Hey folks, Harry here - Bento Ramone attended an advance screening of ENCHANTED being presented by Dick Cook of Walt Disney pictures. Bento enjoyed the film, but the most interesting part of Bento's piece is the reporting that in the next month or so - Walt Disney Pictures will be announcing a new Stop-Motion Animated film directed by the man behind the majority of Stop-Motion animated films of the last decade... sounds like Burton may be helming a stop-motion flick?!?!?! It could also be Henry Selick, but I thought Henry has his position at the used to be Will Vinton Studios aka LAIKA STUDIOS. Who will it be? We'll have to see!

Harry,

This is my first time sending anything in to this site, but it's certainly not my first time on the site. I am currently a First Year film student at the North Carolina School of the Arts, but Ain't It Cool has been bookmarked for me since middle school. Tonight we had a special advanced screening of Disney's "Enchanted" hosted by Dick Cook, the Chairman of Walt Disney Pictures.

I was raised on Disney story-telling. I think, in a way, we all were. It is an honest bridge of generations. Snow White was there for our grandparents, Peter Pan, Sleeping Beauty, Winnie the Pooh and countless other classics were there for our parents, and I was born into the Renaissance of The Lion King, Aladdin, and Beauty and the Beast. With that in mind, Enchanted bridges the gap to a new generation. Using the same 2D animation that gave birth to Snow White, the movie begins. Eventually it transitions into our modern world, a sort of metaphor for this bridge of generations. I do not want to deal with spoilers, because I usually try to avoid them myself. I will say that their are some things that work beautifully in this movie, and some things that just do not.

But the overall result is a huge success for Disney in going back to its golden days of timeless classic story-telling. If you go into this with the same heart and the same mind that you would have gone in to see something like Cinderella or Snow White, you will find yourself enjoying at least something in this picture. I'll just call this a step in the right direction for Disney.

In the following Q & A, Cook mentioned a few projects that Disney has lined up down the road. When questioned about the
future of animation for the studio, Cook said that Disney will have a little of everything on its upcoming slate. A new 2D piece called "The Princess and the Frog" is in the works. The most intriguing bit of info that Cook let slip was in regards to a future stop-motion animation project.

When prodded, Cook hesitated to answer. He tried to hint his
way out of the question, but in a Film School, or just in general with an audience who has a passion for cinema, what he was hinting at was crystal clear and garnered quite a round of applause. He said that the project would be helmed by the creative mastermind behind the majority of stop-motion pictures in the last decade. Our Dean looked at him slyly and asked, "This guy has never worked with Danny Elfman before has he?"

Cook said that the details of the stop-motion project would
probably be released about a month from now. Looks like we have something to look forward to after Sweeney Todd.

Don't know if this is breaking or even usable, but I just hope I could be of some help.

Keep up the good work, and stay gold.

Yours,

Bento Ramone