey tries to talk his way out of an encounter with an angry bear is equal parts tense and humorous. It’s also one of the rare times I can recall Mickey attempting to use his own popularity to escape from a jam (“Well I’m, uh, Mickey Mouse! You know, Mickey Mouse? I hope you’ve heard of me…I hope.”) According to Andreas Deja, animator Frank Thomas incorporated a bit of Walt’s own actions while recording the lines for this scene, giving it a superb bit of what Thomas would call “the illusion of life”.

11. Lonesome Ghosts

Here we have another Mickey-Donald-Goofy venture with shenanigans surrounding the last two, but there’s enough of Mickey in there to make it count. Now tell me if this sounds familiar: a trio of oddballs, one smart if in way over his head, one irascible and sarcastic, and one delightfully naive, go into business capturing ghosts. And yes, at one point one of them says “I ain’t afraid of no ghosts”. It’s a shame Disney wasn’t able to capitalize on this fifty years later apart from syncing this short to the Ghostbusters theme in the DTV Halloween special. Lonesome Ghosts is a spooky jaunt where half the fun comes from the various ways the titular quartet of specters tease our hapless heroes. How the protagonists manage to send them packing kind of confuses me, but it still makes for a good chuckle. Steeped in atmosphere and loaded with laughs, Lonesome Ghosts is a ghoulish good time.

10. Mickey’s Good Deed

It’s Christmas Eve, and Mickey and Pluto are out in the cold with nothing but a bass fiddle that earns them barely enough to eat. A bratty rich half-pint sets his sights on Pluto and goes Veruca Salt on his father, leading to him offering Mickey a fair bit of dough in exchange for the dog. Mickey refuses, until he spies a poor widow and her many children even worse off than he is. This leads to him making a heartwrenching sacrifice to ensure they have a merry Christmas. It’s a short that runs the gamut of emotions. You feel for Mickey every second as he either loses everything he owns or willingly gives it up for a greater good, and there’s plenty of joy to be had when he gets his reward in the end (as well as when that terrible child is given his due punishment). I love watching this every Christmastime, and it exemplifies the giving spirit of the season.

9. Runaway Brain

You wanna know where that infamous image of a demonic Mickey came from? Well here ya go. Fast-paced, frightening and hilarious, Runaway Brain is a wild ride from start to finish. In some ways it feels more akin to a Looney Tunes short than a Disney one. The comic and story beats come right after another, yet leave room for sight gags and references a plenty. There’s even a brief shot that visibly homages The Exorcist. IN A DISNEY SHORT.

Borrowing from The Mad Doctor’s playbook, this time it’s Mickey who’s in a mad scientist’s sights after taking an offer for “a mindless day’s work” at face value, just so he could earn some vacation cash for Minnie. Said mad scientist, Dr. Frankenollie (love the nod there), voiced by Sideshow Bob himself Kelsey Grammar, switches Mickey’s brain with that of his King Kong/Frankenstein-esque creation Julius, who bears more than a passing resemblance to Pete. When the doctor is zapped into ashes by his own experiment – onscreen, mind you – Mickey, now trapped in Julius’ body, must find a way to get back to normal and stop Julius, stuck in Mickey’s form but no less monstrous, from pursuing Minnie. As I said before, the jokes come at you fast and hard. The climax in particular is especially rollicking, with some amazing lighting and coloring choices that pump up the action. As always, Mickey saves the day in the most entertaining – and in this case, bizarre – way possible.

8. The Band Concert

Mickey makes his technicolor debut in one of the first shorts that pits him against a troublesome Donald. All our stalwart conductor wants to do is perform a bit of William Tell for some music lovers in the park, but he’s consistently interrupted by Donald wanting to get in on the action with Turkey In The Straw and an improbable supply of easily breakable flutes. Still, you’ve got to admire both of them for their determination. I’d say nothing short of a cyclone could stop them, but that’s exactly what happens; the climax has them playing through the gale even as they’re hurled through the air! Considering the music they’re performing is appropriately stormy sounding, one has to wonder if they picked up their instruments from Hyrule. The Band Concert is a testament to Mickey’s unflappable perseverance and affinity for music.

