Beauty and the Beast

You may have heard rumors of a live-action Beauty and the Beast in the past, but this time it's official, and Emma Watson is our Beauty!  Emma shared on Facebook:

I'm finally able to tell you... that I will be playing Belle in Disney's new live-action Beauty and the Beast! It was such a big part of my growing up, it almost feels surreal that I'll get to dance to 'Be Our Guest' and sing 'Something There'. My six year old self is on the ceiling - heart bursting. Time to start some singing lessons. I can't wait for you to see it. Emma xx

What do you think of this news?  Hopefully the notable feminist can pull off something better than what's happened with Cinderella.

... I got to get me a library!

"Be our guest, be our guest, put my chaos to the test. Tie your element 'round your neck Pinkie, and WE provide the rest!"

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.

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.