If you think about, New Year’s Day is the perfect holiday for Charlie Brown. With the holidays behind us for another year and nothing ahead of us but the grey days of January and our blank tax returns, it’s easy to feel as defeated as everyone’s favorite “lovable loser” does all year long. It’s a […]
Archive for the ‘Animation Cel-ebration’ Category
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From Drama to Llama: The 20th Anniversary of “The Emperor’s New Groove”
December 25th, 2020 
Michael Lyons From a movie production filled with drama came a film filled with laughs. Disney’s 40th animated feature, The Emperor’s New Groove, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this month, started life as a completely different movie that became mired in problems, but emerged as one of the funniest films ever to come out of the Studio. […]
A Spirited Adaptation: Richard Williams’ “A Christmas Carol” – An Appreciation
December 18th, 2020 Michael Lyons “How did they do that?” is a question that, as an audience, we don’t ask much anymore. This is especially true in animation, particularly in our digital age, where computer animation has made the impossible possible on screen, all the time. But “How did they do that?’ applies to every frame of director Richard Williams […]
One Night Only: When Christmas Specials Were Special
December 11th, 2020 Michael Lyons Several years ago, a friend of mine shared a moment from his childhood that he jokingly referred to as “traumatic.” It was the mid-1970’s and he was grocery shopping with his parents, when he suddenly though to ask what time it was. After his parents told him, he did some quick elementary school math as […]
A “Short” Christmas Greeting: Mickey’s Good Deed
December 4th, 2020 Michael Lyons When fans of Mickey Mouse look for the perfect, classic way to celebrate Christmas with the iconic star, they usually turn to the 1952 short, Pluto’s Christmas Tree, or the “From All of Us to All of You” episode of the Disneyland TV Show, or even 1983’s featurette, Mickey’s Christmas Carol. However early in his […]
Thanksgiving “Cat”-astrophe: Tom & Jerry in “The Little Orphan”
November 27th, 2020 Michael Lyons Even during this socially distant Thanksgiving we just experienced, the trope of unwelcome guests still surfaced (after all, they could still always arrive via video conference!). This aspect of the holiday even surfaced in a classic Tom & Jerry cartoon from 1948 entitled The Little Orphan, in which the cat and mouse team welcome the […]
A “Special” look at Prehistoric Times: “B.C. The First Thanksgiving”
November 20th, 2020 Michael Lyons When A Charlie Brown Christmas aired on CBS fifty-five years ago, it was a huge ratings hit and seen by 45% of those watching television that evening. Soon, other networks started looking for a similar success. They wanted their “blockbuster holiday special.” Since imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and the theory that “if […]
First and Foremost: The Significance of “Steamboat Willie”
November 13th, 2020 Michael Lyons Each year, around this time, Disney fans and animation enthusiasts will always be reminded that November 18th is Mickey Mouse’s birthday. And, if the birthday is a milestone (as it was two years ago for his 90th), the inundation of marketing and merchandising really ramps up. So, why the big deal? Plenty of animated characters […]
A Mice Time in the Outback: The 30th Anniversary of “The Rescuers Down Under”
November 6th, 2020 Michael Lyons It was Monday, November 19th, 1990 and Home Alone had just opened, becoming a mammoth hit that blindsided Hollywood, going on to become one of the biggest movies of all time and a Christmas classic. The John Hughes film also demolished any other movies competing against it at the box-office. One of these was The […]
