Link Therapy

• Criterion Close Isabelle Huppert makes her picks! 
• i09 Netflix odd email phishing scam promotion of The Punisher (I received this too and was like hmmmm... clever but gross and no thank you)
• Gr8ter Days Ann Wedgeworth, a favorite of the National Society of Film Critics prizes in the late 70s and early 80s (Handle with Care, Sweet Dreams) and a Tony winner for a Chapter Two (which later became a film albeit without Wedgeworth) and a TV regular has died
• Boy Culture It only took 50+ years but the Star Trek franchise just got its first gay kiss via Star Trek: Discovery thanks and out actors Anthony Rapp and Wilson Cruz
• Playbill Broadway hit Come From Away, which is about passengers stranded in a small Newfoundland town during 9/11, is going to get a film version with the Broadway director and writers transferring over
• Tracking Board Mahershala Ali and Carmen Ejogo (YAS! She's so undervalued) will headline the third season of True Detective for HBO

Our Ongoing Collective Trauma
• HuffPost a fine piece by Matt Jacobs on loving Hollywood and the pop-culture machine but realizing how rotten its been since its inception when it comes to abuses of power and the treatment of women
• Deadline Marti Nixon on the recent allegations against Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner 
• Variety Matthew Weiner denies the allegations but admits to being angry on set a lot of the time and wishes he had behaved differently
• AV Club Lena Dunham defends a Girls writer accused of assault
• Nylon a personal essay from Evan Rachel Wood about what the psychotic hurricane of these past two years and what she's learned about herself and others during this awful decline in time. 
• Film School Rejects on the way film sites have been reacting (or not) to the growing list of accusations

Two Videos
On Hela's hello cool antler headpiece in Thor Ragnarok and the short teaser for Incredibles 2 (basically Jack Jack giggling and causing havoc with his laser beam eyes) 

Off Screen for Fun
• New Yorker Disney princes reimagined as allies

Prince Eric is extremely committed to female equality in his kingdom. He has so much to tell Ariel about the plight and oppression of women that he fails to notice that she doesn’t have a voice.

"Lion King" Revival Announces Cast

Your childhood memories are about to get Beyoncé'd.

Disney's The Lion King is getting the live-action treatment and previews for it have already shown great promise. Disney has now revealed the list of stars that will voice your most cherised prepubescent traumas. Standouts include James Earl Jones as Mufasa (he also voiced the original in 1994), Chiwetel Ejiofor as maybe-gay uncle Jafar, and budding singer/song-reader Beyoncé Knowles-Carter. The voices of the new King features great diversity that we hope is indicative of the crew behind-the-scenes. 

Check out the full main cast up next...

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1944: The Three Caballeros

by Tim Brayton

We're celebrating the cinema 1944 right now at the Film Experience, and as the resident animation lover, how could I pass up the chance to take a look at that year's most wonderfully bizarre cartoon? I'm referring to Disney's The Three Caballeros, the studio's second feature-length contribution to the United States government's Good Neighbor policy during World War II. That program involved goodwill tours and films tailor-made for Latin American audiences, and in Disney's case, a combination of both: a research trip to South America with Walt Disney and several of his most important artists result in the creation of 1942's Saludos Amigos, in which international icons Donald Duck and Goofy had fun visiting Brazil and Argentina, respectively, and learning all about the locals.

Saludos Amigos is a charming, slight movie (at 42 minutes, it severely tests the definition of the term "feature film"), and exactly what you'd anticipate from the description "the U.S. government paid Disney to make a film about how great people in South America are, in the fumbling, patronizing manner of 1940s Hollywood".

Its quasi-sequel is not that at all... 

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Happy 50th to The Jungle Book (1967) -- Who is your avatar within?

by Nathaniel R

Rudyard Kipling's collection of stories "The Jungle Book"  was first published in 1894. It's been adapted so many times now, you always have to specify which version you're talking about. The most famous and widely seen is surely Disney's 1967 animated version which opened in movie theaters 50 years ago on this very day. It's been a childhood staple for decades now with Disney only just barely trying to replace it with that inferior but wildly successful live-action CGI hybrid replica. When I was a wee toddler it was my favorite Disney movie (it's long since been replaced but holds a special place in my heart).

Today's crucial reader survey / comment party:
Which character do you most relate to... and which do you wish you were a little more like?

Let's hear from the lot of you for a wide sampling of our particular online jungle here at The Film Experience. Your options, in order of their appearance, are...

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Looking back at 1985: The Black Cauldron

Tim here. This month at the Film Experience, we're celebrating the year 1985 in movies, and in the chronicles of animation history, that can mean only one thing.  I refer to the evergreen tale of how Walt Disney Pictures nearly extinguished itself during the hideously protracted, agonized production of the animated feature The Black Cauldron.

This was near the end of almost two straight decades, following Walt Disney's death in 1966, during which time the company with his name on it couldn't put a single foot right. The days of Marvel, Star Wars, and billion-dollar cartoons weren't so much as a glimmer at this time; Disney barely existed as a film studio at all, but was internationally known almost exclusively for its theme parks. Still, live-action films trickled out every so often, and about once every four years, the animation studio would try its hand at a new cartoon. The most ambitious and expensive of these by far was an attempt at adapting the five books of Lloyd Alexander's 1960s series The Chronicles of Prydain into a high fantasy epic like the world of animation had never seen.

There were two main problems with this scheme...

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