7. The Little Whirlwind

Lured to Minnie’s by the promise of cake, Mickey agrees to give her yard a good cleanup in exchange for some dessert. Unfortunately, a playful sentient cyclone has other plans. I’ve never been bothered by Mickey’s voice, but this short shows how he works just as well silently. Much of the action is largely in mime with no dialogue. The slapstick is fun all around. I always did feel a bit bad that Mickey got the short end of the stick in this cartoon; after being tormented by the hellion hurricane, he’s pursued by a giant momma tornado who assumes her offspring was bullied for no reason, and when Minnie checks on his progress he’s blamed for the disaster area that was formerly her garden. I don’t know what the hell she was doing in the kitchen to not hear the two cyclones roaring through her yard but I hope it was worth it. At least Mickey ends up getting the cake – though not in a way he was certainly expecting.

6. Mr. Mouse Takes a Trip

Once more we witness Mickey’s loyalty to his equally devoted canine companion. A simple train trip to Pomona goes off the rails when Mickey must shield Pluto from dog-hating conductor Pete and both find themselves on the run from him. There’s disguises and mishaps galore, and it’s a constant back and forth to see who’s one step ahead of the other. Interesting fact: this short is also the source of the only known footage of Walt Disney recording his lines as Mickey.

5. Symphony Hour

A spiritual sequel to The Band Concert, Mickey once again plays conductor for a classical orchestra made up of his friends. Unfortunately someone thought it was a good idea to leave all the instruments in Goofy’s hands before their big debut, and they’re quickly destroyed. Now poor Mickey has to keep everything together as the concert falls to pieces and their sponsor Pete fumes from his viewing box.

This short… it’s hysterical. There’s no other word for it. Everything from the animation to the music – which sounds like a precursor to Spike Jones – cracks me up. Mickey is pushed to the limits of his endurance as his show crumbles around him. Not helping matters is the attitude of the performers. Sure, Goofy, Horace Horsecollar and the like soldier on admirably, but Donald threatens to up and leave several times. Yet Mickey isn’t afraid to stoop to any level to ensure the show, no matter how terrible, will indeed go on. And the worse it gets for them, the better it gets for us.

4. Thru the Mirror

After falling asleep while reading Alice Through the Looking Glass, Mickey dreams of entering his bedroom mirror and exploring the bizzarro version of his world on the other side. Living furniture, card battles and jazzy dance sequences ensue. Out of all the Mickey shorts on this list, this is probably the best animated. The scenes stick out in your mind long after the cartoon has ended. The size-changing walnuts, the catchy tap dance starting with a game of jump rope with a telephone cord that evolves into a Busby Berkeley homage with playing cards, and the escape from said cards while traversing the dangers of a literal living room? It’s golden age Disney at its finest. There’s not much in the way of story, but that’s not the point of this short. It’s just great animation fueled by years of practice and boundless imagination.

3. Get a Horse!

I remember hearing way back when this short was announced that it was supposedly one from Walt’s heyday which was lost to the ages and recently unearthed. Little could we have realized that it was merely a smokescreen – instead of an old cartoon, we were getting the first new theatrical Mickey Mouse short since Runaway Brain, one that paid tribute to the classic Mickey cartoons of old.

Since I watched Frozen more than once during its theatrical run, I had the privilege of experiencing Get A Horse as it should be: in a big dark movie theater with eye-popping 3D. It gives the perfect illusion that this crazy cartoon with characters jumping in and out and running around the theater really is happening right in front of you. Mickey and friends play around with the screen and the dimensions contained within and with-out in a way not seen since Chuck Jones’ masterpiece Duck Amuck. And having seen many, MANY classic Disney shorts before (if this list hadn’t already indicated), I could even tell where many of the sound bites used for the characters’ dialogue were lifted from. I simply don’t get it when people dismiss this short for “mocking” old school Disney when in reality it does anything but. I think this short is the epitome of what Disney is doing now with their animation, blending the best of the old with the technology and promise of the new. Also, Oswald cameo for the win!

2. The Prince and the Pauper

Talk about nostalgia. I watched this short with the same frequency as my favorite Disney movies on VHS. In fact, due to having no sense of time when I was younger, I thought this twenty minute short was about the same length as those films; it certainly flies by at the same speed. Mark Twain’s tale of royal identity switching has seen its fair share of adaptations, but this one will always be my favorite. We’ve got riveting action and phenomenal voice acting (Wayne Allwine, you were the best Mickey outside of Walt and Brett Iwan can’t hold a candle to you).

