A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

© 2002 Buena Vista Home Entertainment On Quora, David Postle from Australia asks: Why doesn't Disney release a DVD of the 1948 film So Dear to My Heart? I replied:  Um…. You mean,  this  DVD doesn’t exist? © 2003 Buena Vista Home Entertainment There are, in fact, at least two, perhaps even three, DVD editions of  So Dear to My Heart,  a 1948 film produced by Walt Disney and directed by Hamilton Luske and Harold D. Schuster. A bookend - of sorts - to  Song of the South  (it uses the same techniques of mixing live-action cinematography and animation), it earned Bobby Driscoll a special Academy Award for best “juvenile performance” and an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song (“Lavender Blue”) Walt Disney, through its home video division Buena Vista Home Entertainment. released  So Dear to My Heart  on DVD a decade ago, and it’s also viewable on Amazon’s Prime Video service.

Pros:  Gee-whiz 3D animation, witty script, great voice cast Cons:  None With the success of the Pixar/Walt Disney collaborative efforts  Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc,  and  The Incredibles , it looks as though animated films, particularly computer-animated films, are experiencing a creative Renaissance as critics and moviegoers of all ages are treated with features that are visually stunning, wittily written, and are appealing to kids and adults alike. Pixar, which started out as a tiny division of Lucasfilm Ltd and first wowed viewers with the short but visually stunning "Genesis Effect simulation" in 1982's  Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan , continues its run of avant garde 3D animated hits with 2007's  Ratatouille , a story of a French rat who joins forces with the son of a recently deceased chef to fulfill his dream of becoming, of all things, a gourmet cook. Written and co-directed by Brad Bird ( Iron Giant, The Incredibles ) t...

Pros:  Whimsical yet touching story, wonderful voice acting and Pixar's awesome visual artwork Cons:  None! Up:  Whimsical Yet Touching   Co-written and co-directed by Bob Peterson and Pete Docter,  Up  is essentially the love story of Carl and Ellie Fredricksen, even though Ellie dies before the film's main plot about the house-and-balloons adventure that gives the movie its offbeat but effective title. Up  begins as an extended flashback in which we first meet Carl Fredricksen as a very shy young boy in a packed movie house watching an old newsreel; it's sometime in the 1930s or '40s and newsreels were the "windows to the world" in the same way that cable networks such as BBC World, CNN and MSNBC are today. In this newsreel we're introduced to explorer Charles Muntz (Christopher Plummer), who's a cross between Howard Hughes and Indiana Jones.  Muntz flies all over the world in  The Spirit of Adventure,  a Z...

(C) 2017 Lucasfilm Ltd. and Dolby Labs Today's question is:  Why do a lot of fanboys hate ‘The Last Jedi’? I’m probably going to get a lot of flak from some of the  angry fanboys  that this question is about, but since I am a  Star Wars  fan of the 1977 Generation, I’ll give you my two credits’ worth. Star Wars  fanboy angst is not a new phenomenon. It’s probably been around since the first movie premiered 40 years ago ( Oh, See Threepio is too silly! ). I first became aware of it when fans who were 10, 11, or even 12 when  Star Wars  came out in 1977 and didn’t notice some of the kid-friendly humor in it suddenly became aware of the kid-friendly Ewoks in 1983’s  Return of the Jedi …and started grousing that Lucas had invented the “teddy bears”  just to sell more toys.  (There were other issues that fans groused about, but  Ewok-hate  was the trendy topic among the angry-fanboy crowd.) (C) 1983 Luc...

Star Wars: Rebels Created by: Simon Kinberg, Carrie Beck, and Dave Filoni Based on the works of George Lucas Join the Ghost crew as it prepares for its biggest mission yet in Star Wars: Rebels - Season Three ! The story of the Ghost crew is far from over. While Sabine confronts new challenges on her home world of Mandalore, Ezra's growing power as both a Jedi and a rebel leader helps the rebellion acquire new resources and new recruits for the fight ahead. However, the Imperial effort to eliminate the rebellion is now being led by the coldly calculating Grand Admiral Thrawn, whose strategic, tactical, and cultural insights make him a threat unlike any they have faced before.  - Synopsis on Blu-ray packaging On September 24, 2016, the Disney XD cable channel aired Star Wars: Rebels - Steps Into Shadows, a one-hour TV movie written by Steven Melching and Matt Michnovetz and directed by Bosco Ng and Mel Zwyer. Set six months after the events of Twilight of the A...

When the Walt Disney Company opened the doors to the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra’s new home, in the fall of 2014, conductor Gustavo Dudamel dedicated the 2014/2015 season’s opening night concert to five-time Academy Award winning composer/conductor John Williams. Williams, whose most recent work is the score to director J.J. Abrams’  Star Wars: The Force Awakens,  is a legend in both the music and film industries. Since the late 1950s, he has composed and/or arranged music and served as music director for nearly eighty films, including “Saving Private Ryan,” “Amistad,” “Seven Years in Tibet,” “The Lost World,” “Rosewood,” “Schindler's List,” the Indiana Jones series, “Empire of the Sun,” “The Witches of Eastwick,” the Star Wars saga, “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial,” “The Empire Strikes Back,” “Superman,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “Jaws” and “Catch Me if You Can.” In C-Major Entertainment’s “A John Williams Celebratio...