Munch on Some Magic With Kellogg's Disney Classics Fruit Snacks

When I was growing up, I remember being bombarded with kid-centric advertising as I watched the Saturday morning and after-school cartoons. Most of it went in one ear and out the other, but the Fruit Roll-Up commercials must have made an impression, since those were a staple in my school lunches, along with their somewhat more sedate cousins, fruit snacks. It’s been quite a while since I’ve punched the shapes out of a Fruit Roll-Up, but it’s still fairly common to find fruit snacks on top of the refrigerator. And if you’re going to indulge in nostalgic goodies, why not double the fun by getting snacks whose shapes correspond to beloved characters?

There are many such themed snacks out there, from Star Wars to VeggieTales, produced by a variety of companies. Right now, the fruit snacks atop the fridge are Kellogg’s Disney Classics, which feature characters from six different Disney movies. To make things nice and simple, each character always is the same color, which is frequently the case with fruit snacks, but not always. The main advantage I could see to changing things up would be that then it might make more sense to have more basic shapes tossed into the mix. After all, six characters to represent “Disney Classics” is pretty paltry. Still, there’s a decent representation here.

Mostly, it’s fairly early Disney that we’re getting. Pinocchio, Fantasia and Dumbo all hail from the early 1940s, while Dumbo and Peter Pan came out in the mid-1950s. That leaves just The Lion King in the mid-1990s. Pinocchio looks a little funny in all yellow, but at least it goes with his hat. Likewise, an all-red Dumbo is a bit odd, but at least it goes with the ruffle he wears, along with the snazzy suit worn by his tiny manager.

Meanwhile, classy Cocker Spaniel Lady wears no purple at all, but there’s a certain royal air about her, so I can buy the coloring there. Still, the choices for the other three seem much more natural. Mickey, as the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, is all blue, which goes so well with that big blue hat of his, and verdantly garbed Peter Pan, quite understandably, is all green. Simba, meanwhile, is a very natural shade of orange. All of them are pretty good likenesses for as small and squishy as they are, and I don’t have to squint much to see what each one is supposed to be. Dumbo is probably the hardest to make out, while Mickey is the easiest.

Each box comes with ten pouches, each containing about eight fruit snacks, which, despite having six different colors, come in four different flavors: strawberry, grape, orange and cherry. The flavors aren’t super-distinct; I think the greens are strawberry and the yellows are orange, but I’m still not sure what the blues are. Meanwhile, the reds are cherry, the purples are grape and the oranges are orange. They’re reasonably tasty, and while I tend to like my fruit snacks just a tad firmer, I have no real complaints about the texture.

In nutritional terms, these are pretty standard, with each pouch containing 80 calories, 13 grams of sugar and 5 mg of sodium but no fat. They’re also made with real fruit (20 percent) and contain Vitamin C. So not super healthy, not super unhealthy. Certainly not something to feel guilty about munching on now and then. If you are looking for a way to put a little Disney magic into your diet, Kellogg’s Disney Classics fruit snacks aren’t a bad way to do it.

I Alpha-Bet You'll Love Winnie the Pooh's A to Zzzz

I’ve read a lot of alphabet books through the years. My favorites are the ones in which the objects listed for each letter are not in isolation. It’s more fun if there’s a sentence or two to go with it. Winnie the Pooh’s A to Zzzz certainly delivers on that score. Written by Don Ferguson and illustrated by Bill Langley and Diana Wakeman, this 1992 book incorporates all of the major Pooh characters: Pooh, Piglet, Tigger, Eeyore, Rabbit, Kanga, Roo, Owl, Christopher Robin and Disney addition Gopher.

Each page features a full-color, full-page illustration depicting various Hundred-Acre Wood residents in action, and set over top of that is a four-line rhyming verse that includes the word at hand. Just above that is an extra-big appearance of the letter, followed, in capital letters, by “IS FOR _____”. For instance, we naturally have “H IS FOR HONEY,” and the illustration shows Pooh, surrounded by honey jars, enjoying a smackerel. You get the sense that you just opened the door and caught him by surprise; the scene feels vibrant and immediate, which is typical for this book.

Another nice aspect of the book is that it shows us the Hundred-Acre Wood in various seasons. V is for Vest, which fits Piglet “like an all-day hug” as the browning leaves drift to the ground around him, while on the D page, spring is in full bloom, to the accompaniment of trilling birds and one of my favorite mini-poems in the book: “In spring, Pooh’s door / Is open wide / To let the sunshine / Come inside.” The S is for Seesaw page looks pretty summery as a worried Piglet sits suspended high in the air, seemingly stuck since he’s so much lighter than Pooh. This is actually the only page to include Christopher Robin, and it’s really more of a cameo, as the verse doesn’t mention him and he’s more of a casual observer than a participant in the activity at hand. N is for Nose gives us Kanga and Roo in winter; though they hail from Australia, they seem to have no trouble adjusting to freezing temperatures, and Roo looks perfectly cheerful as he playfully tweaks his mother’s nose.

The pictures in this book really are beautiful, filled with detail and bright colors. Of the 26 letters, 20 of them have an illustration that includes Pooh, though not all of the verses do. Gopher, on the other hand, only appears on one page, like Christopher Robin, but at least he is the star character with G is for Gopher. Most of the characters similarly are the subjects of a page. We have P is for Piglet, focusing on Piglet’s diminutive size; E is for Eeyore, which the gloomy donkey would be pleased to know is one of only two two-page spreads in the book; R is for the very busy Rabbit; T is for the bouncy Tigger; O is for Owl, who “tells Pooh everything he knows. / And sometimes even more!”

