Buzz Lightyear of Star Command: Reset

"Toy Story 3 - Spanish Buzz"

DisneyPixar, YouTube (June 22, 2010)
video 2:10

Buzz Lightyear of Star Command. Spanish dance. Dancing with the Stars. Pixar.

And a cartoon hat that was too wide.

DisneyPixar's YouTube video is definitely a promotional piece for "Toy Story 3:" and fun to watch. My opinion. One thing I appreciate about it is the quick glimpses at the production process for the film.

'Toy Story 3' - Buzz? No, Really: That was in the Headline

"'Toy Story 3' lives up to buzz with $41M opener"
The Associated Press (June 19, 2010)

" 'Toy Story 3' has become the favorite plaything for moviegoers as the animated sequel heads to a $100-million-plus opening weekend.

"The latest hit from Disney's Pixar Animation took in $41 million in its first day Friday...."

I know that "buzz," in this context, can mean "a confusion of activity and gossip." (Princeton's WordNet) But considering that a key character in the Toy Story movies is Buzz Lightyear of Star Command - that headline is one of the more delightfully painful plays on words it's been my pleasure to read in the news for a long time.

I'm planning to see "Toy Story 3" soon, by the way: and looking forward to the experience.

Why Do My Nostrils Whisper to Me? - Phineas and Ferb, Disney and Serious Thought

"Phineas And Ferb - The Ballad of Bad Beard Song HQ+Lyrics+Download Link"

xXFurijsXx, YouTube (May 26, 2009)
video 0:37

This is an excerpt from a longer work of cinematography: "The Ballad of Bad Beard" (Phineas and Ferb, Disney). The astute observer will note that there's a perfectly reasonable - for the Phineas and Ferb universe - explanation for Candace's short soliloquy: "Why do my nostrils whisper to me?" Two, actually.

"P&F - The Ballad of Badbeard 1/1"

Disney4lyf, YouTube (June 20, 2008)
video 9:57

(The Ballad starts about 5:42 into the show.)

As the excerpt and episode incontrovertibly demonstrate, the Disney animation series, Phineas and Ferb, is a trenchant inquiry into the meaning of life, the life of meaning, and why one's nostrils whisper to one.

Or, it's a series of distinctly funny , well-paced cartoons.

One thing's for sure: Although the technical quality of this made-for-television serial is pretty good, and the storytelling as complex as in earlier Disney Studios releases, Phineas and Ferb is not what I'd call a "nostalgic" series.

Let's put it this way: "Bambi" it ain't.

More "MOM! Phineas and Ferb are Building a Website!" at Disney Channel.

"Complex?" I'd better explain that. Disney Studios was pretty good at making what I call 'multi-level' movies, like Lady and the Tramp or Bambi. The pacing ensured that the show would have a fairly simple story with enough movement and action to (generally) hold the attention of younger kids, interlaced with a more complicated story with less action more dialog for the parents. It added up to 'family' entertainment.

I think we're looking at something like that, with a very different style, in P&F.

Hansel and Gretel, the Silly Symphony and Before

"Babes in the Woods"
IMDB

"Two Dutch children stumble on a clearing in the woods where gnomes are going about their business. The gnomes are friendly to the children...."

I found this, after one of my kids asked about a cartoon we'd seen. She remembered it as a Hansel and Gretel adaptation, where the witch gets covered by something like chocolate and hardens. She thought it was a Disney cartoon, but I wasn't convinced.

I remembered the cartoon, too, and started a search: which led me to "Babes in the Woods." Wouldn't you know it, it's a Disney Silly Symphony. To make sure we were really looking at what we both remembered, we viewed "Babes in the Woods" on YouTube.

"Babes in the Woods (1932)"
Walt Disney Silly Symphony (1932)

YouTube video (July 7, 2008)
video (7:42)

No question about it: this was the 'hardened witch' cartoon.

I'd forgotten about the gnomish air corps: with geese and pumpkins.