It’s also one of the most dramatic shorts in the Disney canon. Pete is at his most menacing outside of Mickey’s Christmas Carol. Scenes like where Mickey attends to the king in his final moments and the prince learns of his father’s passing carry so much weight to them. They’re framed cinematically and let you take in the gravitas. Still, that’s not to say there isn’t any comedy to be found. The Prince and the Pauper has plenty of moments that still make me laugh twenty-eight years later. It’s a short that has everything. Easily one of Mickey’s finest moments.

1. The Brave Little Tailor

If I were to point to one short that summed up everything I love about Mickey Mouse, all you need to know about him, and why he’s so great, The Brave Little Tailor would be it.

Due to a simple misunderstanding, Mickey is thrust into the role of reluctant hero, one who must face down a killer giant no less. But if most of what the previously mentioned shorts have shown, Mickey’s nothing more or less than the perfect underdog. And when he gets into action, he’s like a cartoon blend of Chaplin, Keaton and Fairbanks – not a coincidence as the former two were big influences on early Mickey. Scared though he is, he rarely panics. Instead he relies on his greatest strengths to save the day – his quick thinking, nimbleness from his diminutive stature, and his loyal, caring heart. There’s a reason why I chose this particular thumbnail for this entry. No matter how many times I see this enamored incarnation of Minnie shower her champion with kisses, making him stumble around dizzily and cheerfully cry “Whoopee! I’ll cut ‘im down to my size!” I always, always go “aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawwwwwww”. It’s just too adorable for words. When you’ve got someone who loves you like Minnie does, you feel like you can take on the world.

I could go on about how the scene where he’s telling the story of how he killed seven with one blow (that’s flies, by the way, not giants) has been studied by animation students and enthusiasts to the point where Junction Point Studios aspired to recreate that level of expression and fluidity when creating Epic Mickey, or how Mickey defeats the giant has been homaged in other shorts as well as the airport fight from Captain America:Civil War, or just that wonderful storybook golden age Disney feel it has from start to finish, but I won’t. By all means, seek out the short and see it all for yourself.

No matter how many times the corporate side of Disney has airbrushed Mickey’s foibles to present him as the bland, perfect company mascot, Mickey’s bravery, kindness, and penchant for attracting trouble has never been fully scrubbed away. Different voice actors, animators, story writers and financial visionaries have come and gone throughout the years, and each has presented their own unique take on the character, but there’s no mistaking the world’s most famous mouse, the one who started it all.

Happy Birthday, Mickey. Here’s to 90 more.

Thanks for reading! What are your favorite Mickey Mouse shorts? Share them in the comments and be sure to follow and check out my Patreon if you want to read more!

My Top 20 Favorite Mickey Mouse Shorts As a lifelong Disney fan I can't understate how much of an impact Mickey Mouse has had on me.

[villi-villain]

Dancing With the Stars (Season 25) - Week 5 Recap

Theme: Disney Night!

Drew Scott & Emma Slater (The Muppet Movie | Viennese Waltz) - 9, 8, 8 (25) Frankie Muniz & Witney Carson (Pirates of the Caribbean | Argentine Tango) - 10, 9, 10 (29) Jordan Fisher & Lindsay Arnold (Moana | Foxtrot) - 10, 10, 10 (30) Lindsey Sterling & Mark Ballas (Pinocchio | Foxtrot) - 9, 10, 9 (28) Nick Lachey & Peta Murgatroyd (The Jungle Book | Quickstep) - 7, 8, 7 (22) Nikki Bella & Artem Chigvintsev (Coco | Jazz) - 9, 9, 9 (27) Sasha Pieterse & Gleb Savchenko (The Little Mermaid | Rumba) - 8, 8, 8 (24) Terrell Owens & Cheryl Burke (The Lion King | Quickstep) - 9, 8, 8 (25) Vanessa Lachey & Maks Chmerkovskiy (Snow White | Waltz) - 8, 8, 8 (24) Victoria Arlen & Val Chmerkovskiy (Steamboat WIllie | Jazz) - 9, 9, 9 (27)

Lowest Scoring Dance(s): Nick & Peta’s Quickstep (22) Highest Scoring Dance(s): Jordan & Lindsay’s Foxtrot (30) Eliminated: Sasha Pieterse & Gleb Savchenko

Favorite Outfit(s): Witney; Peta; Nikki and Artem Overscored: No one Underscored: Victoria & Val and Nikki & Artem by a point or two Favorite Song: “Angelica” - Rodrigo Y Gabriela Least Favorite Dance: Honestly, Vanessa & Maks’ Waltz Most Favorite Dance: Nikki & Artem’s Jazz

