We're not ashamed to admit that we're big Disney fans here at Stylist. Having grown up in the days before Pixar and CGI animation, classics such as Snow White, Robin Hood and The Lion King are a treasured part of our DVD collection. So we felt just a touch disappointed to discover not all of our favourite films were hand-crafted from scratch.
Given that it used to take around three years to make a traditional, hand-drawn animated film, Disney's team no doubt rellished the opportunity to cut a few corners. The easiest way to do it? The 'copy and paste' trick - copy a scene that works, draw in new characters, and hey presto: a "brand new" Disney film from an old clip. A seemingly easy win which went completely unnoticed by viewers - until now, as the YouTube video below of the most obvious Disney doppelgangers shows...
from: http://www.movieline.com/
This weekend’s new release Winnie the Pooh is a soft-spot for us blowhards at Movieline, as it combines cherished characters, a charming new story, and a slender run time. All wonderful things! However, in the past 50 years, Winnie the Pooh and his friends have enjoyed some not-so-pure moments on their numerous VHS adventures, and in honor of Pooh’s latest film, Movieline is shedding light on seven of those now. Heffalumps abound!
1. Tigger’s guilt delusions
In Detective Tigger, Private Ear (one of my favorites), Tigger becomes inspired to don a trench coat and investigate crimes on the mean streets of the Hundred Acre Wood. To establish his reputation, he stages a honey-pot robbery and pretends to solve it. But after he questions himself at the witness stand, guilt overcomes the sputtering gumshoe, and in a spiral of delusion, all of Tigger’s friends appear to turn into giant, looming honeypots.
2. Pooh almost gets “trounced” in the Wild West
When Pooh and his friends stage a play called “The Legend of Sheriff Piglet” (in the VHS featurette “Paw and Order”) they enter a Wild West dreamworld full of High Noon scenery and old-timey characters. The main outlaw in sight is Nasty Jack, a giant “horse thief” (because he’a a horse) whose favorite activity is “trouncing” — stuffing his nemeses into sacks, roughing them up, and dropping them. Yes, that’s right: Pooh was almost beat up.
3. Tigger descends a wishing well and discovers a 50-story cake
For his birthday in “All’s Well That Ends Wishing Well,” Tigger wants a million materialistic items including banana splits, pogo sticks, and Ping Pong tables, but when his friends disappoint him with cheap gifts, he seeks solace in an old wishing well — one that leads to a crazy-ass birthday cake with a million candles on it. When Tigger discovers that a candle blows out every time he makes a wish, he learns a valuable lesson about what’s really important. Before that, he wishes up a bunch of honey for Pooh, and we watch the Bear With Very Little Brain coast on a long, honey river. Pools of honey, waves of joy are drifting through Pooh’s open mind.
4. Discovering pygmy races in “The Land of Milk and Honey”
A honey-deprived Pooh ventures on a tropical journey with his friends (that takes a wrong turn at an annoying hyena) to “the Land of Milk and Honey,” a wonderworld where mini-Piglets run amok in cute outfits. It’s exotic, strange, and — hmmm — potentially racist, but the vistas are nice.
5. Pooh fixes the sky
Using a strange prismatic ladder to the clouds, Pooh spends some time bouncing on cumulus tufts in the nether regions of the troposphere. It’s a really cute and pretty VHS adventure, but it’s also a visual journey that I associate with virtual reality and psychedelia.
6. Tigger loses his stripes, and his friends don’t see him anymore.
In a semi-Biblical adventure of self-identity, a muddy Tigger takes a bath and loses all of his stripes. Here, the jumpsuited little Piglet inspects his immaculate friend, noting, “Very clean indeed — but uh, who are you?” It’s only when Tigger relearns to bounce around and enjoy himself that he regains his stripes. For the record, the site of stripeless Tigger is traumatizing.
7. Anything involving Heffalumps and Woozles
I give you the extraordinary, haunting, and children-unsafe video for “Heffalumps and Woozels,” the acid-doused song that comes up in the 1968 featurette Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day. It precedes Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory’s Oompa Loompa medleys by three years, and Templeton’s smorgasbord sequence from Charlotte’s Web by five. It’s still so weird.
So you all remember last week when I brought you a series of GIFs demonstrating various mental disorders via Winnie the Pooh characters. That was from artist Matthew Wilkinson (warning graphic content on site), and he’s actually done another series that I think is even better.