While every letter is very well represented in this book, I have a clear favorite, a page that I think would make a nice poster in isolation. In it, a gentle snowfall blankets the forest, and pine needles just barely peek through as a smiling Pooh and Piglet pass, the bear all bundled up in a sky blue hat and scarf, Piglet in a green scarf and white earmuffs. They wear matching off-white boots, and a long trail of footprints is behind them. The verse, meanwhile, seems very sage in a way, with a subtle message about the future always being open to new and surprising possibilities: “Our footprints always follow us / On days when it’s been snowing. / They always show us where we’ve been, / But never where we’re going.”

Clearly, you don’t have to be a youngster to get a kick out of this book, but if it had been in print back when I was getting intimately acquainted with the alphabet, I’m sure I would have loved it then too. From start to finish, Winnie the Pooh’s A to Zzzz is one of the most enjoyable books of its kind that I have encountered.

Disney Artists Give Three Cheers For Pooh With The Art of Winnie the Pooh

Last week, I watched The Boys: The Sherman Brothers’ Story, and when it came to the part about writing the music for the Winnie the Pooh featurettes Disney did in the 1960s, a lot of it sounded very familiar. I realized that was because Richard Sherman had related much of the same material in his foreword for The Art of Winnie the Pooh: Disney Artists Celebrate the Silly Old Bear, a beautiful coffee table book commemorating Pooh’s 80th birthday. When I received it as a Christmas gift a few years back, I was surprised to discover that neither Sherman had thought much of Pooh at first glance, but the enthusiasm of costume and set designer Tony Walton had caused them to see the stories in a new light. Meanwhile, I was touched by the anecdote he shared about Jessica McClure, the little girl who captured national attention when she became trapped in a Texas well in 1987. One of the things that got the 18-month-old and her mother through the ordeal was singing the Winnie the Pooh song, since Jessica remembered Pooh being stuck and figured since he got out safely, she would too, and the song reminded her of that.

There’s not a lot of writing in this book, just the two-page foreword; the two-page introduction by Ken Shue, vice president of Disney’s global art development and licensing operations at the time this was published in 2006, which talks about the need for Disney employees to balance hard word and a deep appreciation for “nonsense” and the quotes and explanations that accompany each of the artistic interpretations of Pooh and his friends, along with the name of the artist, the title, and a description of the medium. At the very end of the book, there is also a paragraph devoted to each of the 80 Disney artists whose contributions are included.

This is a handsome collection that reminds me a bit of the public art projects that my city embraced earlier this decade. The first and more successful of them invited local artists to decorate fish statues, using one of two basic patterns; the second did the same with frogs. Boy, did some of them get creative with it! And in both cases, the statues were included in attractive books. The artists here have even more free reign, as the only restriction is that their subject must have something to do with Pooh’s world. The bear himself need not even appear in the artwork, though in most cases he does. For a Pooh fanatic like me, it’s wonderful to peruse these paintings, drawings and other works and get a sense for how many different ways there are to draw inspiration from a beloved fictional landscape.

The artists have an opportunity to discuss their process here, though not quite half of them do. Even when it’s just a sentence or two, I appreciate the insight into that particular person’s connection with the Hundred-Acre Wood. Several others opt to include a quote, usually from The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, that relates to the artwork at hand. For instance, David Pacheco’s untitled colored pencil drawing shows Tigger, Pooh and Piglet sharing a belly laugh, and he explains how Pooh and his friends remind him of his own friends and the joy they take in laughing together. Judith Holmes Clarke’s ”I Can Fly!”, also in colored pencil, is one of my favorite drawings in the book. With its bluish tint and mysteriously fluid look, it shows a winged Pooh and Piglet soaring through a night sky. “To say ‘I can fly!’ is all that is Pooh,” Clarke says. Her biographical sketch lends further insight, as it reveals that she created the Disney Fairies, whose sylvan world is so appealing that I bought the punch-out calendar featuring several of their homes a couple years back.

Most of the pictures look pretty similar to the established Disney Pooh look, but some, like Rich Tuzon’s earthy watercolors that feature a Pooh who moves about on all fours, feel closer to the original Pooh books, and some, like Satoru Kawano’s Block Pooh, which depicts eight of the Pooh characters using only straight lines, feel very futuristic. Lori Tyminski’s earless Pooh pastel, Wincent Van Pooh, pays tribute to Vincent Van Gogh, while Jim Valeri and Geppy Vaccaro’s acrylic Poohcasso honors Pablo Picasso and Alan Batson’s digital The Connaisseur is a nod at Norman Rockwell.

I could talk about every one of the representations in this book, and I’m tempted to, but I’ll just mention a few more that I really love. Steven Andrews’ digital Storyteller shows TIgger telling a lively ghost story to Pooh and Piglet, who clutch each other nervously on the other side of a blazing fire. They’re right beside a meandering creek, and they look to be deep in a green valley, with storm clouds encroaching on the stars overhead. This scene reminds me very much of camping with my folks at Little Pine State Park in Little Pine Valley, PA, and it’s gorgeously done, with everything dark and spooky aside from that tiny circle of light from the fire. As a big fan of music from the 1960s, I love Philo Barnhart’s Technicolor digital Pooh vibrations, which reminds me not only of the obvious Beach Boys song but also Simon and Garfunkel’s Feelin’ Groovy, and Eric Hutchison’s digital Abbey Bridge, which recreates the Beatles’ Abbey Road cover with Tigger as John Lennon, Piglet as Ringo Starr, Pooh as Paul McCartney and Eeyore as George Harrison, gets a big smile out of me.

Carson Van Osten’s pencil drawing Pooh sticks… with you is the perfect way to conclude the collection, with a lovely black-and-white depiction of Pooh and Piglet standing on the Poohsticks bridge, with Christopher Robin standing on the railing and gazing over the side. It looks very much like a marriage of Ernest Shepard and the traditional Disney Pooh look. This is what Pooh is all about, lazy days spent enjoyably in the company of good friends. You can be transported to many such moments with The Art of Winnie the Pooh. If you’ve ever wanted to venture Deep in the Hundred-Acre Wood, this book will most assuredly take you there.

