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  • Blog Post: How Don Rickles became Mr. Potato Head's voice for Disney Pixar's "Toy Story" films

    In honor of Super Bowl Sunday (that annual television event that turns tens of millions of us into couch potatoes, when we wolf down handful of greasy potato chips and/or platters full of toppings-laden potato skins), I thought that - today - it might be appropriate to pay tribute to that most cinematic...
  • Blog Post: Can the "Fantasia" Blu-ray help raise the Walt Disney Family Museum 's profile?

    Well, it looks like Christmas is coming a little early not only for fans of Walt Disney the man, but also for the Walt Disney Family Museum at The Presidio in San Francisco . Today, Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment is releasing a combo Blu-ray / DVD collection featuring both " Fantasia"...
  • Blog Post: How Pixar's Lee Unkrich went from attending USC to directing "TS3"

    So what's the very best way to break into the biz? Does going to some four year school like Emerson College or CalArts (which specializes in Communications and the performing arts) really give you an advantage? Or would it better in the long run to just hook up with some outfit like pabootcamp and...
  • Blog Post: There's a real art to keeping Pixar's traveling art exhibition fresh

    Remysthe14me writes in to say: Copyright Disney Pixar. All rights reserved I saw Jon Nadelberg 's story about the " Pixar: 25 Years of Animation " exhibit at the Oakland Museum of California and was wondering if this is the same exhibition of art that was presented at the MOMA in 2005?...
  • Blog Post: Looking back on the early, early days of the “Toy Story” franchise

    With “Toy Story 3” earning over $365 million worldwide since this Lee Unkrich film was released on June 18 th (More importantly, with the “Toy Story” franchise having produced over $8 billion in global retail sales to date), it is sometime hard to remember that – just 15 years ago – there weren’t a whole...
  • Blog Post: Hamming it up at Disney’s Holiday Showcase

    My apologies for JHM getting a late start today. But Nancy and I really do have a very good excuse for not posting ‘til just now. You see, we were invited down NYC yesterday for Disney’s holiday showcase. Which means that we spent 5 hours going from room-to-room-to-room, seeing virtually everything that...
  • Blog Post: Monday Mouse Watch: DIMG departs from the standard Disney playbook

    Let’s say that you had this great idea for a theme park ride. So you write your idea down and then ship it off to The Walt Disney World Resort . Care to guess what happens once your new ride proposal arrives in Orlando? As soon as the cast member who works in Guest Relations (they’re the department at...
  • Blog Post: Monday Mouse Watch: Looking forward to Disney’s “Prince of Persia” and Pixar’s “Day & Night”

    ShoWest is traditionally this forward-looking event. Where all the Studios come to hype the movies they’ll be releasing later this summer and/or next year. But this time around, John Lasseter and Jerry Bruckheimer took forward-looking to a whole new level. With Bruckheimer using his Lifetime Achievement...
  • Blog Post: John Canemaker pays tribute to a guy named Joe

    You’ve probably seen a lot of Joe Ranft -related material popping up around the Web over the past few days. John Musker ’s excellent story reel-based tribute to his old pal (who was tragically killed in an automobile accident back on August 16, 2005 ). No to mention the first installment of Leo Holzer...
  • Blog Post: Monday Mouse Watch : Never mind "Leggo my Eggo." Check out this LEGO John Lasseter

    With its turn-of-the-century architecture, Gotham Hall has long prided itself on being that spot in New York City “ … where style meets sophistication.” Well, yesterday morning, all of that style & sophistication gave way to silliness. As Disney Consumer Products turned this seven-story-tall gilded...
  • Blog Post: Monday Mouse Watch: What to make of Mickey’s mixed signals

    It’s been quite a month for the Mouse, don’t you think? Inside of one single 30 day span, The Walt Disney Company has: Revealed that it would be spending $4 billion to acquire Marvel Entertainment, Inc. and its library of 5000 characters At the D23 EXPO , the Studios announced a new production label...
  • Blog Post: Toon Tuesday: Will “Toy Story 3” will be that rare sequel that equals the original?

    According to John Lasseter, the folks at Pixar Animation Studios have been dying to make “Toy Story 3” for years now. But – that said – that doesn’t mean that it’s been all that easy to come up with a storyline that was a worthy follow-up to the much-beloved “Toy Story” & “Toy Story 2.” As John recalled...
  • Blog Post: Toon Thursday : Tickets for Lasseter / Miyazaki event go on sale today at 9:01 a.m.

    If you’re an animation fan – a SERIOUS animation fan – you’re going to want to be in Beverly Hills on Tuesday, July 28 th . Japanese animation master Hayao Miyazaki Why For? Because on that night – and for that night only – two animation legends will be sharing a stage. John Lasseter will be hosting...
  • Blog Post: Toon Thursday: GAME OVER for TRON's first director

    It's been a week now since that "TR2N" teaser trailer ran at Comic-Con. And Disneyana & sci-fi fans are desperate for additional information about this Summer 2010 release. Well, let me share some info that I'm sure will send all of you "TRON" fanboys out there straight off the Game Grid. Guess who...
  • Blog Post: Disney Consumer Products isn't getting its hopes up for "Up"

    Following up on last month's article about how Children's Place is getting ready to sell the Disney Store retail chain back to the Walt Disney Company ... I spoke with the managers of a number of New England-area Disney Stores over the past few days. And while none of these folks wanted to go on-the...