Lion King 3D Review

The line for The Lion King 3D was incredibly long and I believe it maxed out at the D23 Expo, so my only chance to see it was in the theaters these next two weeks. 

The film is the original version show in theaters in 1996, so the new song "Morning Report" was not included.  For me this was a moot point; if they included it, awesome, if not, not a huge loss. The film itself is quite clear because of the switch to digital for the sake of the 3D. The usage of 3D is strictly for depth, though there are a couple places where objects or faces do pop out at you, like Zazu's tail feathers, but this seems strictly coincidental. The friend I went with said that he noticed a couple parts in the movie where the picture seemed a little distorted from being in 3D, but I honestly did not notice these times and it did not take away from the movie.

I didn't realize until I got home, but the really cool themed 3D glasses I picked up to use were technically for children, though they did fit me fine.  They have a little Simba on the front and one of the arms says "The Lion King 3D". I thought they were really cool!

My total opinion: It was cool to see The Lion King on the big screen again; when it came out in 1996 it was the 2nd movie I had ever seen in theaters and my sister's first. The 3D was a unique way to see the film, but it did little for me honestly. If you are a big Lion King fan or just want to see the film on the big screen again, I say go for it. Otherwise, I would say put the $13 a ticket towards something else, like buying Lion King on Blu-Ray to get all the awesome features that comes with that, or put it towards your next Walt Disney World vacation and see the Festival of the Lion King show.

A Fun Evening In for Disney Fans

A friend of mine on twitter, Ryan Kilpatrick, has an awesome blog that, if you have not checked it out yet, you are missing out!!  It is called Disney Film Project and, as the title may suggest, it is all about Disney films. Not just feature films either, but shorter works as well! Ryan has a goal to watch all of the Disney theatrical films, both feature and short, in one year. He does make a disclaimer that it may take more than a year, and, I will admit, I hope it does because following along and learning about different films with him is just too much fun!!

He has been able to make his experience interactive thanks to Friendfeed.  Ryan schedules what he calls a TweetWatch, where whoever wants to join in can go to his blog's FriendFeed account (http://friendfeed.com/disneyfilmproject) and watch a movie with him! Ryan picks a Disney movie for that day, learns lots of different facts about it and while everyone watches the movie together, he tells us facts about it. It is a great learning experience and a fun way to spend the evening interacting with fellow Disney fans. Having been able to take part in several of these TweetWatches, I have gotten hooked on the experience and look forward to the evenings when it takes place, which is usually a Monday evening.

If you are interested in joining in on one of these TweetWatches, your first opportunity is this Monday, November 15th at 8:30pm Eastern.  The movie this week is Lady and the Tramp, one of my all-time favorites, which I am very excited for! To join in the fun, just have the movie on the menu screen and join the DisneyFilmProject's FriendFeed and wait for the signal from Ryan to press "Play" and begin the movie.

Click here for a full schedule of TweetWatch movies for the next few weeks and check back to Ryan's site frequently to learn about all of the great shorts he watches throughout his film project journey: http://disneyfilmproject.blogspot.com/. Follow Ryan on twitter at Twitter.com/RyanKilpatrick

Celebrate Halloween in Disney Style!

We are only a week away from Halloween and us Disney fans always have to find some way to incorporate our Disney touches into our celebrations.  The parks do it well with the Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party, but there are a lot of us (including myself) who are not able to celebrate the season with Mickey.  So, if we cannot visit Mickey in his home, we just have to bring him to ours!

When I think of scary and Disney, there are two attractions that I think of right away; Tower of Terror and Haunted Mansion.  There are several ways to incorporate these attractions into your Halloween.  My first and one I find very fun and interesting is http://www.themagical.nl/. I did blog post quite a while ago about this website, but for Halloween, I just had to bring it out again.  This site has ride simulators on them, allowing you to be in charge of and run some of the hit attractions on Disney properties around the world.  For Halloween, there are two simulators that I wanted to highlight, though all of them are good.  There are simulators for Tower of Terror and Disneyland Paris' Phantom Manor (aka Haunted Mansion) and not only are they fun to play around with because you can find out how some of your favorite attractions work, but they have the spooky atmosphere perfect with Halloween.  Play these simulators by yourself or with your children and feel like you are in the parks!

Want to learn everything there is to know about The Haunted Mansion? Check out http://doombuggies.com/ and get everything from pictures and audio clips to personal interviews with Imagineers and where to buy great HM Merchandise! A spooky and fun website for any time of the year!