The Coen Brothers Tackle the Old West in True Grit

“Jeff Bridges is really hot.” So proclaimed my mom the other night as I perused Hulu to find the clip of him singing a duet of Silver Bells with Cookie Monster during his gig as Saturday Night Live host. My brother Nathan and I turned raised eyebrows in her direction, and she hastened to add that she meant he was a hot commodity at the moment. We’ve been teasing her mercilessly ever since, but she’s certainly right about that. Yesterday, Nathan and I had to choose between two movies featuring Bridges in a major role. Had we gone with TRON: Legacy, it might not have seemed quite so preposterous to imagine the term “hot” applied, in another sense of the word, to Jeff Bridges. But in True Grit, the Coen Brothers’ remake of the classic John Wayne movie, the idea was beyond laughable.

Bridges portrays Rooster Cogburn, a U. S. Marshal with a reputation as the meanest dead-eye around. He’s a grizzly old cuss who drinks and smokes too much, and it doesn’t particularly concern him that he may be a little too quick with that trigger finger. He does things his way and refuses to apologize, and trying to have a conversation with him inevitably entails exasperation, since his gravelly rants are rarely more than half-comprehensible. He spits. He snarls. He spends vast quantities of time in the outhouse. He’s just plain grungy. He is so not hot. He is, however, wonderful to watch.

Rooster spends most of the movie on the trail of Tom Chaney, the low-life who murdered the wrong kid’s dad. With spunk reminiscent of L. M. Montgomery’s Anne Shirley – whom she resembles in her long braids, hat and coat – and a laser focus like The Princess Bride’s Inigo Montoya, Mattie Ross is determined to see her father’s killer brought to justice. After an impressive show of her shrewd business sense with a local horse trader, Mattie sets her sights on the reluctant Rooster, ultimately convincing him to take on her challenge. What he doesn’t realize is that he’s also agreed to a pint-sized traveling companion, whether he wants her or not.

Rooster and Mattie seem strangely suited to each other. They’re both tough as nails, and they make a good team. Neither thinks much of LaBoeuf, a Texas Ranger played with a preening swagger by Matt Damon. He’s pretty hot on himself when they first meet, and he views Mattie as nothing more than a nuisance in the culmination of his long quest to track down Chaney for other reasons. Mattie isn’t interested in his help if it means that Chaney will hang for killing a Senator and not her father. Rooster simply finds all his bragging tedious. They become competitors in a heated race, with Chaney the prize. But as the Wild West brings each into contact with nefarious scoundrels, all three pursuers will find hidden grit and a new respect for each other.

Hailee Steinfeld has already begun receiving accolades for her role as the determined 14-year-old Mattie, and I have no dispute with that. This is a girl intelligent beyond her years, so Steinfeld has lots of tricky dialogue to pull off with conviction. Steely resolve is her baseline emotion, but we see her break out of that from time to time, particularly when various people inspire her sympathies. In both this and No Country For Old Men, the movie that established me as a Coen Brothers fan, Josh Brolin plays a man who spends most of the movie being followed. In the former, he’s a pretty good guy who made a really big mistake. In this case, he’s still not wholly unsympathetic, but Tom Chaney is not a man of virtue. Neither is his current boss, gang leader Lucky Ned Pepper, a crusty criminal played by Barry Pepper.

Robert Duvall played that role in the original movie, which I didn’t realize until after I watched it; seeing that on IMDb made me chuckle because Pepper’s performance reminded me quite a bit of Duvall. Never having seen the original movie, I can’t really make comparisons. I understand that much of the dialogue remains intact, so I’m not sure how much I can credit the Coens for their screenplay, but I thought it was an exceptionally well-written movie. I often had to strain a bit to understand the dialogue, since, aside from Mattie’s, most of it came filtered through a fairly thick accent, but it was worth it to catch those careful words. As we headed home, my dad and brother wondered whether 19th-century outlaws were really as eloquent as this movie makes them out to be. The dialogue is often a thing of beauty.

And it’s funny. Like No Country, it’s populated with quirky characters, perhaps none more so than a medicine man played by Ed Corbin who turns up on horseback dressed in a bearskin. Dakin Matthew is a hoot as the increasingly flustered Colonel Stonehill, who simply can’t match wits with this tough teenager, and Jarlath Conroy has a brief but memorable role as an eccentric Irish undertaker. Most of the humor, however, comes from Rooster’s random ramblings, Mattie’s cleverness and LaBoeuf’s self-adulation, especially when any two of the three clash. However, these personalities also are at the heart of the movie’s most touching scenes.

The film is beautifully shot from start to finish, and it didn’t surprise me one bit to learn that Roger Deakins, whose work so impressed me in No Country and other recent movies, was the cinematographer. The countryside looks bleak but also somehow appealing, in a stirring the pioneer spirit sort of way. Complementing it well is Carter Burwell’s score, which incorporates several traditional hymns, particularly Leaning on the Everlasting Arms. “Nothing in this world is free but the grace of God,” reflects an older Mattie in the opening narration, and her faith is a thread that runs through the movie, which begins with an epigraph from Proverbs.

I loved No Country For Old Men, and I was surprised about it, since it was so very violent. True Grit is an old-fashioned Western, so there are a few shoot-outs, but there’s only one scene I would really call gruesome, and it passes quickly. The movie is rated a mild PG-13, and only on rare occasions is the "13" really earned. Profanity scarcely slips out of even the uncouth Rooster’s mouth. There is drinking and smoking aplenty, but that hardly seems worth mentioning in a movie set in the Old West. This flick feels like a respectful throwback, with only occasional bits of subtle humor taking aim at the genre. It’s the story of two, sometimes three, distinct characters taking a grueling journey together and gaining a deeper appreciation for each other and understanding of themselves. I’m still looking forward to TRON. But I’m very glad we saw True Grit, and if there was any doubt before, I can now say with certainty that when the Coen Brothers make another movie, I will be buying a ticket.

