Disney Movies @ MindSay

Went to rent a few movies with my younger sibbie and grandma last night. Got Bambi II(much to younger sibbie's distress) and didn't watch it until today. Like for most Disney sequals I watch, I had little hope for this movie.

"Damnable Disney noobs! How can they possibly make twos out of every movie they have? It's not fair! What's next, 'Bambi the Series?'" Was all that went through my head as the DVD started up.

Be warned, the next bit contains randomly placed spoilers so if you don't want Bambi II spoiled for you, don't read it.

If my voice were working properly, I would've squeed like the most rabid Orlando Bloom fangirls in the world when I saw Bambi's father. I nearly died when I heard his voice. He was too wonderful for my brain to comprehend. The movie only got better from then on, and I found myself believing that this sequel had some how been planned by Walt Disney himself.

The voices were wonderfully done, with Patrick Stewart(Star Trek, Captain Jean-Luc Picard) as Bambi's father and Alexander Gould(Nemo, Finding Nemo) as Bambi himself. The animation was nearly the same as the original, with better quality and the backgrounds were digitally recreated to look like the original. The music had some parts that were like the original score. Even the story and dialog were good, lacking the generic Disney Sequel "Everybody is the same and we all love each other and nothing bad could happen and we should all work together and there is no violence"ness that sends sentient beings to nearby bathrooms to discard the contents of their stomachs.

Overall it was a wonderful movie, and broke itself free of the title "Disney Sequel" and has been promoted to "Disney Movie". Yes, I love it that much. I wonder if Disney Sequels would be so bad if they actually worked as hard as they did on other sequels as they did Bambi II. Let us hope that this is the start of a new era for Disney Sequels.

And you should all know that there's a horrible little deer named Ronno there. He's very mean to Bambi(despite being an absolute mama's boy) and he also reveals to us that Bambi is a girls name. He's cute when he tries to show Feline just how strong he is. It went something like this:

[Ronno and Feline walking through the forest together]

Ronno: You know, the great thing about me is, I don't feel any pain.

Feline: Really?

Ronno: Yeah I'll show you. [runs as fast as he can bashing his head into the nearest tree. Stumbles around confusedly]

Ronno: See! Nothing at all.

I also had to check out the "Sneak Peeks" on the DVD. It breaks my heart to say that they have, infact, created The Fox and the Hound II and it looks undeniably stupid. From what I gathered from the previews, this takes place when Copper and Todd are still young. Copper joins a country dog band and Todd is upset about this. Todd even stated at one point "Ever since you joined that band you've never been around. It's either them-or me." Patrick Swayze will be in it playing a dog in the band named Cash and Reba McEntire will be a dog named Dixie who is also in the band. Other voices are to be announced.

This killed all my hope for Disney Sequels. They didn't even mention Cheif. Poor old coot, doomed to hang out in a barrel until the end of time...

I haven't updated in what seems like forever. I turned 29 over the weekend. I didn't want a big hoopla surrounding it, but it just so happened it fell on the weekend I would be in Disney. Now I spend a lot of time in Disney World. I am a fanatic, and not just for the parks, but the hotels as well. I have actually gone for a weekend and not gone to the parks. Every year I buy a seasonal pass which allows you access to all the parks year round with some black out dates. The black out dates only apply to the busiest times of the year, so no beef there. Now I always go and I always get impeccable service. So when I went this weekend, I received disappointment after disappointment.

     First to start with my girlfriend had planned all of our dining for the weekend. She was all excited because we were both going to be dining in a place we had never eaten before. It is called Gulliver's Grille and is based on the story of Gulliver's Travels. So anyhow I will try to make this as short as possible. We sit down in a nearly empty restaurant and I notice most of the tables around us are messy from the previous occupants. Then a waiter came over and took our drink order. A few minutes after another person came to take our drink order. So we told him we already placed it and he left. While we are waiting for our drinks we overhear several tables complaining to the manager about the service and the food. Then we receive our drinks a few minutes later. Then approximately 20 minutes goes by. The tables still haven't been cleaned and our order wasn't taken. Now I must mention that they were not short staffed, there were numerous people wandering around aimlessly. So we bitched to the manager and got our drinks for free. We then left and he offered us a free dinner and we politely declined. So we left and it was about ten and all the restaurants in the hotels were closed. So we were reduced to eating at the food court at our hotel which is the equivalent of eating in the high school cafeteria.

     That was day one and we were upset a bit. Now I have no complaints at all about the first half of our second day. Even the weather was perfect for my taste. It was in the 50's and it was misting out. Not a full rain, but if it wasn't Florida I would have thought it was going to snow. Things went well until dinner again. We got great service, but the food sucked. I mean real bad, and I don't usually complain about food. I am not picky where that is concerned, but it was barely edible.

