Adventure Awaits!

My very, very good friend and podcast buddy Lou Mongello has released the second volume in his Audio Guide to Walt Disney World series. This time around, Lou guides us through the exotic paths of Adventureland. For an informative and extended review of the new CD, check out George Taylor's recent post over at Imaginerding.

My association with the Audio Guide series goes beyond just stumping for a friend. As with the first volume in the series, Main Street U.S.A., I had the distinct privilege once again to provide the illustration and design work for the compact disc packaging. Check out the JP Digital Graphics and Design site to view the entire graphics package.

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Walk Down the Middle of Main Street U.S.A. - Without Leaving Home!

Presto!

In a somewhat surprising move, the Pixar short film Presto has been made available for purchase on iTunes while simultaneously playing in theaters with Wall-E.

Wall-E

Wall-E is the right movie at the right time. It is at its core a sincere and simple love story devoid of sarcasm and cynicism, but framed within a cautionary fable that gently, though still pointedly, presents a post-apocalypse future brought about by environmental neglect and commercial over-consumption. It is a visually stunning combination of art and design that conveys an astounding emotional depth through not just its deftly animated central characters, but via landscapes and panoramas at times hauntingly surreal and and at other times dense in high tech polish.

The film's title character, a resilient and ever-curious robot appears to be the last of his kind left on a garbage-filled and long abandoned planet earth. With his only friend, an equally sturdy and resilient cockroach, he spends his days compacting and stacking trash cubes while also collecting objects and paraphernalia from what is our now bygone civilization. In doing so, he has developed an unexpected emotional dynamic that imbues in him a loneliness, inspired especially by the romantic musical vignettes he has discovered on a VHS copy of the film Hello Dolly.

Wall-E's world is rocked both literally and figuratively by the arrival of EVE, a sleek distinctly female robot sent by the space-exiled last vestiges of humanity living on a distant starship. EVE is seeking any sign of the reemergence of organic life; Wall-E in turn seeks companionship from EVE and an emotional-physical connection in the form of the hand-holding he has witnessed in the scenes from Hello Dolly. Their romance ultimately takes them into space where they confront the overweight and overstimulated remnants of the human race who live an idyllic, albeit mindless existence and have long ago lost the heartfelt connectivity that Wall-E so desperately yearns for.

The film's hallmark is most certainly its earthbound first act, almost entirely devoid of dialog yet dense in character-driven story and emotional resonance. Though his romance with EVE takes center stage, his friendship with the unnamed cockroach is equally rich in nuance and charm. Director/writer Andrew Stanton embraced a wholly unconventional approach with the material, but it paid huge dividends. So incredibly well-realized are Wall-E, EVE and the movie's other non-human denizens, you are never at a loss to understand what they are all about. It all represents a commitment to creative integrity that continues to set Pixar well above their closest competitors.

Equally entertaining, but in an altogether different way was Presto, the new Pixar animated short that preceded Wall-E. It is a beautiful and hilarious Tex Avery-inspired cartoon that is pure fun from beginning to end.

I Am Very, Very Excited . . .

This is getting to sound like a broken record: Pixar Animation Studios has just topped itself. Again.

The film is so clever and sophisticated that you worry, slightly, that it might be too clever to connect with mainstream audiences. But like those worries last year that having a rat for a hero in "Ratatouille" might throw off audiences, surely "WALL-E" will make that connection. It's so sweet and funny that the multitudes undoubtedly will surrender to its many charms.

-Hollywood Reporter

The engaging and visually stunning computer-animated WALL·E (* * * * out of four) is a significant departure for the studio, with its sci-fi plot and soundtrack of beeps and buzzes that serve as communication between the bots.
WALL·E is at once futuristic, funny and fantastical. It's an extraordinarily captivating adventure, laden with equal parts humor and heart and populated with memorable and endearing characters.

-USA Today

EVERY time I think the studio that gave us "The Incredibles" and "Ratatouille" can't possibly top itself, Pixar comes up with a masterpiece like "WALL-E," which smuggles barbed political satire into a charming, hilarious robot love story aimed at the entire family.

-New York Post

Many will attempt to describe WALL-E with a one-liner. It’s R2-D2 in love. 2001: A Space Odyssey starring The Little Tramp. An Inconvenient Truth meets Idiocracy on its way to Toy Story. But none of these do justice to a film that’s both breathtakingly majestic and heartbreakingly intimate—and, for a good long while, absolutely bereft of dialogue save the squeals, beeps, and chirps of a sweet, lonely robot who, aside from his cockroach pet, is the closest thing to the last living being on earth.