Walt and El Grupo Explore South America

A couple weeks ago, I rented Waking Sleeping Beauty, a documentary about the exciting period in Disney history that largely lined up with my own childhood and included such classics as The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and The Lion King. On that DVD were previews for two other Disney documentaries. I was very interested in The Boys: The Sherman Brothers’ Story, so that went into my queue next. However, when I saw that Walt and El Grupo, which deals with the time during the 1940s when Walt Disney and several of his employees went to South America on a goodwill tour / research trip, would soon be available on Live Streaming Video, I decided to go that route and not worry about the DVD Special Features. As I suspected, while this was still an interesting peek into Disney history, it didn’t keep me as riveted as the others.

Walt and El Grupo was written and directed by Theodore Thomas, son of famed Disney animator Frank Thomas, one of the few people spotlighted in the movie who was familiar to me. Another was artist Mary Blair, known, among other things, for her work on Disneyland attraction it’s a small world. As for everybody else, I was chagrined to realize that I recognized nearly no names that were tossed out throughout the documentary, which made it a little hard to connect with at times, especially since roughly half of the interviewees did not speak English, and at times, the subtitles were pretty hard to read against light backgrounds.

But boy, did we get a lot of Walt, and that was the best part of the movie for me. There were clips of interviews with Walt Disney, videos and photographs of him embracing the cultures of the various cities he visited with his crew, and especially lots of people reminiscing about their memories of him and what a stir he caused everywhere he went. He was only about 40 during this trip, and despite the unfortunate circumstances that partly precipitated it – an animators’ strike that halted work at the studio – he seems to have embraced the journey with gusto, and it was a joy to listen to stories of his interaction with the locals at every leg of the voyage.

There are a lot of talking heads in this movie, and I often found it hard to keep track of who was who, especially among the South Americans. It didn’t help that many of the interview subjects were spouses or children or grandchildren. I often forgot which interviewee went with which member of “el grupo,” the general name used for the group of people who went with Walt Disney on that trip. There was also a fair bit video depicting scenery and culture, but these parts tended to be in rather extended sequences that went on a little too long. I think there could have been a better balance of interviews to travelogue-type scenes.

Aside from the parts about Disney himself, what I found most interesting were the discussions on Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros, the two movies that came out of this venture. The documentary includes several clips from both, certainly enough to whet the appetite of anyone who hasn’t seen those movies. As Disney features go, they’re a little unusual, but I still enjoy them, and it’s neat to get some background on them.

Of the three Disney documentaries I’ve watched this month, Walt and El Grupo was the one that felt the most like a documentary to me. It never really pulled me out of that mindset, largely because it was primarily about an experience rather than specific people. I was able to latch onto Walt Disney to a certain extent, but since so much of that was second-hand, it still didn’t feel that immediate. I certainly recommend the movie to anyone interested in Disney history, but this isn’t one I’ll feel compelled to add to my collection.

Thomas Kinkade Finds Himself as an Artist in The Christmas Cottage

My brother Nathan is a senior in college majoring in Painting. He loves a lot of artists, but Thomas Kinkade, whose warm and fuzzy, light-infused landscape paintings are a staple at the calendar kiosk where I work this time of year, is not one of them. Still, I think that he would appreciate The Christmas Cottage, the 2008 film that loosely chronicles one memorable Christmas in the life of a college-aged Kinkade.

In this feel-good movie written by Ken LaZebnik and directed by Michael Campus, Jared Padalecki plays Thomas, who has returned to his tiny hometown for Christmas break and is shocked to discover that his mother (Marcia Gay Harden) is so far in debt that she is about to lose her cottage. Though Thomas feels like a fish out of water, with a slight air of superiority when it comes to most of the townsfolk, he delves into an art project that he feels is beneath him in hopes that it will help pay his mother’s bill. What he needs to do is create a Christmassy mural to advertise for a local businessman. When he confesses his malaise to his mentor, neighbor Glenn Wessels (Peter O’Toole), this aged artist at the tail end of an illustrious career advises him to put forth his very best effort and use the job as an opportunity to honor his town and its residents.

We see the mural as a work in progress throughout the movie, and gradually, it gains more and more personality as Thomas decides to fill it with specific people who have meant a lot to him and to the town. As he paints, he struggles with the idea of finding his own distinct style. It isn’t until the last minute that he is inspired to add the light pouring through all the windows, that touch that has become his trademark. Thomas’s relationship with Glenn is the heart of the story, and O’Toole gives a heart-rending performance as a very talented man losing control of his faculties – both his mind and his all-important hands. Despite the hints of dementia creeping in, Glenn still is a great source of wisdom for his troubled young neighbor.

While painting is the main focus of the movie, there are several subplots. In the silliest, Thomas’s congenial brother Pat (Aaron Ashmore, who plays the adorable Jimmy Olsen on Smallville) takes a job for a man embroiled in a bitter battle with his neighbor over who has the best Christmas display. Mrs. Kinkade has her hands full trying to corral a chaotic assembly of townspeople for a nice Christmas pageant. Most notably, the family is thrown into a tizzy when Thomas and Pat’s long-absent father (Richard Burgi) shows up again, broke, sardonic and unrepentant for his lack of involvement in their life.

The Christmas Cottage probably isn’t one of those Christmas movies I’m going to watch repeatedly, but I’d certainly have no objection to watching it again with my brother to see what he thinks of it. It definitely feels like a Hallmark movie, though it isn’t really. As I tend to enjoy those sappy made-for-TV efforts, though, that doesn’t bother me. If you’re intrigued by Thomas Kinkade or art in general, it’s worth making a stop at The Christmas Cottage.

