Mickey Mouse turns 80 years old today, and there's not a gray hair on him. Sure, he's a little rounder, a little squatter, and he's been wearing the same clothes for decades, but all in all he looks pretty good. Sure, Mickey hasn't had a movie in two years , but his cheerful face remains one of the most recognizable images in the world, even beating out Santa Claus. Disney threw a big party for the mouse's ...

Before Disney, China's first amusement park was Chengde in Hebei province. Call it Qingland — in honor of the decadent Qing dynasty that walled off 5.6 sq km of rolling forest to create a summer retreat 230 km northeast of Beijing. But forget Space Mountain or It's a Small World. The attractions on these carved-out hunting grounds, aside from the few deer left as a reminder of former wildlife , are some 120 preserved palaces, pavilions and pagodas ...

Astronomy may be hard science, but there's always been a whiff of Disney about it too. What else beyond enchantment could explain the ice volcanoes on Neptune's moon Triton, the helium rain in the atmosphere of Jupiter, the beads of colored glass scattered across the surface of the moon? Now you can add one more through-the-looking-glass feature to the fantasyland that is the cosmos: the green crystal rain falling on a young star in the constellation Orion. When ...

"Mommy, I want to be white." Imagine my wife's anguish and alarm when our beautiful brown-skinned three- year-old daughter made that declaration. We thought we were doing everything right to develop her self-esteem and positive racial identity. We overloaded her toy box with black dolls. We carefully monitored the racial content of TV shows and videos, ruling out Song of the South and Dumbo, two classic Disney movies marred by demeaning black stereotypes. But we saw no harm in Pinocchio, ...

Once upon a time, in a popular tourist destination called the Magic Kingdom, there lived some very prosperous characters. They were happy all the time . They produced souvenirs, cartoons and movies that were the delight of families around the world. But one day a great disenchantment fell over the kingdom, for the magic no longer worked. Tinker Bell's pixie dust had lost its twinkle. A teenage boy was even heard to say, "I wouldn't be caught dead going to ...

The show runs against The Wonderful World of Disney in the 7:30 slot on Sunday night, and there is something wackily inspired about this amusing little coincidence that the CBS programmers have arranged. Just standing there on her runway, half-clad in one of the twelve to 15 costumes Cher Sarkesian Bono wears out every broadcast hour, she inspires more —and infinitely richer—fantasies than all the plastics of Disneyland. Indeed, it is barely possible that Cher in Cher may —with a ...

Cinderella is beguiling proof that Walt Disney still knows his way around fairyland. Harking back to the style of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs , a small army of Disney craftsmen has given the centuries-old Cinderella story* a dewy radiance and comic verve that should make children feel like elves and adults feel like children. In rich but delicately tinted Technicolor, Cinderella is unalloyed make-believe, without the disenchanting sight of a single photographed human face. It embellishes the ...

Up until now, Disney's foray into China has been anything but magical. Its Hong Kong theme park, opened in 2005, has had a bumpy ride due to early missteps and competition — in its first year, attendance fell 400,000 short of an initial 5.6 million target. The following year, the number of visitors dropped to 4 million. To add insult to injury, the company in 2007 discovered an amusement park near Beijing that was filled with knockoff ...

The economic recession may be ending but the independent film industry's shakeout continues to roll, as we were recently reminded by Disney's October decision to gut its Miramax division, cutting staff by more than 70%. It won't be the last to fall under the knife, industry insiders predict, pointing to Universal's Focus Features as the next likely victim. "Very few people think Focus is going to survive," says one industry executive who asked not to be named. It's ...

He got a standing ovation before the orchestra even played a single note. For weeks now, anticipation has been growing for the arrival of fiery young Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel to take over the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the crowd couldn't wait to roar its approval at his arrival. Dudamel, 28, engenders a passion among music lovers that is entirely new to the world of classical music. Tickets for his Saturday debut as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic ...