Dude! Joe's Jottings, Mostly Junk

One negative of growing up is that aside from B&N, perusing a mall, even one as loaded as Tysons, just isn't interesting anymore. Sure, I got a little amusement from looking at the Lego store's Hobbit collection, but my 3 year old just isn't ready for that stuff yet. Who knows what will be the next big thing when she is (besides Star Wars, which will never go away), as even the Harry Potter and PotC sets are now gone. I mock the Microsoft store every time I walk past. I cringe at the Apple store not because I dislike the products, but rather just that I generally dislike the prices...and have no room in the house for a new computer (and I have 2 netbooks that need to find a new purpose in life).

But the Disney store's changes in the last couple of years are the most depressing. Between Disney's acquisition of Marvel and Star Wars, the Disney Princess line, Tink, Frozen (almost as large as the rest of the Princess line combined), and Sophia (from the TV channel), plus the required area for Mickey and Minnie, there just isn't any room for promoting the classical era of Disney films except for one tiny floor stand that was promoting a line of things for 101 Dalmatians (I'll wager the Blue-Ray release is coming up soon). Even Pixar is underrepresented, nevermind the Muppets, and I don't expect the Pixar line to grow with the next film as it seems more for a grown-up audience in the same way that Big Hero 6 is (that film also have almost no merch in the store at all).

Just depressing. Much as I *can* shop online, I actually don't like to.

Original Link.

I did realize something interesting about Jobs's passing that few have commented on.  Most are concerned about how the loss affects Apple stock.  Few have actually asked how the loss will affect Disney stock.  The #1 stockholder has passed on, his stocks still sitting in his own account.  That stock will have to be distributed to his wife and children (and any others), subject to the terms of any will he might have had (given that he's known this might happen any second now for years, I'm sure he kept it up to date).

Not all the recipients will likely want to keep the stock, but will just sell, take the cash, pay the tax bill, and move on.

It is likely, then, that a massive ton of Disney stock is about to go on sale that somebody will have to buy.  If Iger is smart, he'll have the company buy it back in order to have a better pool to distribute to employees, but I'm not sure (with ABC's lackluster performance this year, albeit on part with the rest of the major networks) that he can really talk the board into that large a cash payout. In any case, the large supply will drop the price pretty drastically for a few weeks until things sort themselves out.  Only if Iger acts quickly (by offering a price above the market price) can he avoid having the price drop to the point that it inspires a larger sell-off.

Blue Sky Disney: Lessons Unlearned...:

On what went right and what went wrong. Mostly on the wrong part of that reflective question. Lets recap a little about the 2009 D23 Expo. First, it was over 4 days and in the end had over 20,000+ attend the show. Not bad for a first time event. Disney pulled it off pretty well, although there were some rough edges that you would think they would learn from and tweak the next time, right?

Not really, no.

What follows is a pretty impressive list of PR and "Con" organizational failures from this past weekend in Anaheim.

MR. FUN:

It was an unofficial experiment but the experience proved insightful. I set up a special screening for a church group in downtown Los Angeles back in the sixties. The motion picture I chose to screen was Walt Disney’s “Song of the South.”

You see, before the heady days of Blue Ray DVDs and video tape the only way one could watch a Disney movie was in the theaters. Should your favorite Disney film not be in release you were out of luck. There was absolutely no other way to enjoy one of Walt’s delightful feature films. There was one exception. Should you happen to be an employee of the Disney Company you could check out a full length feature on 16mm motion picture film. You probably already know where this is going. My audience was African American, and all were gathered together to enjoy this “controversial” Disney movie on a pleasant Saturday evening.

As expected there were laughs, tears and the usual emotions one would expect at a Disney screening. Applause filled the auditorium as the film ended with the on screen logo, “a Walt Disney production.”

Wait a minute! You might ask. Isn’t this the insensitive, offensive racist movie that black people are suppose to hate? Isn’t this the reason the Disney Company continues to keep this delightful tale of the old south under lock and key never to be released? Apparently, my African American audience of the nineteen sixties had gotten beyond that.

I wonder how long it’ll take the Walt Disney Company to do the same?

"Mr. Fun" is Floyd Norman, Disney animator and story man (today, an occasional consultant for Pixar), was named a Disney Legend in 2007, and was the first African-American animator in the Disney studios.

D23: The Official Disney Fan Club:

Wally Boag, a longtime leading man at Disneyland's Golden Horseshoe Revue and television and film actor, passed away today. He was 91 years old. Wally entertained Disneyland park guests five days a week, three times a day, for nearly 27 years.

Voyages Extraordinaires: Treasure Planet (2002):

There is an endless opportunity for speculation in assessing why Treasure Planet underperformed at theatures. A theory that I think holds some relevance for a number of films from that period is that Disney is creatively caught between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, people complain and dismiss Disney as being a company that produces princess movies and other fairy tales. Granted, that is where they are at their most iconic [...]. However, there has never been a shortage of experimentation either: once upon a time, Snow White was experimental. Fantasia and the other mid-century music anthologies were most certainly so, as were the Latin American-themed Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros.

Which leads to the other hand: people complain that Disney only makes fairy tales, and then refuse to see any Disney [animated] movie that isn't one. Is it any wonder that Disney's return to traditional animation is being heralded in by two fairy tales, Enchanted and The Princess and the Frog? When they attempt an Atlantis or a Treasure Planet, a moviegoing public cannot seem to wrap their minds around it. Nor can they, despite 20 years of Japanese animation being imported to Western shores, contemplate a mature Hollywood animated film like The Iron Giant or Titan A.E.

Unfortunately, like Fantasia, fans of the film will have to wait a few decades for vindication.

Much of the same could be said for Meet the Robinsons which was also a fantastic piece of work that got buried in the "Disney only makes fairy tales" mix, showing that Disney in 3D is just as trapped by the stereotype expectations as Disney in 2D.

I added the following comment:

Disney Animation in 3D (leaving Pixar out for a bit) hasn't done much better. Meet the Robinsons (which I also loved) was also cursed by the expectation problem, that lack of desire to see a non-princess film from the studio.

Of course that film was also hit hard by being released in a lousy time of year for movies (April, I think?), another experiment ("can we dodge the blockbuster summer and avoid getting buried by our own Pirates sequel") that didn't pay off.

Then again, Pixar too has been hit by the expectation punch. Most of their films since Nemo haven't done near Nemo's numbers in the box office, hinting to some pundits that Pixar should go back to making movies "just for little kids", in spite of the strong critical acclaim and very impressive merchandise sales (think Cars). Toy Story 3 is the recent exception that seems to prove that rule.

considering I wrote this 18 months ago, it should be noted that alongside the Fantasia Blu-Ray I also picked up Sorcerer's Apprentice (mind you, because Amazon had a bundling sale, $10 off).

Leslie Nielsen’s 1961 Visit to Disneyland Park « Disney Parks Blog:

Actor Leslie Nielsen passed away over the weekend at the age of 84. We have a publicity photo of Mr. Nielsen in our archive and I’m sharing it with you this morning in remembrance of this very funny and talented man.



The photo was taken at the Submarine Voyage at Disneyland park in 1961. At the time, Mr. Nielsen was starring as Revolutionary War fighter Francis Marion in “The Swamp Fox,” an eight-episode series shown during “Walt Disney Presents” on ABC.

'Gone with the Wind' child actress dies at 76 - Yahoo! News:

FORT BRAGG, Calif. – Cammie King Conlon, the former child actress who portrayed the doomed daughter of Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara in "Gone With the Wind," has died at the age of 76.

She died of lung cancer Wednesday morning at her Fort Bragg home on California's north coast, said friend Bruce Lewis. Her son, Matthew Ned Conlon, was by her side.

Conlon was picked to play the small, but pivotal role of Bonnie Blue Butler in the 1939 Civil War epic at age 4. Her character's death in a fall from a pony irrevocably damages Rhett and Scarlett's tumultuous marriage.

Conlon also voiced the young doe Faline in Walt Disney's "Bambi" three years later. It would be her final film role.