A Bitter But Brilliant Brotherhood Is Revealed in The Boys: The Sherman Brothers' Story

When I think of great songwriting teams, a few names rise to the top: Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, Alan Menken and Howard Ashman. Probably the first songwriting partnership whose music made its way into my life was the Sherman Brothers, Robert and Richard. Given my love of both Disney and the craft of songwriting, I knew as soon as I heard of it that I would have to see The Boys: The Sherman Brothers’ Story.

This documentary, created by Jeff Sherman (Robert’s son) and Gregory Sherman (Richard’s son), tells an eye-opening tale that is sometimes inspiring, sometimes dreadfully sad. It turns out that Robert and Richard, or as they are generally referred to in the movie, Bob and Dick, may have been able to create pure magic when they sat down to write songs together, but their personal relationship was – and, unless a lot has changed in the last couple of years, is – a far cry from congenial.

The Boys, which is how most of their colleagues referred to them during their time at Disney, includes quite a bit of archival footage, as well as current interviews with the brothers and those who know them. While the DVD includes a number of interesting bonus features, there’s not a making-of segment, so I’m not sure where all this footage from the 1980s came from. Was this in the works that long ago, or were those parts filmed for another purpose? I’m glad, though, that we get to spend so much of the movie watching the Shermans at work together, as they did so magnificently. The recent interviews with each man individually are just as intriguing, but there’s a certain tone of desolation about it, especially in the interviews with Dick.

Together, the Shermans crafted some of the happiest and most memorable songs of the century. I always thought, “Wow. How incredibly cool that must have been to be able to do that with your own brother.” They do say that when a song idea came to them, there was no greater thrill. But you also get the sense that theirs was, for the most part, not a very pleasant partnership. Their personalities were so different, they had a tendency to clash. On the documentary, Bob, the primary lyricist and elder by a couple of years, often comes across as gruff and no-nonsense. He looks like he’s at least a decade older than the vivacious Dick, who seems very emotionally open. Dick laughs and smiles a lot throughout the film, but he also gets choked up more often, and in the estrangement, he seems more victim than perpetrator.

Although lyric-writing is my primary area of interest, I found myself more drawn to the bubbly Dick, and my heart went out to him on several occasions, the first time being when each man was asked about whether they were close as children. First we saw Bob’s response, an almost shockingly dismissive, “I barely knew him.” And then Dick: “Oh, yeah, he was my hero!” Whenever the conversation topic lingered too long on the divergent directions their personal lives took, Dick became disturbed. He reflected on how he missed being the ebullient uncle; his voice broke as he read the eloquent note Bob wrote to him for his 50th birthday. More than once, he simply said that he didn’t want to talk about it. Bob, meanwhile, generally came across as having little emotional investment in Dick. Then again, the film also delves a bit into Bob’s time as a teenage soldier during World War II, which deeply scarred him. He says that he was the first American to arrive at Dachau when it was liberated, and many of his later creative endeavors were an effort to override the horror of what he saw there. It’s little wonder that there seemed to be something standoffish about him.

But brotherly rivalry was only one part of this movie. There was also the great American story of two young men, the sons of songwriter Al Sherman, who discovered that they had a certain knack for writing songs together. This led to pop hits and eventually a recurring gig writing songs for Annette Funicello to sing on The Mickey Mouse Club. Then came the first meeting with Walt Disney himself, a moment clearly ingrained in both of their minds. The brothers, but particularly Bob, speak of Disney’s founder with such warmth and reverence; it was clear that their relationship with him, from both a professional and personal viewpoint, was something that they never took for granted.

I’m fairly certain that the first Disney song to utterly capture my imagination was Feed the Birds. It’s my favorite song in Mary Poppins, and I still think it’s one of the most beautiful film segments I’ve ever seen. When I went to England during college, one of the absolute highlights of my trip was going to St. Paul’s Cathedral, and this song is the reason for that. So I found it incredibly touching that it was after they presented this song to him that Walt Disney invited them to become staff songwriters. Later in the film, they mention that it always remained his absolute favorite of their songs, and some afternoons, they would sing it together, just for him. While the men seem miles apart in most of their interviews, their reflections upon the moment when Walt officially hired them and his final farewell to them less than a decade later were remarkably similar, and it was bittersweet to see each of them break down over those memories.

It surprised me to learn that Mary Poppins came so early in the Sherman Brothers’ Disney career, since it really is a movie that is “practically perfect in every way,” and the songs are a huge part of that. Because it is such an iconic movie and so important to them, the documentary spends a fair bit of time on it, casting P. L. Travers, author of the original Mary Poppins books, as a wicked witch doing her best to stop the film from going forward and discussing the genesis of some of the biggest songs. For instance, Bob was inspired to write A Spoonful of Sugar after hearing his son talk about receiving the Salk vaccine, which was administered with… a spoonful of sugar.

The Shermans’ output during their main stretch of time with Disney in the 1960s was incredible, and one can’t help but wonder what might have followed if Walt hadn’t died at the young age of 65 but had continued to oversee the company for years. In the wake of his death, Disney lost much of its magic for them, though they did continue on for a while, with Bedknobs and Broomsticks and The Aristocats their most notable Disney projects of that time. The movie also mentions some of their non-Disney work, like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Charlotte’s Web, which Bob identifies as his favorite of their joint efforts. Winnie the Pooh also gets a fair amount of attention, both their work in the 1960s and their collaboration with Kenny Loggins on The Tigger Movie in 2000. Despite their initial inability to connect with A. A. Milne’s stories, they seem to have found it very moving to have the chance to write new Pooh music together again after all that time, especially since their Disney output had pretty much dried up in the 1980s.

