Category — Mickey Mouse

You go Mickey. When I’m your age, I want to look as young as you do today.

These last 80 years have been quite transformative for you. You’ve gone from a sweet and unpretentious little rascal to a modern day role model for the young. The next 80 are sure to be as transformative, especially as more images of you begin to enter the public domain. Sure there will be fights, huge ones, for control of your future. You have become a part of us. And now you belong to all of us as much as you ever belonged to Walt and the company he set up with his brother. I only hope you’re up to the task.

Happy Birthday Mickey Mouse.

We’ve always known there is a bit of a dark side to Mickey Mouse. Usually he was just being his mischievous self, but sometimes, as in Runaway Brain, he seemed like a completely different mouse. Okay. Maybe he was a completely different mouse. But he’s always been fairly squeaky clean when it comes to consumer products. In the last few years, however, we’ve been treated to some wider extremes of Walt’s most famous creation.

Walt Disney’s influence as a creative visionary and artist has inspired generations and BLOC28 by Disney is a new label that uniquely connects today’s street art and contemporary art culture with Disney’s most iconic character, Mickey Mouse. BLOC28 by Disney - Series 2, builds on the phenomenal success of the first series with well-known urban artists Aroe, Chaz Bojorquez, Ewok, Rime, Suiko and Tenga.

Each artist developed a one-of-a-kind piece of Mickey–themed art in their signature style which serves as the inspiration for a line of limited-edition product. And in celebration of the contemporary art community, Disney is kicking off a ten-day auction of limited edition BLOC28 product with eBay Giving Works to benefit Art Share Los Angeles – a community arts incubator whose mission is to shape lives through art, education and community action.

If you don’t live in New York or Los Angeles it can be incredibly difficult to get your hands on the BLOC28 line of products. So this auction is probably your best chance. Plus it supports a good cause. So everyone is a winner.

More information on the auction is available at eBay.

This weekend you’ll want to make sure to head over to South Korean artist Hyungkoo Lee’s “Animatus” exhibit to see his wild creations that peel the skin off your favorite animated characters to reveal the skeleton’s inside. This Mickey Mouse is just a taste.

If you’re Basel, Switzerland you can catch the exhibition at the natural history museum. Otherwise, Michael Sporn has pictures.

For its vigorous pursuit of copyright extension and trademark protection the Walt Disney Company is often made to be the villain in the war for freedom of expression and artistic expression. I obviously have a dog, or two, in this fight (my content is stolen all the time, but I also license it under a CC license for easier fair use). Additionally, I am a bit conflicted over whether I think copyright extension has gone too far, which I do, versus protection of the lovable characters created by Walt Disney and his artists, where I would hate to see others, who may not have the same love and passion that Disney’s artists do, in control.

So this article in the LA Times about how the Walt Disney Company may have flubbed the copyright for Mickey Mouse during his early days, definitely interests me. The short of it is, copyright laws can be very arcane and how it’s enforced today often depends on the requirements dating from the era of its creation. Apparently a researcher, a former Disney employee who doesn’t like the way the company is treating Walt’s creations, found that the original release of Steamboat Willie was on shaky copyright grounds.

There’s a lot more to the story than that. But the end result is Disney may or may not have lost the copyright on the Steamboat Willie short, but they still own the trademarks on all the various Disney characters (with a few exceptions where the Disney characters are based on public domain stories). So even if someone was to press for a public domain use of Mickey Mouse from Steamboat Willie and try and market that movie or stills from it, they would still face a very costly legal battle from Disney’s deep pocket over exactly how the film could be used without violating Disney trademark on Mickey Mouse.

In no way does this mean Disney no longer owns Mickey Mouse. Nor did Disney lose the copyright or trademark on Mickey or any other Disney characters (many iconic characters got their start in Steamboat Willie). At the most, I think you might see a few people try and sneak a full version of the Steamboat Willie short on a DVD or compilation with a clear disclaimer about how they’re not Disney and that the movie is in the public domain.

I, for one, would like to see a version of Steamboat Willie where a true passionate fan of early Disney animation is able to show how the magic was made. Sort of a subject matter expert DVD commentary. Or how about some mashups or remixes of the short with other music or animation cues. Public Domain would allow that. As long as it was clear it wasn’t Disney making those editions.

Eventually everything must enter the public domain where it can be used to create new artistic endeavors. This is how cultures grow and stay healthy. They question now is just when?

I’m loving these Mickey Mouse Paintings by Floyd Gottfredson between 1978-1983. Gottfredson pencilled the daily Mickey Mouse comic strip beginning in 1930. He was inducted as Disney Legend in 2003.

The El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood is the pinnacle of the Disney movie watching experience.  It is old Hollywood meets new, with restorations to both the exterior and interior, and equipped with Dolby SR-D digital sound, film and digital projectors, and 3-D capability. It is a Disney stage production.  It is excellent ice cream.  What’s not to love?

The El Capitan is located in the heart of Hollywood, right across the street from the Kodak Theatre- you know, the Academy Awards place.  It originally opened in 1926 as “Hollywood’s First Home of Spoken Drama.”  In the ten years following its opening it featured over 100 stage productions starring the likes of Will Rogers, Joan Fontaine and Clark Gable.  In 1941 Citizen Kane made its World Premiere at the El Capitan Theatre.  Basically, the place has history.

Then there is the ice cream.  Disney’s Soda Fountain and Studio Store features an old fashioned ice cream parlor (with actual soda jerks!) serving Bakersfield’s famous Dewar’s and homemade candies.  They also make a mean peanut butter and jelly sandwich (Mickey-shaped, of course).