Fun? I think so. But some people find stories like this scary.

I can see the point: thrown out of their home, lost in the woods, threatened by a cannibalistic nut, and forced to commit a particularly messy sort of murder in self-defense. Quite a kiddie story.

Project Gutenberg has an e-book copy of "Grimm's Fairy Tales by Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm" (in English, thankfully), and TVTropes.com has a pretty good writeup about Hansel and Gretel.

I may have some very interesting dreams tonight.

Make Your Own Disneyland Sign - Virtually, of Course

"Disneyland Sign Generator"
Add Letters

This is a simple, and fun, bit of online software: You can put your own message, complete with a Disney image, on a Disneyland sign. Virtually, of course.

They've got a Newspaper Headline Generator too.

Google Earth Maps / Disney World Interactive Fly-Through - This is Fun!

The odds are pretty good that this is the only way I'll get to Disney World. I read about Disney World being mapped into Google Earth, "in what Disney claims is the largest corporate entry on Google Earth" - as it said in the news.

I heard about the new gimmick on the news this morning, decided to try it out, and found a link to Disney World's introduction.

A video with Ludwig von Drake as narrator introduced me to the Disney/Google Earth 3D interactive flythrough. Then the video started replaying. I don't know if it's on an endless loop, and I'm not going to find out.

There's a catch to this Disney World map. Actually, two.

First, you'll need "the latest version of Google Earth" ("Google Earth 4.3, according to an Australian news article).

Second, this 3D virtual Disneyland isn't for older, slower computers. The good news is that Google Earth is free, and so is the Disney service.

I tried it with Google Earth 4.2. I could use it to find my way around, and get some information, but it wasn't 'as advertised' (naturally). Even so, it was pretty impressive to someone like me, who was around when 16-color graphics was a cutting-edge breakthrough.

So, I upgraded to Google Earth 4.3, tried it again - saw the same flat, very non-3D views.

Oh, wait.

When all else fails, read the instructions.

It's pretty clear that you're supposed to put "Show Disney World in 3D" in a popup (which didn't appear on my screen - no surprise, since I've opted out of popups). A button, quite prominently placed near the top of the screen, was labeled 'see this in 3D, you nitwit' - except the button was more polite.

I did, and buildings started popping out of the flat map.

I clicked the Mickey Mouse ears, and was on my way. After getting the hang of the controls, I flew under the monorail and at treetop level, past some of the attractions.

Actually, a little under treetop level. If I'd been in a real aircraft, I'd have probably made national headlines.

"Google Earth maps Disney theme park"
NEWS.com.au (June 6, 2008)

"WALT Disney was right: it's a small world after all.

"The sprawling Walt Disney World theme park in Orlando Florida has been mapped onto Google Earth, in what Disney claims is the largest corporate entry on Google Earth.

"Tourists will now able to plan their trip around Disney World with the aid of a 3D Google Earth map."

Walt! Say it Ain't So! Mickey was a Knockoff??

"Micky Mouse vs Mickey Mouse" raises the possibility that Mickey Mouse was copied from a mouse toy made by the Performo-Toy Company (I hadn't heard of them,either), called - Mickey.

There are a lot of coincidences, but I think there's at least a 50-50 chance that Walt Disney at least thought he had come up with "Mickey" on his own. He may have seen the PTC Mickey, and retained an unconscious memory - or Walt's Mickey may look like PTC's Mickey because both are highly anthropomorphised and abstracted mice, designed by people in the same culture at the same time.

Sadly .... no, I'll let you read it.

(However, before getting boiling mad about Disneyco over this, remember the flap over the Nebraska ETV Network's logo, which they paid a commercial artist to create. Then, in 1975, NBC trotted out a new logo that exactly the same as the Nebraska ETV logo. The last I heard of it, Nebraska ETV was about to be squashed by NBC's legal department.

Happily, NBC decided to pay ETV's expenses for creating and distributing a new logo, and threw in some new equipment.)