Everyone has always thought of Alice in Wonderland as some sort of allegory for a super ridiculous drug trip, but these GIFs demonstrate just how many substances are actually covered in the story. Granted, some weren’t even invented when the story was written, but it’s hard to unsee all of these once you realize they’re there.
Check out the full GIF gallery below, and Matthew, I look forward to seeing what your next project like this will be.
GIF artist (yes, there is such a thing) Matthew Wilkinson has animated this series of images to show different mental illnesses, as acted out by Winnie the Pooh characters.
I’m not sure how I’ve never seen this before, but they really do align with all the various Pooh characters, and it makes my childhood memories just a shade or two darker.
Besides Christopher Robin hallucinating talking animals as a way of coping with his abusive father, check out the rest of the disorders below:
There are many doppelgangers and lookalikes out there. You could be minding your own business and see your evil twin stroll right on by. Well, imagine watching a Disney movie and seeing an animated version of yourself. That’s what this is. A tribute to celebrities that look like Disney characters.So sit back and enjoy the creepy similarities.
The Beast and Mickey Rourke – Even their back stories line up. Both started off good looking until some disaster struck. One was cursed by a magical beggar woman, the other cursed by terrible plastic surgeon after trying to return to boxing. It’s okay, though. Both make a comeback.
Cruella De Vil from 101 Dalmations and Madonna – With that evil look of a geriatric desperately trying to hold onto what little youth they have left (or lost long, long ago) these ladies take their elderly angst out on acquiring youthful things like puppies or children from other countries.
The Little Mermaid’s Prince Eric and Patrick Dempsey – Both are idolized by chicks. Eric gets a statue made of himself that Ariel obsesses over and Dempsey played his role on Grey’s Anatomy which catapulted himself to the hearts of every college girl in America who needed somewhere to go after Sex and the City wasn’t around anymore.
Hercules’s Hades and Gary Buesy – Seriously. There might not be a better matchup. Both lurk in the shadows of Olympus or Hollywood, using their insanity to terrify everyone.
The Little Mermaid’s Ursula and Queen Latifah – You can view it in the light that both crave that singing voice. Ursula steals if from Ariel and keeps it in that weird shell around her neck and Queen Latifah (a.k.a. Dana Elaine Owens) began as a musician and turned to acting. But in simpler terms, both are large and in this picture, their hair is the same color. Good enough.
The Sword in the Stone’s Merlin and Richard Harris as Dumbledore in Harry Potter – Yeah, this may seem easy. But I very well could have chosen Ian McKellen or the new Dumbledore played by Michael Gambon instead of Richard Harris. But they don’t really have the same look that Harris does. Maybe it has something to do with the eyebrows.
Peter Pan’s Captain Hook and legendary Howard Stern – Okay, you have to use a little imagination for this one. It’s not a perfect matchup. But it was either Howard or Weird Al and it came down to the hair. Also Captain Hook is tall (Howard’s 6′5″) and frequently complains (Howard often complains about his looks). Imagine Peter Pan being the FCC and cutting off Hook’s hand which could metaphorically be Howard getting fired from NBC. But The King of All Media didn’t peter out. Instead he came back and became a name synonymous with mischief.
Peter Pan and Justin Bieber – The boy who wouldn’t grow up. Teenage girls flock to him. Some fly. But in the end, everyone despises him because every girl loves him (Wendy, Tiger Lily, Tinkerbell, etc). It’s almost too similar. Maybe Bieber’s shadow will run away from him.
The Lady and the Tramp’s Peg and Goldie Hawn – There’s no real similarities other than that they look alike. Not saying Goldie looks like a dog or whatever. Just the way Peg’s bangs hang over her face and the way she struts around is quite reminiscent of a 1980’s Goldie Hawn.
The Lion King’s Rafiki and Morgan Freeman – Maybe it’s because they both look so wise. Maybe it’s because everyone loves them both. Maybe it’s because of the white hair and beard. Or maybe it’s because of the freckles.
Fans decked out in futuristic garb formed a line early Tuesday to see the return of the Michael Jackson film "Captain EO" to Disneyland after a 13-year hiatus.
At 10 a.m., the 17-minute, science fiction-themed musical returns to the Tomorrowland Theater for limited engagement. It replaces "Honey I Shrunk the Audience," which closed Jan. 3.
"Captain EO" debuted at the height of Jackson’s fame in 1986, featuring director Francis Ford Coppola and executive producer George Lucas. It cost a reported $30 million to make and ran as an attraction at the theme park until 1997.
