Disney World

WHO needs John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John any more?
Disney’s High School Musical is the new boy meets girl college phenomenon and this Orbit Theatre production was so popular it went like greased lightning, if you will pardon the pun.In the aisles they danced, they rocked, they sang, they cheered. They were wowed.Danny and Sandy famously sang You’re The One That I Want in their worldwide smash hit Grease many years ago. This production is very much the one the audience want now.It cannot have been easy for the Orbit cast to pull off successfully their own version of a show that has very much become the rage among the younger generation of today.The “sold-out” signs went up pretty much straight away when it was announced they would be performing High School Musical twice a day during half-term week.Expectations were high, but the artists threw themselves into the production with gusto, vigour and lots of acting or singing talent.As High School Musical 2 appeared to come out the moment the original film version ended, I’m quite sure I am not the only parent in Wales who has noticed Troy and Gabriella on the TV screens almost continuously in recent months, without actually knowing too much about the storyline.I do now, though. The analogies with Grease are obvious. For Danny read Troy Bolton, for Sandy read Gabriella Montez. And for the T-Birds read the Wildcats.Set at East High School, Troy, played here by Joe Smith, is captain of the basketball team, the playmaker whose ability to lead from the front is pivotal to the side’s chances of beating their big school rivals from down the road in a championship match. Troy is Mr Popular, the person everyone in the school wants to be friends with, male or female.

New student Gabriella, portrayed by Rebecca Reid, is shy, excels in maths and science, but has made an impression on Troy.The two have their own separate boy-girl cliques, but team up privately to try to take the leading parts in the school’s own upcoming musical production.Inevitably there is a baddie, in this case the bitchy Sharpay, played splendidly by Olivia Clements, who seems to think the lead role in the school production is automatically hers and does everything she can to ensure that Gabriella isn’t even considered for the role.Sharpay is aided, sort of, by her twin Rhys, played by the truly excellent Adam King, who is a goodie really, doesn’t approve of his sister’s antics, but is swayed by her on account of Sharpay being born eight minutes earlier than himself .The odds appear to be stacked against Troy and Gabriella. But, by the end of the show, their friends accept that singing together is what the two really want and do their own mischievous bit to ensure Sharpay’s own little plot is trumped.Troy and Gabriella’s version of Breaking Free, High School Musical’s equivalent of You’re The One That I Want, was eagerly anticipated and brought the house down when it finally came, with every youngster in the audience joining in with splendid enthusiasm.Even this, however, was arguably eclipsed, by the finale We’re All In This Together. The audience were well and truly in the mood by this stage.So too the Orbit actors and actresses, who must have been bowled over by the enthusiasm with which they were greeted. The rapturous ovation they received at the end said everything really.

Seeking an edge in the crowded gaming market, Disney will inject some star power into its upcoming game “Turok,” its first Mature-rated title.Timothy Olyphant, Powers Boothe, Ron Perlman, William Fichtner and Donnie Wahlberg will provide the voices for “Turok,” set for release in February. The game is being developed by Vancouver-based Propaganda Studios.Based on the popular comic book license, the game pits a team of commandos against soldiers, dinosaurs and other creatures.

Disney has imagineered this movie with the same craft it uses to create one of its theme-park rides. It’s sleek, shiny with bright colors and constructed with professional behind-the-scenes expertise. Most important, “The Game Plan” is Disneyfied to be a ride for the whole family, even if Mom and Dad would rather be partying on Pleasure Island.Joe Kingman (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) is a self-absorbed, egomaniacal Boston football quarterback. He lives in a high-tech bachelor pad, plastered with tributes to his own greatness and lit primarily by the preternatural gleaming of his teeth. His me-centered life gets an unwanted timeout when an adorable 7-year-old girl (overpoweringly cute and precocious Madison Pettis) shows up claiming to be his daughter.The Rock’s unbelievable dancing pecs and Pettis’ batting eyelashes and equally pearly whites are almost distracting enough to make you forget about the rote plot mechanics.Does Joe overcome his selfishness on and off the field as he comes to love and need this child in his life? Are there picturesque musical montages and lots of lovable lugs on the football team who fall for her equally hard? Hey, don’t ask me for spoilers.I will say the movie turns overly maudlin in the third act, and it could have done without the weird interpretive ballet subplot that helps soften Joe up. Otherwise, “The Game Plan” is as polished and innocuous as a spin around the park on Dumbo.