Overall thoughts on the the night Gahhhhh Disney Night!!! In the fall season! VICTORIA & VAL - what a great way to start the show! I love the older cartoons of Mickey, so I was so happy that they featured Steamboat Willie. It just bugged me to no end that they did not have the mouse ears... they had the gloves, whiskers, and the nose, but no ears? I still loved their Jazz, wish it had gotten a higher score, but it was the first out of the gate. VANESSA & MAKS - was it just me, or did it look like that Vanessa was about to pass out at any moment? I can tell that this couple is on their way out within the next few weeks and it’s really unfortunate because Vanessa could have gone far. Oh, I LOVED their package though! 8 Maks’?! LINDSEY & MARK - like the judges said, I’m glad to see a dance from these two that doesn’t really have a quirk to it - they’ve proven that they don’t need it! Beautiful dance to a classic Disney song. Made me wish I was at Disneyland. NICK & PETA - okay, that was super cute! I loved Peta’s outfit and it was clear that they were having a lot of fun with this theme. Was the 8 from Len a little generous, maybe. DREW & EMMA - wow, such a beautiful and uplifting dance. I love the friendship between Drew and Emma. He is improving so much and I can’t wait to see what else he and Emma could pull out. SASHA & GLEB - like I said last week, I’ve been struggling with this couple. I don’t know if it’s Gleb’s choreography, but I never have an opinion when it’s him and his partner. Sasha was a great dancer on the show, no doubt about it. However, I think she had a very specific fanbase and that just couldn’t carry her farther. TERRELL & CHERYL - like Drew, I think Terrell is improving very well in this competition. The Lion King was a great choice for them and as always, Cheryl choreographed an awesome routine. I liked how they incorporated the troupe into the dance, especially having Sasha in his zebra-print pants again! FRANKIE & WITNEY - WITNEY IS OFFICIALLY BACK! Her choreography was on point this week. These two executed their performance perfectly and I officially believe that Frankie is a contender and could end up in the final three. Great dance! JORDAN & LINDSAY - once again, I believe that this could be Lindsay’s season and I am so excited. I love this version of the song and it’s great that Jordan was able to perform to his own track. Jordan just keeps on amazing me every week. Love this couple. NIKKI & ARTEM - hands down, my favorite dance of the night! I love their outfits and Artem definitely rocked that sombrero. Knowing how much this performance meant to Nikki and her background gave the dance a little kick. I was smiling the whole time watching it and it’s something new that was brought to Dancing With the Stars. Can’t wait to see Coco!

Looking forward to Movie Night next week!

Who I think should be eliminated next week: Nick Lachey & Peta Murgatroyd Who I think will be eliminated next week: Vanessa Lachey & Maks Chmerkovskiy

[ramajmedia]

Itchy From The Simpsons Is 100 Years Old Today: Here's His Origin

Itchy from The Simpsons turns 100 years old today, September 3, 2019. One half of the immensely popular The Itchy & Scratchy Show, the homicidal mouse, along with his perpetually victimized best friend Scratchy - a parody of Tom & Jerry - have delighted Springfield's children and outraged adults for decades. In The Simpsons' universe, actress June Bellamy does the voices of Itchy and Scratchy but in real life, Dan Castellaneta (the voice of Homer Simpson) voices Itchy while Harry Shearer voices Scratchy.

In The Simpsons, Itchy & Scratchy shorts are a staple of The Krusty the Klown Show, which airs weekday afternoons and is broadcast live from Krustylu Studios in Springfield. Krusty's program can run up to three hours and ten minutes; luckily, Itchy & Scratchy is always there to provide ample filler that's usually better received than Krusty's hit-or-miss live sketches. A typical Itchy & Scratchy episode consists of Scratchy happily going about his daily business, unaware of a grotesque death trap lain by Itchy. The serial killer mouse then gruesomely murders his best cat friend, which always provokes unbridled laughter from the audience. Cartoonist Roger Myers Sr. was long credited as the creator of Itchy & Scratchy, a fact that his son, Roger Myers Jr., who runs Itchy & Scratchy Studios today, proudly trumpeted.

