Aladdin Tagged Articles at Cinematical

I'm as big a fan of Pixar movies as anyone, but I honestly miss the old-fashioned 2-D style animation from Walt Disney. I think there's definitely room for both hand-drawn and computer animated films, because as brilliant as movies like Toy Story, Ratatouille and Wall-E may be, they're a completely separate kind of filmmaking from the traditional Disney films. They shouldn't be compared to nor should they replace the kind of beloved fairy tale classics we've enjoyed from the Mouse House for 70 years. So, before commenting on the new teaser trailer for The Princess and the Frog (available here if the YouTube version is removed), let me just say, welcome back, 2-D!

OK, so what do I think? Well, upon seeing the New Orleans setting, my first response was unfortunately one of fear: what if Disney one-ups its Hunchback of Notre Dame pole-dance debacle with a scene involving Mardi Gras beads? Well, obviously Disney knows better than to be so blatantly naughty, though I wouldn't doubt that animators will find some way to slip in a hint of Big Easy-style debauchery.

Quick! Who played the title role in WALL-E? If you answered "Ben Burtt," chances are you're either a hard-core geek or someone who stayed for the credits and thought, "Who the heck is Ben Burtt?" Burtt, well known to Star Wars and Spielberg fans for his superb work as a sound designer -- he's won two Oscars and received two Special Achievement Awards from the Academy -- picked up his first credit as an actor for providing WALL-E with a voice. And he drives home the point that cartoons, or "animated films" if you prefer, don't need celebrity voices anymore.

Once upon a time, Robin Williams agreed to voice the part of Genie in Disney's Aladdin. Disney decided to capitalize on his stardom and advertised his supporting role heavily, probably the first time a celebrity voice was used to sell an animated film. Aladdin became the biggest hit of the year. This was the tipping point. Millions of adults, notably those without children who hadn't been convinced by the previous year's Beauty and the Beast, decided that cartoons were not just for kids anymore.

The rest is history. Celebrity voices became the norm, and if one celebrity helped bring in the box office bucks, three or five or seven must be even better, and voice casts soon became filled with celebs both major and minor. Celebs had another advantage: they could give interviews and go on talk shows to promote the movie. Inevitably they'd say, "I wanted to do something my kids could see."

Almost one year ago, I fell head over heels for Annie Leibovitz's photographic recreations of famous, animated Disney scenes. She shot Scarlett Johansson as the running Cinderella, Beyonce Knowles as Alice in Wonderland, spinning around in teacups that came from Disney World, and David Beckham as the Prince who fights off Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty. Now the next set of images have hit the net. They are housed over at The Disney Blog, and I'm still swooning.

I think that what I like most about these images is that they're awesome even if I don't particularly care for the people in them. Leibovitz knows how to capture the essence of each scene, and it makes me wonder just how stunning a carefully-plotted, full-length feature would look. (D*mn good, but long to do, and expensive to boot!) This time around, we've got the above, which features Mikhail Baryshnikov as Peter Pan with Gisele Bundchen as Wendy Darling and a teeny Tina Fey as Tinker Bell. But there's also images with Jessica Biel as Pocahontas, Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony taking a magic carpet ride in Aladdin, and one more from that film, which looks split from the first, that has Whoopi Goldberg as the Genie.

As an added bonus, TDB also has a bunch of behind-the-scenes pics, which help you see how these great images came to be.

Disney has once again unlocked its seven-year vault and the platinum reissue of The Little Mermaid has sold over four million units in one week, despite the recent downturn in animated feature films at the box office. That's also ahead of the lucrative holiday shopping that will start picking up steam in the coming weeks, meaning this little fish will be jumping its way upstream to spawn and possibly sell more then ten million units by Christmas. That's a whopper on any scale.

This release marks the second visit to DVD for Ariel and friends, which isn't counting the direct-to-video sequel The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea, and it won't be the last since we will definitely see a high-definition release sometime in the near future. The movie had also been released on VHS, and recently appears as an online download through Disney's exclusive arrangement with Apple's iTunes service. It has managed to gross more than $211 million worldwide in theaters alone, with home video rentals and sales continuing to milk money from that cash cow.