Both Disneyland and Disney’s California Adventure theme parks have once again been transformed to create Disney’s HalloweenTime in celebration of the Autumn Holiday. The event returns after last year’s inaugural season with several new additions.Disney Characters in Halloween CostumesDisney’s HalloweenTime features a lively mix of Disney characters in seasonal costumes, whimsical decor, decked-out attractions, themed shows and tasty treats designed with the whole family in mind.New this year is “Candy Corn Acres” inside Disney’s California Adventure Park. The candy corn farm has taken root in Sunshine Plaza and features more than 6,000 pieces of decorative and colorful candy.At Disneyland, Disney’s HalloweenTime also marks the return of a Halloween tradition: the transformation of the Haunted Mansion into “Haunted Mansion Holiday.”Jack Skellington and his friends transform the Haunted Mansion in New Orleans Square into the popular seasonal Haunted Mansion Holiday. Inspired by the innovative animated film Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas, Haunted Mansion Holiday depicts the holiday mayhem that occurs when Halloween and Christmas traditions collide.The fun begins outside the parks’ entrances. Jack-o’-lantern creations resembling Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Pluto and Goofy adorn the top of the Main Entrance to Disneyland. Across the Esplanade, at the entrance to Disney’s California Adventure park, the iconic 11-foot-tall California letters are transformed into giant pieces of candy corn.In addition to the new Candy Corn Acres, Disney’s HalloweenTime personality Jimmy C. Corn will host games and activities in the area.

Spooky seasonal decorations can also be found on the grounds of the Hollywood Tower Hotel, the site of the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror thrill ride. The Golden Dreams Theater has been transformed into the Golden Screams Theater and has rolled out the black carpet to present the “Golden Screams Awards Ceremony,” where the audience screams for their favorite foe to determine which Disney Villain will receive the coveted “Chernie” award for “Best Scream.”Disney’s California Adventure is also hosting a separate ticket nighttime event after the park has closed to day guests. Mickey’s HalloweenTreat gives kids and their families the opportunity to dress in their Halloween costumes and trick-or-treat throughout the park.This year’s Mickey’s HalloweenTreat will offer tricksters of all ages more treat locations along with fun character encounters and an all-new “Mickey’s Trick-or-Treat in the Street” nightly cavalcade, plus interactive games and spirited music.Mickey’s HalloweenTreat takes place Thursday and Fridays beginning October 4, plus Monday – Wednesday, October 29 - 31.At Disneyland, the entire park ahs been decked out for the Autumn holiday. Main Street, U.S.A. features the Main Street Pumpkin Festival where guests are greeted there by Constable Jack O’Leary and Miss Cobbler, who has been selected as this year’s Miss Pumpkin Festival.More than 300 jack-o’-lanterns peek out of shop windows, while festive orange and yellow bunting graces the quaint Victorian buildings. The whimsical 12-foot tall Mickey Mouse jack-o’-lantern, complete with pumpkin ears, highlights Town Square, smiling at guests as they enter Main Street and giving them a playful wink when they depart.

“Woody’s Halloween Roundup” has taken over Big Thunder Ranch in Frontierland. The Roundup fun includes a visit with the animals in the “Petting Boo,” crafts and musical activities including a Halloween Hoedown and a spooky interactive sing-along version of “Old McDonald Had a Farm” featuring black cats, ghosts and werewolves. Woody, Jessie and Bullseye from the Disney-Pixar Toy Story movies appear throughout the day on stage in comic adventure tales hosted by a guitar playing, storytelling cowboy.Throughout the Disneyland Resort during Disney’s HalloweenTime, families can enjoy unique Halloween-themed food items including Zero’s Ghostly Ghoulash, a favorite of Jack Skellington’s pet in Haunted Mansion Holiday, and merchandise including Disney costumes, collectible pins and coins, and a special set of Halloween-themed Mickey Mouse ears resembling a Mickey jack-o’-lantern.

In a villa in Mt Eden, a calendar hangs on the wall. Saturday, September 22 is circled with a bright, red vivid marker.Each day, 10-year-old Sophie and 6-year-old Claire meticulously cross off a number, counting down to this most monumental of occasions.No, it is not either of their birthdays. It is the day High School Musical 2 screens on New Zealand television.The girls are not alone in their excitement. All over the country, children, tweens and even teens are counting down the days.Michael Cairns, managing director of Walt Disney Television International (Australia/New Zealand), says the company was amazed by the numbers.”We were quietly confident that the sequel would do well but to get 17 million viewers [in the US], compared to the six million of the original, was just phenomenal.”It is thought the real figures could be even higher, due to group viewing parties, Cairns says.”We detected that a lot of the viewing was done as groups. People had High School Musical parties to watch the movie together.”In New Zealand, more than a million viewers have seen the first High School Musical film.Across the Tasman, four-and-a-half million Australians have tuned in.”I’m hoping the second movie will be received just as well as the first,” Cairns says.

