Who2 Editorial Blog

Notes and Commentary from the Editors

Thursday, November 05, 2009

Tim Burton at the MOMA

Filmmaker Tim Burton will be the subject of a five-week exhibition at New York's Museum of Modern Art, beginning November 22nd.

Burton got into the movie business in the early 1980s as an animator for Walt Disney, doing drawings that never made it into The Black Cauldron. The MOMA show will highlight his drawings and paintings -- all in a style that moviegoers will recognize.

The link to MOMA is here. An Indiewire story with more details about the show is here.

Labels: Tim Burton, Walt Disney

Posted by Mr. Hehn at 1:49 PM Share on Facebook 0 comments

Friday, September 18, 2009

Cowboys Stadium: Disney Smackdown!

Here's one thing that can be said for the new Cowboys Stadium, where the Dallas Cowboys will play their first home game of the regular season on Sunday against the Giants: it's not Mickey Mouse architecture.

With a $1.15 billion price tag and a flying saucer-like form, the stadium's design mercifully avoids the aw-shucks, small-town look that has become common in many American stadiums over the years. There's no brick cladding, no fake wrought ironwork, no infantilizing theme restaurants that seem as if they had been commissioned by Uncle Walt for the Happiest Place on Earth.

The architecture critic for The New York Times reviews the new home of the Dallas Cowboys.

The good news is, the Cowboys are also getting rid of their silly old cheerleaders in favor of a new pair:

Labels: Mickey Mouse, The Dallas Cowboys, Walt Disney

Posted by Mr. Holznagel at 7:06 AM Share on Facebook 0 comments

Monday, August 17, 2009

"King of Popsicle" Succeeding Where Disney Failed

Walt Disney's body has long been rumored, falsely, to lie frozen beneath the Matterhorn at Disneyland.

But now comes word from The NY Post that Michael Jackson really has been frozen beneath the Freedom Mausoleum at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, California. Jackson is getting the ice, it seems, where Disney could only manage to be boringly cremated.

The Post has one of those irresistable headlines -- "Chiller! Jacko Now the King of Popsicle" -- and adds in breathless Post-speak that the body was moved from "Motown biggie Berry Gordy's family crypt" on orders from Jackson's mother, Katharine:

Katherine is refusing to let her son be buried in an unmarked grave because she's terrified that robbers will snatch his body or that the site would be desecrated.

So he lies alone in a small, bare brick room with beige walls in a gold casket, which rests on a white bench and is encased in a clear fiberglass container that keeps frost out, the sources said.

Well, maybe. In any case, Jackson is clearly bucking to join Alexander the Great in our loop Oddly Preserved. Alexander was also placed in a gold casket, though he was then soaked in honey -- a gaudy touch that the Jackson family may be hard-pressed to match.

As a bonus coincidence, the cremated remains of Walt Disney are now buried at... Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale.

Labels: Alexander the Great, Forest Lawn, Michael Jackson, Walt Disney

Posted by Mr. Holznagel at 6:38 AM Share on Facebook 0 comments

Tuesday, July 07, 2009

Forest Lawn: Michael Jackson's Final Resting Place?

(TV trucks outside Forest Lawn Memorial Park in the Hollywood Hills on 7 July 2009.)

A family funeral for pop star Michael Jackson took place at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Hollywood Hills today, and Jackson reportedly (may) be buried there after his funeral today.

Forest Lawn has a long and slightly odd history. It's just over the hill behind the famous HOLLYWOOD sign; a friend and I once walked up the hill past the sign and its many security cameras, over the brow of the hill (Griffith Park to your right as you're heading north) and then down into Forest Park.

Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills is loaded with celebrities: Bette Davis, Lucille Ball, Steve Allen and Telly Savalas among them. Ed McMahon and David Carradine just landed there, too.

(Note: Walt Disney himself is at a different Forest Lawn property, Forest Lawn Glendale, which is a few miles away.)

As an additional Hollywood touch, from the cemetery you can look right across the Ventura Freeway at the Disney animation studios in beautiful Burbank.

Forest Lawn's other claim to fame is its extravagant (some would say kitschy) tributes to the American Revolution. The cemetery includes a replica of Boston's Old North Church and other odd items. Per the Forest Lawn website:

- Feel the excitement of the American Revolution as you stand before the world's largest historical mosaic, The Birth of Liberty.

- Visit a faithful reproduction of Boston's fabled Old North Church

- See larger-than-life-sized bronze statues of Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln

- Watch a free 26-minute movie about the American Revolution

- Tour the Plaza of Mesoamerican Heritage, a tribute to the early civilizations of North America who thrived in the land that is now Mexico

Not your average Boot Hill, in other words.

Hubert Eaton, who founded Forest Lawn, didn't go for the gloomy graveyard model. He believed in "memorial parks" where families could come to visit and even picnic among the dearly departed. Toward that end, he banned stand-up headstones in favor of flat tablets, and he's credited with inventing (as it were) this all-flat-tablet style of cemetery.

(Eaton, like Disney, is buried at Forest Lawn Glendale.)

We didn't even know it was a celebrity burial ground at the time of our walk, but we marveled over the Old North Church replica and the Revolutionary details, which have an olde-time Hall of Presidents feel. It's a strange scene.

As another friend said today, "All you need is a Ferris wheel and Michael will feel right at home."

Labels: David Carradine, Ed McMahon, Forest Lawn, Hubert Eaton, Lucille Ball, Michael Jackson, Steve Allen, Telly Savalas, The Old North Church, Walt Disney

Posted by Mr. Holznagel at 12:33 PM Share on Facebook 0 comments

Monday, May 04, 2009