Last summer, the Disney Channel hosted the wildly popular kids-only dance competition, Make Your Mark: Ultimate Dance Off: Shake It Up Edition. More than 28,000 audition videos were submitted online and six talented finalists were chosen. The finalists competed in a professionally-choreographed dance event telecast live on the Disney Channel, and the winners, a team of four dancers named AKSquared, were featured as spotlight dancers on an episode of Shake It Up.
Screenshot from the Make Your Mark: Ultimate Dance Off website, image copyright Disney
Millions of Disney Channel fans tuned in for the 2011 Ultimate Dance Off and thousands more have eagerly waited for the opportunity to show off their dance moves in a new competition. GREAT NEWS! Disney has confirmed that MAKE YOUR MARK WILL RETURN IN JULY 2012 for a second edition of the competition series. Like last year’s Shake It Up Edition, the 2012 competition will feature an online audition period followed by an October telecast of the semi-finalist showdown.
Read More: http://www.disney-blog.com/?p=2716
Promotional image from The Muppets, image copyright Disney
Walt Disney Pictures released ten feature films in 2011, including three foreign films and the re-release of the animated smash The Lion King (1994) in 3D. The films were a mixed bag of big budget spectacles and nostalgic charmers. Mars Needs Moms bombed, On Stranger Tides was critically panned (but grossed more than $1 billion worldwide), and The Muppets and Winnie the Pooh were two of the most acclaimed films of the year.
Read More: http://www.disney-blog.com/?p=2690
For more than sixteen years, Pixar Animation Studios has dominated 3-D animation, releasing eleven bona fide critical smash hits (and a twelfth film, Cars 2, the only Pixar feature to score a rotten tomato). Pixar’s Toy Story and Cars franchises are huge moneymakers, and the studio is looking to score again with the prequel to Monsters, Inc., Monsters University, which is set for release on June 21st, 2013.
Poster for Pixar's Brave (2012), image copyright Disney
But nestled between the recent run of prequels and sequels is this year’s Brave, a fairy tale set in ancient Scotland, and Pixar’s first original feature since 2009’s Up. Brave is also Pixar’s first feature to star a female character (see Pixar’s greatest female characters here) and is the studio’s answer to the Disney’s “Princess” franchise. In true Disney fashion, Princess Merida is a spunky redhead who defies her parents and refuses to follow tradition – sound familiar?
Read More: http://www.disney-blog.com/?p=2673
The holiday season is a magical time of the year* when Christians and non-Christians alike can revel in the gorgeous twinkling lights that are on display every December and through the New Year.
Christmas Lights in Brooklyn's Dyker Heights, photograph by Valerie Champagne
This year, I indulged in the Christmas spirit by visiting Brooklyn’s Dyker Heights neighborhood which is famous for its extravagant Christmas light displays. Every December, Dyker Heights homeowners bedeck their luxurious manses in outrageous and elaborate displays that include thousands of lights, oversized nutcrackers, spinning carousels, and animatronic Santa Clauses. Some of the homes are elegantly decorated and others are garishly overdone with front yards overflowing with lighted reindeer, plastic candy canes, and inflatable snowmen – too many to count.
Read More: http://www.disney-blog.com/?p=2652
Disney doesn’t have a great track record when it comes to science fiction movies, especially not in recent years. In 2000, Mission to Mars suffered middling critical reviews and made a scanty $110 million worldwide on a $100 million budget. By 2002, the Disney Renaissance had come to an end, and the animated Treasure Planet was a total flop, grossing only $110 million on a $140 million budget. And this year’s Mars Needs Moms was an even bigger disaster, grossing only $38 million on a $150 million budget.
Promotional image for John Carter (2012), image copyright Disney
With so many sci-fi failures in so few years, it’s surprising that the upcoming John Carter (2012) got made at all, but perhaps Disney thinks that the fourth time will be a charm. Unlike Treasure Planet and Mars Needs Moms, John Carter is a live action adventure film based on A Princess of Mars (1912), the first novel in the 11-book Barsoom series by author Edgar Rice Burroughs. Burroughs is best known for creating the character Tarzan, but it is his century-old Barsoom series that inspired countless science fiction writers to write in the genre and encouraged scientists to focus on space exploration and the search for extraterrestrial life.
Read More: http://www.disney-blog.com/?p=2602