Judging by Sophie and Claire’s anticipation, it will be.The New Zealand and Australian markets hold a special place in High School Musical history - they were the first international territories to adopt the original film.Until that point, Disney was unsure if the film would work outside the United States; whether the quintessential all-American movie would translate to international audiences.”The Australian and New Zealand numbers proved that it did,” Cairns says.The film went on to be seen by more than 200 million viewers across 100 countries.Cairns believes the film’s success is due to its universal themes, which are dealt with in a fun, engaging way.”It’s all about fitting in and making choices. It connects with kids. It examines a lot of the emotions they’re going through as they grow up.”Every generation has a musical, and this is this generation’s musical. And it’s the school everyone would like to go to.”While some were originally surprised that such a fresh and innocent film could capture the imagination of today’s media-savvy youth, Cairns was not.”The world is a different place but I think every generation went through difficult times.”Maybe it is a feelgood movie and maybe people do find escapism in it, but I think people have always found that in Disney movies.

“Ultimately, it’s a great story, told well.”If you get the story right with a young and enthusiastic cast, people will respond.”It’s a formula that Disney doesn’t intend to drop any time soon.High School Musical 3 has already been announced for 2008, this time as a cinema release.With books, clothing, an ice tour - due in New Zealand next year - and more than 2000 theatrical productions globally, it seems High School Musical mania is here to stay.Last weekend the National Youth Theatre Company performed a special encore season of High School Musical at the Civic Theatre, including special sneak peeks of the sequel.The group debuted the stage show at the Aotea Centre in June, and it became the fastest selling show in the history of the events centre

Exposure is usually a good thing for a franchise. And few will argue that  High School Musical hasn’t been blessed with exposure. Disney’s (NYSE: DIS) original made-for-Disney Channel flick was a sleeper sensation last year. Last month’s debut of  High School Musical 2 caught no one by surprise, becoming the summer’s most watched cable program, with 17 million viewers. It also became the cornerstone of the mighty Wal-Mart’s (NYSE: WMT) back-to-school promotion.However, Disney now has to deal with the kind of exposure that it didn’t want to see. A snapshot of a naked Vanessa Hudgens — one of the show’s six young stars — is making the rounds in cyberspace. Even though that’s possible with anyone these days after a primer on using Adobe’s Photoshop, Hudgens’ reps are confirming that this is the genuine article.This is an important franchise for Disney. The third installment is slated to be a theatrical release next summer. As we speak, an “on ice” version of the show is touring the country. Both soundtracks are still selling briskly.So what do you do if you’re Disney? The company is held to a higher standard as a family entertainment giant, yet it’s not as if teens and pre-teens that are fans of the show will put up with the re-casting of the Gabriella character.

This may very well boil down to the nature of the photograph. Titillating snapshots have tripped up upstarts before. Whether it’s stripping Vanessa Williams of her beauty pageant crown or finding Frenchie Davis booted off the second season of CKX’s (Nasdaq: CKXE) American Idol, racy camera clicks can sink ships. However, those two instances were actual photo shoots by commercial adult entertainment photographers. Hudgens is a victim of a private incident, photographed naked and alone in a bathroom. That is a distinction that spared Antonella Barba’s hide — figuratively — from being booted off the last season of American Idol.Still, it’s not an easy call for Disney. Publicity is typically a wonderful thing to have, but the company is bound to ruffle feathers no matter what it decides. In that sense, the franchise’s timing is actually pretty good. As the next film graduates from Disney Channel and onto the more liberating big screen, the rules play out quite differently.Keira Knightley and Johnny Depp have bared more than their souls in earlier flicks, yet Disney hasn’t had a problem with casting both in the Pirates of the Caribbean blockbuster films. So it would be a shock to see Hudgens given the boot, even if the very nature of injecting new talent into a high school-themed franchise will eventually mean unearthing new stars.

Disney is in for a Bollywood flavour and as it gets ready to launch its Hollywood blockbusters in India, it is quickly sealing deals.The latest deal is with the Shankar Ehsaan Loy trio for its Hollywood chartbuster, High School Musical.”The creativity in India is great. We definitely wanted a Bollywood touch to High school musical,” said Rich Ross, President, Disney Channel Worldwide.Disney has recently tied up with Yash Raj films for its animation movie Road Side Romeo. Also on the cards are plans to produce movies out of India. The third in its famous American sequel — Cheeta Girls — will be produced right here.Sources say that with strategic 14.9 per cent equity holding in UTV, many more movie projects are in the pipeline to be jointly undertaken.For the $36 billion media and entertainment conglomerate, India is an emerging market. It has clocked a $600 million over the last one year and with plans to produce movies directly out of India, the global giant’s interface has just begun.

