A Delayed D23 Expo 2015 - Films Post

Hello dear readers! It's been a while.

I had the privilege of going to the D23 Expo in Anaheim this year, and in terms of getting into presentations and panels, this was my most successful trip yet! I was able to make it into all of the major ones I wanted: Animation on Friday, Live Action and Parks and Resorts on Saturday, and Gaming on Sunday. I;m not going to go over everything here, but if you want a more detailed play-by-play, my boyfriend and I did 2 podcasts, one regarding Friday, and the other for Saturday.

I skipped on dressing up this year. As much as I love doing it, it's very time consuming and we were already getting up incredibly early to see things. I am hoping to procure a live action Cinderella ballgown at some point in the near future, though :)

Speaking of which, the Kenneth Branagh directed film exceeded my expectations. The marketing for the film seemed to play up the camp, but the film feels honest and true, and is a very worthwhile re-telling of the classic story that we all know and love. Audiences agreed, too - the film did exceptionally well at the Box Office. I am eager to add the film to my Blu-Ray collection soon.

Cinderella and Maleficent are some of the first few live-action re-tellings of classic Disney animated films, and while some reported titles have made Disney fans nervous (I, admittedly, being one of them), I am happy to report that what little I did see for The Jungle Book and Beauty and the Beast have me very excited to visit theaters when they are released. In the hands of the right writers, directors and producers, these films can be truly magical.

Beauty and the Beast has a strong celebrity cast, with notables such as Emma Watson and Josh Gad, and is appropriately a musical - it will be taking many cues from not just the animated film, but possibly even more so from the Broadway version. The film will most certainly be a beautiful spectacle, and if Cinderella's performance was any indication, I have faith that the film will do exceptionally well at the Box Office. But we have a while to wait - the film is not coming out until 2017.

Jungle Book is coming sooner, with a release date of April 15th, 2016, and folks, the film looks wonderful. I was especially nervous about this film before, but the footage that I've seen is truly magical. There's definitely a lot of TLC that has been put into this project, and it is obvious that Disney is really making sure that everything comes out just right. They have had to essentially double-shoot everything with their Mowgli (Neel Sethi) to get the look of him interacting with the animal characters and the environment of the jungle just right. But what struck me most is how they are truly keeping the spirit of the animated film with this new version (yes, you will hear a mention of "bear necessities"), and going so far as to re-creating some of those classic shots, but now with a truly living, breathing and wild jungle.

One of the fabulous freebies from D23

The last true standout that I want to talk about is, of course, Moana. Ever since the internet first heard word that Disney was making a Hawaiian "princess" film, fans flooded the internet with their imagined concept art, other making their awkward teen instagram posts lamenting that it took Disney this long to make this film and also noting that they were concerned about how they would treat the character.

Well, the good news is that this film looks to be shaping up to be Disney's next Little Mermaid, and I mean that literally - it's the same two men that shaped the 1989 favorite that are helming the Moana project as well. And it takes place heavily on the ocean. And you have a young girl who is eager to explore the world while her father, the chief, wants her to stay home where it's safe. And the mother is dead. Formulas.

Be excited for the Rock, who plays Maui, a burly demi-god that is trying to prove himself by helping Moana on her journey to be a navigator. Be excited for Moana's adorable piglet. Be excited that Moana looks to have more realistic body proportions! And definitely be excited for the animation. All accross the board, Disney has truly stepped up in the animation and CGI department. The realism is truly astounding. We're in for a treat.

There was a lot of new information and cool things at the Expo, and these are just some of the highlights. If you're looking for something more in-depth, I really encourage you to listen to the two podcasts I made (the details were more fresh in my mind when I recorded), and there's a lot of other details and films that I didn't mention here.

Stay tuned for one additional post regarding the Parks and Resorts news from D23 - lots of photos to come! 

Maleficent, Mistress of All Evil - Slighted Beauty Queen?

As a slight twist for this blog, I've decided to dedicate a post to a female villain once a week for the month of October. After all, what's a good princess story without a deliciously evil villain?

