Ah, “Disney Movies” — a staple of the childhood of pretty much any American child from the 1990s. These animated films — mostly Broadway-inspired musicals — produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios (née Walt Disney Feature Animation) became one of the most trusted brands in all of cinema thanks to a fantastic run of films…
This post is part of The Month of Animated Features. Without thinking too much about it, what’s your gut answer to the headline? Once you take a close look at the catalog of animated features released over the years, the answer becomes pretty obvious pretty quickly. First, let’s examine this question in terms of rigid numeric…
This post is part of The Month of Animated Features. Read part one of Disney’s Golden Age historical overview here. Following the 1942 release Bambi, the next several years were not a kind decade to Walt Disney’s animation studio. With a limited staff and limited funds, they produced only six “package films,” only one of which…
This post is part of The Month of Animated Features. While the Golden Age overview highlights the role of Snow White in the history of animation, this post takes a look at Snow White in terms of how creatively valuable it is as a film viewed today. Film Focus: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,…
Though it’s hard to imagine it today, cartoons existed long before the television. In the late 1920s, feature length animation was nothing more than a radical experiment, but silent cartoon shorts were relatively common and shown in movie theaters. This infancy of American animation would shortly give way to one of the style’s most creative periods. According to most film historians’…
This post is part of The Month of Animated Features Before I spend a month writing about it, I figure I should explain what animation means to me and why I find it so appealing. “Animated movie” is often regarded as a genre, much like comedy or drama. In reality, animation is a style rather…
Rating: **** (out of 4) Sorry, Shutter Island. Toy Story 3 is my favorite movie I’ve seen this year, and it’s not even close. I’m an unashamed Pixar fanboy, so you should probably take my reactions with a grain of salt. But here is my attempt to persuade you to see Pixar’s latest masterpiece, in…