Scattered throughout the movie are comments by a number of prominent personalities. These include Roy Disney; screenwriter A. J. Carothers; Mary Poppins stars Julie Andrews, Dick Van Dyke and Karen Dotrice; Angela Lansbury of Bedknobs and Broomsticks; film scholar Leonard Maltin; Parent Trap star Hayley Mills; actor Ben Stiller, who seems to have been interviewed mostly just as a Disney enthusiast; and several others. A look at the bonus features, most of which are between five and ten minutes in length, gives you an even greater sense of how these men affected the world of movies, along with the Disney theme park experience. I enjoyed each of the special features, but my favorite was the Sherman Brothers’ Jukebox, which includes about a dozen of their songs. Click on each one, and you’ll get to hear it and usually hear one or both of them talking about how the song came to be written. It’s a fascinating peek into the songwriting process.

I still think that Richard and Robert Sherman had one of the coolest jobs imaginable. I’m sorry to learn that their incredible harmony rarely extended to their personal lives – to the extent that the sons who took this project on went decades without seeing each other. It’s really a rather depressing story. But just think of all the amazing music that came out of their contentious partnership…

Kenny Loggins Enchants Again With More Songs From Pooh Corner

Kenny Loggins and Winnie the Pooh go way back. Like many children before him, he met Pooh in the classic books by A. A. Milne. Around the time he wrote House at Pooh Corner as a high school student grappling with his reluctance to leave childhood behind, Richard and Robert Sherman were writing the iconic songs that would soon become instantly identifiable as having to do with the Silly Old Bear. I read Milne’s books, which were wonderful, but I met Pooh first via Disney, like so many of my generation. There’s something extra touching, then, about Loggins finding his way back to the Hundred Acre Wood with the help of the Sherman Brothers.

More Songs From Pooh Corner is a follow-up album to Loggins’ Return to Pooh Corner, a collection of lullabies. Even when he released Return, it seems that he had an idea that this was a subject to which he would like to return. His opening note concludes, “Here are the songs I sing to my children… Should I say ‘part one’?” This album came out six years later, the same year as The Tigger Movie, which presented him with an opportunity to write an original song with the Sherman Brothers that in many ways feels like a response to House at Pooh Corner. While that song is a plea to return to a place he loved so much, the new song offers assurance that it’s not so out of reach.

Your Heart Will Lead You Home - This is the aforementioned song that served as the theme to The Tigger Movie. Unlike House at Pooh Corner, it makes no specific mention of anything that would immediately associate it with the Pooh universe, aside from the instrumental quote of the earlier song that opens it. If you heard this song on the radio with no context, chances are that your mind would not travel to the Hundred Acre Wood. There is a very Pooh-ish sort of sensibility to it, though, especially in the opening verse, which talks of such woodland staples as “lazy afternoons” and “hummin’ little tunes”. And the emphasis on friendship is certainly one that fits that world in general, and particularly that movie, since it finds Tigger having an identity crisis when, all at once, being the only one of his kind doesn’t seem so appealing anymore, and it’s up to his friends to show him that he does have a family after all. I suppose that after doing this, Loggins had Disney on the brain; three more songs from Disney movies turn up here. On an album that includes many childhood classics, this tender anthem feels right where it belongs. “When you feel lost and on your own and far from home, you’re never alone, you know. Just think of your friends, the ones who care. They all will be waiting there with love to share, and your heart will lead you home.”

You’ll Be In My Heart - Another Disney song released shortly before this album came out, this one comes from Tarzan, where it serves as a powerful expression of the love between mother and child. Written by Phil Collins, it speaks of the desire of a parent to protect his or her children and to keep them close even when they venture out on their own. A very gentle and understated performance. “When destiny calls you, you must be strong. I may not be with you, so you gotta hold on…”

Always, In All Ways - One of only four songs on the album not connected with a movie, this song goes very well with the one before it, conveying the same message of wanting to be there for one’s child. While You’ll Be In My Heart is directed at a young child, this song finds the parent dealing with the fledgling leaving the nest. It’s bittersweet, but the gentle, almost whispered song written by Loggins and Mark Mancina carries an assurance that the love and support remain just as strong despite the shift in circumstances. “I never thought that this day would come when we’d have to say goodbye, but now that you’re on your own, whenever you need a home, I’ll be there inside you always, in all ways.”

Flying Dreams - This gorgeous song is the theme of Don Bluth’s The Secret of NIMH and is probably just behind Somewhere Out There when it comes to my favorite songs from his movies. It always seemed like a bit of an odd theme to me, since it seems to be about romantic love, which really isn’t a focus of the movie, except for the fact that the widowed mouse at the heart of the story connects with the super-intelligent rats who save her family’s home because of their association with her husband. In that sense, one might say that his love transcends death and continues to bolster his wife and children. A beautiful duet with Olivia Newton-John, with woodwinds adding to its haunting quality. “Love, it seems, made flying dreams so hearts could soar. Heaven sent, these wings were meant to prove once more that love is the key…”

That’ll Do - Even though I loved Babe, I never saw its sequel, from which this is drawn. (I should do something about that soon.) But several years ago, I heard this gentle song at an Art Garfunkel concert , where his wife performed it beautifully. It’s a song of encouragement, written by Randy Newman around the taciturn Farmer Hoggett’s affirmation of choice. The incorporation of the harp and Uilleann pipes give an enchanting Celtic flavor to this heartening tune. “A kind and steady heart can conquer doubt and fear. A little courage goes a long, long way, gets you a little bit further down the road each day, and before you know it, you’ll hear someone say, ‘That’ll do, Babe. That’ll do.’”

Turn Around - This Harry Belafonte song is another that isn’t associated with a movie, and I don’t think it’s one that I’ve heard in another context. It’s a Sunrise, Sunset sort of song about how quickly time passes. A bit melancholy but very tender, with sparse guitar accompaniment. “Where are you going, my little one, little one? Little pigtails and petticoats, where have you gone? Turn around and you’re tiny, turn around and you’re grown, turn around and you’re a young wife with babes of your own.”