But WALL-E will not be remembered by children–or the adults for whom WALL-E is really intended–for its tsk-tsking environmental policy or its Naomi Klein polemics. Rather, you’ll adore it because of a cuddly, lonely little robot who breaks your beeping heart.

-Village Voice

The first 40 minutes or so of Wall-E— in which barely any dialogue is spoken, and almost no human figures appear on screen — is a cinematic poem of such wit and beauty that its darker implications may take a while to sink in. The scene is an intricately rendered city, bristling with skyscrapers but bereft of any inhabitants apart from a battered, industrious robot and his loyal cockroach sidekick. Hazy, dust-filtered sunlight illuminates a landscape of eerie, post-apocalyptic silence. This is a world without people, you might say without animation, though it teems with evidence of past life.

-New York Times

IF Pixar Animation Studios has an enviable record of consistent success -- and with a worldwide box-office gross of $4.3 billion from its eight films, it certainly does -- it's because the company has an uncanny gift for pushing things further without pushing too far. Pixar's adventurous new film, the one-of-a-kind "Wall-E," shows how it's done.

Daring and traditional, groundbreaking and familiar, apocalyptic and sentimental, "Wall-E" gains strength from embracing contradictions that would destroy other films. Directed by Pixar stalwart Andrew Stanton, who co-wrote and directed the Oscar-winning "Finding Nemo," "Wall-E" is the latest Pixar film to manage what's become next door to impossible for anyone else: appealing to the broadest possible audience without insulting anyone's intelligence.

-Los Angeles Times

Yet even as the movie turns pointedly, and resonantly, satirical, it never loses its heart. I'm not sure I'd trust anyone, kid or adult, who didn't get a bit of a lump in the throat by the end of WALL-E, a film that brings off what the best (and only the best) Pixar films have: It whisks you to another world, then makes it every inch our own.

-Entertainment Weekly

Pixar’s “WALL•E” succeeds at being three things at once: an enthralling animated film, a visual wonderment and a decent science-fiction story. After “Kung Fu Panda,” I thought I had just about exhausted my emergency supply of childlike credulity, but here is a film, like “Finding Nemo,” that you can enjoy even if you’ve grown up. That it works largely without spoken dialogue is all the more astonishing; it can easily cross language barriers, which is all the better, considering that it tells a planetary story.

-Roger Ebert

It is, the more I think about it, a jewel of a film in conception, execution and message. But the kids, who had been laughing at a recent screening, got very quiet during certain sequences, especially when the Earth seemed irredeemable. "WALL-E's" glance into the future didn't do much for my bliss either, but the idea that a company in the business of mainstream entertainment would make something as creative, substantial and cautionary as "WALL-E" has to raise your hopes for humanity.

-Washington Post

Waste Allocation Load Lifter - Earth Class

Disney Lost and Found

Disney Lost and Found: Exploring the Hidden Artwork from Never-Produced Animation by well-regarded animation historian Charles Solomon has arrived in bookstores and it offers another illustration-rich peek into the Disney Studios fabled Animation Research Library. Solomon provided a previous tour of that archive in his extensive 1995 book The Disney That Never Was. Slighter in text and pages than that earlier exploration, Disney Lost and Found still remains a joyful experience and a welcome addition to any Disney history library.

In the book's first section, Visions Lost and Found, Solomon presents artwork and conceptualizations from classic features such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Sleeping Beauty and The Rescuers. The chapter is essentially a collection of either deleted scenes or abandoned concepts. Especially revelatory were early concept designs for Sleeping Beauty by Bill Peet that demonstrated a dramatic contrast from that film's ultimate realization, and an extensive amount of material showing two early and very different story ideas for The Rescuers.

The remainder of the book focuses specifically on two more recent abandoned projects from Walt Disney Feature Animation.

Predating Chicken Little by a number of years, Wild Life was intended to be the studio's first foray into a wholly CG animated feature. Solomon notes, "Wild Life began as a Pygmalion story designed to show children the shallowness of the world of glitz and fashion. But over the a period of months, it turned into a more cynical story set in the club scene of Big City, a fictionalized 1970s New York, the era when David Bowie and The Velvet Underground hung out with jet-setters in urban clubs." Designs by artists such as Hans Bacher, Floyd Norman and Greg Killman reveal a concept that was indeed a very dramatic departure for Disney. Alternately stunning and outrageous (and sometimes both), the designs for Wild Life clearly extended beyond what was considered appropriate for a Disney feature and it is not difficult to understand why it was ultimately shelved. As Solomon notes, " . . . insurmountable problems arose, especially between the decadent milieu of the later versions and the requirements of the traditional Disney audience."