Another way you cannot go wrong when it comes to Disney and Halloween is with music.  Going back to Haunted Mansion and Tower of Terror, these soundtracks make great background music for a Halloween party. If you want to feel like you are in the park celebrating, you could get the Magic Kingdom Event Party Music CD, which has the full soundtracks from the Boo to You Parade, Hallowishes and Halloween Villains Mix and Mingle, among other fun soundtracks including music from the Pirates and Princess Party.  Other music you may not have immediately thought of could be some of your favorite villains "theme songs" per se.  Some of these tracks include "Poor Unfortunate Souls" (Ursula), "Gaston" and "The Mob Song" (Gaston), "Prince Ali (Reprise)" (Jafar), "Be Prepared" (Scar) and so many more! Oh, and don't forget to check the music from Fantasmic, there are lots of villainesque music from that soundtrack as well!

Movies are a great way to get in the Halloween Spirit! Every movie has a villain, which is scary for Halloween, but there are some movies out there that specifically for this time of year.  One scary movie would the The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, as featured on the October 25 Tweetwatch, sponsored by http://www.disneyfilmproject.blogspot.com/ (look for a post about Ryan's project coming soon). The "Halloweentown" series are very cute and fun movies to watch this time of year, my little sister and I love to watch those!  Some others include Black Cauldron, Nightmare Before Christmas (also could be used for Christmas), Haunted Mansion and, from television show "House of Mouse"- "House of Villains".

Those are just some ideas that I have on how to incorporate Disney into your Halloween.  There are tons more ideas of course, I would love to hear how you incorporate Disney into your Halloween! Leave a comment here or send me an email with your ideas!

I will leave you now with just one more idea, a picture that I took at Linvilla Orchards. What would you carve into a Disney pumpkin??

The Disucator Returns!: Multilingual Disney

With a new school year starting, it is time to bring back The Disucator; ideas and information on how to bring a little Disney to your classroom!

Today's idea is for Foreign Language teachers of all grade levels and languages. One activity that is seen frequently in foreign language classes is listening activities, this helps the students to practice listening to conversations and comprehending them.  Why not give your students a treat after a hard test and yet still have them engaged in a class activity? Have them watch a Disney movie in the language they are taking! Letting them watch the movie will keep them engaged in the activity and, since it is a storyline they probably know, they will be better able to keep up with the dialogue than if it was a everyday conversation with no visuals. Also, because they know what the dialogues are generally about, they may be able to learn new vocabulary words used in the conversations.

Another idea is to keep Disney storybooks in the language you are teaching in your classroom and allow the students on some downtime to page through them.  This also may help expand their vocabulary and allow them to see where words are used in familiar contexts. 

While this sounds like something you would do for younger children, this really can be done with all grade levels and language levels! My sister watched children's movies in her Spanish class and said she really found it enjoyable, they were still learning and yet they were relaxing and having fun.  Even in college this could work! I know that if I walked into my language class and the teacher told me I was going to be watching a Disney movie in Spanish, I would be so excited! And for those teachers who may be worried about their students falling asleep or not paying attention to the film, you can make up a worksheet to give the students.  Have them listen for certain verbs or have them write down vocabulary words they do not know, just a simple exercise to keep them engaged. 

I hope that these ideas can help you bring a little Disney fun to your language class! Until our next lesson: Class Dismissed!

Weekly DDL Post

This week on the Disney Driven Life, I review a couple major announcements the Comic Con last week! Both are movie announcements and one could be quite spooky! Check out the article here!

What's the Location?

The other day, my sister Emily and I were watching Dumbo and she was looking up trivia about it. One of the pieces of trivia she came across was that Dumbo was one of the few Disney Animated Features that actually take place in the USA. I found this interesting and began trying to make a list of Disney movies and where they took place in my head. I eventually realized that Disney had way to many movies for me to make a list like that in my head, so I decided to look them all up and write them down.