     So now we move onto the third day, I am trying to move it along for the sake of my readers (if I have any). We get up and go to breakfast at the place we usually go. That was good, but when we go back to our room to make sure everything was out we got a surprise. The air was on full blast and the clock radio was blaring. Neither of which we left on. So we checked the room and noticed a funny smell. The unmistakable smell of smoke, the evidence of two cigarette butts which was in our toilet. So we immediately called housekeeping. Well I say we and I mean my girlfriend. She was livid. We had already encountered a bunch of crap on this trip and were pissed. So she called and bitched to them. Now usually when Disney hears you are upset they are right there with the free stuff to give out. Now I don't know this from experience, because I have never had a bad time there until now. I do know people who have complained about stuff and they gave them free nights in hotels or free tickets to the park. They weren't budging and told us there was nothing they could do.

   So after that we just went to MGM studios. There we encountered several employees whose second language was English. Now that is usually unheard of in Disney unless you are in EPCOT in the countries. I have also never encountered an employee without a smile on their face or not have the answer I needed. I encountered all of them on this trip. I asked an ice cream vendor where the Narnia exhibit was and he shrugged and said, "I don't know." I was flabbergasted. Then when we finally found the Narnia exhibit, there was an announcer there. The man murdered the English language repeatedly. I had trouble hearing him. Now I expect this sort of thing in a mall in Miami. Not in Disney world. It just seems to me that they have cut all the jobs from the  people that were there a while. Simply to cut costs, and hire a bunch of immigrants so save money. People that don't give a shit about their jobs.

     Now maybe if they just spent less money on their endless shitty movies and direct to video sequels they could concentrate on their theme parks. I mean every time I go there, there is at least 30 more Tinkerbell trinkets than the last time I was there. I mean how much of this crap do we need? All I can say if this is what I am going to be getting from Disney in the future then I can just stay in South Florida where nobody has the answers and nobody speaks English. Now don't get me wrong, I have no problem with people speaking another language, but this is America. Learn English or go the fuck home. Don't ask me if I habla espanol. Then when I reply no give me a look of surprise on your face.

You know. I've seen countless of animes throughout my life. From Ghost In The Shell, Ninja Scroll, The End of Evangelion, Akira, etc. etc. (Anime movies not shows.) Hayo Miyazaki's (Spirited Away which won the 2002 Best Animation Oscar.) Howl's Moving Castle is breath taking. I have never seen anything like that in my entire life. In France this movie got a 7 minute clapping ovation. This movie has already crushed the Incredibles and already blew Spirited Away out of the water. I just don't get it. Every single one of his movies gets better and better. He crushes any Disney movie out there100 times over. That's why Disney always begs for him to let them sponser it here in America.

For someone who's watched anime for so long. This was my first one to see it on the big movie screen. I loved it so much. The animation to this feature was beyond words. The CGI you could hardly tell where they were. And practically a lot of it was hand drawn. This is a 2+ hour movie I'm talking about. That's HUGE. All the characters are so loveable in the movie. I love my scarecrow "Turnip Head" hehe. He was so cool! And the Moving Castle was absolutley gorgeous moving around like that.

And the English Dubbing was superb. The english voice acting was soooooooo good that it's far beyond greatness then Cowboy Bebop, Gundam Wing, Ranma 1/2 and Inuyasha could ever be. Of course since Miyzaki is such a big deal. The voices in the movie were some pretty big Hollywood stars. Christan Bale (The New Batman in Batman Begins he plays Howl!) and Billy Crystal (Played The little Fire Demon so uber cute and freaking funny!!!) there were a few other big names but I didn't regconized too well and can't remember. I think one girl was Emily B. something.

But anyways this was a great movie. This you could take your whole family too. It's so weird how all of Miyazaki's stuff is pretty much having to deal with little kids in the anime and they do so extremely well all over the world. I can't remember what place it was in with the top movies in the world you know. I've read one of his mangas  (comicbook called Nausicaa Valley Of The Wind which is also another anime movie and is like 300 to 500 pages each, 5 of them in all.) I've seen Princess Mononoke. Others Are Kiki's Delivary Service and Castle In The Sky. There's a bit more I haven't named yet but I'll have to look them up.

Miyazaki's is one of the modern masters of Japanese Cinema as a Director and Writer. The guy went to college for economics and fell in love with reading children's stories that he went to Toei (A Major Anime Corporation These Days) It's so amazing how the best movies ever done are all done about children stories. Take care guys and leave me comments. I swear you'll go out and want to see this movie. I'm not sure if it's Limited Release. My cousin said that there were commercials for it so we'll see. It's great if you can see it go see it. It's so wonderful and just amazing how well crafted this is.