Beauty and the Beast - I confess that of all the songs in Beauty and the Beast, this one, while beautiful and insightful, is my least favorite. Unlike the rest, it doesn’t feel particularly connected to the character who sings it, and as a love song, Something There feels much more in-the-moment and intimate to me. Still, the fact that this is a “tale as old as time” means that this Alan Menken / Howard Ashman song resonates with a lot of people, and I think I prefer this mellow version to the grandiose radio version that helped catapult Celine Dion to stardom. “Barely even friends, then somebody bends unexpectedly. Just a little change, small to say the least. Both a little scared, neither one prepared, Beauty and the Beast.”

Baby Mine - This Dumbo weeper also appears on Art Garfunkel’s Songs From a Parent to a Child, one of my favorite children’s albums. I’m partial to that version of the song, which is pretty much You’ll Be In My Heart six decades earlier, but Loggins does a lovely job with it as well. Certainly one of the most fundamentally lullaby-like tracks on the album. “All those same people who scold you, what they’d give just for the right to hold you…”

The Inch Worm - I vividly remember the first time I watched the Danny Kaye musical Hans Christian Andersen. My friend and I were having a sleepover, and both of us had Little Mermaid fever. Since the Disney animated feature was, as I recall, between theaters and home video at the time, Mom and Dad thought it might be fun for us to watch this movie, in which Andersen’s classic is presented as a ballet. I think I liked the movie more than she did, and it didn’t hurt that I already knew this song, since Anne Murray included it on her children’s album, There’s a Hippo In My Tub, which I’d probably listened to dozens of times by that point. It’s a nice reminder not to get so caught up in quantitative considerations that you forget how to stop and smell the flowers. A nice violin section and a kids’ chorus enhance this gentle song. “Inchworm, inchworm, measuring the marigolds, seems to me you’d stop and see how beautiful they are.”

Hana Aluna Lullabye - Another song that Loggins had a hand in writing. This one is directed at his daughter, who was named for the Hawaiian town of Hana. A very soothing tune that includes a fair bit of Hawaiian, along with ukulele. Listening to this song on a snowy winter day whisks me away to tropical shores for a few moments. No movie connection, but a definite sense of place. “Before you were born, I saw you in the sunrise, in the arms of my lover, in the music of the islands. And you are made of paradise, of ginger and pikake, wild mango and moonlight and dreams of our sweet ohana.”

Goodnight - Loggins included a John Lennon song on his first children’s album, and this time around he closes with a tip of the hat to Lennon / McCartney. This duet with Alison Krauss is a most fitting way to end the album, in which every track segues seamlessly into the next. Here, the transition will hopefully be into dreamland as Loggins closes the track with a softly spoken “goodnight”. “Now it’s time to say good night. Good night, sleep tight. Now the sun turns out his light. Good night, sleep tight. Dream sweet dreams for me; dream sweet dreams for you.”

Somehow, I think that whoever is listening to this album will do just that.

Join Larry for a Ride on the What-If Express in It's a Meaningful Life

VeggieTales is a Christian video series that has been entertaining and enriching me for the past 15 years, and when I saw that their latest DVD had a tie-in with Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life, one of my favorite movies to watch this time of year, I was doubly interested. It’s a Meaningful Life is a 45-minute-long video containing one long story, which has been the norm for VeggieTales Christmas videos. The basic story is basically a mix of Wonderful Life, The Family Man and The Polar Express, with plenty of fun Veggie twists tossed in.

Larry the Cucumber plays the role of Stewart, the main character who is named for Jimmy Stewart and is married to Donna (Petunia), who is named after Donna Reed. Though VeggieTales has been pairing these two up ever since Duke and the Great Pie War several years ago, it was still a little weird for me to see Larry playing the part of a man who is married with kids, since he usually comes across as such a big kid himself. But his scenes with both Petunia and his children, especially little Emma, are very sweet.

Although Stewart has a good life as the owner of the toy train factory handed down to him by his father and a volunteer peewee football coach, he can’t stop thinking about that fateful day years ago when he almost won the team’s big game. Instead, his buddy Morty (Mr. Lunt) made the winning play and went on to superstardom. When Morty comes back for a visit, all those old feelings of bitterness threaten to overwhelm him. Who could blame him for feeling a little sorry for himself when his own son can’t stop going on about how great Morty is?

In the early days, VeggieTales videos tended to have fairly simple props and backdrops. One of the main reasons the characters were vegetables was because they were pretty easy to animate. But there have been major advances since then, and the setting for It’s a Meaningful Life is rich and complex, particularly the scenes that show us Stewart’s tiny town. The action shots of the What-If Express rambling through the countryside as the Northern Lights appear in the night sky are also pretty impressive.

With only 45 minutes, plus time taken out for framing scenes on the countertop and a silly song, this is a story that cuts right to the chase. Everything happens very quickly. We get Stewart’s youth, then we see him as a dad in the autumn, and then in the winter. After he gets on the train, which is a combination of the Polar Express and the mysterious journey that Clarence takes George on in Wonderful Life, with a dash of A Christmas Carol thrown in, he makes only two stops to see the “hypothetical” stemming from his “regrettable”. First, he sees what his own life would be like if he’d been the big football hero instead of Morty. Then he sees what things would be like for everyone else in his town. Unlike George, Stewart is merely an observer, and he is unable to interact with any of these figures, but seeing his hollow life as a cranky, self-absorbed celebrity and the ruin that has befallen his town and loved ones, he reconsiders his own lot In life.

My favorite element of the main story is probably Stewart’s relationship with his adorable young adopted daughter, which is very reminiscent of George’s relationship with Zuzu. The lullaby he sings for her is very tender, and it sets us up for the considerably less sedate Silly Song, which has Junior Asparagus extending his awake time for as long as possible by requesting that his increasingly exasperated mother bring him every stuffed animal he can think of. Some of the animals in his collection are funny in and of themselves, and Junior’s hyper antics are hilarious and will probably resonate with anyone who has ever attempted to get a young child to go to sleep. Stewart’s peppy song about giving 110 percent is pretty catchy too and reminds me of something that Fred MacMurray might have sung in The Happiest Millionaire or any number of old Disney movies in which he played an enthusiastic dad. Probably the song most firmly stuck in my head, though, despite barely understanding a word of the lyrics, is the trippy commercial that first Morty and then Alternate Stewart records. It’s sung incredibly quickly, with a comparable barrage of goofy 2-D images, and the point is to show us how these characters have sold out by recording these obnoxious ads for products they don’t believe in.

