In the summer of 2020, as a reckoning on racial justice swept the country, Disney said it would rip out Splash Mountain, a wildly popular flume ride with a racist back story. Some people cheered, saying the move was long overdue: After 31 years at Disneyland in California and 28 at Walt Disney World in … Read more
Workers were busy taking down the swirly, glass-globe chandelier in the huge domed foyer of the marbled lobby of the Waldorf Astoria Orlando when I arrived. It seemed perfectly OK to me, but it was about to be replaced with a fancy crystal one from the Czech Republic, complete with handmade leaves. After a year-long, … Read more
“The Nutcracker” is a cherished Holiday staple — one that, for every traditional treatment, inspires a left-field twist toward the contemporary. There’s a grain of truth in Lisa Simpson’s comment that everybody does “The Nutcracker” “because you don’t have to pay for the music rights.” As the critic Roslyn Sulcas once wrote in The New … Read more
Did “The Simpsons” predict this? An artist has reimagined the beloved cartoon characters as humans with the help of AI software and a bit of photo retouching. Hidreley Diao, a regular contributor to the site Bored Panda, let curiosity get the best of him, asking AI to render many animated household names in flesh and … Read more
“The Wiz” is about to ease its way down the road to Broadway once again. The beloved “The Wizard of Oz” show is slated to return to Great White Way in the spring of 2024, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The show will be directed by Schele Williams and include additional material from writer Amber … Read more
Scream “jinkies!” and put on the square glasses: From Warner Bros. Animation, Velma is an animated comedy series unraveling the origin story of Velma Dinkley, the iconic orange-turtlenecked brains of the Scooby-Doo Mystery Inc. gang. In a departure from the family-friendly approachable Scooby-Doo franchise, Velma is an adult-oriented show (see poster with the blood-splattered glasses), … Read more