Beauty and the Beast

You may have seen a headline on Facebook (it's trending, whatever that means) about a fan theory that supposes Belle's favorite book is actually about Aladdin. It's a swell idea based on a 2013 post by Tumblr user PetiteTiaras interpreting a line the song "Little Town" in Beauty and the Beast, but it just doesn't hold up.

For starters, Aladdin isn't a "prince in disguise;" he's quite the opposite. 

Also, a little later in the song, Belle shows the book to a flock of sheep and we get a look at an illustration that looks nothing like Agrabah:

Unless this book is a compilation of stories, there's no way this is about Aladdin, and given that she refers to it as having chapters in the lyrics, that seems pretty unlikely. 

If there aren't singing orangutans in this movie, the whole thing is a bust.

Disney continues its foray into live action remakes with the newly released trailer for next year's version of The Jungle Book.

It's got some really big voice acting names to it, a kid that looks a heck of a lot like Mowgli and some pounding drums in the soundtrack. So that's something. At the very least, it looks better than the 1994 Jason Scott Lee version.



That bear looks lost.

For whatever reason, Disney has recently decided to go back its well of immortal cartoons and remake them with live action. It's a strategy they appear to be doubling down on, because it seems like that's a phrase some Disney exec would have used when talking about this strategy.

The first of these remakes was this years Cinderella. Next will come this probably-songless remake of Jungle Book. Then for 2017, Disney is already working on a live action Beauty and the Beast. And last July, they announced they would work on a live action, Tim Burton remake of Dumbo.

You could probably thrown this year's Maleficent in with the bunch, but we're mostly talking about specific remakes rather than reimaginings. The world is full of complications.

But for now, we can just sit back and imagine what Christopher Walken will sound like as King Louie. Because that's probably going to be the best part.

Are you excited for The Jungle Book or any of these live action remakes?

Virtual reality is coming, y'all. And it's going to do crazy things.

As another example of the ways we haven't even explored yet, filmmakers gave Disney animator Glen Keane an HTC Vive virtual reality headset and some painting software. Keane worked on some of the most classic cartoon films like The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast. But now he gets to virtually step inside of his drawings and create them in a 3D space.

Completely wild and beautiful.

Engadget goes into some more detail about it.

The film, directed by Ashley Rodholm, shows how virtual reality allows Keane to finally bring his characters to life. "When you draw, you're expressing something that's real, visceral," he says in the short. "By making a line, it's sort of a seismograph of your soul."

Instead of a paper and pencil, Keane draws life-sized versions of Ariel and Beast in the short with an HTC Vive headset and the 3D painting app Tilt Brush app (which is now owned by Google). And rather than just being static on a page, he's able to walk around his characters as if they were fully three-dimensional.

I mean, look at this. It's something out of a magical fever dream.

The future can't get here soon enough.

We're just left with the thought that she never should have kissed that hairy bear creature. 

Who do you think won?

After the $170 million opening weekend Maleficent had, it's no wonder Disney's adapting another one of your childhood favorites into live-action. Beauty and the Beast is to be directed by Bill Condon, best known for his work on, wait for it, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn parts one and two.