As I wrote them down, I realized that making a list like this is harder than I thought. While some movies were pretty obvious, others there seems to be more controversial than others or else just downright confusing. I compiled the list the best that I could though. Where there was confusion, I wrote down whatever I could find for the movie, even if there were several places to choose from and for movies with multiple sequences, such as Fantasia or Fun and Fancy Free, I wrote Various.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs..........Germany/Belgium
Pinocchio..........Italy
Fantasia..........Various
Dumbo..........USA
Bambi..........USA
Saludos Amigos..........Latin America
The Three Caballeros..........Latin America
Make Mine Music..........Various
Fun and Fancy Free..........Various
Melody Time..........Various
The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad..........USA/England
Cinderella..........France
Alice in Wonderland..........England
Peter Pan..........England
Lady and the Tramp..........USA
Sleeping Beauty..........France
101 Dalmatians..........England
The Sword in the Stone..........England
The Jungle Book..........India
The Aristocats..........France
Robin Hood..........England
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh..........England
The Rescuers..........USA
the Fox and the Hound..........USA
The Black Cauldron..........England/France
The Great Mouse Detective..........England
Oliver and Company..........USA
The Little Mermaid..........Denmark/Holland/England
The Rescuers Down Under..........Australia
Beauty and the Beast..........France
Aladdin..........Arabia
The Lion King..........Africa
Pocahontas..........USA
The Hunchback of Notre Dame..........France
Hercules..........Greece
Mulan..........China
Tarzan..........Africa
Fantasia 2000..........Various
The Emperor's New Groove..........South America
Atlantis: The Lost Empire..........USA, Atlantis
Lilo and Stitch..........USA
Treasure Planet..........Outer Space
Brother Bear..........North America, Arctic
Home on the Range..........USA
The Princess and the Frog..........USA
Bolt..........USA
Chicken Little..........Imaginary Town
Dinosaur..........Past, Prehistoric
Meet the Robinsons..........USA


Pixar Movies
A Bug's Life..........Unknown/Could be Anywhere
Cars..........Imaginary Town, but meant to be USA
Finding Nemo..........Australia
The Incredibles..........USA
Monsters Inc..........Monster World, Worldwide
Ratatouille..........France

Toy Story..........USA

Up..........USA
Wall*E..........Worldwide, Space


That's the list that I compiled with the information I found online, I tallied it up and this is what I found:

USA: 16
Various/Unknown (Including movies with multiple possibilities: 9
Imaginary/Past/Future/Space: 8
England: 7
France: 6
South/Latin America: 3
Africa: 2
Australia: 2
Arabia: 1
India: 1
Germany/Belgium: 1
Italy: 1
Greece: 1
China: 1

Through my research, I found that USA actually had the most movies that took place there. Granted, I did include Pixar movies, but even if you take out the Pixar ones, USA still has the most with 12.

If you have questions about any of the locations I have written down or if you know of any missing movies or changes I need to make please let me know either by email (lady_aurora_yensid@hotmail.com) or by leaving a comment here!

A Timeless Classic Renewed!

As I sit and eat more of my incredibly buttery theater popcorn (like really buttery, I have to practically wash my hands every time I take a bite), I am thinking about the awesome movie I just saw. I had heard that A Christmas Carol was going to be excellent and I was not disappointed! I have seen many versions of this movie, as it is a favorite of my father and because of the general love of Christmas found in the Clawson household, and I was quite impressed. They stuck firmly to the story, incorporating all of the well known scenes and even adding the not-as-known ones, including the infamous hearse. For those who have seen the "Mickey's Christmas Carol", the final scene with the ghost of Christmas Yet to Come really reminded me of the scene as it is done with Pete in that film.

My mom, sister and I did not see the movie in 3D (Mom is not the biggest fan of 3D) but we were easily able to tell where the 3D parts were and even in 2D the graphics were very pronounced! You still felt like you were in the movie itself! The animation was by far the best feature and addition to the classic film. At the beginning, a book opens to an illustration and then the animation switches from the illustration to the live animation of the movie and, if I did not know any better, I would have swore I was watching live actors rather than animation! I knew it would be good, but was blown away by the total quality!

While I am thoroughly impressed with this movie, I will not pretend that it did not have its frightening points. The appearance of the spirits, the hearse...there were some parts that made both my sister and I jump out of our seats. Because of this, I am not sure I would recommend this for young children; there are just some scenes that I would consider nightmare worthy. Then again, I am a total chicken, so if your child is up to the challenge, I highly recommend it! It really is a family movie with a great classic plot and tale of the true spirit of Christmas, I would just hold on to your little ones in case they may be frightened.

So two thumbs way way up for A Christmas Carol with Jim Carrey! I would highly recommend it to start off your holiday season!