It’s rare when Disney comics get a write-up in The Wall Street Journal, so today’s piece on the popularity of The Donald (Duck, that is) is long overdue. Disney’s comics are indeed more popular in Europe, and the standard characters (aka Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Daisy Duck, Goofy and Pluto) are more well known today to children internationally than they are here in the USA. Susan Bernofsky does a good job explaining why Deutschland digs the Duck.

The Little Mermaid reunion in Burbank last night was a blast. Co-Directors John Musker and Ron Clements (and panelists including Andreas Deja, Reuben Aquino, Mark Henn, Duncan Marjoribanks, moderator Tom Sito, among others) told great stories on how the film got made and the highs and lows of casting, production, test screenings and the ultimate public reaction to the final product. (Asifa-Hollywood recorded the panel on video).

During the Q & A portion, John Musker mentioned seeing a remarkable (and a bit scary) You Tube video of Nick Pitera and his cover of Part Of Your World. Check it out below:

Even more interesting is Pitera’s “duet” of A Whole New World from Musker and Clement’s Aladdin.

Opening today in New York, L.A. and San Francisco is a wonderful documentary on the career of songwriters Robert B. Sherman and Richard M. Sherman - the Sherman Brothers of Mary Poppins, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Winnie The Pooh, Charlotte’s Web and Snoopy Come Home fame. I saw this film the other night and it was very entertaining (loaded with their songs) and very enlightening (loaded with surprisingly intimate information about the duo).

It’s a really good film, but publicity for The Boys is not so good - and I think the film will only play for one week (in L.A. at the The Regent in Westwood, the AMC Meteron in San Francisco and Landmark Sunshine Cinema on Houston Street in NYC). Check it out this weekend - you’ll be glad you did.

Wayne Allwine, the official voice of Mickey Mouse, the third person in history to play the character in various movies and TV shows, has passed away.

According to Wikipedia, Allwine’s first appearance as Mickey was voicing the animated lead-ins for The New Mickey Mouse Club in 1977. His first appearance as Mickey for a theatrical release was in the 1983 featurette Mickey’s Christmas Carol and he has provided the voice for Mickey Mouse ever since. He was married to Russi Taylor, the current voice of Minnie Mouse. Allwine was also a sound effects editor for various feature films. Allwine died on Monday, due to complications from diabetes. He was 62.

UPDATE: Animation Guild rep Steve Hulett has written his memories of working with Wayne Allwine when they were both traffic boys at Disney in the mid-1960s.

Below is an interview with Allwine and Taylor from the Walt Disney Treasures box set Mickey Mouse in Living Color: Volume Two.

Had the pleasure of seeing Pixar’s latest masterpiece last Thursday — and yeah, it’s a masterpiece. They’ve done it again. An original modern day fable - a pure blend of intelligent, artful filmmaking and commercial pop-entertainment. The sentimental first fifteen minutes will touch your heart, and the rest of the film is a fast, funny visual delight. Enjoyable on every level.

Pixar leads. I’m not quite sure if others are following, but one thing is for sure: Pixar leads. One reason they stand far and away from their competition is that they take risks. Their point of view in developing story material is aimed in a different direction from the other studios. I also love how Pixar tells their stories - treating the audience, including the kids, as intelligent human beings.

That said, Up is still at its heart, a cartoon. The characters are caricatures, the situations impossible and yet - as with all great cartoons - we can relate to the characters and their motivations.

You can read the plot details and learn behind the scenes information on other sites. Here are a few odd footnotes and observations of my own… no spoilers, I hope.

• Anyone notice the similarity of between Carl Frederickson and actor Spencer Tracy (circa 1963-1967)? See photo above for comparision.

•The floating house is a lot more than a gimmick. Carl is tethered to it throughout the film (it represents his late wife). In fact, this is surely the best flying house movie since Winsor McCay’s The Flying House (1921). I didn’t once think about Zathura (2005), Howl’s Moving Castle (2004), or Danny Deckchair (2003)… until I left the theatre.

•The villian of the piece is named Charles Muntz. I wonder what inspired his name? In real life, Charles Mintz was the animation producer who “stole” Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, forcing Walt Disney to create Mickey Mouse. In Up, Muntz is trying to capture an elusive “cartoon-like” bird, and created a way to make animals “talk”. Is their any connection here? Is the animation histotian in me reading too much into all this?

•”Kevin”, the film’s gooney bird (below right), is a hybrid of a Dr. Suess creation and a Fleischer cross-eyed character (below left, from 1932’s Sing A Song,). Loved it.

I loved all of UP. It worked for me. Get out and see UP in 3D on May 29th (or that weekend) — and enjoy this current golden age as long as it lasts.

As a follow-up to Amid’s post yesterday on Disney’s Pinocchio trade ad, David Lesjak (who runs two of the best Disneyana blogs on the web: Toons At War and Vintage Disney Collectibles) sent us this double page trade ad from 1932 (click thumbnails below to read at full size).

“Attached is an ad which appeared in the October 1, 1932 edition of the Motion Picture Herald. I downloaded the images a long time ago from Steve Geppi’s Diamond Galleries “Scoop” e-newsletter. It shows that as early as 1932 Walt Disney was publicly providing the names of those who worked at the Studio, even going as far to list the names of the women who worked in the “Tracing and Painting Dep’t,” as well as staff in the “Reference Library” and “Music Library.”

Interesting to note the copy running along the bottom of the ad: “To produce a single Mickey Mouse or Silly Symphony requires full time of this organization for two weeks.” Only two weeks? In each department? Animation alone took three or four weeks, even then. Can anyone clarify what that line meant?

While researching a book that I’m currently working on, I discovered a four-page ad published in the March 4, 1940 edition of The Hollywood Reporter. The ad, taken out by the Disney studio, congratulates the crew who worked on Pinocchio. These type of ads are nothing special nowadays but this particular one is fascinating to see in the context of Disney history.

One of the commonly heard lines about why the Disney strike happened is that Walt never credited his artists publicly and wanted everybody to believe that he made his films alone. This ad proves that that statement is patently false. In fact, this ad appeared over a year before the strike happened. It credits the lead animators, voice artists, background and layout crews, storymen, musician, designers, fx animators, and even the live-action models. The first page of the ad is above, the following three pages are after the jump.

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I was rummaging through my files last night and found this old beat-up Mickey Mouse Bubble Gum card from the early 1930s. I don’t know if anyone has posted this set (96 cards) on the internet, but I’d sure like to see the rest of them. Could this be the first time Walt Disney himself was pictured in licensed merchandise?