Watchin' Disney #07: The Three Caballeros

Lord that post about Saludos Amigos stinks. The thing is is that Saludos Amigos is just a collection of shorts about Latin America, and there isn't a whole lot to write about something like that. The movie of today, The Three Caballeros, is also a collection of shorts about Latin America, so just go ahead and skip this post; it will suck.

Previous relationship with movie: Owned it on VHS as a kid, have had "THE THREE CABALLEROS, THEY SAY WE ARE BIRDS OF A FEATHAAAHHHH" running through my head for about 16 years.

So I watched it: This movie is pretty great. Our old pal Donald Duck is the star, the movie starts out with Donald Duck receiving a package from his Latin American friends. The package is some films that are, much like the content of Saludos Amigos, a bunch of short cartoons that have to do with Latin America. Soon enough, Donald's pal and my new favorite Disney Character Joe Carioca comes and sings songs and does dances with Donald and eventually their other friend Panchito comes and, again, more singing and dancing. The whole like last half of the movie is basically just many different scenes of Donald dancing with live action Latinas.

Oh, also there's a really cool rude bird called the Aracuan, he might be my favorite character instead of Joe Carioca actually (trust me he's great).

Anyway, despite my snark, this movie rules.

Best part of the movie: New feature of Watchin' Disney! The best part of this movie is when Donald Duck throws his sombrero in the air and it turns into a sailor hat and falls on his head.

Up next: Make Mine Music, how bout that.

Watchin' Disney #06: Saludos Amigos

It's been too long since the last time I've watched Disney, but I haven't forgotten about this blog feature (making me the only one alive who hasn't forgotten about my own blog's blog feature). The reason for the delay: I'm up to Saludos Amigos, which proved kind of hard to find a library that had it on DVD to rent. I ended up getting it on loan from a library from Martin Luther King Dallas Library (who knew Texas had a Martin Luther King Library? I kinda expected a Chuck Norris Library or Alamo Library or something). Anyways, I got the DVD, I watched it, and now I'ma blog about it.

Previous relationship with movie: Never even heard of it! I didn't even know it was a movie (it kind of isn't, it's 42 minutes long).

So I watched it: I like it! It's pretty much one of those movies where Walt tries to teach you stuff; in this instance, he tries to teach you about Latin America. It's basically four shorts put together with some footage of the Disney animators going to Mexico and learning about the culture and drawing cartoons of it, and then you watch the cartoons they draw! Cool!

The shorts are all pretty good. The first three are a Donald Duck cartoon, a cartoon about an anthropomorphic plane with a mom plane and a dad plane, and a Goofy cartoon. They're all pretty basic Disney cartoons, except they happen to take place in Mexico. The last cartoon is Donald Duck meeting rude parrot Jose Carioca, in a watercolor painting of Brazil. I don't have much to say about them really. They're just cool cartoons, I recommend this movie.

Man this is a terrible blog post. The thing is I'm rushing it because this DVD is due soon and I'm gonna rack up mad fines if it's late seeing as how it needs to be shipped back to Dallas.

Up next: The Three Caballeros; more Jose Carioca, I can't wait.

COS + EFFECT

I made this:

Watchin' Disney #05: Bambi

Hey it's Bambi, you guys know that movie. Let's go watch some Disney.

Previous relationship with movie: I don't really have any strong memories of watching Bambi. I'm sure I've seen it before, because I own a VHS copy of it and for the first six or so years of my life I did nothing but watch Disney movies on VHS. A couple of months ago I bought a slipcover-less used copy of the Bambi Platinum Edition DVD because it's out of print and I had either started or was planning to start Watchin' Disney: The Blog Feature.

So I watched it: I don't think I have too much to say about Bambi. I can see why I don't have strong memories of it, despite having probably seen it, because not a whole lot happens in it. That's not a bad thing though. It is a good thing. The movie is just basically a bunch of scenes where Bambi grows up and lives his life in a forest. It's a cool thing to try, a "realistic" movie about forest critters. It's a thing that was worth doing, and thank god Walt and co. did it when they did cause you can't just make an animated movie about scenes in a forest now. Yeah, Bambi's mom dies, but that's not the point of this movie. It's just a thing that happens in Bambi's life.

Speaking of Bambi's mom dying, this movie is pretty dark, enough to make me think the Disney stereotype of "cutesy forest critters" is undeserved, and that said stereotypes' parodies involving Disney-esque cutesy forest critters doing rude things like KILLING each other and having BLOOD and GUTS are in fact entirely superfluous.

What else can I talk about, uhhh, I had no idea that Bambi grows up in this movie, but he does, he grows up and gets a grown up voice like Simba. I can't really take grown up Bambi seriously though, I mean his name is BAMBI. The DVD box cover as well as this blog post features Bambi making cute eyes at a butterfly, who expects to see that character all grown up with antlers and everything? But at the end of the movie grown Bambi beats up a bunch of hunting dogs and that's pretty cool. (Don't worry about spoilers, like I said this movie pretty much has no story.) I liked Bambi, for real, I just still haven't really gotten into the rhythms of the old Disney animated movies. It's taking me a while!

