2016 was the best year for Disney animation in a very long time, and it pleases me to no end that I'm able to say that. Walt Disney Animation began the year giving furries their new generation-defining obsession in Zootopia, which was also an all-around excellent film; in June, Pixar Animation rebounded with their best … Continue reading (Reviews) DisneyFest: Zootopia, Finding Dory, Moana
Category: Reviews
(Reviews) DisneyFest: Big Hero 6, Inside Out, The Good Dinosaur
2014 was a bit light for Walt Disney Animation and Pixar Studios. Between the two of them, they released only Big Hero 6, which turned out to be enough -- it was that year's highest-grossing animated film and won the Best Animated Feature Oscar. It also just so happened to be an excellent movie. Pixar … Continue reading (Reviews) DisneyFest: Big Hero 6, Inside Out, The Good Dinosaur
(Reviews) DisneyFest: Wreck-It Ralph, Monsters University, Frozen
Remember five years ago? It was 2012 back then and we all thought we were going to die in some really weird global cataclysm because the Mayans had deemed it so. Woody Harrelson would go down outside his camper van at Yellowstone, and the only people who would survive are John Cusack and his plucky … Continue reading (Reviews) DisneyFest: Wreck-It Ralph, Monsters University, Frozen
(Review) The Shame Locked Away in Giovanni’s Room
The Paris in James Baldwin's novel Giovanni's Room is a kind of hell in which desperate men step on each other to climb out of the hole they're in, never realizing it's possible to help lift one another out of their predicament. Fear motivates everyone; they're afraid of anyone finding out who they really are … Continue reading (Review) The Shame Locked Away in Giovanni’s Room
(Reviews) DisneyFest: Cars 2, Winnie the Pooh, Brave
By 2011, the fortunes of Disney and Pixar were reversing; while the former had finally scored a critical and commercial success with Tangled, the latter was navigating the second phase of its career after moving past its original stories with the final installment of the Toy Story trilogy. Disney released one movie that year -- … Continue reading (Reviews) DisneyFest: Cars 2, Winnie the Pooh, Brave
(Reviews) DisneyFest: The Princess and the Frog, Toy Story 3, Tangled
Disney Animation delivered a genuine surprise near Christmas of 2009 with The Princess and The Frog, a return to traditional animation that celebrated the culture of New Orleans in an adaptation of The Frog Prince. In the summer of 2010, Lee Unkrich completed Pixar's first trilogy to near-universal praise with Toy Story 3, closing the … Continue reading (Reviews) DisneyFest: The Princess and the Frog, Toy Story 3, Tangled
(Reviews) DisneyFest: WALL-E, Bolt, Up
In 2008 and 2009, both Walt Disney and Pixar Animation were entering a new era. Disney Animation was under the control of Pixar executives Edwin Catmull and John Lassater, who set about trying to turn around the studio. They rehired a lot of the "new guard" who had left the studio years earlier, changed the … Continue reading (Reviews) DisneyFest: WALL-E, Bolt, Up
(Reviews) DisneyFest: Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Monsters Inc., Lilo & Stitch
After the surprise success of The Emperor's New Groove, Disney took a sharp turn towards science-fiction adventure with...mixed success. Meanwhile, Pixar really stepped into it's own with ambitious and confident storytelling, pushing the limits of what CGI animation could do in every new film. This aesthetic is one they never really got away from, which … Continue reading (Reviews) DisneyFest: Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Monsters Inc., Lilo & Stitch
(Reviews) DisneyFest: Fantasia 2000, Dinosaur, The Emperor’s New Groove
Between classes, my day job and the crushing despair of the election, I haven't had a lot of energy to write. I've been wanting to step back into the writing projects that have kept me anchored when the rest of my life is flying apart, and that starts with this blog. There is an awful … Continue reading (Reviews) DisneyFest: Fantasia 2000, Dinosaur, The Emperor’s New Groove
(Reviews) A Pixar-Disney Sandwich
At this point in the Disney animated canon, Walt Disney Studios is coming to the end of their Renaissance while a young upstart CGI studio named Pixar is on the rise. The House of Mouse put a lot of their effort into adapting a really tricky Edgar Rice Burroughs pulp-adventure, while the boys in Emeryville … Continue reading (Reviews) A Pixar-Disney Sandwich
From the Desk of Jakebe T. Rabbit 