Disney to Debut Animated...
The new animated Star Wars Rebels series will premiere in the fall of 2104 as a...
Archive
Pizza Planet: It Delivers, Again and Again!
With just about everybody, everywhere, weighing in on the surprising flopping sound being made by Disney’s epic feature film John Carter, I’m going to exercise my right to remain silent. All I will say about the film, which is the first live-action picture from Pixar’s Andrew Stanton, is that it [...]
Hoyt Curtin’s Jug band Session
You may or may not know the name Hoyt Curtin, but there’s no question you’ve heard his work. So has anyone who has owned a television since 1960. Hoyt was the musical director for Hanna-Barbera during their television heyday, and the composer of such classic theme songs those that opened [...]
Remembering the Words of Robert B. Sherman
The passing this week of songwriter Robert B. Sherman at age 86 brings an end to one of the great creative teams of the twentieth century. Bob and his brother Richard were known as “Walt’s songwriters,” having composed not only the Oscar-winning song score for Mary Poppins, but songs for [...]
Brenda Chapman and the See-Through Ceiling
When early press started coming out about Brave, Disney/Pixar’s summer 2012 release, a lot of it centered on the fact that it was the studio’s first feature film to be directed by a woman. A few short months later that publicity angle flew away like an arrow, when Brenda Chapman [...]
Pocahontas and The Mouse’s Gong Show
Every aspect of creating an animated feature takes time, except, arguably, for one: the greenlighting of an idea. Back in the days when the Walt Disney Studio was just about the only game in town for animated features, it promoted an idea-pitching process known as “The Gong Show,” in which [...]
Virginia Davis and the Road to Hollywood
Several years before Mickey Mouse, little Virginia Davis was the first star of the operation that would become the Walt Disney Studios. That’s not news, of course; before her passing in 2009 at the age of 90, Virginia, who played the live action lead in Disney’s Alice cartoons of the [...]
The Studio You’ve Probably Never Heard Of!
One can read any number of histories of the American animation industry and never come across the name Romer Grey. The son of Western writer Zane Grey, Romer whimsically decided to open an animation studio in 1930. Even though the studio never actually turned out a cartoon, it assembled a [...]
Chucking the Competition
In any discussion of the legendary Leon Schlesinger/Warner Bros. cartoon studio, you often hear the words “friendly competition” used to describe the relationships between the various director-driven units. Once in a while you even hear stories about some not-so-friendly competition. But you would never hear things like that coming from [...]
When Snow White Scared Young Roy Disney
The late Roy E. Disney ranks very high on the short-list of people who worked to make the animation industry what it is today. He was born into the business, of course: his father was Roy O. Disney, Walt’s older brother and business partner, the man who found the financing [...]
High School Pranks with Joe Barbera
I can almost hear the voice of a reader somewhere out there saying, “Joe Barbera again?” Well, yes, actually. Out of the hundreds and hundreds of interviews in my files, I have more material from Joe than just about anyone. This is because we were ostensibly working on a book [...]
Academy Makes Animation...
The Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has...
Shout! Unleashes...
The Eisner Award-winning comic-book series by Joe Quesada, Paul Jenkins, Bill...
