The Best Day on the Set of "Saving Mr Banks"

Costume Designer Daniel Orlandi is guest-blogging all day!

by Daniel Orlandi

I had been preparing for the high-pressure two days of shooting at DisneyLand for several months. There were about 800 extras including 250 kids that had to be costumed and the research had been surprising. People used to actually dress up for a day in the park back in 1962. We had everyone in colorful 1960s California finery. When dressing extras I like to give everyone a character — so no souvenirs or T shirts!  We found a website where people posted their old personal photos of Disneyland. That was invaluable.

We also had to dress the park employees. Recreating Disney’s 1960s walk-around characters proved even more challenging...

Click to read more ...

Disney World's Pandora

Nathaniel popping in from a vacation I forgot to tell you about at Disney World to say hello. (Thanks to the team for keeping you occupied!) Disney opened "Pandora – The World of Avatar" just a week back and the lines are loooong. It's two to three hours for the Avatar related rides and pricy gift shop purchases. The most popular of the souvenirs are banshee puppets that sit on your shoulder. All the little kids seem to be wearing them but it seems like adults might like them even more. They're gorgeous and have a ton of realistic movement you control with a small device in one hand. There are also custom made Avatar action figures that are meant to look like you. That's an exceptional audience-friendly concept for a toy but I personally didn't see enough resemblance in the examples to justify the $80ish price tag.

We fast-passed the "Flight of Passage" ride and it is breathtaking. You mount motorcycle like contraptions and wear some form of 3D glasses for the ride. For a hot minute or so in the middle of the 4 minute ride, I literally forgot I was at an amusement park I was so caught up in it as if I actually were flying a banshee in Na'vi form. James Cameron, never one to shy away from hyperbole, has described the ride as "dreaming with your eyes open” and that's not far off. In theory it's not so different from other rides which are more "virtual" than purely physical (like, say, old school rollercoasters) but this one is the most immersive and transporting ride of its kind that I've ever experienced.

Remember Gandhi? Baby Jake? Harlow?

On this day in movie related history...

1893 Mahatma Gandhi committed his first act of civil disobedience refusing to move from a whites only first class section of a train. He had a valid ticket, after all. He was forcibly ejected in South Africa's Pietermaritzburg Railway Station. This event and many others from his nonviolent revolution were reenacted by Ben Kingsley in Gandhi, Oscar's Best Picture of 1982. (You can cover a lot with a running time of 191 minutes.)
1909 Jessica Tandy is born. Steals Michelle Pfeiffer's Oscar 80 years, 9 months, and 19 days later.
1917 Rat Pack royalty Dean Martin is born. Centennial next year.
1928 Perpetually underappreciated and totally awesome director James Ivory is born. Later makes masterpieces like A Room With a View and Howards End. Where's his Honorary Oscar, AMPAS? He's 87 people get on that immediately. 

1937 The original Bombshell, Jean Harlow dies suddenly at the peak of her fame at the age of 26. Where's her biopic?
1952 Liam Neeson is born.
1958 Prince is born. *sniffle*
1966 Tom McCarthy, the director of last year's Best Picture Spotlight (2015) is born
1972 One of the world's most handsome actors, Karl Urban, is born in New Zealand. Later goes to both Middle Earth and Space, the final frontier. Next up: Pete's Dragon and Thor: Ragnarok. Meanwhile in New York Grease opens on Broadway. It becomes a movie phenomenon six years later. It is never leaving us.
1985 Goonies and Perfect both open. "What's so wrong with wanting to be perfect?"
1974 Bear Grylls is born so we might one day see pampered A list actors try to look tough in survival mode in the wild... albeit with a film crew around them so how Wild are they really Running? 
1976 ”The Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night,” by journalist Nik Cohn is published in New York magazine. It becomes a movie very quickly, a classic too, Saturday Night Fever (1977)
1990 Universal Studios Florida opens. Original rides based on Jaws, Earthquake, and King Kong all experience technical problems.

Baby Gyllenhaal

1991 City Slickers opens, turning into a surprise hit. Jack Palance wins the Oscar and little boy Jake Gyllenhaal makes his film debut 
1998 The Lion King, the Broadway sensation based on Disney's mega-hit movie, wins six Tony Awards
2015 Helen Mirren wins her Tony for playing Queen Elizabeth on Broadway, a role that also won her an Oscar (The Queen). She also won an Emmy for playing a different Queen Elizabeth. She's just an audiobook about royalty away from her EGOT.

Princess Leia "I'm Going to Disneyland!"

she'll fit right in.

The news travelled 'cross the web faster than hyper speed earlier tonight. Princess Leia has found a new home at Disney, the Mouse House having purchased all things Lucasfilm for a wee $4 billion and stock.

One day Disney will own the entire world but it's okay because corporations are people. And you'd totally be okay if one person owned the entire world, right??? Pray that your future corporate overlord will be a benevolent dictator... who giggles a lot and wears mouse ears.

Star Wars Episode VII: The Quest For More Billions, or whatever they'll eventually name it, is aiming for a 2015 release. That's quick. I hope they have a screenwriter already typing away. And I hope that screenwriter's name is not George Lucas.

The best part of this news is the Star Wars ride possibilities at amusement parks are endless. The worst part of this news is that the Star Wars franchise is already so over-exposed and now it'll be even worse! What Disney's done to Tinkerbell depresses me virtually every day and what horrible ubiquitous personality-changing fate might lie in store for Leia or the Ewoks or Jabba the Hut or (gasp) Jar Jar Binks.

If the new film is not set too far into the future following Return of the Jedi, will Princess Leia resurface and if so who on earth could play her? Let's do an impromptu Cast This! Ideally though, they'd go with all new characters and let Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, and Harrison Ford do cameos as their classic trio many years on.

Disney Parks

When's the last time you went to a movie amusement park? For reasons I can't figure I was having multiple flashbacks about Disney World today. Maybe it's because summer is on the way?

I've only ever been once, a treat from my best friend on my birthday. I had such a blast and I was a total freak about running around to take photos with the characters I loved even though it was two million degrees out and I looked terrible (not a summer person). I was talking to Mary Poppins when Sleeping Beauty appeared and I was like 'bye bitch' (not really) but I bolted for Aurora because, duh, best princess. I might be mixing up the series of events because it was quite overwhelming for days and days.

Share your Disney stories in the comments. Should I go again? Any new rides of note?

My favorite photo from the trip was with Peter Pan & Wendy who I've always loved both as a pair and separately.

Why was I thinking about this today? It matters not.