Related: The Simpsons: The Origin Of The Stupid Sexy Flanders Meme

However, the truth about who really created Itchy was revealed in The Simpsons season 7 episode, "The Day the Violence Died". Bart and Lisa Simpson discovered that a homeless vagrant named Chester J. Lampwick (voiced by Kirk Douglas) was the true creator of Itchy and owns the rights to the character. As he showed the Simpson siblings, Lampwick owned a reel of the first Itchy cartoon he ever animated, titled "Itchy the Lucky Mouse in Manhattan Madness", where Itchy kills an Irish man and Theodore Roosevelt. With Bart and Lisa's help, Lampwick went to court and successfully proved that Roger Myers Sr. stole Itchy from him, thanks to an animation cell of Itchy that Lampwick autographed to Myers on September 3, 1919 - the day Lampwick created Itchy. Myers Sr. went on to earn riches as the "creator" of Itchy & Scratchy while Lampwick ended up on skid row.

As for Scratchy, his first appearance was in an uneventful 1928 cartoon called "That Happy Cat"; that same year, Roger Myers Sr. teamed up Itchy and Scratchy for the first time in a short called "Steamboat Itchy" (a parody of "Steamboat Willie", Walt Disney's first-ever Mickey Mouse cartoon). From then on, Itchy & Scratchy became a phenomenon, the serial killer mouse and his hapless cat victim appeared in at least two feature films, Pinitchio and Scratchtasia, and they starred in commercials for Laramie cigarettes. In the 1970s, the cat and mouse starred in an X-rated cartoon called Itchy & Scratchy Meet Fritz the Cat. They also headlined The Itchy & Scratchy and Friends Hour, which included new, unmemorable characters created by Myers Sr. like Uncle Ant, Disgruntled Goat, Flatulent Fox, Ku Klux Klam, Manic Mailman, Dinner Dog, and Rich Uncle Skeleton. In addition, they had their own theme park called Itchy & Scratchy Land until the animatronic robots went on a murderous rampage.

Along with Bart and Lisa, the rest of the Simpson family also impacted Itchy & Scratchy; Marge Simpson led a campaign of decency to have the violent cat and mouse banned, only to briefly write a sanitized version of the cartoon, which flopped. Bart and Lisa successfully wrote for the cartoon, using Grampa Simpson as their front until the ruse was discovered. Finally, Homer Simpson himself voiced a new character, Poochie the Dog, which also tanked thanks to massive studio interference. Homer's brief career as a voice-over artist soon went belly up, which he blamed on his losing creative control of the project (he also forgot to ask for any money).

Because they once jumped to The Gabbo Show thanks to budget issues, Krusty tried to replace Itchy & Scratchy with Eastern Europe's favorite cat and mouse team, Worker and Parasite, but that didn't last. There's just no substitute for Itchy and his homicidal ways and, in 2028, The Simpsons fans will get to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Itchy & Scratchy as well.

Next: The Simpsons' Best FOX Jokes

The Simpsons airs Sundays @ 8pm on FOX. Every season will be available to stream on Disney+.

source https://screenrant.com/simpsons-itchy-mouse-origin-100-years-old/

[crimsonblackrose]

After our super sad trip to USJ we were all determined to do a much better job with Disney Sea. Our hotel was nearby, it included a free shuttle so there was no way to get lost, we just had to pick up our tickets and ride the Disney train.

I had a list of goals for Disney Sea

Try alien mochi

Ride a new ride (Lost River Delta) with preferably a fast pass

Watch Big Band Beat

Find and buy the Disney Sea pins.

Anything else would just be a nice addition.

When we arrived a showing for their summer pirate themed water show  was  starting but my friends were very adamant that this time I wouldn’t miss the show on my list. So we bee-lined straight for Biglietteria so that we could try our hands at the lottery. Biglietteria is a small area near the entrance and Mediterranean Harbor with a ton of screens where you scan your passes for the lottery you want to enter. For Big Band Beat that means to get reserved seating (best seating) for the show. However this doesn’t include the first show, it’s for all the shows after. You can also only enter the lottery once. That’s it. It essentially is like playing a slot machine nut if you loose there’s no more chances. So we didn’t win. What we decided to do was to go try and get a fast pass for a ride and just come back to the first show which was a free for all. We quickly headed to the Lost River Delta as the music for the show began to swell and the crowds began to get bigger. We managed to get a fast pass for Indiana Jones Adventure: Temple of the Crystal Skull and then when we tried to get one for Raging Spirits quickly learned that after getting one fast pass you’re stuck with a wait time of at least an hour before you can do it again. (And awkwardly in our case, one hour for two of us and two hours for the third, we and staff couldn’t figure that one out.)