I'll admit, the Mistress of All Evil has been on my mind. After all, she'll be getting her own live action film in 2014, starring Angelina Jolie. Disney synergy works in mysterious ways, doesn't it? I can't wait to see this movie when it debuts.

Speaking of which, I can't help but think that for Halloween celebrations in the parks the castles should get involved - well, the Sleeping Beauty Castles anyway. I mean, how amazing would it be to enter Disneyland and have your eye drawn immediately to a castle covered in thorns?

Original concept art by Eyvind Earle

Of course, if Disney didn't feel like spending the time and money on physical, 3-dimensional thorns, they could have this be a nighttime-only thing. Utilizing the projection technology they use for the fireworks shows, they could easily project intimidating brambles and thorns with some mood lighting for the desired effect...and if desired further, a show could be built around this where good conquers evil and the castle is restored (and maybe a princess woken by true love's kiss, who knows). Obviously we don't want to copy Fantasmic!, but a little something something might be fun.

Just like those brambles, Maleficent is a bit edgier than the rest of the Disney villains. As far as the film Sleeping Beauty is concerned, the only reason why Maleficent curses the innocent baby Aurora (still fresh in her cradle) is that she wasn't invited to a party. Lesson learned: even if you really don't want a certain someone to come to your bash, if you invite everyone else, word is going to get around and that person is going to be pissed off.

Maleficent's physical design is rather edgy, too. In a complete switcheroo at the studio when this film was being produced, Walt Disney decided that instead of starting with the characters' designs first and then the backgrounds complementing them, that Eyvind Earle's beautiful backgrounds take center stage and the character designs be done after. A lot of the animation artists weren't happy about this, but the film's gorgeous look has ensured it to be a classic and innovative film. The characters are beautiful themselves, and Maleficent is no exception. Marc Davis animated her beautifully.

Okay, yes, she's green...but she wears it well, doesn't she? The purple and black complement her so well. Her facial structure is gorgeous, and she's tall and slender (going on that alone, she is, interestingly enough, similar to Aurora). The horns and collar add a nice touch of drama (and foreshadow what is to come). And on top of it all, she's almost sultry in a mysterious way. She has her very own dark castle with minions, and wherever she goes, her loyal companion, Diablo, accompanies her. On top of all that, being a dark fairy, she has very powerful magic that even the 3 good fairies are nervous to compete with.

It's interesting. Maleficent has so much going for her that one may wonder why she would even care whether she was invited to the newborn princess' celebration. Looking at the situation itself, she must have been extremely embarrassed - Merryweather declares to the entire (very public) room that Maleficent wasn't "wanted" at the celebration. This (and a few visual cues) indicate that Maleficent hasn't exactly had a spotless record that would warrant her an invitation. Still, the last thing anyone (especially one with clearly as much pride as Maleficent has) would want is to be told in front of a large group of people at a party is that no one wanted them there. I mean - who wouldn't try to throw something back in these jerks' faces? The one person who clearly was wanted there was Aurora, so she became Maleficent's target. 

I'm not saying that it is reasonable to curse a newborn baby to die at 16, but Maleficent's behavior (from a generic standpoint) seems slightly more understandable when looked at from a different angle. It seemed like an impulsive and prideful decision more than anything else...and honestly? Perhaps Maleficent is lonely. She probably doesn't get invited to parties. Sure, she can throw her own, but her cronies are there to be cronies, not to be her friends. All she has is Diablo. Diablo can't tell her how pretty she is or how smart she is, or engage in an intelligent conversation wit her. Maleficent might have dedicated aids, but friends? Not really. Maybe she'd be more pleasant if she were invited to dinner once in a while. Sure, it's a little risky, but one does not start out life being evil - life shapes them to become that way, and they see themselves as heroes in their own version of the world.

If things weren't bad enough, Maleficent obsesses for 16 years over the whereabouts of Princess Aurora. If we thought she was unhappy before, imagine being in a dark castle by yourself and obsessing over taking revenge over that one thing that happened at a party this many years ago...that kind of obsessing can drive someone crazy (and in her case, crazy evil). Once Diablo is turned into a statue and her whole plan unravels, her last bit of humanity seems to escape her as she transforms into a dragon.