Of VeggieTales’ four Christmas releases, this is the one that feels the least Christmassy, as quite a bit of it doesn’t take place at Christmas. There’s nothing on the countertop or in the Silly Song indicative of Christmas either. With so much of it involving football, it might feel just as seasonal in September. I suppose that the climax didn’t actually need to take place at Christmas, but it allows for more fun parallels with the above-mentioned movies. This video will probably entertain you most if you’ve seen any or all of those, but It’s a Meaningful Life is meaningful even if you don’t get all the little references to Christmastime classics, and I can’t wait to see what VeggieTales will come up with next.

Enjoy an Old-Fashioned Bell Choir Concert With Pooh Bells

Every year, I get a big kick out of checking out all of the new Christmas ornaments at Hallmark. I ooh and aah over them, but I rarely buy them before Christmas. Afterward is another story, as I have a long-standing tradition of buying ornaments in the days after Christmas when they’re on sale and when I usually have a bit of money that relatives have advised me to spend on something fun. Back in 2006, I happened upon something at Hallmark that I really wanted, but I took my chances, especially since it was quite pricey, and planned to get to Hallmark on 26th in hopes of snatching one up. By December 26th, however, they were gone. That’ll teach me to be a cheapskate. Then, last year, I discovered the website Hooked on Hallmark, where just about every ornament I’ve craved for the past couple of decades is readily available for purchase. So far, I’ve mostly kept temptation at bay, but I knew that I would have to buy Pooh Bells, the decoration from a few years back that I so admired.

I guess “decoration” would be the best word for it. Pooh Bells is far too big to be considered an ornament. It’s meant to be placed on a table or other flat surface, someplace accessible to human hands but not in danger of being damaged by careless passersby. It’s fairly heavy duty and intricately carved, and its bulk is taken up by a large, boxy structure. There’s a flat platform about ten inches in length and close to four inches wide. This is green, as are the walls on either end. It rests atop a red stand that is thicker and slightly wider. The top part is flat on the bottom but looks as though it is covered in clumps of snow on the top. The red, green and white look very Christmassy together.

Running between the two green end pieces is a purplish bar, and on that bar is a series of gears. These are bookended on the outside by a crank and another gear, both bright yellow with tiny bees on them. Turn the crank, and this decoration begins to do its magic. The pieces on the top will move, and the music box, easily visible as it rests against one of the green walls, will play its snippet of Carol of the Bells. It’s a rather repetitive song, and the snippet we get is just the same four notes over and over, but it’s still really cool. What makes it even neater is how old-fashioned it is. This looks like something that could have been around in the 1800s, if Pooh and pals had been around back then. You don’t have to worry about batteries; all you do is set Pooh Bells down, and whenever you want to get a little movement, turn the crank and watch it spring to life.

This decoration features a four-member bell choir. Having watched my parents in a bell choir when I was little, I suspect that there’s not really all that much you could play with four bells. But if you just need these same four notes again and again, then this little choir is the perfect size. It consists of Tigger, Piglet, Pooh and Eeyore, and each character is manipulated differently when the crank turns.

Tigger, the tallest member of the group by a considerable margin, is understandably exuberant. His tail is scrunched, ready for a pounce, and when the crank turns, the tail straightens up as he rises into the air, giving the impression that he is bouncing. The tail is cloth, as is the purple scarf he wears, and although his hat is hard and carved, the white ball at the tip is fuzzy. One hand holds a gold bell with a brown handle, while the other holds a lyric sheet.

Piglet is next, and he wears a red cloth scarf. He sits on a stump, which helps him to not look quite so tiny against his friends, though you can’t help but notice that his bell is about the same size as his head. Piglet swivels, while Pooh, beside him, shakes his head back and forth. Pooh wears his typical red shirt, and he too has a song sheet. He has a green cloth scarf, and like Tigger, he has a Santa hat with a fuzzy ball at the tip, but unlike Tigger, he has holes in his hat where his ears poke out. And since all this bell-ringing Is such hard work, there is a small pot of honey just in front of him so he can have a snack when he’s done.

Eeyore, the only member of the group who isn’t wearing anything aside from the ever-present pink bow (an actual ribbon) on his tail, is also the only one not smiling. I wouldn’t exactly say that he’s frowning; his face is really more of a blank slate, as though he can’t decide whether or not he’s having a good time. His ears look a little droopy to me, and he presents the appearance of rolling his eyes, but his bell is firmly clutched like the rest of them, and on the whole, he doesn’t seem all that put out as he raises and lowers his paw.

All of the colors have a sort of muted flavor to them, but there’s still a certain vibrance that shines through, and the dark orange, pink, light orange and bluish-gray of Tigger, Piglet, Pooh and Eeyore complement each other well. I think the only thing that might make this cuter would be if Eeyore had phony antlers on his head. But I won’t hold a grudge if he doesn’t want to be subjected to that kind of indignity.

This is a really handsome decoration that is both expensive and fragile, but if you’re as big a Pooh fan as I am, neither of those drawbacks will be enough to deter you. I’ve collected enough Pooh ornaments over the years that I could probably fill a tree with nothing but the Silly Old Bear and his friends. If I ever did that, I would make sure that I set Pooh Bells up on a shelf nearby, where these merry revelers could supervise the tree-trimming while furnishing a festive tune sure to remain firmly fixed in my mind for days to come. If that sounds like a good plan to you, perhaps you might consider letting Pooh and his pals ring in the Christmas season yourself.