The store portion is basically a small Disney Store with DVDs and character merchandise, but with a strong emphasis, including theming, on the film currently featured in the adjacent theatre.

We saw WALL-E (my review here, and my kids’ review here).

One of the cool things about the theatre is that they overlay everything to fit the movie, and by everything I mean from the marquee to the ATM (it was space-themed, not a robot).  This is carried next door into the ice cream parlor where my son and I shared a WALL-E sundae, and by share I mean I had two bites and he went into a sugar-fueled eating frenzy (see above).

For WALL-E the El Capitan teamed with NASA and JPL.  The lobby was decorated in models and information regarding various satellites, robotics, and other milestones of space exploration.  It was out of this world (sorry, I couldn’t resist).  WALL-E runs through August 27th.

Prior to WALL-E there was a live stage show that incorporated scenes from classic Disney/Pixar movies into dance numbers featuring the characters from the corresponding films.  The show is called “Disney’s Flight of Fantasy” and the crowd went wild.

My family and I had a blast and I can’t recommend the experience enough.  If you’re visiting for a Disneyland Resort vacation you should really consider adding this to your itinerary, and if you’re local you’ll appreciate this: clean bathrooms in Hollywood.  That’s the Disney touch.

Upcoming shows include Sleeping Beauty, TinkerBell, Beverly Hills Chihuahua (Chihuahua!), The Nightmare Before Christmas (3-D), High School Musical 3: Senior Year, and Bolt (3-D).

You can call 1-800-DISNEY6 or visit www.elcapitantickets.com for tickets and information.

I was just about to log off for the night when this story came across my radar. A Fox News station in Tampa Bay is back on the old story that the Walt Disney Company is refusing to authenticate what a gentleman claims is the original drawing of Mickey Mouse. Well, duh. It’s obvious to anyone with the slightest knowledge of Mickey’s early films that this isn’t an original Mickey.

I thought we put this one to bed last year, but now I’m so riled up to see it hit the airwaves again that I had to make another attempt at setting the record straight.

Someone get the local FOX news affiliates on the horn and ask them to do the slightest bit of research on this story about this confused gentlemen Steve Stein who thinks he has an original Mickey Mouse drawing from the 1920s. A simple search for “SteamBoat Willie” (Mickey’s first released animated short film) or “Plane Crazy” (the first film to feature Mickey, but not the first released) will reveal that: Mickey didn’t develop gloves on his hands until later in his life, he didn’t get the famous pie-eyes until the 30s, and the phones in the 20s didn’t use those curly phone cords either. Best of all, Walt wouldn’t have been drawing Mickey Mouse at that point anyway, it was Ub Iwerks who did almost all the drawings of Mickey Mouse for the Disney Brother Studios.

Thing is we already debunked this story in February of 2007 when the same Fox Tampa Television station ran this story. If the current reporter had just Googled “Steve Stein Mickey” my February story is the 4th result. Lazy reporting, exactly what I expect from Fox.

What’s inside the Cathay Circle Theatre replica at Disney’s Hollywood Studio? Why vintage Mickey Mouse toys, of course.

Concept art for the re-made entrance plaza to California Adventure shows them getting their own Cathay Circle Theatre replica. I hope they leave this collection alone.

The other day I ran across this postcard of Mickey Mouse through the years. I used to have the full size poster up in my room as a teenager. With a few notable departures (CG Mickey in Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and Runaway Brain (which hearkens back to earlier Mickey ever so slightly)) Mickey Mouse has remained relatively unchanged in design since the 80s.

Now this NY Times article hints that another shift is coming. Whether it’s just an evolution in wardrobe, as in the later stages of that postcard, or a serious makeover remains to be seen. But I think we’ve already seen some hints and the new Mickey Mouse animated short/featurette that Disney is rumored to be working on will reveal even more.

“I love classic Mickey, but he needs to evolve to be relevant to new generations of kids,” Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chief executive, said in an interview.

Mr. Iger talks about the need to balance “heritage and innovation.” For Mickey and other Disney characters, one method is to keep the core attributes of the characters the same, but to update the world in which they live. For instance, Disney is updating Toontown, the section of Disneyland that Mickey calls home. One plan features an old-fashioned trolley, but Mr. Iger is not sure that is a smart idea. Will modern children know what an old-fashioned trolley is?

I certainly hope modern children will know what a trolley is. If not, one ride on the Jolly Trolley will show them. Even then they can just look it up on wikipedia when they get home (or via their netlink at the parks while standing on line).

Btw, the re-introduction of Mickey Mouse to today’s children is occurring primarily through the “Mickey Mouse Clubhouse” pre-school targeted television series. The Mickey kids meet there is very different than the Mickey I grew up on. He’s much more self-assured, not milktoast, and unlikely to stumble or bumble his way through events. In fact, Mickey is more of a leader these days (although he was always the leader of his two closest friends Goofy and Donald). He’s also a problem solver. Which is what the show aims to install in modern children, the ability to solve problems by thinking thinks through and examining what tools you have at hand.

ArtDaily.org has a pointer to an art show featuring works by Ron English. A painting of ‘Muslim Mickey’ is used to highlight the exhibit of the AGIT-POP artist. It is more than a little eerie. Perhaps, because Mickey has no ears but also because that makes him look more like a mousy Mona Lisa after 72 hours with no sleep. (Link)