November, 2010

There's this great little moment in " Waking Sleeping Beauty " (which - FYI - was just released on DVD yesterday) from 1980. Where a very young John Lasseter - armed with an 8mm sound camera - is filming an equally young Randy Cartwright as he wanders the halls of the Animation Building on the Disney Lot. So after bumping into a robust-looking Ron Miller and then dropping in on a seemingly mute Tim Burton , who do Randy & John go to see but directing animator Glen Keane . Who -...

Some men search for Shangri-La. Me? For over 30 years now, I've been in pursuit of any & all information pertaining to Walt Disney Animation Studios ' aborted " Fantasia " follow-up, "Musicana." Copyright Disney Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved Seriously. I can tell you the exact day that this obsession of mine started. It was October 26, 1980 and the Los Angeles Times had just published an article entitled "Disney Films: Chasing the Changing Times."...

Happy Thanksgiving from the JimHillMedia.com family. Copyright 2010 Disney and the Disneyland Alumni Club. All rights reserved Isn't the above a great piece of Disney character art? I wish that I could claim that this had been created for JHM. But truth be told, this terrific Thanksgiving turkey was created for the Disneyland Alumni Club and is featured on a cloisonné pin as well as on a set of note cards that the Club now has available for purchase in its online store . And speaking of...

Looking for something fun to do with the family after you finish Thanksgiving dinner? Well, why not toss a copy of " Toy Story 3 " into the Blu-ray player. Where you can then learn about what happens to poor Buzz Lightyear once he begins malfunctioning and then has to be sent to Taiwan in order to be repaired. Copyright Disney Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved Oops. My mistake. That's not the version of this " Toy Story " sequel that Pixar spent 5 years perfecting. But...

Go ahead. Admit it. When it comes to the Disney characters , you're confident. You're incredibly well versed when it comes to all of their quirks & histories. But when it comes to all of those comic book heroes & villains that The Walt Disney Company acquired when it purchased Marvel Entertainment back in August of 2009 ... Not so much. Well, if you'd like to quickly get up-to-speed on all of the Marvel characters, then I suggest that you plant yourself on the couch this coming...

Let me be blunt here. " Deathly Hallows - Part I " isn't really a Harry Potter movie. At least not as we've come to know them. To explain: In the latest installment of this blockbuster Warner Bros. film series, there's no trip to Hogwarts and its continually-shifting staircases. The closest that we ever get to this School of Witchcraft and Wizardry is the Hogwarts Express. Which is stopped en route to the school by some Death Eaters who are searching for Harry, Ron and Hermione...

How many of you remember how the original " TRON " ended? With Tron battling the MCP (i.e. Master Control Program) ... Copyright 1982 Walt Disney Productions. All rights reserved ... and ultimately defeating it. Which then resulted in all of the MCP's extremely restrictive security measures being shut down. Which meant that information could once again flowing freely through cyberspace. Which - in the virtual world - is about as close as you're going to get to a Disney-style happy...

So what was it like to attend this year's Cartoon Art Museum fundraiser at Pixar Animation Studios ? Well, for starters, given that work is already underway on that 155,000 square foot building that's being added to the Emeryville campus, event attendees had to find another way enter this 21-acre complex ... Photo by Rod Mongenel ... because Pixar's picturesque main entrance was temporarily closed. Photo by Rod Mongenel But once you got past that little hiccup, it was pretty much business...

It's that time of year again. As WDW 's decorating staff packs away the pumpkins and starts hanging the Christmas ornaments ... Senior Decorator Carlos Rivera hangs a gigantic ornament on Epcot's 65-foot icon tree in preparation for the holidays. Photo by Diana Zalucky. Copyright Disney Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved ... as Walt Disney World gets ready for the 2010 holiday season . Copyright Disney Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved Out on the West Coast this past Friday night...

October was a great month for Jim Korkis fans. Adventurers Club enthusiasts who attended ConGaloosh 2010 got to hear him hold forth on the hidden history of this late, great Pleasure Island nightclub ... Special thanks to the ConGaloosh Society for use of this image ... while members of the World Chapter of the Disneyana Fan Club got a treat when Korkis came by the Thai Thani restaurant in Celebration, FL to then spin tales about the Mickey Mouse Club. Photo by Ellen Petrokiewicz Disney Vacation...

New Yorkers are typically a pretty jaded bunch. So what could get this many people to suddenly stop in Times Square and whip out their cameras? Photo by Jim Hill Disney characters. Lots & lots of Disney characters. Photo by Jim Hill Everyone from Lightening McQueen ... Photo by Jim Hill ... to Rapunzel & Flynn Rider were on hand yesterday as The Walt Disney Company officially opened the doors to the largest Disney Store in North America. Photo by Jim Hill Of course, what with this being a...

Greetings from Beantown. Where Nancy and I joined several hundred D23 members at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts yesterday night for a special celebration of "Fantasia" & "Fantasia 2000. " Photo by Nancy Stadler Even before this event officially got underway, attendees could begin their exploration of "the Fantasia that never was" by checking out the artwork that was on display just outside the Mildred and Harold Remis Auditorium ... Photo by Nancy Stadler ... which...

It was a cold grey November morning in New York City. Photo by Nancy Stadler And even though people were feeling somewhat discombobulated from the first morning of Daylight Savings Time (Not to mention the fact that the ING New York City Marathon was being held that same day. Which meant that streets were soon to be closed all over the city), D23 members from all over the country still made their way to Times Square . Eager to be among the very first to experience the Company's brand-new flagship...

You hear that whirring sound? That's the steel door descending on your chance to visit Pixar Animation Studios at the 7 th annual Cartoon Art Museum benefit . Pixar University dean Randy Nelson welcomes Sybil Lockart and Margot Johnson to this benefit for the Cartoon Art Museum. Photo by Robert Binka Today at 3 p.m. PT, CAM will be cutting off ticket sales for this year's event. Which means - unless you're willing to pony up $199 (which will get you a ticket for the VIP Screening Tier...

So why would you want to give the Cartoon Art Museum $199? Because - if you do so - you get to spend some of this coming Saturday ... Photo by Gina Mongenel ... here. Yep. One day a year (as part of its annual benefit for the Cartoon Art Museum ) Pixar Animation Studios throws open its doors. Allowing members of the general public to head up to the Studio's second floor ... Photo by Gina Mongenel ... where you can then explore Pixar's gallery space. Which currently features a spectacular...