Originally Posted By leobloom You can tell I'm not a math major. I couldn't even number my three points properly. Urgh.
Originally Posted By davewasbaloo >>>Likewise, I detest "Catchy Rhythm" and "All around the World". They are the most mediocre parade music ever composed for a Disney park. And that "Halloween..loween..loween.." Garbage. It's not wonder why they keep borrowing music from Tokyo.<<< Lol, I quite like the Halloween music, though the last couple of years they have used the Nightmare Before Christmas - Everybody Scream, it's Halloween soundtrack. I also am not a huge fan of All around the world, but I do adore Dancing a Catchy Rhythm. My favorite parade music of all time however is from Tapestry of Nations. My fav parade too.
Originally Posted By davewasbaloo Good synopsis leo. I would like to offer a slightly different tangent. I am not an African American, though my family does know prejudice due to being oa native american background (my mom was very poorly treated in the South being dark), and disability (which is a prejudice rarely spoken of in the US), as well as having lived as an immigrant for the last 25 years. My take on this is Disney is being stupid. Just like the way there are cleaned up versions of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, and some schools have taken Uncle Tom's Cabin out of their libraries, and Disney has hidden Song of the South away. What I find interesting is it is on TV in the UK every couple of years and I do own a copy. There is not such a big difference between it and Gone with the Wind (already sited), Roots (which was very much praised - though we do not see the oppresive side in SotS) etc. My understanding is the real concern is the depiction of the Tar Baby as well as some of the dialogue of Brer Bear and Brer Fox. However, if this is offensive, I would argue that the crows in Dumbo are just as offensive. There is an importance of keeping the dialect alive, and knowing that illiteracy was a key part of the antibellum and carpet bagging times of the South (for white share croppers too). That stories being told were the main ways of communicating. I am sure if Maya Angelou or another historian with an African American backround were to set the tone, it would be just fine with the exception of a few. But I have seen more offensive depictions in the Jazz Singer or Warner Bros Cartoons. It was of it's time, and hiding it away is plain silly. I think the reality is that in addition to the concern of controversy, there would be costs associated with production that may not be recouped. The main audience would be fan boys like us, who are not a big enough cohort to drive the revenue. And casual fans may be disappointed when they see it as it is just alright, but not a masterpiece. Now how we got here from discussing DLP in the sand, I'll never know.
Originally Posted By Spirit of 74 I'll just second (or third) Leo and Dave's points above. I haven't seen SotS in years now, but my memory (I wrote a paper about it in college) is pretty vivid. And it really is no more offensive than Gone WIth the Wind ... and certainly Dumbo as well. I think Leo nailed it on how Disney pushed themselves into a corner with it and made it a story much larger than it ever needed to be. Of course, they also changed Dixie Landings when no one (except perhaps those who live to be offended like Jim Hill's ex when she posted here ... wonder where dear old Fabby is now) found it offensive whatsoever. If Disney had simply released it in the early/mid 90s (perhaps with a statement, but I'm not even sure one is needed ... the film isn't blatantly racist, it shows what the South was like at a given time) and then again around 2000 and then again around 2006 (like they typically do) this would be a non-story. But they've made it one. And Iger doesn't have the balls to release it and say 'it's art ... it depicted the old South and was released in the 1940s'. You can't sanitize history (gotta love them airbrushing the cigerettes out of Walt's hands at DLH's Steakhouse 55). Of course, they did just release a Pirates film where you see dozens (hundreds?) of mermaids and not one breast ... because they know they might scare the fanbois away and piss off the wholesome Americans who rightly know the human body and the mermaid body are disgusting and should never be viewed, especially bychildren ... and I feel like playing my DLP music before bed ... Dancing ...
Originally Posted By davewasbaloo Whereas in Europe, the mermaids would be nude. Like the woman contortionist in Europe Park. Ok, it was a body suit (and what a body), but in the US they would have mandated it an over 21 show only. In Europe, the theatre was full of kids, who loved it.
Originally Posted By Bolna <<Make sure and slip a review in one of your post.>> I was planning to do so.