Thankfully a cast member caught us and explained it to us. She also was very kind and since for at least one friend it was her first time at Disney ever, so she gave her a cute sticker so that the staff would welcome her to her first journey to Disney. We also all got first ride of the day stickers with a cute Baymax drawn on it. (That throughout the day and the heat we all subsequently lost at one point or another.)

Since we had a lot of time before we could make another fast pass or go to the first showing of Big Band Beat we headed over to the Arabian Coast to get some popcorn and kill some time. As we were doing this an alert came through the speakers throughout the park in multiple languages saying that due to extreme heat they were asking guests to stay hydrated and take frequent breaks. We figured this was our plan as well and hopped in line for a short 20 minute wait at Jasmine’s Flying Carpets. Then we bought curry popcorn and a cute popcorn box to trade off carrying for the day.

While at USJ we didn’t eat much popcorn, at Disney Sea we ate a ton of it and this Steamboat Willie popcorn bucket was constantly being refilled. (And also occasionally played with since the top makes a fun squeaking sound) It did however sometimes reach the same fate as the Sailor Moon box at USJ, which was that the popcorn after a certain amount of time started to go stale.

Before leaving the Arabian coast we figured we’d see how long the line was for the Caravan Carousel, there was practically no line so we quickly joined, waited for the ride that was going to end and then climbed up to the second floor to pick our creature.

It was just nice to already have beaten our poor record at Universal Studios Japan. We had a bit of time left before the first showing of Big Band Beat so we decided to go grab lunch first. My friends got very excited looking at the menu for New York Deli which was near Big Band Beat so we figured we’d go eat there. We also planned to stock up on water while there as well since we had yet to see any for sale. The New York Deli is huge. There is so much seating. But when we went it was slammed. I sent my friends to get in line while I looked for a spot and there were just no tables open so I hovered. Eventually one nearby opened and I swooped in to take it and wait for them. One came back and relieved me of duty so I could join the other in line and we could order together to save time. I ordered the deli salad. And learned much to all of our dismay, that they didn’t sell water.

860 yen for the deli salad

They did have cups that you could use and a little fountain, but no bottles, which I know is not the greenest thing but to have a container for water that you can quickly shove in your bag on rides is much easier than a paper cup. The salad was okay but very difficult to eat. It was a regular salad but then whole sandwich slices of meat on top, and sticks of cheese, which were not the easiest things to mix into the salad.  After lunch we headed to Big Band Beat and were pretty happy to see no line.

Big Band Beat is the only show at Disney Sea that’s in English. It’s all music and songs in a swinging jazz 1920’s big band style. It was really nice to sit inside and watch it and it was quite fun.

While the first showing is a first come first served set up, for the rest of the showing the first floor seating is only for those who win the lottery and the rest of the seats are first come first serve. It’s well worth it, we didn’t get there early enough for the first floor seating, but our seats were quite good. Better than the time I saw Hamilton and was behind a pole. I think, it makes a perfect break, especially on a hot day. After the show we quickly found the alien mochi I’d wanted to try.

Three come in a cup and all are different flavors. The filling is chocolate, vanilla and strawberry ice cream. It was so nice.

Because of the time one of our friends left in a hurry to see if she could quickly get us our fast passes for Raging Spirits. While she did that my other friend with the popcorn box jumped into the popcorn line (garlic shrimp) and I went on a hunt for water. What I quickly learned, despite the many many alerts going off to stay hydrated, that water isn’t commonly found at Disney Sea. As the day progressed we realized more often than not that the vendors didn’t sell water. Soda and ice cream yes, but water, no. So it became a thing, that if we saw water we bought it. And sometimes one of us would run off while the others were in line and run half way around the park in search of a vendor that did in fact sell water. It was incredibly frustrating. It was also more expensive than not only water outside the park but the water we’d bought (and had been available at every single vendor) in USJ.

