Some people would go to any lengths to get a autograph from Walt Disney. But would you go to any depth? An abandoned cave in Cody, Montana reportedly has Walt Disney’s personal endorsement—his signature—scrawled on the cave wall. Is it for real? Check out this report from Channel 8 News.

(Thanks, Mark Gittman)

I’m still not sure about this flick… but the trailer looks pretty good to me.

Film history professor Eric Faden of Bucknell University explains copyright law, via clips from Disney and Pixar films, in this clever video posted by Stanford Law School. Watch it below on YouTube or download a copy to your computer from the Stanford website.

(via Boing Boing)

Here’s an kinescope excerpt from the classic 1950s TV show, You Asked For It, from sometime during its first year of broadcast (1950-51 season). Here, host Art Baker is answering viewer mail about how animated cartoons are made, assisted by animator Ken Walker (flipping scenes from the short Plutopia) — and a rather pathetic Mickey Mouse puppet.

As an addendum to our posts on Ward Kimball (can we ever post enough about Kimball?), our pal Don Brockway (Psst, check out his webpage devoted to Disney voice actress Kathryn Beaumont) is posting on YouTube a rare 1978 broadcast of Tom Snyder’s Tomorrow Show, shot on location at Grizzly Flats!

Don writes:

Like many of your readers, I was saddened to hear that Grizzly Flats is no more. Something I’ve held onto, since the beginning of time, is a tape of this broadcast. I recorded it on ¾� video at the time, and it’s one of my favorite shows. When I took my old ¾� U-matic in to be serviced, my buddy behind the counter said, “Who gave you this, Fred Flintstone?� But he managed to get it working again, and I was able to salvage the program.

I’m posting the entire 45 minute show (editing out commercials) a piece at a time. It may take a couple of days. But I want to share this great show with everybody; it’s an excellent tribute to Ward and to Grizzly Flats.

We agree. Below are all seven videos of the program that Don has graciously posted onto YouTube.

According to this piece in today’s LA Times, Ward Kimball’s family is dismantling his backyard Grizzly Flats Railroad - one of the major inspirations for Disneyland. John Lasseter is personally taking some of the depot buildings… the rest of the material donated to museums, or destroyed.

It isn’t everyday that the LA Times prints an editorial that mentions Song of the South (1946) and Alice’s Egg Plant (1925). But that’s just what they did today in condemning Farfur, the Mickey Mouse imposter that hosts Tomorrow’s Pioneers, a kids’ television show on Hamas’ Al Aqsa TV.

The LA Times editorial encourages using a power greater than the U.S. Army to confront to this terror threat: the Disney lawyers!

At the risk of encouraging lawyers, here’s a lawsuit we’d love to see: Hamas getting dragged through some international court by Disney’s implacable army of attorneys. If ever there were a real claim that the company suffered dilution to the value of its intellectual property, this is it.

In case you haven’t seen it, here’s the video everyone is talking about:

From Business Week, this article offers a few new details about Disney’s shorts program. Among the tidbits:

* The budgets for these shorts are “$2million or less.”

* One of the six shorts in development, The Ballad of Nessie, is “partly an exercise in helping animators improve their skills at drawing fabric in a naturalistic way.”

* Another interesting item from the article:

There’s even a piece of this new program that’s aimed at employees who don’t draw for a living. By joining the “Shorts Club,” anybody from a secretary to a tech help-desk employee can gain access to a computer workstation in their off-hours to make a five-minute cartoon. These likely won’t make it to a theater. But they could help get everybody in the organization excited about what they’re doing.

And what would a mainstream article about animation be without poor research and misinformation. The writer of this piece obviously has no concept of animation history when he writes, “In the 1930s, Walt Disney pioneered the animated short as a way of keeping his animators sharp while waiting for the script for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to finish.” Wow!

(via Seward Street)