Much more regrettable is the abandonment of My Peoples. Solomon's description of the proposed feature indicates what might have been a wholly original and visually stunning film:

"The idea for My Peoples grew out of Barry Cook's interest in American folk art. The co-director of Mulan, Cook imagined a tale of star-crossed lovers set in Appalachia in the late 1940s. Old Man McGee swears to keep his daughter Rose away from Elgin Harper because of an old feud and the superstition that 'bad things happen' when Harpers and McGees get together. The 'Peoples,' folk-art characters Elgin crafts from found objects, come to life to bring the young lovers together."

The interesting twist to the film's design was that the Peoples would have been rendered in CG in contrast to the film's overall presentation in traditional animation. The artwork revealed in the book foreshadowed what could have been an amazing and visually arresting final film. A careful reading between the lines indicates that executive-level interference ultimately doomed the project, but Solomon does note that "Some artists still hope that My Peoples will be revived one day."

One common characteristic among Disney enthusiasts seems to be the hunger to see that which might have been. Disney Lost and Found serves up a veritable feast that satisfies and manages to squelch a least some of that hunger.

Meet Wall-E and Your Fellow Carolina Enthusiasts!

Tar Heel Disney fans unite!

Next Saturday June 28, I along with my brothers in blogging George and Andrew from Imaginerding, will be hosting an informal Carolina Disney Meet to see the new Disney-Pixar film Wall-E. We will be meeting in High Point for a matinée show. For more information on theater and showtime, email George directly at biblioadonis at yahoo dot com.

Coming Soon: Kingdom Keepers 2

It's been some time in coming but the second volume in the Walt Disney World-themed young adult book series Kingdom Keepers will be released later this summer. Kingdom Keepers II: Disney at Dawn by Ridley Pearson will arrive in bookstores on August 26th. Here's the synopsis provided by the publisher:

It's supposed to be a happy day at the Magic Kingdom-the return of the teenaged holographic hosts. But things go very wrong when a sudden lightning storm disrupts the celebration, and Amanda's mysterious sister, Jez, disappears. The only clue is the sighting of a wild monkey in the Magic Kingdom during the storm. The mystery deepens as Finn is contacted by Wayne, an old man he hasn't heard from in months. Wayne tells Finn that there's trouble at the Animal Kingdom: the evil Overtakers have gained control of one of the computer servers that will be used to operate Daylight Holographic Imaging there. That means that if any of the holographic hosts fall asleep, they will go into comas-permanently. Filled with action and brimming with the same meticulous detail as The Kingdom Keepers: Disney After Dark, this second book in the series-Disney at Dawn-is the result of hands-on research behind the scenes at Disney's Animal Kingdom Park. Young and older readers alike will get a glimpse into a second Disney kingdom. The wild rides have only just begun; and the clock is ticking. How long can the teens keep themselves awake in their quest to find their friend-and what happens if they fail?

The first Kingdom Keepers, also penned by Pearson and released in 2005, was a generally fun, if not a bit wacky at times adventure. It clearly was intended to be the beginning of a series and many readers had begun to wonder if the project had been abandoned. It's interesting to note that when the sequel was first announced earlier this year, the title given was Kingdom Keepers: the Rise of Chernabog.

Get Goofy on iTunes!

I've received countless email over the past few months inquiring about the availability of last year's new Goofy cartoon How to Hook Up Your Home Theater. In that regard, great news! The short has quietly surfaced on iTunes and is available for purchase. Still no word on a DVD release, though inclusion in a future Disney Treasures set would seem possible.

UPDATE: iTunes currently lists the short in its Disney Short Films category but returns a message of The item you requested is currently not available in the US store when you either attempt to purchase the item or link to its product page. I purchased the short from the US iTunes store on June 13th in the afternoon. If anyone associated with Disney Home Entertainment or iTunes can clarify the situation please contact me via email or post comments.

UPDATE 2: The short is now again available for purchase and download.

