Well, the Maggie Simpson short lost in its bid for an Academy Award, and the world was robbed of the opportunity to see director David Silverman’s majestic beard. Here’s a photopic of Silverman, Matt Groening, and writer Michael Price looking dapper on the red carpet (apparently Silverman and Groening didn’t get the memo to wear this Maggie button):
On the red carpet with @tubatron and some guy. twitter.com/mikepriceinla/…
— Michael Price (@mikepriceinla) February 24, 2013
I am real excited about Wreck-It Ralph, an upcoming Disney movie about video game characters, or as I like to think of it, Tron With Jokes. It’s written by former Simpsons director Jim Reardon (he appears in The Simpsons nearly every time there’s a scene at a train station) and directed by former Simpsons director Rich Moore (he’s the first guy on The Escalator to Nowhere). It’s good to see Simpsons alums doing well!
TAG Blog says the animators working on Ralph are “psyched” about it, because as one guy points out, “[t]he company lawyers could have just had us do parodies of other characters, but they went and got the rights to use actual personalities from other video games.” Bowser! Robotnik! All the Street Fighter guys! Clyde the ghost from Pac-Man! Q*bert! Some other guys I don’t recognize! You can see ’em in this trailer Disney released today…
And so it has spent the last year outfitting an underground, nerve center to address that most low-tech of problems, the wait. Located under Cinderella Castle, the new center uses video cameras, computer programs, digital park maps and other whiz-bang tools to spot gridlock before it forms and deploy countermeasures in real time.
In one corner, employees watch flat-screen televisions that depict various attractions in green, yellow and red outlines, with the colors representing wait-time gradations.
If Pirates of the Caribbean, the ride that sends people on a spirited voyage through the Spanish Main, suddenly blinks from green to yellow, the center might respond by alerting managers to launch more boats
“We need more Bort license plates in the gift shop. I repeat, we are sold out of Bort license plates.”
Disney animators are inflexible jerks who can’t adapt to different drawing styles. Get out of the way of the progress train, you dinosaurs! CGI is here to stay! [No Homers Club]
