Caught the second half of While the City Snoozes this morning and noticed something odd.

Enchanted Genie tries to kill his friends.

Aladdin and Jasmine try to escape....

..but the alley has a death end, meanwhile...

.. Genie morphs into a robot and fires at them.

he misses blasting the wall revealing a stairs? Uh, why would a stairs run up from a brick wall?

I went to see Finding Nemo on Ice last night; it was okay but not really anything special. It’s a retelling of the smash hit Pixar Finding Nemo from 2003. Nemo, a kid clown fish, is captured by a Sydney diver somewhere in the deep ocean. His dad Martin starts a frantic search with the help of Dory, a blue tang with severe short-term memory loss.

The special effects where quite good and Dory’s humor was fun at times but could also be lame. The costumes where ok, I mean it does look odd to see a fish with legs sticking out underneath and a head above, but after a while I believed it where Nemo, Martin and Dory there on the ice.
There was no singing, I wondered about that. I loved the instrumental dance numbers, they where my favorite parts in the whole show.
It’s also the first time a Disney on Ice show used footage from a movie, in this case background scenery of the film and the dentist that captures Nemo appears on screen once in a while.
Conclusion, Finding Nemo on Ice is a fun show for families and kids but adults that love Disney and Pixar probably will have a fine time but not anything you’ll want to reminisce years after. Adults will appreciate the often stunning costumes of the supporting cast and ensemble but might cringe at the costume design of the leads. They’ll also like the clever solutions to portray certain places like the fish tank and the East Australian Current.

Next year’s show is the most appreciated Princess Wishes; I’ve been waiting for this show since I saw Princess Classics three years ago.
Princess Wishes seems to have a bigger role of Aladdin and Jasmine then Classics did. Despite sharing show time with the other princesses and Tinkerbelle Wishes has the Peddler and Genie too. I’ve seen big blue before in I think 2 other shows, Princess Classics and 100 years of Magic on Ice show but the peddler is new. Can’t wait till December 2009!

crystal_style shared her new Princess 2009 wall calender on d_princess LJ. Typical all the girls get new gorgus dresses and poor Jas is left with the stupid pose and dress she has for years. Why did the creators include her in the first place I wonder. Also on d_princess are scans of a cute Belle coloring page in the December issue of Prinsess.

At Zhaolin park in Harbin, China is the 35th edition of 35th Ice Lantern Festival. This year is the theme is Disney.
More Disney ice news: I’ll go to Finding Nemo on Ice this Saturday. From the clips and photo’s I’ve seen online it looks like Genie is in the show.

Jason Anders talks with people in the animation industy to publish them on Full Circle Productions. This week he published his conversation with Rajah lead animator Aaron Blaise on his career.
On bringing the royal feline to live Aaron said:

During the design process, I did hundreds of tiger designs, trying to achieve the fluid Hershfeld look that the film’s art direction was trying to achieve. I was struggling until one day I saw the hood ornament on a Jaguar car. The little sculpture had a lot of the qualities I was trying to achieve in my designs. I drew a lot of inspiration from that little piece of metal on the hood of a car! My designs were soon approved!

Tip by Heather

Two of the coloring pages scanned by kangofu are featuring Jasmine. Both seem to be an activty.

Using a Japanese Princess Magazine image scanned in by kangofu this wallpaper is the result of playing around in Paint Shop Pro. If you are on LiveJournal stop by Agrabah, Aladdin’s community on there and thank her for taking the time. Burried down in her blog is many more Princess Magazine artwork.

Wounded-Melody made about 20 Disney Princess icons. Jasmine only got two one she has to share. I think it’s a lovely avatar. The rest is mostly made up Belle and Snow White.

Wall-E will keep track of 2009 for me. Since Disney doesn’t make nice Princess calendar anymore, the last two years where disappointing. Dreadful artwork in the standard boring poses of the girls. Bless the fans that prove it’s possible to make fun, beautiful calendars of Princess Jasmine and her fellow royal highnesses. On the other hand; the artist only did January and she doesn’t have plans to make the rest of the year.

I just finished A Muppet Christmas Carol on DVD. I’ve seen the movie on TV a couple of times because the music is on Disneytunes allot I wanted the soundtrack but could only find the DVD which is fine too.
Anyway A Muppet Christmas Carol and Aladdin share the same premiere year, both came out in 1992 and so where promoted alongside by Disney. I have an ad for “Muppet Christmas” in my copy of Entertainment Weekly Nov. 1992.

Watching the movie took me back to 1993, that’s when both movies where released in Netherlands, it was a lovely holiday season I was almost half a lifetime younger and was halfway high school that year I think glad to be out of primary education not to say I hated it but I was picked on allot. Anyway the movie also reminded me that an Aladdin Christmas Carol was discussed in the premature days of the fandom.

I couldn’t find a ‘cast list’ in the archives but in the spirit of A Muppet Christmas Carol and Mickey’s Christmas Carol the lead male character would be casted as Bob Cratchit, Jasmine would play his wife. The Sultan as Scrooge’s schoolteacher and Thundra as Belle.
The spirits could be various characters Genie as the Ghost of Christmas Present and Jafar could be Marley Scrooge death partner. Scrooge himself should be portrayed by Iago as the bird is very greedy; looking for a deal the parrot is casted for the role as the old businessman. Of course then Iago should be a human character named Iago.

That leaves us with two ghosts, The Ghost of Christmas Past and the Ghost of Christmas Future to cast. On the Aladdin character side there’s Abu, Carpet, Rajah and Rasoul as big supporting characters in the universe plus the slew of minor TV series characters as extras like we saw Pluto in Mickey’s Christmas Carol and many minor Muppets in the Muppets Christmas Carol.

You got to love how easy Aladdin tricks his new pal, that was a recurring theme in the movie you know. He tricked about everyone in doing something, a free wish from Genie, fool Jafar to become a genie. Tricked Sultan into believing Prince Ali was the right suitor for his daughter. Actually the only one who wasn’t really fooled was Jasmine.

Genie is the maître d’ at the bistro Aladdin and Jasmine have a romantic candlelight dinner for two.

So after watching the fun facts on the DVD I learned that Brad Kane did voice work for the cereal Trix. I think he’s one of the kids because he can’t be the adult sounding rabbit in those 1980’s ads.
Looking around on YouTube I came across a 1992 commercial with a genie. It’s ironic that Brad sang in a cartoon with a genie at the same time.

I’ve never seen this snowglobe before. It’s lovely the details like peacock fountain and doves in flight give this globe a peaceful spring feeling but there’s room for improvement, Jasmine’s face is ugly off model and the towers should have been round.

It’s also a disneydirect.com product sold for 80 dollars and free shipping of you buy for $89 or more.

Hans Bacher worked for Disney Feature Animation from the the late 80’s throughout the late 90’s giving him credits on quite a few golden 1990’s films that came out the studio during that time. As production designer he helped shape the movie’s atmosphere with color and shape.
For Aladdin he did some background and key scenes impressions.
The rest of his blog One1more2time3 at Wordpress.com is pretty much dedicated to Bambi. Hans has the most breathtaking backgrounds. You’ll find some Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, Hercules and Mulan artwork roaming on his blog as well.

Source: AC MB