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How To Hook Up Your Home Theater

Toy Story Midway Mania

While engaging, fun and entertaining, the new Toy Story Midway Mania attraction at Disney's Hollywood Studios is also relatively uninspired and certainly unexceptional. It will no doubt be a crowd pleaser for years to come and it serves as a much needed counterpoint to the Studios less kid-friendly headliners, but it is not an E Ticket attraction by any means.

There is distinctly no WOW! aspect to Toy Story Midway Mania. It more or less duplicates the technology behind DisneyQuest's Pirates of the Caribbean: Battle for Buccaneer Gold, which has been around for nearly a decade. In theme and format, it is essentially an enhancement of its Magic Kingdom cousin Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin. The ride is buoyed by the presence of the always charming and captivating Toy Story cast of characters and an as yet unrivaled level of interactivity, but as a theme park attraction it remains wholly unoriginal. It is a fast and fun ten minutes, but it doesn't by any means represent state of the art Imagineering. Even the attraction's very sophisticated Mr. Potato Head animatronic seems to fall short of being a true representation of the company's recent living character initiatives.

The attraction also suffers from what seems to be the perpetual Disney World-Pixar curse of disjointed theming. Toy Story Midway Mania was clearly developed for the Paradise Pier area of Disney's California Adventure, and its presence in Florida is likely more the result of bean counter rationale than creative sensibilities. The carnival midway theme in no way relates to a movie studios dynamic, and the attraction's location inside a replica of Pixar's Emeryville headquarters proves somewhat jarring.

All that said, Toy Story Midway Mania is a quite enjoyable attraction that begs repeat visits. It is a solid D Ticket experience.

Step Back in Time - Thank You Walt Disney!

If there are any 2719 Hyperion readers out there with reasonable access to the Kansas City area, please consider attending next week's fund raising event on behalf of the nonprofit organization Thank You Walt Disney and its efforts to restore the original Laugh-O-Grams Studios building. The event is being held on Thursday, June 12 at the new Screenland Armor Theatre in North Kansas City. Festivities begin at 6PM with a silent auction and will conclude with a special showing of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull at 8PM. Tickets are $35. For more information about the event and how to purchase tickets, go to www.laughograms.com or email thankyouwaltdisney@hotmail.com.

Kansas City was an integral and important time and place in the life of Walt Disney and even more significantly in the history of animation itself. The McConahy Building, located at 1127 East 31st Street was the location of the Laugh-O-Grams Studios and is the focal point of the restoration efforts of Thank You Walt Disney.

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Long Ago Magic Along 31st Street in Kansas City

Get Inside Disney Music

I've made many friends since starting 2719 Hyperion and one such individual is musician and composer David Recchione. I had the pleasure of meeting David at last year's MagicMeets Disney fan gathering in Pennsylvania, and he is one of the most friendly and genuine persons I have encountered in the Disney fan community. We went on to participate together in a round table discussion on Disney theme park music on the WDW Radio Show and I realized I had found a truly kindred spirit in the appreciation of Disney entertainment, and most especially Disney music.

A few months back, David had given me a sneak peek of content he was preparing for a blog on Disney music. I was thrilled. David has now finally launched the Inside Disney Music blog, with a wonderful four-part series entitled The Disney Film Composers. It is an enlightening, well researched, insightful and valuable addition to the Disney blogging community.

Awesome work, David and best of luck!

The Pixar Touch

I have long bemoaned the largely uneducated state of so many of the denizens of the Disney online community. As my very good friend and fellow blogger George Taylor regular documents and promotes, there is a vast library of resources available, especially in print form, on all matters and subjects Disney. But unfortunately, discourse based on solid research and reputable sources is often secondary to the back side ventriloquism practiced by so many Disney bloggers, podcasters and community members.

One particular subject that so often inspires uninformed sound bites and hollow punditry is Pixar. That is why David A. Price's book The Pixar Touch: The Making of a Company is so welcome a publication. Though not as pronounced as it used to be, the "Pixar is not Disney" mantra continues to be voiced in many circles. Through meticulous research and astute observations, Price dispels that supposition, demonstrating that Pixar is in many ways the spiritual successor to the creative and artistic philosophies innovated and sustained by Walt Disney throughout his lifetime.

In documenting the history of this "little company that could," Price reaches well beyond the creation of memorable and now iconic characters such as Woody, Buzz Lightyear, Mike, Sully and Nemo. The roots of Pixar stretch back to the beginnings of the computer revolution during the late 1960s and 1970s and the dogged perseverance of Ed Catmull and his determined contemporaries. Price chronicles the efforts of these individuals to develop a viable technology of computer animation with the ultimate goal of creating a wholly computer generated animated film. A serendipitous encounter with a young Cal Arts-trained animator named John Lasseter ultimately becomes a lightening in a bottle dynamic that would forever change the landscape of animated film making.