She is beautiful and terrifying...and no longer herself. All that is left of her is her manic desire to destroy and attack. It is actually rather sad - but it makes for great cinema. Maleficent was a slighted beauty queen that went off the deep end, and remains one of the best Disney villains of all time.

If you're a fan of Maleficent, you may be frustrated at the general lack of merchandise for her usually. Disney has shaken things up recently and is now offering more villains items (and they even went the designer doll route, as they did not too long ago). Here are a few of my favorites.

All of these items (and more) can be found at disneystore.com 

However, if none of these are really your style, and you're in the mood for hip threads, you should check out Threadless - Disney approved the site to allow random artists to come up with their own Disney Villains apparel. But hurry! These items won't be around for very long.

See you next week!

A Sleeping Beauty Post

I just took a lovely trip to Europe and spent a whole week in Paris. I wanted to hit several tourist spots, but I knew that I absolutely had to visit Disneyland Paris. I am a California native, and had only been to the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, so I was very excited to visit a different set of Disney parks.

While I will not go into detail here about that trip, I would like to take a look at the differences between Anaheim's and Paris' castles, as they share a distinctly connective feature: Sleeping Beauty.

Originally, Sleeping Beauty Castle in Anaheim was to be named Snow White Castle (in fact, Walt accidentally called it that on television). Disneyland opened in 1955, and Snow White and the Seven Dwarves had garnered Disney many awards and achievements, so it seemed to just be natural that the first animated film would have a tribute to it smack dab in the center of Walt's grand park. However, since the beginning of the 1950s, the Walt Disney Animation Studio had been hard at work trying to translate the classic fairytale of Sleeping Beauty into a full-length animated feature film. The movie was causing the studio a great amount of headaches, and costing quite a bit of money because it was taking so long to make (the film didn't finally open until 1959). The detail that went into this film was incredible – it took a whole week just to finish painting a single background for the film, and for the first time, it was the backgrounds and environments that were taking precedence over the design of the film instead of the characters. As they say in Hollywood, time is money, and this picture was worrying a lot of people at the studio in terms of finances. But Walt was proud of what his Studio was creating, and wanted to give the film a bit of a promotional boost…so Walt decided to name his new castle Sleeping Beauty Castle instead. Additionally, in the original model for the castle, the top half was backwards; one of the designers had been playing with the model, and as Walt was about to walk in, the top half got switched around and the Imagineers did not have enough time to turn it back the "right way" before the big boss came in. Ironically, Walt loved the castle backwards, so the design stuck. For the overall design, Imagineers took inspiration from the Neuschwanstein Castle in Germany.

  

Since Disneyland opened before Sleeping Beauty was released to theaters, this was the perfect way to advertise ahead of time. The downside to this was that not everything in the film had been finalized; still, the Imagineers worked with what they had. The Walk-Through was not there when the park first opened, but Walt hated unused space (and loved using that space to create even grander things), so the idea for guests to actually go up inside the castle was born. To create more of an attraction out of the castle, WED built the Sleeping Beauty Walk-Through, which visually told the story of Sleeping Beauty (albeit in a more dark and dramatic way with perhaps more focus on Maleficent than the full story) through flat paintings that were inspired by Eyvind Earle's artistry (the man who created the look for the film, and he was also directly involved in the creation of the attraction) – and that version opened in 1957. Twenty years later, the attraction was re-designed with three-dimensional dioramas. While this face-lift made the attraction more "hip" for the time and gave a full account of the Sleeping Beauty story, it somewhat lacked the artistic finesse that had been seen with Earle's artistic look. As the years passed, Disneyland's upkeep became rather questionable, and the Walk-Through, while still open, wasn't tremendously popular (many guests didn't even know about it, for that matter). After September 11^th, 2001, Disneyland's attendance and revenue took a nasty turn for the worse, and management was looking to find any way they could to make cuts. The attraction closed in October "for refurbishment" – in reality, Disney probably had no intention to ever refurbish the attraction. Disneyland's 50^th anniversary came and went, with a major resurgence of popularity and fiscal gain, but still the Walk-Through remained closed (and was rumored of being used as a storage area for the 50^th fireworks). But Disney loves synergy, and that fact alone just might have been enough to greenlight an updated version of the attraction to tie-in with the release of the Sleeping Beauty Blu-Ray/DVD release for the film's 50^th anniversary. The newest version now showcases the old school Eyvid Earle style, but makes it three-dimensional in dioramas with up-to-date special effects to make for some really magical displays.

