Pixar began with short films and it still prefaces each of its features with a short that gives them a chance to try something or someone new. That’s the best place to see the up and coming talent who will be behind some of the studio’s future releases.”Toy Story 3″ is preceded by “Day & Night” (not to be confused with this week’s Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz movie, “Knight and Day”), a stupendously clever and entertaining film with some of the most eye-popping use of 3D ever put on (and exploding off of a) screen
Characters in peril, scary monster, dinosaurs die out
Diversity Issues:
None
Date Released to Theaters:
1940
Date Released to DVD:
2010
Amazon.com ASIN:
B0040QTNSK
Disney’s glorious “Fantasia” and its sequel, “Fantasia 2000” are out for a limited time in a spectacular 4-DVD blu-ray package.
Considered a failure on its original release, “Fantasia’s” eight-part combination of images and music is now indisputably a classic. Musicologist Deems Taylor explains that there are three kinds of music: music that paints a picture, music that tells a story, and “absolute music,” or music for music’s sake, and then shows us all three. Highlights include Mickey Mouse as The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, whose plan to save himself from a little work by enchanting a broom to carry the buckets of water gets out of control, the Nutcracker Suite’s forest moving from fall into winter (with the adorable mushroom doing the Chinese Dance), Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, with characters from Greek mythology celebrating at a festival and seeking shelter from a storm, and the Dance of the Hours, with ostrich and hippo ballerinas dancing with gallant (if overburdened) crocodiles.
It concludes with the scary Night on Bald Mountain followed by the dawn’s Ave Maria. The movie is perfect for blu-ray — it’s as though we can finally see the colors the way the artists could only dream of. The flying Pegasus family soars through the sky, the thistles kick like Cossacks to the Russian dance, the dinosaurs lumber to the Rite of Spring. This is one of the greatest movies in cinematic history, groundbreaking and timeless.
And there’s more. Disney planned another musical segment designed by famous surrealist artist Salvador Dali, who came out to the Disney studio for eight months to work on it. But it was canceled due to financial setbacks at the company at the time, and Disney always regretted that it was not completed. It has become a legend, much speculated about and sought after. This splendid set includes Destino, with Roy Disney at long last completing Dali’s original vision, 58 years after he began it.
Roy Disney also supervised “Fantasia 2000,” the sequel, which includes a charming Al Hirschfeld-inspired Manhattan saga set to George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” and a wildly funny flamingo/yo-yo mix-up (more like a pile-up) to the music of Saint-Seans.
Fantasia/Fantasia 2000 is a genuine family treasure, guaranteed to inspire and entertain all ages. Grab it while you can.
A Useless and Stupid Product for Expectant Mothers
Posted on June 18, 2010 at 3:56 pm
Children should be exposed to music as early and as often as possible and there is nothing wrong with pregnant women doing the best they can to surround themselves with soothing and beautiful sounds for their own benefit and the baby’s. But this new product, Sound Beginnings and its competitors are simply idiotic. They are belts for a pregnant woman to strap to her belly so that she can pipe music and other sounds directly to the baby from her own MP3 player.
Research does show that babies hear in utero. But that does not mean that they need some contraption to provide more benefit more than they get from what is going on around their mothers as they conduct their lives. If you want the baby to hear music, play some. If you want the baby to hear voices, talk. There is no data to show that the baby, surrounded by amniotic fluid inside the uterus, can hear any better via a belly strap than via the ambient environment as conducted through the mother’s skeletal system. There is no evidence to support any benefit whatsoever from this product other than for the companies prying more money away from expectant parents and their families and giving them even more anxiety and homework.
Additional stupidities: “The speakers are made to keep the total sound output at a low level for babies with the loudest it can go at 85 decibels. Furthermore, the speakers are encased in padded vinyl which almost eliminates the vibrations making it even safer for little ears.” Again, no data whatever to support this claim of what is or is not safe “for little ears” or at what stage of development the ears are functional. And it comes in three colors, black, white, and a pinkish they call “nude” — an offensive use of this term in a world where pregnant women and their babies have many different skin tones.
The people who sell this junk should be ashamed of themselves, as should the bogus organizations that have given it “awards:” Disney’s Iparenting media award, Mom’s Best Award, and the Parent Tested Parent Approved Media Award. All three of these “organizations” are money-making semi-scams that charge fees from products submitted for “awards.” Note that there are no awards from any educational, obstetric, or pediatric associations.
I remember a visit to my obstetrician when I was pregnant with our first child. The doctor said that the baby would recognize our voices when he was born from hearing them so frequently in utero. “Well,” my husband said, “the baby will probably recognize Cary Grant’s voice, too. She watches a lot of movies!” To this day, our son will tease me when he hears Cary Grant’s voice by saying, “Why does that sound so familiar?” And just think, even without a belly strap that protected his little ears.
Disney’s online role-playing game Pixie Hollow is based on its DVD series about Tinker Bell and her friends. It gives children a chance to select a (female) fairy avatar and interact with other fairies. Salon’s Mary Elizabeth Williams reports that Pixie Hollow has its first boy avatar, called a “sparrow man.”
But children are pretty resourceful little gender warriors. The open secret around the Hollow has long been that if you make your fairy tall, with short hair, and give her an ambiguous name like Jamie, she can pretty quickly establish a reputation as a he.
It may be that little boys want to play. Or, it may be that little girls want to have boy characters to dress up and interact with. It may be that today’s children are comfortable exploring the meaning of gender boundaries.
The fact that when young visitors create characters now they’re presented with both a female and a male avatar and prompted to “please pick one” is a big deal for a generation that’s going to grow up spending a portion of its life online. It says that there are choices.
is a genuine family treasure, guaranteed to inspire and entertain all ages. Grab it while you can.
