My new favorite moment from A Whole New World. The clouds are beautifully drawn, slightly transparent so that Aladdin and Jasmine’s bodies shine through. Love their expressions of excitement as they swoosh through the night.

Sure many people did AWNW on the pianio I enjoyed lisying to this slower version, the person has many more Disney songs in thier profile you should check it out there are a couple of jewels in there.

1Artistman uploaded test animation of Jasmine singing a few lines during the magic carpet ride sequence.
That person did a marbablous job at re-creating such a legendary piece of animation history. Jasmine is on model, her expressions match exactly the animation is fluid.

Check the video at his profile.

A rare version of Aladdin’s theme song surfaced the other day in the form of the accompanied song in an anime music video. One theory on Ultimate Disney is that it’s from Disney Dreams. The male voice does sound like Peter Pan to me. He sounds simlar to the Peter Pan I heard on park recordings like parades and such.

“Disney Dreams, an original stage show performed on the Disney Cruise Line. The show involves a young girl named Anne Marie who dreams of flying and meeting Princesses and kings. She wishes on a star and when she falls asleep, the Blue Fairy comes and grants her wish, but she has to find the strength inside to fly before the clock strikes 12. Anyway, Peter Pan is her guide throughout the show as they travel through different Disney stories to make her wish come true. “

While someone at YouTube thinks it could be from Aladdin (jr), the high school production package Disney made a couple of years ago and is since then preformed on schools all over the USA. In this case it could be a demo recording but by who and when is unknown. It’s supported by the fact that both voices sound childish but I wonder why Disney would orded a demo recording.

Mario meets Aladdin. Did I ever told you I love classic Nintendo games?

A Whole New Super Mario World by ~PairOfKoopas on deviantART

The Musical Sing A Long is the annual closing event of the Uitmarkt, many culture shows and stuff are previewed throughout Amsterdam in the last weekend of August. It marks the start of a cultural season that lasts until June the next year. On the Musical Sing A Long big and small musical productions are previewed that will open soon and often a sample of an running musical is also preformed.

In Disney Sing A Long 4 major Dutch musical artists from 3 generations will sing the hits from Disney musicals like The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin.

Last nights preview included a short sample of Stanley Burleson and Casey Francisco singing A Whole New World.

Alan Menken was at a UK talkshow to talk about his latest project Sister Act that saw it’s premiere this week I heard.

Jim Hill editor Alex Ogle attended “An Evening with Alan Menken” back in February. I haven’t checked Jim Hill’s site for some months and didn’t come across any other mention of Alan Menken giving a concert If I had I surely had blogged about it before.

Alex mentioned how Alan Menken talked some about his old friend the way to eary lost to us genius Howard Ashman and the story of how Howard fought to keep Proud of Your Boy in the film. Alan remised that story before on the 2004 DVD and in the 1992 making of book I believe. Alan opened the evening with Beauty and the Beast and closed it A Whole New World

People always ask on fandub vids “OMG where did you find the sheetmusic? I’ve been looking for it like forever” or something in this extent. Well one source is YouTube itself. Now I can’t read music notes and have little understanding how high and low notes work on musicsheets but my ears bleed listing to either video below. It’s hard to find the medley and some parts even sound like it’s a different song altogether. I hope the videos could help someone play A Whole New World the way it should be done. If not I suggest to look elsewhere for your sheetmusic.

On Youtube recordings of the the BCC radio program Friday Night is Music Night, a music program on the Britsh radio with a long history. Details in my post from 7 January.

Adam Pascal and Heather Headley redition of A Whole New World makes me cringe. The song is a musical balled and should be sang smooth and fast. Adam sings it slower but acceptalbe, I’m not really a fan of his voice even though I only heard him in this song. But Heather Headley does to song that makes me cringe. She makes her Jasmine lines sound gospel/jazz like. Listen at 1:57 horrible.

Maybe I’m old fashion and should be opener to different takes on this classic Disney song but in my book nothing beats the Brad/Lea version.

Jasmine is played by Rosario Dawson. Aladdin is portayed by Jason Sudekis.

“Why is one of our kids blue?!”

pap64 UltimateDisney board member fanboyed over Aladdin’s A Whole New World hitting the nail right on the head writing:

- The symphony and melody: I love it to death. I just love how it starts slow and subtle, builds up to a magical and thrilling bridge and ends is a soothing way. It adds a lot of magic and romance to an already enchanting moment.