 

When Imagineers were given the task to create a new Sleeping Beauty Castle for Paris, however, they wanted to do something different. By that point, several other Disney castles had been built and WDI had created a better system for physically setting up their parks to accommodate large crowds (and to make things look even grander than before). The park was built with complete consideration of beauty, so WDI created a Sleeping Beauty Castle (or, in French, Le Château de la Belle au Bois Dormant) straight out of their 1959 film, complete with a beautiful grassy hill. To make the castle even more spectacular, they created three levels: at the bottom, a dungeon-like area with Maleficent in dragon form (and perhaps the most amazing Audio-Animatronic that I have ever seen), the normal entry-level to go in from Main Street and out into Fantasyland, and at the top a set of beautiful stained-glass windows and tapestries detailing the story of Sleeping Beauty.

On the one hand, we have the original. Disneyland in Anaheim is the original Disney theme park period, and it is the only one that Walt Disney personally touched. Being the first, it is smaller, so of course, the castle is smaller than Disneyland Paris'. While some like to say that bigger is always better, I personally treasure how intimate Disneyland is, and as a result, I love that the castle is the size that it is. However, the scale is perfectly calculated in Paris…Main Street is much bigger by all accounts, so of course the castle needs to be bigger. Their castle is also film-accurate, down to the look of the base on a lovely green hill. The entrance is spectacular, with a gorgeous moat (well…when the moat is properly filled, that is)…but, Anaheim has a real-working drawbridge, while Paris does not. Both castles have fun film-detailing: in Anaheim you can find statues of Briar Rose's friends surrounding the castle, while in Paris you can find the characters designed into the architecture. At Anaheim, the castle sparkles! In Paris, it…well, could use some more paint. Paris has a dragon with smoke coming out of her nostrils, while Anaheim has a mix of dioramas and interactive elements. I was bummed when I visited Paris because the castle was under construction, so I never got to see the top floor. I'm glad that they are finally giving the castle some proper TLC at least.

And perhaps that is ultimately why I still love the castle in Anaheim a little bit more. Had the castle in Paris been kept up over the years like the one in Anaheim, I would possibly re-consider…but the fact that their management let the castle fall into the shape that it was in (to show such a dramatic extent of work that had to be done on the castle to clean it up) really hurt the way the castle (and, as I found in other parts, the whole park) looked in my eyes. In defense of the castle, though, I can see that in pristine condition it would be a glorious sight to behold…and heaven knows that I could have stared at that dragon for a whole hour (my family had to urge me to finally go on). What a shame that Walt Disney World's Animal Park did not receive even a part of the design of the dragon for that ill-fated Discovery River Ride that would have tied in with the Beastly Kingdom concept. Too bad Disney threw the money at creating an animatronic of a character from their movie Dinosaur instead. Anyhow…hopefully, when this transformation on the castle (and the park) is complete for the park's big birthday celebration next year, it will be something that Princess Aurora could be proud of. There is currently quite a bit of excitement going on, as there has been some interesting work done on the moat to make some wonder if there might be some World of Color-esque fountains being installed to make for an exciting show for the anniversary.

I don't know about you, but one of my favorite bits from Sleeping Beauty is Flora and Merryweather fighting over what color Aurora's beautiful dress should be (and I really, really wish Disney would give us a little more blue). As a bride today, women have more than just the typical white option – and in fact, blue and pink are gaining quite a bit of momentum in the bridal market. So, for the Aurora at heart, I felt it would be great to feature a little blue and a little pink. From top to bottom: Claire Pettibone, Jewel by Priscilla of Boston, Oscar de la Renta, and Judd Waddell for 2012.