Price weaves a compelling and page-turning history that in many ways showcases both the then quickly evolving computer industry and the evolution of computer driven special effects for film and television. Lucasfilm, Apple and Disney are the primary backdrops for the tale and it is fascinating to relive notable events such as the development of the PC and the creation of the original Star Wars films from this particular perspective. While it is immensely satisfying to bear witness to the story of Catmull's and Lasseter's marriage of cutting edge technology with Walt Disney-inspired storytelling and creativity, it is the machinations of such secondary players as Michael Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg and most especially Steve Jobs that prove the most interesting and enlightening.

My only disappointment with the book was in its ever increasing slightness as it moved more and more quickly to the climactic Disney-Pixar merger in 2006. Price moves quickly through the company's last decade of incredible successes and provides little information and insight on the post-merger Pixar, despite the two years that separated that event from the book's publication. I was left hungry for more information and insight on such topics as Catmull's and Lasseter's restructuring of Walt Disney Animation, the reworking of Meet the Robinsons, Chris Sander's controversial dismissal from American Dog (now Bolt) and Lasseter's own still somewhat ambiguous role at Walt Disney Imagineering.

That reservation notwithstanding, The Pixar Touch is a comprehensive and well written chronicle of not just Pixar, but of the contemporary Walt Disney Company as well. If you are a Disney enthusiast who wishes to argue the merits of Pixar and its celebrated creative team, then at least do so from a well educated frame of reference. David Price's book is a great place to begin or extend that education.

Congratulations . . . Again!

I am very happy and excited to announce that Amanda Chin, Victoria Gatarz, Emily Jarosiewicz, and Valentina Pannullo have been awarded First Place in the New Jersey History Day competition held this past Saturday. I had previously reported the girls' successful performance in the regional competition last month under the guidance of their teacher Christy Viszoki. As I noted then, for their subject they chose to focus on the controversy that surrounded Disney's America, the unrealized theme park that had been conceptualized for an area in northern Virginia just outside of the nation's capital. Their project, an exhibit entitled "Disney's America Exposed," will now be entered in the National History competition to be held next month in Washington D.C.

I continue to be very proud to have been a part of the girls research efforts and I wish them the very best of luck in the national competition!

Space Mountain by Greg Maletic

A year ago we happily featured the amazing faux attraction posters created by artist and graphic designer Greg Maletic that paid tribute to both 1970s era Disney World attractions and the famous Magic Kingdom entryway posters that promoted them. Greg has done it again with a stunning design that pays tribute to Space Mountain and its early NASA-esque theming.

Check out Greg's blog for details on how you can download and print a copy of the poster. Greg's amazing talent is exceeded only by his generosity--this and his earlier posters are available free of charge. Thanks, Greg.

Congratulations Amanda, Victoria, Emily and Valentina!

I want to send out heartfelt congratulations to four individuals who I have yet to meet personally but are still very special to me nonetheless. Amanda Chin, Victoria Gatarz, Emily Jarosiewicz, and Valentina Pannullo have reason to celebrate and be proud today as their team project has been awarded first place in the southern regional competition of New Jersey History Day. The competition is part of the larger National History Day initiative.

Amanda, Victoria, Emily and Valentina, students at Applegarth Middle School in Monroe Township, NJ and under the guidance of their teacher Christy Viszoki, contacted me a few months ago to request assistance in the research they were doing for their competition project. The theme for this year's competition was Conflict and Compromise in History. Students who participated were required to choose a topic and make a presentation in one of four different ways: an exhibit, a documentary film, a paper or a performance. For their topic, the girls chose to focus on the controversy that surrounded Disney's America, the unrealized theme park that had been conceptualized for an area in northern Virginia just outside of the nation's capital. Their project, an exhibit entitled "Disney's America Exposed," earned top honors at the competition held this past Saturday.

I was very flattered when the girls contacted me and asked me to share my knowledge and insights of the Disney's America project. And it was a real thrill when Christy contacted me over the weekend with the very exciting news. She noted, " The girls always go above and beyond in their work. They are amazing students, although even more significantly, exceptional human beings. I am very proud of and happy for them."

The girls now move on to the New Jersey state competition on May 3rd, and if successful there, will continue on to the final National History Day competition at the University of Maryland in mid-June.

