Browse by Tags

Though Andreas Deja may not be working for Walt Disney Animation Studios right now, don't make the mistake of thinking that this master animator is retired. "That's why I react funny when people ask me 'So how's retired life treating you?,'" Andrea revealed during a recent...

When Andreas Deja was a little boy growing up in Germany, he loved going to the movies. He especially enjoyed catching the theatrical re-releases of classic Disney animated features like "Lady & the Tramp" and "The Jungle Book." Copyright Disney Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved...

Let's get the bad news out of the way first. We probably won't be returning to Toontown anytime soon. During the Q & A portion of a panel celebrating the 25th anniversary of the release of " Who Framed Roger Rabbit? ," a San Diego Comic-Con attendee asked if the rumors online were...

Katie Q. dropped me a line earlier today to say: I've really been enjoying JHM's Comic-Con coverage. All of the pictures that you've posted so far make me want to come out San Diego one summer and experience it all for myself. The key to enjoying yourself at Comic-Con -- especially when you're...

There's a common misconception out there right now that -- just because The Walt Disney Company is holding its third D23 EXPO at the Anaheim Convention Center on August 9 - 11 -- this then means that the Mouse is taking a pass on this year's Comic-Con in San Diego . Copyright Disney Enterprises...

It's often been said that a story is only as good as its villain. Which is why you genuinely have to feel for Casey Nicholaw and Chad Beguelin . As the director & the librettist of " Disney's Aladdin: The New Stage Musical " (which will begin presenting performances at Seattle's...

Did you hear that there was a Loch Ness Monster sighting yesterday in France? Well, not a sighting exactly. More like a screening. With Walt Disney Animation Studios ' latest short, " The Ballad of Nessie ," being shown to attendees of the 51 st Annecy International Animation Festival and...

In honor of William & Kate's wedding today, I thought that it might be fun to circle back on a royal-related story that I briefly mentioned on this site back in November of last year. As part of a Why For column that talked about a sequence that was originally considered for " Fantasia 2000...

I'm sure that you're already familiar with that Audio Animatronic version of Abraham Lincoln which appears in The Hall of Presidents at WDW 's Magic Kingdom . Copyright Disney Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved And maybe you've seen that cool, new NextGen version of Honest Abe which...

It is the film that - when Andrew Mooney of Disney Consumer Products revealed that this project was in the works back in June of 2009 at the Licensing International Expo in Las Vegas - made a lot of people go "Huh?" By that I mean: A hand-drawn, feature-length Winnie the Pooh . Which was something...

When people talk about where the Disney / Pixar magic comes from, there are always a few California cities that get mentioned right away. Burbank. Glendale. Anaheim. Emeryville. But - to be honest -- there's one other place that really belongs on that list. And that's Valencia, CA. Which is home...

Do you hear that loud beep-beep-beep noise coming from Burbank? That’s The Walt Disney Company backing up. Rapidly retreating from its earlier attempts to make the Winnie the Pooh characters seem hip, fashionable and contemporary. “Coming off of ‘ My Friends Tigger and Pooh ,’ we did a lot of research...

Good God. Are we really already be up to Volume 9 in the “Walt’s People” series? I can recall when Disney Historian Didier Ghez initially proposed these books (which – if I’m remembering correctly – was sometime back during the Pleistocene Epoch) that would collect & then reprint the very best Mouse...

When you look at Mama Odie, what do you see? Copyright Disney Enterprises, Inc. All Rights Reserved Okay, for starters, she’s one of the more memorable characters from Disney’s “The Princess and the Frog” (FYI: Sales of the DVD version of Walt Disney Animation Studios’ return to hand-drawn animation...

For a guy who spends much of his time among the stars (the Hollywood kind, anyway), author and film historian Leonard Maltin is surprisingly down-to-earth. Which is why – when Leonard and I chatted on the phone yesterday about how he’d been selected to receive the very first NFFC-Disneyana Fan Club Heritage...

It’s the Hans Christian Andersen story that Walt Disney almost put into production back in the 1940s (as part of a live action / animated co-production with Samuel Goldwyn ). This is one of Kay Nielsen's Little Mermaid concept paintings for that aborted Hans Christian Andersen feature from the 1940s...

Who is Hans Bacher ? Trust me, folks. If you're a Disneyana fan, you know this man's work. If you were creeped out by the look of the Beast's lair in " Beauty & the Beast " ... Copyright 2007 Disney Enterprises. All Rights Reserved ... or ever marveled at the clean, crisp design of the logo for the...

Given that " The Game Plan " was No. 1 at the box office for the second weekend in a row, I'd imagine that Oren Aviv (i.e. the president of production at Walt Disney Pictures), is feeling pretty happy right about now. Of course, that's probably because this Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson comedy was the very...

You know what's really striking about Andreas Deja ? Not that he's such an accomplished animator, the talent behind such memorable Disney characters as Gaston in " Beauty & the Beast ," Jafar in " Aladdin ," Scar in " The Lion King ," the title character in " Hercules " as well as one of the title...