If you’re a fan of Little Golden Books, or indeed the mid-century illustration by the likes of Mary Blair, Mel Crawford, Tom Oreb, Alice and Martin Provensen — to name a few — drag yourself over to the Golden Gems blog immediately.
Be sure to delve into the Walt Disney and Hanna Barbera stuff too.
I could honestly spend the rest of the afternoon pawing through the pages. (via John K)
The first, highly anticipated, full trailer for Toy Story 3 has been released and is showing, in the US at least, before the Toy Story 3D double feature. It features a nice VHS-esque flashback of Andy’s childhood before he heads off to college, leaving Buzz, Woody and the rest of the toys behind.
(HD movie down, but it’s still on YouTube if you’re quick.) It’s back again.
It’s quite staggering how much CG animation has progressed over the past 14 years… For the re-release the original Toy Story was rendered 86,400 times more quickly than it could have been done in 1995.
Also good to see drooling babies stuffing toys in their orifices. I don’t think Pixar have done that since 1988’s Tin Toy!
Update: Disney have, unsurprisingly, pulled the trailer. It will be back again soon — probably after its official web-wide release.
Here’s mystery guest Walt Disney on the North American version of the TV quiz show “What’s My Line”, first aired on CBS in November 1956. The show also features Jerry Lewis as a contestant who asks, “Walt, did you check with the government to see if they needed any money lately?”
Also fascinating are Walt’s comments on his love of the immediacy of television. I wonder what he’d have made of the internet.
D23, the new Disney fan community, are putting up classic newspaper comic strips every day. Right now they’re showing vintage Mickey Mouse strips from 1930, Donald Duck dailies from 1938 and Scamp (the son of Lady and the Tramp) from 1955.
There doesn’t seem to be any sort of archive, unfortunately, but hopefully they’ll add one in the future. And an RSS feed, please!
Jeff Altman, an assistant film colourist, has been restoring a bunch of his grandfather’s old 16mm home movies — including this absolute gem of a family vacation to Disneyland in 1956, a year after the park opened.
What’s amazing is not only the image quality, but that they managed to capture Walt Disney himself (shaking hands with Jeff’s grandmother, no less). Superb! (via The Disney Blog)
The Onion, the bastion of all credible news sources, has revealed that a Walt Disney World maintenance crew accidentally stumbled upon an 2,300 year old underground chamber containing more than 8,000 terra cotta Mouseketeers.
According to photographs surfacing from the dig site, the terra-cotta Mouseketeers are arranged according to rank, from Annette to Cubby, and appear to be marching or tap-dancing in place. On the walls of the tomb, archaeologists have discovered a large fresco that depicts thousands of the mouse-eared foot soldiers bowing before what appears to be a large reptilian figure wearing a crown. The apparent king is shown seated upon a throne of skulls and bears a striking resemblance to Walt Disney.
Akman al Luad H’Beth!
If you follow our Twitter stream you would have caught a sneaky glimpse of the new Alice in Wonderland teaser trailer the other day. It somehow managed to slip out onto the net before Disney meant it to and was quickly pulled.
For the patient (and for those that appreciate a nice big picture!) it is now available, following its unveiling at the San Deigo Comic-Con, in full HD at the Apple Trailers site.
Alice in Wonderland, directed by Tim Burton, will feature elements from both of Lewis Carroll’s Alice books, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass and is scheduled for release on March 10th, 2010.
Remember that blurry footage of the Tron sequel trailer from last year’s Comic-Con? Well, they showed it again this year — this time in 3D!
Technically it’s “test footage” and since then the movie has been given a name: Tron Legacy. The visuals are stunning enough to overshadow the fact it sounds a bit like a men’s aftershave.
Those visuals? No more squinting necessary! They’re up in various flavours on the viral site flynnlives.com — including full HD Quicktime.
Tron Legacy high definition test footage
Set in 2010, Tron Legacy follows Sean Flynn, the son of Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges, reprising his role) as he investigates the disappearance of his father. Bruce Boxleitner will also reprise his role as Tron. Tron Legacy is due to be released some time in 2010. (via the Tron Facebook fan page)
I’ve just been browsing Lou Romano’s production artwork that he did for Pixar’s “Up” again — specifically the colour script work that he did — and wondered why I hadn’t mentioned it here before!
Lou was a production designer on the movie and he’s posted dozens and dozens of pieces of artwork as well as some After Effects tests and dioramas.
Be sure to check out the rest of his blog too for more superb artwork, including stuff for The Incredibles and The Powerpuff Girls.
I thought this to be a delightful photo in its own right, but then I read the story behind the house. Long-time resident of Ballard, Seattle, Edith Macefield, refused to sell up as the land around her one hundred year-old property was radically developed — even when offered a million dollars.
Edith sadly passed away last year but, recently, dozens of coloured helium balloons were tied to her home to promote Pixar’s latest feature “Up”, a story of a man who refuses to give up his own home after his own wife passes away.