Join me in extending Amanda, Victoria, Emily and Valentina congratulations and in wishing them the best of luck in the state competition.

Pictured above: Emily Jarosiewicz, Amanda Chin.

Crazy About Movies

Leonard Maltin has long been one of my heroes and role models. His cartoon history tome Of Mice and Magic opened up the world of classic Hollywood animation to me some twenty five or so years ago, and he's one of the very few film critics I feel I can trust for fair and insightful reviews. His participation in the Disney Treasures DVD series is but one of many reasons to elevate him to Hollywood sainthood.

So it should come as no surprise that I heartily and enthusiastically recommend his latest book Leonard Maltin's Movie Crazy. Collecting the very best of his quarterly newsletter that is a veritable cornucopia of movie history, star interviews and Hollywood ephemera, the book is a page turner of the highest magnitude. And lest you think I veer off topic from " . . . the Many Worlds of Disney Entertainment," Maltin frequently touches on Disney-related material. Especially notable is Chapter Four which features the article "The Women of Ink and Paint," a wonderful interview with Betty Kimball and Marie Johnston. It is a fun, accessible read and hopefully the first of many future volumes that will continue to collect the best of Maltin's Movie Crazy efforts.

Celebrating Disney's First Academy Awards

My good friend and fellow Disney blogger David Lesjak has just posted an excellent and very extensive article at Vintage Disney Collectibles on the 1932 Academy Awards ceremony where Walt Disney received his very first awards. One especially notable part of the evenings festivities was the presentation of the Disney Studios-produced Parade of the Award Nominees, a short cartoon that featured Mickey Mouse and other Disney characters leading a parade of animated incarnations of that years acting nominees. Disney was presented with two awards that year; one honoring the creation of Mickey Mouse; the other recognizing the achievement of Flowers and Trees, the first Technicolor Silly Symphony.

David's post is a wonderful snapshot in time from Hollywood's golden age and a real treat for Disney historians and enthusiasts alike. Don't miss it!

New Music from the Walt Disney Records Archives

Walt Disney Records has been quietly re-releasing long unavailable material from its vast archives on iTunes over the past year or so, and happily, a number of new selections have hit the iTunes store today. The titles are:

Westward Ho the Wagons
Italiannette
Annette Sings Anka
Chilling, Thrilling Sounds of the Haunted House

And quite significantly, the original soundtrack from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

According to Walt Disney Records producer Randy Thornton--

"This is HOPEFULLY the beginning of a new line (only time will tell). Also, when you purchase this title, you can download a Digital Booklet with behind-the-scenes photos, and illustrations. I’ve written a brief “Producer’s Note” outlining the background of the project, and there is (the highlight for me) liner notes from my new friend, composer John Debney . . . It’s taken me over 10 years to get this released, and it was definitely worth the wait! Thanks very much for all your patience, enthusiasm and support for this great, classic stuff."

Thornton continues to be one of the true unsung heroes of Disney-related historical preservation. He has been tireless in his efforts to find and restore these vintage recordings and insure their availability to what is undeniably a very small audience of enthusiasts. Thornton is well known to Disney music fans as the person who produces the Official Disneyland and Walt Disney World music collections; he was notably responsible for the amazing and near-definitive Musical History of Disneyland collection, released during the park's recent 50th Anniversary celebration.

In addition, five albums that were previously available at the Disneyland/Walt Disney World Wonderland music-on-demand kiosks have been added to the archive releases available on iTunes. Those titles are:

Meet Me Down On Main Street
A Musical Tour of France with Maurice Chevalier
Songs from Lady and the Tramp
The Disney Afternoon
Country Bear Jamboree

One special note about today's releases--a number of readers have contacted me recently concerning the song "The Ballad of John Colter." Fess Parker performed the song in Westward Ho the Wagons and it is available on the collection released today. It is also included on the archive release Fess Parker - Cowboy and Indian Songs, also available on iTunes.

Special thanks to Greg Ehrbar for communicating this information via both the Magical Music of the Mouse and his own Mouse Tracks web site.

More Princess and the Frog Revealed

While no major revelations or even new Imagineering concept art could be found within the pages of the just released Walt Disney Company 2008 Annual Report, stockholders were treated to a glimpse of The Princess and the Frog. A scene with the film's title character Tiana looking out off of a balcony was the backdrop for the final page of Robert Iger's Letter to Shareholders. The movie is scheduled for a 2009 release.