Originally Posted By Bolna leobloom and Dave, thanks for your explanations about the Song of the South. Coming from a country which has to struggle with a very dark spot in its history, I find it interesting to see how other countries deal with the not so grand aspects of their history. The unavailability of Song of the South in the US reminds me to some degree of the German approach to certain Nazi films. Since the German state owns the copyright (or has an exclusive license) to these films, they are not distributed. But they are available for screenings in a scientific context (for example my local history museum shows Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will" a few times per year with an introduction by a historian and a discussion afterwards). One of the reasons for doing this is exactly to prevent those films to be mystified. They rather want people who are interested to be able to get access, but also want to put the film in the right context. I wonder if Disney could start making this less of an issue by having D23 events showing the film with a historical introduction? And I am not surprised that the film is still around on TV in Europe, I would guess that they just have some long running licensing agreement. And in the end, I guess one day Disney won't be able to prevent much - the film will be in the public domain one day anyway.
Originally Posted By Bolna <<Now how we got here from discussing DLP in the sand, I'll never know.>> They played Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah in the video you posted and I commented on that. Sorry!
Originally Posted By Bolna And going back to the original theme: The festival is going to open this coming weekend and I hope they will have more pictures from it when it is open. The official website has added quite a few links to pictures and videos already: <a href="http://www.zandsculptuur.be/index.asp?taal=en" target="_blank">http://www.zandsculptuur.be/in...?taal=en</a>
Originally Posted By leobloom Interesting stuff about the treatment of Nazi films, Bolna. Thanks for sharing!
Originally Posted By davewasbaloo Here is a nice article by my friend Andy (you might know him from the MSEP/Fantillusion DVD - official spirit, made by Disney, not social media IP theft ;-) <a href="http://blog.mousekingdom.com/2011/06/10/disneyland-paris-sand-sculptures-opening-night/" target="_blank">http://blog.mousekingdom.com/2...g-night/</a>
Originally Posted By davewasbaloo No worries guys. Pierce, I understand there were about 40 artists altogher, with about 24 principlae artists. The director is Alexander Deman, who also is an ice sculpter. Sadly I do not know of any of the others.
Originally Posted By TDLFAN >>My favorite parade music of all time however is from Tapestry of Nations. My fav parade too.<< That was not a parade. It was a Human Rights Protest, which is why it became a Tapestry of "Dreams"?
Originally Posted By FerretAfros That was a human rights protest? Strange, I never picked up on that. Granted, I never saw it in person, but I've seen enough photos and videos of the parade (and I just about have the nearly-30-minute soundtrack memorized) to get a pretty good idea of the spirit behind it. It's always appeared much more as a celebration of our commonalities between cultures, than a protest of anything. But I never saw it, so maybe that's not what it really was. And from what I've seen, Tapestry of Dreams wasn't all that different. They added some bizarre characters at the beginning, annoying kids 'dreaming' things in the audio, and really forced references to Walt Disney, but the general idea behind the revised parade seemed the same. If one was a protest of something (which I really don't think it was), then they both were.
Originally Posted By davewasbaloo Lol TDLfan my friend, bot have missed you. However, as you can probably guess, I do not agree with your assessment. My perception of the parade was it is in the spirit of international celebrations, the puppets being very similar to the ones used in Carnaval and religious celebration parades in Europe and South America, in India effigies are often carried, in the UK, the Guy on Bon Fire Night, in asian cultures - the dragons and lanterns. I saw ToN as a twist on these themes. Fantastic stuff. Plus I loved the spinning drums, they were very cool (given my dad is a pro drummer, this had an appeal). And the music was magnificient.
Originally Posted By davewasbaloo Different strokes, must of the TDL parades look too sickly sweet for me. Though I would love to see Dreamlights. I think what I also loved about ToN, no characters!!!! Yay!
Originally Posted By Spirit of 74 I'll take Dreamlights over ToN any day. But I still think my buddy TDLFAN was a bit harsh, it was fine for Y2K ... but who the hell cares? I'm just happy to see him around. I'd love to hear his comments on another, more serious, more Spirited thread! ;-)
