"'LIFE OF PI' tiger 'damn near drowned'... 27 animal deaths on 'THE HOBBIT'..."

"Dog punched repeatedly in popular DISNEY movie... Secret emails, documents exposed... Spielberg protected by cover-up of 'WAR HORSE' death... MORE..."

Drudge top-pages a set of headlines — including the main headline, "MOVIES, TV AWASH IN HIDDEN ANIMAL ABUSE"— aiming massive attention at a Hollywood Reporter article with a much subtler headline, "No Animals Were Harmed."

Walt Disney smoked 3 packs of cigarettes a day and died of lung cancer, but portraying Walt Disney in a movie, "can we show him smoking?"

"No way in hell," says Tom Hanks, citing "the current atmosphere of pressure in films."

The film is "Saving Mr Banks,"  about Disney acquiring the film rights to "Mary Poppins," which I guess is supposed to be interesting because of the merger of American and British culture, with Britain embodied in the author P.L. Travers, and Tom Hanks essentially wooing her. Allegorical claptrap... and that's assuming it's ambitiously conceived. It might just be exactly the story of Disney getting the rights to "Mary Poppins." Who cares? People might care if Hanks seems like Disney, if they remember what Disney seems like. Why isn't he smoking?!

"Fallen Princesses..."

"... When The Happily-Ever-After Doesn’t Happen."

"We've got Johnny Depp with a taxidermied crow on top of his head and painted to the nth degree... and he looks like a gothic freak."

"There's no way you can look at this and not say it's odd, unusual, strange, arresting, startling... It's a major setback for the Native American image in the world because that's how millions of people will think American Indians are now."

ADDED: The link above goes to an NPR item — "Does Disney's Tonto Reinforce Stereotypes Or Overcome Them?" — and after posting, I decided to check out the reviews for "The Lone Ranger." They're terrible.

How/why/wherefore did it turn out this way? The evidence suggests a combination of hubris, errant revisionism, a misguided and perverse degree of violence, and a script that never worked in the first place.

ALSO: From the sidebar at NPR's "Tonto" article, from just a few days ago, "Can 'Devious Maids' Really Break Stereotypes About Latinas?" ("Thankfully, the maids themselves aren't stereotypes. But there are no Latina bosses here.") From yesterday: "How A Minority Biking Group Raises The Profile Of Cycling." ("It was very powerful to have a group, like 60 or 70 riders who were all black rolling through a predominately black community on a bike.") And, also from yesterday: "The Secret History Of The Word 'Cracker.'" ("For many Southern whites, though, cracker has remained uncomplicated, a source of cultural pride.")

NPR means well, I'm pretty sure, as it talks and talks about race from an upper-middle-class white perspective. That's how it looks to me, anyway. 

"The redesign of Merida in advance of her official induction to the Disney Princess collection does a tremendous disservice..."

"... to the millions of children for whom Merida is an empowering role model who speaks to girls' capacity to be change agents in the world rather than just trophies to be admired."

Moreover, by making her skinnier, sexier and more mature in appearance, you are sending a message to girls that the original, realistic, teenage-appearing version of Merida is inferior; that for girls and women to have value – to be recognised as true princesses – they must conform to a narrow definition of beauty

"We don’t know where this came from, Disney is getting to her somehow.... We don’t even play with princesses..."

"...but all she wants to do is put on a dress and dance around the house, and now she really, really wants Cinderella at her birthday party," the parents say to the professional Cinderella, who dresses like the Disney Cinderella and sings "A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes" at parties. Won't Disney come after her after this big profile in The Washington Post?

“I can say I’m Cinderella because she was around before Disney,” explained Russell, who has upgraded her outfits and now has five other performers working for her. “Rapunzel they don’t own, but ‘Tangled’ they do. Our Little Mermaid is not their Ariel. But we do look like them.”

"How Much 'Star Wars' is Too Much 'Star Wars'?"

Hmm. I don't know. I stopped after 2. Long ago, in a ... whatever.

"Steamboat Willie overdubbed with the Koyaanisqatsi theme."

"The Disney classic paired with Phillip Glass' classic theme. Oddly unsettling on a number of levels."

Hmm. I don't know. I clicked through and watched it a bit, and the main thing I thought was what a great cartoon, full of weirdness and sadism that was always there and not something new injected by the mysterious-serious soundtrack. The injection — which might feel good to druggies — is aggressive nudging that only serves the purposes of those too numb to see what is there in life as it already is. 

The second thing I thought was every time those spooky voices incant "Koyaanisqatsi," what I hear is "[unintelligible] Wisconsin."

By the way, Meade happened to glance over at 0:50 and laughed out loud, not because of anything about the added soundtrack, but the original comic idea. I said: "What? This is 'Steamboat Willie,' the oldest cartoon in the world." But his laugh meant — as I immediately realized — that this is something perfectly great, perfectly timeless, and utterly — udderly — unimprovable.