Ukiwah bun 500 yen

I’m a bit sensitive to spicy so there’s a lot of things I didn’t try last time out of fear. But one of my friends who was with me was down to try everything, and since she’s the one who’d ran to try and get us fast pass tickets I wanted to get her a treat, something we could maybe share but also mostly for her. Disney Sea does these cute buns that come in very cute character wrapping. Last time I was in Disney Sea the Arabian coast had one filled with curry and Chandu on it, but because it might have been spicy I decided not to get it. But I’d asked about it in the Arabian coast earlier that day and they said they didn’t sell it in the summer. So instead when we were walking from the American Waterfront into Port Discovery I got in line at Seaside Snacks and got a pipping hot bun to carry over to the Lost River Delta to give her. I could literally only hold it by the the top because it was way too hot. It was very cute and not bad, not spicy either so I enjoyed a bite. It was filled with shrimp. Probably, it’s more enjoyable when it’s cooler out.

Back in the Lost River Delta we learned that the fast pass option had been closed for the day. We’d missed our opportunity to get a fast pass for Raging Spirits. Which was fine. We still had one fast pass for Indiana Jones and speeding through the line, scanning our tickets was really nice. (Though sitting in the Jeep for the ride hurt one of our friends knees, due to some position she got stuck in for the duration.) The wait time for Raging Spirits never seemed to drop below 2 hours so eventually after walking past it a couple times to see, we gave up and returned to where we’d been the luckiest, the Arabian Coast.

It was hot, we were tired. The waits in the Arabian coast weren’t long at all so we decided we’d see what we assumed would be a show and got in line for Sinbad’s Storybook Voyage. It ended up being the best ride. It’s a slow boat ride with a very similar aesthetic to It’s a Small World with singing marionettes. However it tells the adventurous story of Sinbad, a bit nicer and Disney-fied version, and includes Sinbad’s adorable tiger cub companion Chandu, which I had totally mistaken as a baby Raja when I saw the souvenirs and even the curry bun last year. Apparently when the ride first opened there wasn’t any singing and it was a bit creepier and darker and truer to the original story. But I liked the cute adventurous song that played throughout the ride and will keep playing it over and over on youtube. I didn’t get sick of it the way I would for It’s a small world, and it was cool and dark and it was just nice to sit for so long. If you’re in the area and it doesn’t have a long wait I suggest going.

At this point despite taking constant breaks we were running low on energy. One friend in particular, who’d gotten her knee twisted a bit uncomfortably wasn’t doing so well so we took a break and had some snacks

shaved ice with strawberry and ice cream at Sultan’s Oasis

After recovering for a little bit we decided to hop on the Transit Steamer line to take it from the Lost River Delta to the Mediterranean Harbor. I figured it’d be easier on my friends knee and would put us closer to shopping so we could buy the things we’d been wanting to get. Plus we’d be closer to the last popcorn flavor they wanted to try, Chinese Chili which was a little spicy. (Our favorite ended up being the curry)

It was a nice peaceful boat ride and they got to see more of the park from another view, like the Mysterious Island that we’d only quickly passed through earlier in the day to get to our lunch.

The pins were a little disappointing. There weren’t a lot available which even the staff at some of the shops, when we asked about them mentioned. We were told that they sold out often and the options didn’t usually say “Disney Sea” but after some searching we found a couple that we liked, including one of Chandu and one for a new ride that was broken when we passed and with an insanely long line outside called Soaring: Fantastic Flight which you can get a fast pass for. We decided after seeing the line and learning it wasn’t currently running that it wasn’t something we had energy to wait for.

Finally near all the shops as the sun began to set we grabbed a table and got in line for Mamma Biscotti’s Bakery which according to the Today’s event guide for the summer was having some bubble tea drink. It was in Japanese so we weren’t sure exactly what it was or how it tied in to their summer pirate theme. We ordered one and then got a ton of really cute baked goods to split.

The bubble tea drink turned out to not be bubble tea but iced bubble coffee, so we weren’t as happy with it as we’d originally hoped. (As 2 mostly tea drinkers and one dehydrated picky coffee drinker) However the long line at the bakery was for this drink. Our snacks though were really good. We got (from left to right) a banana and walnut muffin (300 yen), a black tea bread with custard (280 yen), and an apple custard danish (330 yen). With everything cooling off, some snacks and feeling a bit more rested we had a small second wind. So we decided to wander off towards the Teddy Roosevelt Lounge for dinner.

While the Teddy Roosevelt Lounge wasn’t on my must do list, it had been on my I’d like to go to list, mostly for one of their insane seasonal parfaits. But I was also hungry. The salad I’d had earlier in the day hadn’t been particularly filling, and I was mostly full of popcorn, and I really didn’t want another night of convenience store dinner. So I figured I’d order food and if my friends wanted to help me eat it then they could. If not I’d do my best.

