Disney
Related: American culture - Hollywood - entertainment - escapism
Contrast: 42nd street in much of the 20th century
Schloss Neuschwanstein, near Munchen, Germany
Schloss Neuschwanstein without a doubt the most famous castle in Bavaria. This castle was also built by Ludwig II, and it dates from the middle of the 19th century. The amazing mix of styles of this castles make it an outstanding structure and create an unreal and romantic impression. Disney used it as its base for the castle in Disney Land. [Aug 2006]
Profile
The Walt Disney Company (most commonly known as Disney) (NYSE: DIS) is one of the largest media and entertainment corporations in the world. Founded on October 16, 1923 by brothers Walt and Roy Disney as a small animation studio, today it is one of the largest Hollywood studios and also owns nine theme parks and several television networks, including the American Broadcasting Company (ABC).
Disney's corporate headquarters and primary production facilities are located at the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California, USA. The company is a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. It had revenues of $31.9 billion in 2005. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney [Aug 2006]
Disneyfication
Adult entertainment sites filled the Times Square district beginning in the mid-1960s, and continuing until the Disneyfication of the area in the mid-1990s. There are still such sites in the vicinity, although far fewer of them. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_New_York_City#Multicultural_impact [Jan 2005]Fantasia (1940) - Ford Beebe, Bill Roberts
Fantasia (1940) - Ford Beebe, Bill Roberts [Amazon.com]
Groundbreaking on several counts, not the least of which was an innovative use of animation and stereophonic sound, this ambitious Disney feature has lost nothing to time since its release in 1940. Classical music was interpreted by Disney animators, resulting in surreal fantasy and playful escapism. Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra provided the music for eight segments by the composers Tchaikovsky, Moussorgsky, Stravinsky, Beethoven, Ponchielli, Bach, Dukas, and Schubert. Not all the sequences were created equally, but a few are simply glorious, such as "Night on Bald Mountain," "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," and "The Nutcracker Suite." The animation ranges from subtly delicate to fiercely bold. The screen bursts with color and action as creatures transmute and convention is thrust aside. The painstaking detail and saturated hues are unique to this film, unmatched even by more advanced technology. --Rochelle O'Gorman, amazon.com
More films
- Tron (1982) - Steven Lisberger [1 DVD, Amazon US]
The surprising truth about Disney's 1982 computer-game fantasy is that it's still visually impressive (though technologically quaint by later high-definition standards) and a lot of fun. It's about a computer wizard named Flynn (Jeff Bridges) who is digitally broken down into a data stream by a villainous software pirate (David Warner) and reconstituted into the internal, 3-D graphical world of computers. It is there, in the blazingly colorful, geometrically intense landscapes of cyberspace, that Flynn joins forces with Tron (Bruce Boxleitner) to outmaneuver the Master Control program that holds them captive in the equivalent of a gigantic, infinitely challenging computer game. Disney's wizards used a variety of cinematic techniques and early-'80s state-of-the-art computer-generated graphics to accomplish their dynamic visual goals, and the result was a milestone in cyberentertainment, catering to technogeeks while providing a dazzling adventure for hackers and nonhackers alike. Appearing just in time to celebrate the nascent cyberpunk movement in science fiction, Tron received a decidedly mixed reaction when originally released, but has since become a high-tech favorite and a landmark in special effects, with a loyal following of fans. --Jeff Shannon for amazon.com - The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) - Henry Selick [Amazon US]
For those who never thought Disney would release a film in which Santa Claus is kidnapped and tortured, well, here it is! The full title is Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas, which should give you an idea of the tone of this stop-action animated musical/fantasy/horror/comedy. It is based on characters created by Burton, the former Disney animator best known as the director of Pee-wee's Big Adventure, Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, and the first two Batman movies. His benignly scary-funny sensibility dominates the story of Halloweentown resident Jack Skellington (voice by Danny Elfman, who also wrote the songs), who stumbles on a bizarre and fascinating alternative universe called ... Christmastown! Directed by Henry Selick (who later made the delightful James and the Giant Peach), this PG-rated picture has a reassuringly light touch. As Roger Ebert noted in his review, "some of the Halloween creatures might be a tad scary for smaller children, but this is the kind of movie older kids will eat up; it has the kind of offbeat, subversive energy that tells them wonderful things are likely to happen." --Jim Emerson for Amazon.com
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