A ‘heads up’ on some Disney Programs at the upcoming 16th Annual Philadelphia Film Festival, April 5th through 18th.

Friday, April 6 • 6:45 • Prince Music Theater • Tickets $10.00
Fantasia (1940) — A screening of the landmark film with an ensemble of Philadelphia Orchestra musicians, performing onstage preceding the screening.

Saturday, April 7 • 2:30 • Prince Music Theater • Tickets $8.00
The Disney Cartoon: Nine Decades of Magic — A screening of Disney shorts spanning nine decades of the company’s history. Shorts will include Pixar’s Red’s Dream, Roger Rabbit’s Roller Coaster Rabbit and the Salvador Dali-designed Destino.

Saturday, April 7 • 7:15 • Prince Music Theater • Tickets $10.00
A Salute To Roy Disney, an on-stage interview with Leonard Maltin. (Maltin will also be hosting a screening of rare Our Gang shorts on April 7th at 4:30pm)

Sunday, April 8 • 2:15 • Prince Music Theater •Tickets $8.00
Disney Cartoon Rarities - 35mm prints of Disney shorts including Hell’s Bells, Egyptian Melodies, Music Land, The Whoopee Party, Hawaiian Holiday, The Band Concert, as well as examples of Alice in Cartoonland and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.

Non-Disney animation at the Philly Fest will include a screening of the forthcoming anime feature Paprika and a program of contemporary animated shorts.

David Lesjack, on his Toons At War blog, has begun series of posts about Disney’s 1942 Academy Award winning short Der Fuehrer’s Face.

David’s blog is normally filled with odds and ends, interesting bits of obscure information and minutiae on Disney’s World War II animation. These latest posts on Der Fuehrer’s Face contain all sorts of new things I’ve never seen before - the original sketch (possibly by Kimball) for the sheet music, posts on Oliver Wallace and Spike Jones, comic strips and merchandising. Fascinating stuff.

Okay, I promise to stop posting silly Disney food products–as soon as they stop making them.

Brew reader Michael Eilerman snapped this pic of Old Yeller Dog Food at his local Kroger’s supermarket last week. Memo to Disney: Old Yeller had rabies! Tommy Kirk has to shoot him at the end of the flick. It’s a very disturbing film. I’m not feeding my dog any of this stuff!

What’s next? That Darn Cat-food?

Earlier: Mickey Meat Burgers, Disney Tomato stickers, Mickey Mouse Liver Paste, and Popeye Paté.

I haven’t seen the new Peter Pan 2-Disc Platinum Edition, but according to the prolific UK animation director Oscar Grillo, the dvd is a mess. Many animation enthusiasts have complained about Disney’s film “restorations” in the past, and knowing Grillo’s keen eye, it’s easy to believe this is as bad as he says. I’d be curious to hear more comments from other Brew readers who have watched this new dvd release, particularly if you’re familiar with earlier theatrical releases and home video versions. Here are Oscar’s thoughts:

Yesterday I saw a copy of the newly released “Peter Pan Special Edition” and I ALMOST HAD A HEART ATTACK!!! Granted, Peter Pan is no Pinocchio, but I like it very much. The transfer, digital enhancing, sound and image ARE ALL HORRIBLE!! They’ve “strengthened” all the lines and darkened the backgrounds and altered the colours to a degree that now Peter Pan looks like one of those classic “Porky Pigs” rotoscoped in Korea in the Seventies using Rapidographs. I must have seen Peter Pan more than three hundred times and most of them in the cinema. I know the film very well. This version truly shocked me. I won’t talk much, I suggest people compare this version with any of the previously released video or DVD editions and you’ll see for yourself what I mean and complain to those responsible. When a madman damages the “Night Watch” by Rembrandt (it actually happened), he ends up in a psychiatric hospital; when a corporation ruins an animation classic, they sell it as a “special edition.”

UPDATE: Here’s a gallery of still comparisons from various home video release of Peter Pan. (Thanks, Steve)

What is this obsession I have with Euro-Disney food?

This is not quite as strange as Mickey Mouse liver paste, but these frozen Mickey-shaped meat patties won’t be replacing the Big Mac anytime soon.

Oh, and for a midnight snack, check out these Mickey pizza pies!

(Thanks, Alberto Alvarez-Perea)

Here’s the latest trailer for Pixar’s Ratatouille with a lot of new footage that I haven’t seen anywhere else before.

(Thanks, John)

There is an important Disney history triple-play going on at three of our favorite blogs.

Michael Sporn got the ball rolling last year by posting the first 23 pages of the animator drafts for Pinocchio (1940). These are the sequence by sequence breakdowns of who animated each shot, scene by scene. Start here to read the earliest scenes.

Hans Perk at A Film L.A. picked up the ball and continued this project by posting the rest of the draft, (backtrack from here), posting several new pages each day.

Mark Mayerson is taking this information and visualizing it into “mosaics”: illustrating each shot with a frame grab, identifying the animators, and offering insightful commentary for each sequence. (Mayerson has previously done this, based on Perk’s collection of drafts, for several shorts including Mother Goose Goes Hollywood, Symphony Hour and Plutopia).

Now, Michael Sporn has now begun posting the original storyboards for the film.

This is a treasure trove of information for one of the undeniable classics of animation. It’s also a great example of what the Internet can do—bringing together information from three sources, in different parts of the world, that now allow us to study the individual work of the artists who brought this masterpiece to life.

We’ve highlighted this new trend before. The high-end, urban fashion vinyl dolls not aimed at the kids or the Disneyland family crowd. From the same Japanese figure maker (Medi Com Toy Corp) who produced the vintage Mickey and Oswald vinyls (mentioned here), here’s an interesting looking pirate Mickey Mouse figurine (above right), a follow up to the companys previous figure, from last summer, where Mickey was molded in homage to the punk band, The Clash.

We’ve come along way since the days of Charlotte Clark.

(Thanks, Mika Tolvanen)