Talk about your Cartoon Brew: A new Australian beer campaign has co-opted Disney’s Snow White and renamed her Ho White — and the seven dwarves are now Randy, Filthy, Ugly, Freaky, Dodgy, Dirty and Smarmy. The initial ad features Ho White wearing a negligee, in bed with the naughty dwarves, blowing smoke rings. The concept was created by The Foundry for Jamieson Brewery.

The Walt Disney Company is not pleased.

(via SlashFilm)

Back in July we posted about a new Nintendo game in development, Epic Mickey. Now, the November issue of Game Informer magazine has the scoop on this new game from Junction Point and Disney Interactive Studios.

BTW, if you look really closely at that cover painting you’ll spot Oswald the Lucky Rabbit behind the gates in the center.

I’m not a gamer, but this thing looks pretty cool to me. Game Informer also posted a video podcast with game creator, Warren Spector, where he discusses his love of Mickey Mouse, Disney and all things classic animation - and on another page they post a gallery of Spector’s Disney collection, which includes everything from a killer The Three Caballeros half sheet poster to several issues of Gemstone’s Disney comics.

(Thanks, Platy)

Here’s some show-and-tell. I found these odds and ends of UPA publicity at Cinecon, the classic movie convention held in Hollywood over Labor day weekend. None of these miscellaneous tid-bits are very important, but they are all part of the great jigsaw puzzle of film history — and can be telling on how the UPA cartoons were marketed and perceived by the public at the time. The first row is a four page spread from a pocket-sized movie magazine called Prevue (July 1953). I posted the cover below left (click on thumbnails to see full size image). You never know what you’ll find in oddball (and odd-sized) fan magazines such as these. In addition to the UPA pages, there were three pages promoting Disney’s live action feature The Sword and The Rose.

Next we have several clippings from Motion Picture Herald, a weekly trade magazine aimed at theatre owners. A dealer was selling a whole years run of 52 issues from 1952. I went through them all and found these items of interest: Columbia Pictures took out several back cover ads touting there current releases, done in a “newspaper” style, with press-style blurbs. At left, a bit about producer Steve Bosustow and his Academy Award; in the center, Columbia highlights a Bethesda Maryland theatre who billed Rooty Toot Toot and a bunch of Magoo cartoons over the main feature (Return of the Texan, a 20th Century Fox film); and at right, proving the incredible popularity of Mr. Magoo, the Herald ran this photo of a theatre in London who made a whole show of Mr. Magoo cartoons: “The First Mr. Magoo Show”. I wonder if there were ever a second or third?

And finally, a double-page ad in February 10th 1951 edition of Motion Picture Herald hyping the popularity and press (NY Times, Life Magazine, comparisions to Disney’s Three Little Pigs) of UPA’s Gerald McBoing Boing. It’s rare for any individual short to rate a full page ad - more so a two page spread.

Reviews of the Walt Disney Family Museum are beginning to appear in papers and online. There aren’t many (if any) animation-related museums in the US—and especially none as well-endowed as this one—so it’ll be interesting to see how it’s received by the media and general public. Here’s a round-up:

Peter Hartlaub in the SF Chronicle

John King in the SF Chronicle about how they transformed old Presidio buildings into a musuem

Photo tour on MousePlanet.com

Edward Rothstein in The New York Times

Lori Rackl in the Chicago Sun-Times

I’m still not a fan of Family Guy, but I have to admit this is a terrific sequence from last night’s 8th season premiere episode.

UPDATE: You should read the comments on this post for sequence production details from Family Guy director Greg Colton, and the lead animator of the piece, Darlie Brewster (posting with the handle DarlieB). Our thanks to both of them for participating in the comments.

I collect all the Pixar and Disney Little Golden Books because they usually feature incredible artwork by the studio’s best artists. And the price is right too, only $3.99. The uber-talented Lorelay Bove illustrated the latest one based on The Princess and the Frog and she’s offering a tiny sneak peek on her blog. It’ll go on sale October 13th - and I can’t wait.