- The vocals: Disney hit the nail on the head when hiring Brad and Lea. Their voices were perfect for this song. Brad captures the imagination of Aladdin in such as way that even if some come close no one can top it. Lea pure interpretation adds charm to the female lead and complements Brad perfectly. In fact, they did a really great job of doing the musical vocals. You can’t tell that the characters are being voiced by another set of singers.

- The scene: Not only is the song one of my all time faves, the scene it came from was amazing to say the least, coming close to the beauty of the ballroom sequence in “Beauty and the Beast”. The colors and animation were almost dream like and adds a lot to an already powerful song. Whenever I feel down, I just pop down Aladdin on my DVD player and go right to the flying carpet scene and I feel happy.

Personally I love the Dutch version more than the English version. Jasmine’s Dutch voice gives the girl a gentler personality and sounds more like a 15 year old then either Lea or Linda could.

mooky_7_sa over at UD spotted another Aladdin reference in Enchanted,  the picnick scene during That’s How You Know refers to Al and Jas magic carpet ride. The way Gisselle waves is supposed to homage Jasmine waving I think it’s streching how much Enchanted references classic Disney animated films. The dancing women with the chandelier on her head is refering to Beauty and the Beast though.
Also Disney-Fan wrote in the begining of the movie the old hag tricks Gisselle in following her to the waterfall fountain is said to resemble Jafar convincing Aladdin to go with him to the Cave.
Check out the troll’s loincloth pictures, he wears the peasant dresses from Aurora, Cinderella and Belle

On the BCC telecast I’d do Anything England votes for the actress who’ll portay Nancy in the revival of Cameron Mackintosh’s Oliver! Also during each show the audience can vote for their favorite child in the rance to play the title character Oliver.
As you might know the show is the follow up to How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria? And Any Dream Will Do, which found a new Maria and Joseph for London’s West End. The format was sold so other countries produce a local version. For example we Dutchies voted for Evita last year and will decide who will play Joseph in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor dreamcoat later this year.

The clip below shows the 3 Semi-finalists, Arthur, Chester, and Gwion try and fail horribly their hand at Alan Menken and Tim Rice’s A Whole New World. I know they’re kids but the blonde (Gwion?) just sang plain false.

I pulled the post Making of Marketplace off because I couldn’t get the layout the way I wanted. It’s sitting in my drafts until I’m with it. In the mean time I’ve got 12 stills from the clean-up version A Whole New World.

Buried deep within disc 2 of the Special Edition DVD are a few seconds of this famous Aladdin and Jasmine duet in an in-progress state. It’s the only animation segment on the disc. There’s the first time recording season with Brad and Lea but that’s everywhere on the web. I would love to see a progress reel on this scene when Aladdin is being released on Blu-ray.

Clean-up animation means that the drawings are redraw in clean smooth lines from the often rough drawings by the lead animator and his assistants. It’s the one of the last steps in the progress an animated film goes through starting at storyboard, rough animation, clean-up animation, coloring & effects.

The crew behind A Whole New World

We all know that Alan Menken wrote the music and Tim Rice penned the lyrics and that Brad Kane and Lea Salonga sing it you might also know that Kathy Altieri and her background team did all the backgrounds in the movie so A Whole New World was no exception.
In the directors commentary track it’s revealed that Scott Santoro, of the visual effects department, animated the ice clouds. It where Burny Mattson & Francis Glebas who storyboarded this sequence and so where the first to create the amazing visuals that are in the final film. Both story artists have a long history at Disney for example Burny worked in most feature films between The Rescuers (1977) and Mulan (1998) while Mr. Glebas
was attached to many films from Aladdin (1992) to Treasure Planet (2002).
Layout credits go to Rasoul Azadani’s layout team who makes as Eric Goldberg says “make you feel airborne”

Generally just one supervisor over sees the animation when the two leads are interacting allot. At least that’s from what was said on Beauty and the Beast special edition when talking about the ballroom sequence. In A Whole New World it was Jasmine’s supervisor animator Mark Henn who animated both Aladdin and Jasmine.

Now on to the stills