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Denver, 3:56 PM
Sun Nov 29
8 posts in the last 24 hours
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11/05/09
I wish people in my fantasy football league would go for that. I'll take Miles Austin for the rights to my stick figure avatar, Nedly. #epicmickey
11/05/09
Starting in the early 1920's, a young Walt Disney is just starting out as an animator and making cartoons for a company he worked for. His first creation was Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.
As time went on, his Oswald cartoons were a success and made big money for the company (which one, I don't know, I need to brush up on my Disney history). Walt felt that since his creation was doing so well that he deserved a nice pay raise for his work.
The company's response was to fire him and keep the character all to themselves.
Walt certainly showed them when he eventually made his own animation company and created Mickey Mouse, seeing as how he could no longer legally use Oswald.
Flash forward to 2006 when the announcers for Disney owned ABC's Monday Night Football begin to slowly fade into the background as Disney puts newer announcers in. However, the announcers were still under contract to ABC and couldn't compete.
NBC, wanting to get some good announcing talent for their Sunday Night Football, wanted to pick up Al Michaels and other Monday Night Football announcers. So NBC called ABC up and wanted to find a way to haggle Al Michaels' and friends' contracts in exchange for something they had.
Well as it turned out, through a weird twist of fate, the General Electric owned NBC Universal had the rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Disney looks at it and goes "This is our chance to get a piece of the Disney history back", and gives the announcers to NBC in exchange for the rights to Oswald back.
So now, with the rights secured, Disney can re-release the old Oswald cartoons, and also use the character for future Disney works.
Epic Mickey just seems to be one of the first new uses of Oswald, and frankly, this is like animation buff geekery in overdrive here.
Now if Al Michaels actually narrated a part of the game, THAT would be funny.
~Otaku-Man #epicmickey
11/04/09
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11/05/09
[corporate.disney.go.com] #epicmickey
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11/05/09
[corporate.disney.go.com] #epicmickey
11/04/09
They got a veteran sportscaster who is a household name in America....so a super obscure Disney character from the 20s can appear in a Wii game.
And I whole heartedly agree with the NYT when they say that "Mickey has become more of a corporate symbol than a beloved character for recent generations of young people." At least in the states....over here..there is no easier way to get people to buy your cheap plastic crap then to slap Mickey onto it. #epicmickey
11/04/09
11/04/09
[sports.espn.go.com]
"Oswald is definitely worth more than a fourth-round draft choice," Michaels said, referring to what the Kansas City Chiefs gave the New York Jets as compensation for releasing coach Herm Edwards from his contract. "I'm going to be a trivia answer someday." #epicmickey
11/04/09
Of course, if Disney hadn't lobbied so hard to destroy our copyright law, we all would have that oppertunity. #epicmickey
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11/02/09
To be honest, I think it's done because a British accent sounds foreign to Americans and if they went too full on with genuine Iranian accents they'd just sound vaguely, comical like an Omid Djalili stand-up routine, and then people would complain they can't understand the dialogue.
Not saying I agree with that by the way; I'm just saying that's why I think they use British accents to denote "foreign" in America. #princeofpersia
11/02/09
The British accents strike me as weird too, but movies like 300 and Troy used British accents too. It's probably just a fad with movies set in "ancient times" using British accents, and in 20 years we'll all look back at it and think about how weird it is. #princeofpersia
11/02/09
While this is quite obviously a fantasy world, there have been puppet governments of the British Empire in the middle east for hundreds of years. It might not explain why British accents get used all the time (ie 300), but in some cases, especially amongst the 'Elite' (esp. in India), royalty would try to behave and speak as English as possible. #princeofpersia
11/02/09
Also, Americans (and the actors in American cinema) speak english, so scripts in whatever the native tongue of the movie's location happens to be are out of the question. How many people would go to see this if it was in Farsi with english subtitles?
...well I would, but they will make much more money with cheesy faux-Brit accents. #princeofpersia
11/03/09
And yes, when many people from the middle east learn English they learn it from.. English people. England's only a few thousand miles closer. Of course it's a little different now with Americans in Iraq, but a lot of Iraqis who speak english speak with more of a british accent. #princeofpersia
11/03/09
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11/02/09
I really hope that changes, or that I heard it wrong. #princeofpersia
11/02/09
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