Fans began lobbying for the return of the 3-D film soon after Jackson’s death last year, saying it would honor the King of Pop.
The Times' Brady McDonald, writing at the Daily Travel & Deal blog, says the return of Captain EO “presents a perplexing challenge to family-centric Disney: How to market a movie relic starring a controversial character without appearing to capitalize on his demise.”
The film stars Jackson as a captain leading a crew of aliens, robots and "fuzzball" on a spaceship on a mission to deliver a gift to a wicked alien witch played by Anjelica Huston.
A Disney spokeswoman told KTLA that there was no timeline for how long the show would run, but said it would stay for as long as it remained popular.
--Tony Barboza
Photo: "Captain EO" starring Michael Jackson thrilled Disneyland visitors from 1986 to 1997. The 3-D production reopens Tuesday at the theme park. Credit: Disneyland Resort
"Avatar": A blue-tinted rehash of "Pocahontas"? (20th Century Fox")
One of the many complaints about James Cameron's blockbuster film, "Avatar," is that its "derivative" plot ploddingly parallels that of 1995's Disney animated tale "Pocahontas." Though the similarities haven't dimmed "Avatar"'s box office — on track to beat Cameron's "Titanic," says BBC.com — they’ve provoked grassroots critics to "mash up" footage and audio from the two films to expose what they consider a shameless ripoff. Consider exhibits 1 through 4:
1. "Avatar" meets Disney: This spoof marries audio from 1995's "Pocahontas" with "Avatar" clips to make the case that the respective heros and heroines are interchangeable. By the time Vanessa Williams starts singing about blue moons and the irrelevancy of skin color (in "Colors of the Wind," the "Pocahontas" theme song) at 00:45, the two films seem to blur into one.
2. "Pocahontas" meets James Cameron: This mashup uses the reverses strategy — ambitiously syncing the "Avatar" trailer's audio with "Pocahontas" footage. Savvy viewers may notice that, at 1:28, Pocahontas begins "spouting" Sigourney Weaver's cynical "Avatar" dialogue, giving the effect that the sensitive Indian Maiden considers her lover an empty-headed himbo.
3. The alternative "Colors of the Wind" music video: Here, Vanessa William's Disney theme song becomes a musical backdrop to an "Avatar" dream date. Two large-nosed blue beings flirt, swoon, and soar about on the backs of pterodactyl-like creatures until it becomes clear that, of all the windy colors with which one can paint, blue is the most romantic.
4. "Pocahontas" recut as an "Avatar" action film: Similar to number 2 (above) but with a faster-paced, "Terminator" edge. In this version, the relatively chipper Disney tale turns menacing with help from James Horner's pounding "Avatar" soundtrack and Sigourney Weaver's voice ("let your mind go blank...") emerges not from Pocahontas, but from a sinister, anthromophized tree.
On December 5, 1901 Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was born in Chicago, Illinois.
Little did anyone know that in the next 65 years, the world of entertainment would never be the same. With his brother, Roy, Walt Disney formed Walt Disney Productions that would eventually give us some of the most famous cartoon characters of all time, from Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, created in the early years of animation, to the 21st century digital stars like Woody the cowboy and Buzz Lightyear.
Since Snow White, its first animated feature released in 1937, Disney has created over 300 characters that operate over 100 brands, creating a business worth $4.4 billion a year.
A popular showman as well as a innovator in animation and feature film production, Walt Disney became the father of the cartoon genre, picking up a huge number of awards along the way, including 59 Academy Award nominations (a record) and winning a total of 26 Oscars.
What's more, his company has come a long way since Steam Boat Willie, becoming a worldwide institution in itself with theme parks and resorts in the US, Japan, France and China.
Even since his death in 1966, technological advancements in animation and numerous shifts in the movie industry have failed to impact on Walt Disney's success.
You will struggle to find a single person on earth who has never come across at least one of Disney's many characters. And the best way to sum up the impact that Walt Disney's brainchild has had is to say that it's impossible to imagine the world without it.
Somebody had a lot of time on their hands - and compiled the cloned dance moves and character behaviors from across the whole Disney video catalog. Some sequences were used as templates, and I don't see a problem with that... This is however a valuable glimpse into the animation kitchen of Disney's "dream factory":
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All you art collectors out there. Here is a chance to get a Giclee copy of some of Ian M Sherwin work. Ian is planning on doing a whole series of Marblehead, Massachusetts paintings. His work is amazing.
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