Walt Disney may be the single biggest influence on twentieth century culture, but the company he founded has in recent years lost its way. For the past seventy years following the release of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, most American children have grown up on Disney movies. All that seemed to change three years ago, when the company announced that the forgettable Home on the Range would be its last full-length animated feature. Thankfully, neither that decision nor the confusion that prompted it may have been truly final. For the first ten minutes or so of their latest movie, Enchanted, their animation division is back in full force, and it’s a good return to form. Then the main characters are thrown into the real world, as if in a Simpsons Halloween episode, and they bring the Disney spirit to New York. In both its animated and its live-action sequences the film is intentionally self-referential to previous Disney movies, but not postmodern, like Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, or mean-spirited, like Shrek (Jeffrey Katzenberg’s raspberry to his former employer). Rather, it’s a cinematic argument that the old formulas still work. It effectively sends up our modern lack of understanding of emotion without irony, sweetness without bathos. It’s a Disney movie that is a fundamental defense of Disney movies, and the best Disney movie in almost two decades.Disney represents the pinnacle of traditionally drawn animation, which in our technologically enlightened era can seem beautifully anachronistic — sadly, even to business models. Only fourteen years after Beauty and the Beast, the first Disney movie to feature computer animation, virtually all animated movies were CGI, and Disney left the medium it defined. Disney’s exit from the field of full-length hand-drawn animated movies betrayed a fundamental doubt about the company’s ability to make the movies that defined it: gorgeously rendered, impeccably styled musicals for the whole family, unabashedly saccharine and, for the modern age, almost unthinkably unironic. Finally, with Enchanted, Disney seems to have regained their faith in, and much of their skill at, what they do best. The script gently reminds viewers that lack of irony and straightforwardness of meaning can actually be a good thing, and until the overwrought conclusion, strikes a nearly perfect tone of casual reverence to the Disney legacy.

Old-style Disney movies didn’t need recognizable actors, because the intensely quality-controlled brand was always far more important than the individual pieces. (Aladdin and The Lion King are both fine, but both are marked by an overreliance on screen actors recruited as ringers, especially the histrionic Robin Williams. Neither came close to the high-water mark of Beauty and the Beast.) Enchanted is the first Disney animated film where casting screen actors was essential, because the animated characters enter the real world, and fortunately they got the casting of the main character right. It’s a performance that requires the actress to humanize the 70-year old Disney formula princess without teen beat pandering, ironic winks, or the whiff of an anti-hero. In bringing Princess Giselle to life, Amy Adams gives a stunning, Oscar-worthy performance, every bit as gorgeous and adorable as Ariel, Belle, Cinderella, or any of her other forebears. It’s Adams’s movie from stem to stern — a live-action actress arguing passionately for the integrity of animated children’s movies — and the rest of movie soars under her, faithful to its many influences, from fantastic Busby Berkeley musical setpieces to animal sidekicks who look straight out of Ratatouille. The rest of the cast is fine as well: James Marsden is also well-cast (and cast to type) as the attractive, well-meaning and dimwitted Prince Edward; Patrick Dempsey effectively transitions to the big screen; Timothy Spall is reliably good as a treacherous appearance-changing servant, as he was in the Harry Potter movies; and Susan Sarandon is fine but mostly wasted as the evil queen.The tone is relentlessly bright, and it could get wearing if it weren’t so infectious. Adams is rarely in serious danger for long; Sarandon just isn’t as effectively evil as other Disney evil queens. The songs are amiably forgettable, and work best as setups for the truly superb choreography and dance setpieces, particularly one in Central Park that is really the highlight of the movie. And, as I said earlier, the movie’s sureness of tone deserts it in the final ten minutes, where the script finally turns too self-referential for its own good and thuds off to its happy ending. There are no surprises to be found in the plot, only pleasant surprises in the execution.It is a completely derivative movie, even more than most Disney movies, but unlike much of Disney’s recent output, it gets the derivation right. Ever since Snow White, the movie that firmly established the Disney formula for a successful, musical, sanitized, animated fairy tale, many of the best Disney movies have tapped into the familiar forms, and Enchanted winkingly embraces its unoriginality. As a result, it’s not quite as good as the movies made at Disney’s peak, back when the rules were still being written, as it still closely follows that half-century-old decorum. However, its humor is derived not from poking fun at the old-fashionedness of the sensibility, but in how far we are from it, how far we’ve gone from a simple belief in the saving power of true love. After all, if we can’t appreciate that, in some important way the joke’s on us.