Up next: Saludos Amigos. What the hell is Saludos Amigos? I'm afraid it's going to be a while before I can work up the enthusiasm to go rent and watch that, hopefully not too long though.

Teaser image, oo la la

A preview image of a video project I'm doing, I hope turns out cool.

Watchin' Disney #04: Dumbo

Here's a little movie about an elephant with big ears.

Previous relationship with movie: I'm not sure if I have ever seen Dumbo. I thought I'd seen it; I remembered it starting out with baby Dumbo hatching from an egg. Then he is made to work in the circus where he gets teased by the other elephant children for his big ears, and he doesn't like it so he flies to the city. City life is too hard for Dumbo, so he flies back to the circus and becomes a star for his big ears and everyone loves him. As I found out from watching the movie, pretty much all of this was wrong. So, I don't know if I've ever actually watched it. I've also never seen Dumbo's Circus.

So I watched it: Dumbo is actually pretty ridiculous. There's a scene where the circus ringmaster makes all of the elephants stack up in a pyramid. I dunno man, if I saw a bunch of elephants stacked on top of each other in real life, all standing on their feet and practically reaching the roof, I'd be terrified. I wouldn't think it was a cool circus trick at all. The whole movie kind of exists in a sort of believable/cartoony mix. So it's weird, you're watching a movie about a flying elephant and you have to remind yourself that it's a cartoon. But hey, these guys were pretty much inventing animated movies, so you gotta cut them some slack.

Dumbo reminds me a lot of Pinocchio, and not just because it has a mentor mouse in the Jiminy Cricket role. Like Pinocchio, it has a pretty insane story that is paced so bizarrely. For example, this movie is 64 minutes long, and you don't actually see Dumbo fly until about 60 minutes in. It works well within the movie, but it's still weird to watch a movie about a flying elephant and see a total four minutes of flying. Only Operation Dumbo Drop has a lower flying elephant time to total running time ratio in the history of movies called Dumbo. Oh, also there's a scene in Dumbo where Dumbo and his mouse friend get drunk and have visions of dancing elephants, and that takes up like five minutes (out of 64 minutes). And then there are the vaguely-racist crows. Anyway I liked Dumbo. I don't know how I'd rank it against the rest of the Disney movies so far, but I liked it. This also has the best songs in a Disney movie so far, "Casey Junior" is going to be playing in my head for weeks.

Up next: Bambi, let's see how that goes.

Watchin' Disney #03: Fantasia

It has been too long since I've last Watched Disney, and for that I am sorry. I've actually had Fantasia rented for weeks but, as I said in the last post, I kind of thought it blew, so I was putting off watching it as much as I could. But Watchin' Disney isn't about whether or not I feel like Watchin' Disney, it's about Watchin' Disney. So Disney I watched.

Previous relationship with movie: Well, I kind of thought it blew.

So I watched it: I do not think it blows anymore. First of all I haven't seen this movie since I was a kid and no duh a kid is going to think a movie about shapes dancing along to classical music blows. Second of all my most recent memory of Fantasia is seeing Fantasia 2000, which best I can remember really did kind of blow. But that is dozens of Watchin' Disneys away. So as I've said, I don't think Fantasia blows anymore, in fact I like it now.

I mean this movie just starts out so bizarrely. The title doesn't even come up at the beginning. Just some guy walks up to the screen, and explains that they're going to play some classical music with animated visuals set to it. Like, he just says it like it's the most normal thing in the world. Now I can't claim to know what was going on in 1940, but the DVD is restored so well that it looks like it was shot today, and it's not like the fashions of the classical music scene have changed a lot since 1200 or whatever A.D., so I couldn't help watch this guy explain the concept of Fantasia as though it was made today, and it was almost like a Tim and Eric sketch come to life. So insane. Maybe that's why Fantasia 2000 kind of blew, because they had Penn and Teller do tricks and other comedians come out and crack jokes rather than just say it like it is that they're going to play some classical music with animations and you are going to watch.

And even then they just show the orchestra playing for like six minutes before there's actually any animation, and even then it's just a bunch of lines bouncing around. Frankly the actual animated parts of Fantasia aren't THAT good. They're extremely well-animated no doubt but they're not really all that entertaining to watch. The Sorcerer's Apprentice (the part with the wizard Mickey) is very obviously the best part, there's a reason that's the only part of Fantasia most people care about. However there is by a 20-minute segment where they just spit in Sarah Palin's bespectacled face by animating billions of years of evolution, complete with fish walking on land and dinosaurs non-coexisting with humans, set to classical music and marketed to children. Maybe 1940 was a lot cooler than I give it credit for.

Up next: Dumbo. That one should be soon, no more long waits, I swear.