I always love looking at optimistic views of the future from the past… and here’s a good one. The Usborne Book of the Future: A Trip in Time to the Year 2000 and Beyond, which was originally published in 1979. Chapters include “Robots: Science and medicine”, “Future Cities: Homes and living” and “Star Travel: Transport and travel”. (via Boing Boing)
It reminds me of the old EPCOT attractions from Walt Disney World like Horizons and Spaceship Earth that were also built around that time.
If you like this it’s also worth checking out the Paleofuture blog for all kinds of fantastic retro visions of the future.
It seems sitting on the Disney board gets you all kinds of perks. Distant Creations report that an audio-animatronic (1970s, in-garage) Steve Jobs has been added to EPCOT’s Spaceship Earth attraction as part of its recent face-lift.
Spaceship Earth is scheduled to re-open in February with a new theme (more about technology and less about communication), narrated by Judi Dench. (via The Disney Blog)
The hideous millennium wand and dismembered Mickey Mouse arm that’s clung to the side of EPCOT’s geodesic sphere for the last seven years is finally coming down. It has been reported that Siemens, the new sponsor of the attraction, made a request that it be removed as part of the current Spaceship Earth rehab.
In case you’d forgotten how fantastic it used to look, here’s a reminder. This is a promotional slide from Walt Disney World in 1982, courtesy of Jeff B on Flickr:
The Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage re-opened in Tomorrowland at Disneyland last week after the original Submarine Voyage closed to guests nearly ten years ago. The Re-Imaginering blog heralds the new attraction as a beginning of a promising new era at Disneyland:
Along with the submarine fleet, another long lost unit has come marching home again… the animators. And they are bringing the “Walt” back to Disneyland.
In the acquisition of Pixar, Disney has bought back their wandering soul and healthy inner child – at a premium – and it could not have been a better move. Here are to be found the traditional Disney talents and ideas, the Walt spirit in exile.
The Disney Blog highlights a number of links to launch coverage, two ride-throughs and interviews from the press event.
Imagineer, former animator and Disney Legend, X Atencio speaks on the Official Disneyland Resort Podcast about his work as an animator through to an imagineer at Disney, and talks about his work on the original Pirates of the Caribbean attraction.
Talking of Disney animators, Clay Kaytis has just put up the latest segment of his interview with Burny Mattinson at the Animation Podcast.
I haven’t had a chance to post anything for a while so I’m catching up a a bit here. Originally mentioned by Blackwing Diaries, the UCLA’s Department of Special Collections unveiled a new website with 5,100 images from the archives of the LA Times and the Los Angeles Daily News.
Cartoon Brew has been rooting through the archives and has come up with a load of interesting photos of Disneyland, Walt Disney Studios (the strikes, and the never very camera-shy Ward Kimball), Bill Peet and many more that haven’t been seen for a very long time. Enjoy.
I thought I’d drop Disney a line to find out what happened to the Walt Disney Legacy Collection DVD set and, more specifically, the Destino DVD. Sadly, I still don’t know much more:
“At this time, we do not have a DVD release date for DESTINO. We will forward your request for release to our Marketing Department for consideration. No additional LEGACY COLLECTION releases have been announced.”
Did I dream the Destino DVD box mock-up that was, until recently, displayed on the Legacy site? | Comments (0) »
I thought I posted this a while ago, but obviously not! It’s the trailer for the Disney / Square Kingdom Hearts 2 Final Mix+, which includes the original Kingdom Hearts 2 plus Kingdom Hearts: Re:Chain of Memories, a re-working of the GBA game that, chronologically, sat between Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2. Interestingly they’ve kept the fighting using cards thing that I really couldn’t get into.
A shame that it looks like it’s only going to be available in Japan though. No details on a EU PAL or US NTSC release yet. (via Penny Arcade)
Walt Disney Treasures to Continue: Talking of Disney… It looks like they’re not going to stop the Disney Treasures DVD series after all. The next wave, released in December, will include “Disneyland: Stories, Secrets, and Magic”, “Chronological Donald: Volume 3″, and “Oswald the Lucky Rabbit”. Interestingly, Oswald and Disneyland were originally scheduled to be released as part of the new Disney Legacy Collection, but have since been removed from the official site. There’s no sign of the elusive Disney/Dali “Destino” DVD now either — it too has been removed from the Legacy site. | Comments (0) »
Take a look at this fantastic version of the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror from Walt Disney World’s MGM Studios in Florida. It’s created wholly with Garry’s Mod and Half-Life 2! I think this is the file here. (via The Disney Blog)
I’m a great fan of the film critic Mark Kermode and, for the most part, respect his judgement, however I did have to cringe while hearing him review the Disney (not Pixar) flick Meet the Robinsons in his latest podcast straight after reading the comments on this blog entry at Blackwing Diaries — yes, he mentions the “seven writers”. As Jenny says, it’s not unusual for many storyboard artists to be involved in “writing” a film, what is unusual is that they get all their deserved credit at the beginning of the film.
Disney’s marvellous new autonomous audio-animatronic, the Muppet Mobile Lab, visited Pixar on another test-run. The Disney blog has a great video of it in action. You can also find some photos on Flickr.
Disney has announced the pricing structure for their forthcoming MMORPG based on the Pirates of the Caribbean movies and theme park attractions: Free for the ad-supported version, or $9.95 per month for the “Unlimited Access” level. Quite what “ad supported” actually means — bill boards for Princess dress-up clothing in-game, perhaps — remains to be seen.
The game will be released for Windows in the Spring. No Mac version, though, so it looks like Apple OS fans have to use Bootcamp or something to play. (via The Disney Blog)