Last weekend marked the launch of the great American Christmas film season at the box office. Two of the movies in which much hope has been invested might be seen as competing parables for our troubled economic times.Enchanted is Disney’s latest twist on the traditional saccharine-fuelled fairy story. An animated princess, complete with the usual retinue of royal suitor and cute, furry animals, is banished from cartoonland by an evil stepmother and winds up an innocent at large in live-action feature format on the cynical streets of New York. There, in a cleverly modern take on the classic story, she finds true love in the form of an embittered divorce lawyer and they live happily ever after.The Mist, an MGM adaptation of a Stephen King novel, is from a wholly different narrative stable. A bunch of people in a quiet Maine town find themselves holed up in a supermarket when a mysterious fog descends and envelops them in a nasty swarm of terrifying creatures. This being a Stephen King thriller, needless to say, lots of very bad things happen to innocent people.As a contest, it was no contest. The Disney princess, played by sweetness-personified Amy Adams, romped home, of course. In fact, raking in more than $50 million (£24 million) over the five-day weekend, Enchanted became the second-highest-grossing Thanksgiving launch so far, the best since Toy Story 2 in 1999. The Mist came in at a foggy $13 million.Now I realise you can read too much into the cinema-going habits of Americans at Thanksgiving. I realise, too, that these are of somewhat different genres. My five young daughters are more your typical movie-goers over the holiday period and they were not alone in being enchanted by Disney.But with a bit of imagination, you can construct a nice metaphor from this one-sided movie contest. Given a choice between a bit of sentimental old fluff about the possibility of true love even in cynical old Manhattan and the sum of their worst nightmares in a supermarket in Maine, Americans voted with their wallets for the triumph of hope over fear.And, as it happens, Enchanted is more or less how you might describe the American economy right now. While commentators see only the approaching Mist of a housing meltdown, financial crisis and collapsing dollar, real Americans are still living through something of a fairytale.

Despite all the bad things that are supposed to be happening, the economy continues to grow. In fact, in this world, even the supposedly bad things are good.Take, for the moment, that falling dollar. As is now well known, the US currency is down almost 40 per cent in the past 5½ years. If you had asked the average gloomy economist back then what would be the implications of such a steep fall in the dollar, the answer would have included a good deal of pessimistic conventional wisdom.Such a sharp drop in the value of the currency would, it was generally assumed, spell real trouble for the value of US assets. Demand for US Treasury bonds would surely fall sharply. In fact, the decline in the dollar’s value would be both cause and effect of a flight from dollar-denominated assets.Interest rates, which move inversely to bond prices, would, therefore, surge, presumably prompting a serious retrenchment. Foreigners would surely offload many of their US equities, too, and Americans would not be far behind them.Then there would be an inflationary surge. A 40 per cent decline in the dollar’s value, would, other things being equal, push up import prices by a similar amount and the feed-through to the broader economy would be swift and painful.But what has happened? In the past 5½ years, US Treasury prices actually have soared. In early 2002 the yield on the benchmark ten-year Treasury was about 5.5 per cent. It is now about 4 per cent. Equities, on a broad measure, are up by about 50 per cent in the past five years.Inflation? It has gone up, but hardly enough to notice. In December 2002, the core consumer price index (all prices except volatile food and energy costs) was up 1.9 per cent from a year earlier. Last month it was up to 2.2 per cent, still comfortably in line with what we have come to see as price stability.

Now there are lots of specific reasons that explain these unexpectedly benign outcomes: foreign central banks still buying US Treasuries; global savings keeping demand strong for all US assets; prices held low by international competition. And it is still true that we face serious challenges.But when you think of all the factors that could have produced disaster in the past five years – not just a dollar collapse but soaring oil prices and an overextended housing market – you have to conclude that something quite fundamental has changed. The US and global economies continue to demonstrate a remarkable structural resilience and flexibility unseen in modern history.Looking at the economic performance of the US, of course, most pundits still prefer the Stephen King metaphor to Walt Disney’s. But who would have thought it? The real world looks much more like Disney.

Enchanted’s Giselle is a member of a very special royal “we,” a sisterhood known as the Disney princesses.As she journeys from the sun-dappled animated land of Andalasia to the harsh realities of modern-day Manhattan in the new romantic comedy, the trilling ‘toon comes to 3-D life and pays tribute to such fellow fairy-tale heroines as Snow White and Cinderella while spoofing their telltale traits.