D52: The Halfway Point Roundup Thingamajig!

Oh, hey, look at the time. Apparently we're already halfway through this silly little project! Twenty-six down, twenty-six to go. (Weird to think that nearly half of Disney's films were released just in the last two decades, isn't it?) What have I taken away from this so far? Well, um......pioneering as they might've been, there's no denying that Disney's early stuff is HIGHLY uneven. I can't think of a single film so far that I liked 100%, with no major caveats. When Disney himself was in charge, a recurring hang-up I had was the general lack of emotion characters tended to display, especially females in abusive situations. And then Wolfgang Reitherman came along, and gave everything visual character, but also made for stories that were, undeniably, pretty shallow. And then.....well, let's just say that it's clear that they didn't know where to go from there.

But now the Disney Renaissance is around the corner, and that'll be an entirely different story! And hopefully a better one. But, before we march forward into a fairly thick gauntlet of princesses, allow me to take a look back and share a few things I liked, and a few others I didn't, in the best format of all: ARBITRARY LISTIES.

Okay, maybe THIS will be the year where everything bets betterish!

A Word From The Future: I'll surely recap my New Years Resolution progress at some point later in the year, but......Jesus, if only I had known...

As always, the start of a new year means that people everywhere make promises to themselves, usually involving weight loss, that they probably have no real intention of actually keeping, to be perfectly honest. It's almost as grand a tradition as making films about how not believing in fictional characters is just plain wrong around Christmas, or having the President pardon a turkey that has been wrongly convicted of the heinous crime of being a turkey around Thanksgiving!

Pride and Prejudice (and Jesses)

If you've spent any amount of time on the Internet, you've either participated in, or at least been an uncomfortable witness to, unwinnable arguments with mindless bigots. Mindless prejudice is, after all, among the many things the web has greatly simplified. Never before has it been easier to anonymously tell the world about how whichever minority/religion/gender/sexual orientation/phase of the moon is destroying the world! And, if you've spent any amount of time on the Internet, undoubtedly you've noticed that these arguments are unwinnable because every mindless bigot in the universe has the same irrefutable argument against anyone who might question their prejudices.

"You people are all awful awful hypocrites because you're prejudiced against people with prejudices!"

Wait, did I say "irrefutable"? Of course, I meant "completely invalid and illogical and silly". It's like criticising someone who's being shot at for fighting back against their attacker because it makes them every bit as violent and immoral.