Annie Leibovitz Disney Dream Portrait Series

The latest installment of Annie Leibovitz photos featuring celebrities in Disney fairy tale scenes is out for the "Disney Dream Portrait Series," promoting Disney Parks' "Year of a Million Dreams." This set of photos features Whoopi Goldberg, Jennifer Lopez, Marc Anthony, Gisele Bundchen, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Tina Fey, and Jessica Biel.

The below scene is entitled "Where a Whole New World Awaits," and features Whoopi Goldberg portraying the Genie from "Aladdin."



Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony portray Jasmine and Aladdin in part two of "Where a Whole New World Awaits."



In the following scene entitled "Where You Never Have to Grow Up," supermodel Gisele Bundchen portrays Wendy, dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov is Peter Pan, and Tina Fey is Tinkerbell.




Finally Jessica Biel portrays Pocahontas in the scene entitled "Where Dreams Run Free."



I absolutely love these "Year of a Million Dreams" promotional pictures for the Disney Parks. I hope there are many more in store for this year.

2008 Oscar Nominations

Nominees for 80th Annual Academy Awards have been announced.

Disney division Miramax received many nominations, but my focus will be on the main Walt Disney Pictures division.

Ratatouille received quite a few nominations including Best Animated Feature, Best Original Screenplay, Best Original Score, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Sound Editing.

Being one of the best reviewed movies of the year, many were hoping for a Best Picture nomination. I definitely wasn't expecting one, but it would have been quite exciting to have an animated movie be nominated again for Best Picture like Beauty and the Beast was in 1992.

Enchanted received three nominations for Best Original Song--"Happy Working Song," "So Close," and "That's How You Know."

No Lead Actress nomination for Amy Adams for Enchanted, which is disappointing. Taking three out of five spots in the Best Original Song category, Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz have a pretty good chance and rightly deserve a win.

Finally, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End received two nominations for Best Visual Effects and Makeup.

High School Musical 3 Rallies into Theaters Oct 24

Right on the heels of the High School Musical covered 2007 Annual Report, Disney announces a tentative release date of Oct 24, 2008 for High School Musical 3. There's also a very vague plot summary:

High School Musical 3 will revolve around seniors Troy (Efron) and Gabriella (Hudgens) facing the prospect of being separated from one another as they head off in different directions to college. Joined by the rest of the Wildcats, they stage an elaborate spring musical reflecting their experiences, hopes and fears about their future.

I do wonder if this Oct 24 release date will actually stay in place given the current writer's strike.

Side Note: There's a great post defending the High School Musical franchise over at 2719 Hyperion which I thoroughly enjoyed.

The Walt Disney Company 2007 Annual Report

The Walt Disney Company 2007 Annual Report is here! At some point this week, I will actually read through it, but I decided to comb through it quickly to see if there was any fun tidbits or pictures. The most exciting item I found was this lovely new image from "The Princess and the Frog."

Disney Channel Ratings #1 in 2007

Variety reports that Disney Channel's ratings were #1 among all cable channels in 2007 averaging 2.694 million total viewers. Very close behind Disney is USA network with only 15,000 less. This isn't real surprising given the huge numbers "High School Musical 2"" saw in the summer. Although "Hannah Montana" and "The Suite Life of Zack and Cody" have contributed to the ratings increase, I highly doubt Disney would have gotten that top spot without "High School Musical 2."

The Little Mermaid 3 Plot Summary

Here is the plot as stated on DisneyShopping.com, slated to be one of the last direct to dvd sequels (or in this case prequel) that Disney will do.

Every story has a beginning but only one begins under the sea ...Now, for the first time ever, discover the story you never knew in ''The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning,'' an all-new motion picture only on Disney DVD. Returning favorites Sebastian and Flounder join Ariel, her six sisters, and the deliciously wicked new villain Marina Del Rey in this all-new movie filled with spectacular animation in the tradition of the original, and overflowing with new songs from award-winning composer Jeanine Tesori. Long ago, in a kingdom where music is outlawed, King Triton's youngest daughter, Ariel, discovers her love for music in a secret, underground music club. Torn with the choice of whether to hide her passion or share it with her father and risk losing everything, Ariel sets off on a daring adventure to restore music to Atlantica.

I've watched pretty many of the direct to dvd sequels that Disney has come out with, and some of them haven't been too bad, but the plot on this just makes me say, "Huh?" Outlawed music? Really? And no Ursula? The only good thing that could come out of this is if we find out a little more about Ariel's mother. She has always been someone whom I would love to discover more about.

Here's a short musical clip from The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning