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He turns 80 today.  Walt Disney’s Steamboat Willie premiered on November 18th 1928 at the Broadway Theater.

The most iconic mouse there is.  One day, if Pixar’s Luxo doesn’t get waylaid making pornos, we’ll be regarding it with the same affection as Mickey Mouse.

It’s always hard to judge movies aimed squarely at young kids from the perspective of a jaded adult.  Especially because I love to go back and revisit the movies I have fond  memories of - unfortunately, after watching them I’m disgusted with my taste as a child.  Still, the new entry into the Witch Mountain franchise(?) starring The Rock and a couple of kids looks like it could be good, disposable fun to take young cousins or nieces and nephews to.  Something the slightly older too cool for Pixar crowd might like.

Also, The Rock ya’ll.  Definitely the action star we’ve been looking for since Arnold, Sly adn JCVD’s slide into irrelevance.

Official Plot Synopsis: Race to Witch Mountain is a thrilling action-adventure about a hard luck Las Vegas cab driver Jack Bruno (DWAYNE JOHNSON), whose life is thrown into chaos when apparent ‘runaway’ teenagers Sara (ANNASOPHIA ROBB) and Seth (ALEXANDER LUDWIG) jump into his taxi. He soon realizes his two fares are children with exceptional paranormal powers whom he must protect as they elude a collection of ruthless enemies.

Race to Witch Mountain hits theaters on March 13th 2009.

Pixar is at it again with the unlikely adventure of Carl Fredricksen, voiced by Ed Asner.  There is a bit of Pixar’s magical realism involved as Carl decides to fly to the jungle by attached millions of balloons to his house.  Obviously it’s pointless to judge a movie by the trailer, but Pixar hasn’t done wrong yet.

This might be blasphemous but I much prefer this type of animated story then ones with anthropomorphic animals or whatnot. It’s why I default to watching The Incredibles when I’m feeling in the mood to watch a Pixar flick.

Up arrives in theaters on May 29, 2009.

Which is probably why we weren’t so shocked that one of the new characters in their Christmas 2009 movie, The Princess and the Frog was a stereotypical cajon-type. We weren’t the only ones who recognized the obviousness. It was fairly on par with some of their other past efforts, which doesn’t make it right or excusable.

Disney has a long history of racist portrayals as you’ll see below and in some of their most recent efforts as well. Still, I’m not sure what’s worse: subtle racism like a character called Jim Crow (true) or the hidden sexual innuendos found in Little Mermaid and The Lion King. No, scratch that. Racism wins. Or loses, I guess, depending on your point of view. Anyway, the point is that a company built of family-entertainment should no better and we should expect better from them and that starts with calling them on their shenanigans.

Good for Disney at least trying to go back to 2-D animation, but we could do without the simple characterizations of certain groups of people. We poked around on YouTube and someone has spliced together a montage of exactly what we were looking for - examples of Disney’s past transgressions.

When Pixar essentially went all in and took over Disney animation a few years ago, the exciting news was that John Lassiter was taking the reigns and wanted to bring back traditional 2-D animation in the vein of classic Disney movies. They wouldn’t be hand drawn, obvs, but just the promise of Disney returning to the roots they ceremoniously abandoned for the computer animation oil field was exciting.

The first such project is going to be The Princess and the Frog, a Broadway-style musical tale set in 1920’s Jazz Age New Orleans and featuring their first African-American character, Tiana. Tiana is a chambermaid much like Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, who no doubt meets a Prince and lives happily ever after.

Cool, I can get down with that.

Looks like we might even get some stereotypical cajun anthropomorphic insects and music by Harry Conick Jr Randy Newman (ugh).

So yeah, Disney isn’t exactly bringing it their first time around. The thing is we need this movie to be a success if animation fans (that would be me) want to have mainstream animation movies to see on the big screen. I suppose that’s a rant for another day, however.

I don’t know what it is about Pixar’s upcoming Wall-E, but he’s such an endearing robot and the movie isn’t even out yet. I think people respond to him in a way that they haven’t responded to an animated character before. It’s like there is this strange connection for the little guy. We’ll see if that carries over when the movie comes out.

Disney and Pixar have created a live action Wall-E and the little guy is just as cute.