2,040 yen

I ended up ordering one of their very meaty platters. It came with three different types of sausage (one of which was spicy), a beef pie, and chicken breast. It was a lot. But I felt like I hadn’t gotten a lot of protein (yes I completely forgot my salad had been sliced meat on top of leaves after a long day in the sun) and another friend with a special diet needed wanted some meat to counteract the sweets. It was quite good, but a bit too much for me. While I’m not a vegetarian I don’t eat that much meat and this was like a meat lovers platter. Then I ordered the thing I was most excited for. The seasonal parfait.

The seasonal parfait can be a bit more expensive if you want to keep the fancy glass it comes in (2,260 yen) but if you’re like me and have no space in your luggage and just want a nice seasonal treat then it’s about 1,230 yen. It was so good. It was mostly mango and pineapple with some blueberries snuck in there. So after the fresh fruit which included some insanely delicate slices of folded mango was whipped cream then below that was a delightful fruit sorbet then more whipped cream, some fruit jelly, more fruit and it just was layered to match the fruit on top. Since it’s a seasonal parfait if you have any dietary restrictions or food allergies I’d ask the staff first what’s in it.

Some Teddy Roosevelt paraphernalia

The Teddy Roosevelt lounge has a much fancier atmosphere. The food is a bit more pricier than you’ll find elsewhere in the park but it’s also a lot calmer and has a more adult vibe, especially around the bar. If you want a more chill atmosphere to eat or even if you have a large group it’s a good spot to go. The three of us sat at a booth that could have easily fit 9 or more people, it was insane. If you’re also a fan of US history/ presidents there’s tons of Teddy Roosevelt stuff around the restaurant. And the bar is held up by carved wooden bears.

After dinner we split up. The friend whose knee was hurting and I took the train then shuttle back to our hotel while our other friend who was at Disney for the first time stayed to ride a few rides and watch the fire works on her own. She ended up leaving when the park closed and even waited in the insanely long ride for Raging Spirits.  Ultimately it wasn’t that bad. But oh boy, summer in Japan is brutal, especially at amusement parks without much shade.

Things we did to combat the heat:

We took breaks often. If there was a seat somewhere, whether it was in the sun or not, we grabbed it. Usually one person (me) would grab a seat or hover until a seat opened up, then everyone else would order their food or drinks or snacks and then we’d either switch or I’d pay them back.

If we saw water for sale we bought it.

Anytime we were out in the sun we used our umbrellas/parasols.

50+SPF sunscreen was reapplied when we went to the bathrooms. We even shared with the occasional other slowly burning tourist who’d forgotten some.

We all had fans that we got here. It’s a Korean website, so not easy to navigate if you don’t know Korean, but those fans were great. We wore them on our neck and they  blew air up into our face so our hands were free. Mini portable rechargeable fans are really popular in Korea and have been for the last couple of years, however this is the only kind I’ve seen that is hands free and blows towards you. Only note with the fan is if you have long hair and it gets caught you’re kinda in a world of trouble. (I did this at USJ and my friends had to spend a good five minutes in line for butter beer rescuing my hair from my fan) They also do occasionally turn themselves off.

At the nearest convenience store/ drug store I stocked up on -3 degrees Biore sheets which are these wet towelettes that when rubbed against your skin make you feel cooler. One of my friends did not like them because it made her skin in certain spots have a burning sensation. Like in the crease of her elbow or the backs of her knees. So if you have sensitive skin, skip these. It’s like a cool tingly feeling that I didn’t mind, kinda like a mint product. If you’re curious this is a the Japanese website for what we used. I literally loved it so much that I bought more to take home.

a handkerchief- Whenever I’m traveling and it’s going to be hot I bring a lightweight “My neighbor Totoro” handkerchief that I tie around my wrist to soak up sweat. It’s gross but I hate the feel of dripping sweat so it’s necessity, and it’s better than rubbing my face with my hands, or trying to use my shirt. Plus I can pour water on it and then my wrist is cool for a bit.

bring your own water bottle. Fill it up before you get to the park. Some times there’s water fountains but not often. Or buy several bottles of water outside the park to carry in your bag throughout the day. There really aren’t a lot of places around the park selling water or even with water available. I’d say maybe 1/3rd of vendors offer it. If that.

Surviving Japanese Summer: Disney Sea edition After our super sad trip to USJ we were all determined to do a much better job with Disney Sea.