Disney Lies

Correction

In an earlier post we announced that “The Aristocats Special Edition” DVD was overpriced and that readers should consider purchasing “the plain old The Aristocrats DVD instead.” It turns out that “The Aristocrats” is a different movie entirely, and we received many e-mails from parents who mistakenly followed our advice (to the delight, amazement, and/or confusion of their children). Sorry ’bout that!

Disney’s 50th animated feature has been approved and is moving into production. All Together Now is going to be a musical tour-de-force, starring characters from all preceding Disney animated features. The film will be a combination of 2D and 3D animation, much to the delight of fans of both mediums.

“We are very pleased to have put together a plan that will allow Disney to return to traditional animation, at least in part, in time for its fiftieth feature,” said Pete Schill, supposedly a Disney animation lead. “To keep costs under control, All Together will be composed entirely of animation recycled from other films, but with all new dialogue by current hot Disney stars. It’ll be like a wonderful collage — funny, delightful, nostalgic, and most importantly, cheap.”

We at DisneyLies can’t wait! See you at the movies in 2011!

Gustov Fuhrurfan, head of Hitlermania, an Adolf-Hitler-themed museum in Norway, claims to have discovered a number of sketches of Disneys Seven Dwarfs made by Hitler himself. “This is pretty definitive proof,” said Fuhrurfan, “that Walt Disney himself hired Adolf to do character design for Snow White. There is really no other possible explanation, and I recommend that anyone who disagrees with this assessment be investigated by the government with extreme prejudice.”

Fuhrurfan also contends that Hitler was a key animator on several Mickey Mouse shorts (most notably, “Poland Trouble”) and recommended that Disney organize his theme park into “easily conquered ‘lands’.”

Toy Story and Toy Story 2 will be rereleased in theaters (in 2009 and 2010 respectively, but not necessarily in that order), but this time there will new depth to the story. Both films will be released in 3D, offering an additional dimension of entertainment to those who own 3D glasses.

The reworking of the computer animated portion of the films for 3D is not particularly difficult, in that it can be accomplished by computer. However, calling Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, and other stars of the film back into the studio to re-record their dialogue in 3D is proving to be very time consuming. (The part of Slinky Dog will be recreated by Jim Carey because Jim Varney, being dead, is not available.)

Pixar announced that its animated version of the classic novel Don Quixote will be released in 2009. For marketing reasons, the film will be titled Up — apparently 97% of Americans are unable to pronounce “Quixote” correctly, and 17% of those who even try actually end up injuring themselves.

The novel’s story will be followed very closely. As it is summed up in the official press release: “Up follows the adventures of Dog Quixote and his constant companion Sancho Panda as they imagine themselves enjoying the ‘night life’ in their uneventful Spanish village.” Sounds like fun to us!

In January, Disney will release, for the first time on DVD, Song of the South ‑ the Director’s Cut. The name of the project is a bit of a misnomer, in that this brand-new re-editing of the controversial animation classic was not created at the behest of its original director, but by Disney’s marketing department.

The new cut includes no scenes that anyone could possibly find offensive. “We don’t want to offend anyone,” said imaginary Disney spokesperson Polly Sensitive. “This is a kinder, gentler film, with no troublesome imagery and a running time that is more in keeping with today’s on-the-go lifestyle.”

The film, now approximately four seconds long and consisting entirely of the Buena Vista distribution logo reveal, will be available at Staples in spindles of 100 for use as blank DVD media.

A few weeks ago, the first single frame of animation from the new Disney film Bolt was released, and reaction by die-hard online Disney animation fans has been — to put it mildly — extreme. “It’s a bunch of crud,” said LuvDaMOUSE on the HappyTimes.com discussion board after his grammar, spelling, and punctuation were cleaned up. “I can’t believe that we’ve waited so long for this. It’s not animation, it’s crudimation. You can tell that the whole story is going to stink to high heaven from soup to nuts after seeing just one forest for this tree.”

DisFanbaoy4FR on the MoleHillMedia.com discussion board added, “There are no evil cats with eye patches anywhere in that frame. This bites like a stinking pile. I don’t even have my masters in art yet and I could do better than this. I don’t care when it comes out, I’m not even going to ask my mom to take me.”

Bolt – the story of a dog who thinks he has super powers but finds out he is wrong and gets over his depression about not being able to fly like Underdog with the help of his cowboy friend Woodie the Hamster — will be released in November. Based on their comprehensive reaction to what little information is available about the film, bitter fans are already lining up at theaters in great numbers to not buy opening-day tickets.

There have been a number of complaints related to Disney’s new documentary, “How to Hook Up Your Home Theatre.” A number of people who have seen this training video have written to us saying that the instructions were incorrect, incomplete, or (in a few cases) just plain dangerous.

Said one guest (Edward Poochface, who prefers to remain anonymous), “Disney needs to stay out of the business of creating home improvement videos if this is how they are going to go about it. People were actually laughing, the whole thing was so ridiculous! And what’s with the guy they got to demonstrate the thing? Is he supposed to be dressed up like a dog or is he just ugly or something?”

It is hoped that this video will not lead to a rash of lawsuits, as was the case with Disney’s 1960 offering, “How To Tell If Your Neighbor is a Communist.”

Disney’s most recent family-friendly film, Enchanted, has only been out for a few days and has already raked in more than $50 million at the box office, completely silencing critics who predicted that this feature’s traditional animation would, “…horribly alienate modern audiences who can’t stand anything less than computer animation in a feature film. They’ll be clawing at their eyeballs and fleeing the theater within the first five minutes.”

Fans of traditional animation are, to say the least, overjoyed at the film’s reception. Says Peter Celinker of the California Center for Intense Manual Labor Arts, “Although the first ten minutes of the film were obviously created using traditional animation techniques, most viewers should be unaware that the entire film is, in fact, hand animated. This proves, without a shadow of a doubt, that traditional animation can hold its own with ‘computer’ or ‘lazy’ animation when it comes to realism.” Celinker admitted that hand-drawing this kind of detail was time consuming, even when digital methods are used to color cells. “It’s true that the whole process is labor intensive. Enchanted began principle animation in 1998 and was barely completed before the film’s release date, and production costs were somewhere in the low billions, but once you see the final product on the screen, you know it was all worth it!”