cks you designed to be ~exotic~ or whatever, and those rabid jerks at Disney can only grit their teeth now!
The Reluctant Dragon — My Thoughts · 7:48pm Aug 18th, 2015
A man, prodded into recommending a story (one guess) to Walt Disney gets a extended look behind the curtain of the studio while drifting away again and again from his tour-guide..
...And that's about it. Cute framing device, but Inception it sure wasn't.
More below the cut.
It was quite alright.
Not good, not bad, but interesting.
Think I'm a bit too old for it, and knew too much about the behind the scenes stuff already. There were quiet a few stretches I caught myself looking over at the watch simply because I already know the back-stage of animation, and wanted them to get on with it.
A fascinating little time-capsule with a cute framing device, but as far as Disney mock-documentaries from roughly the same era I think i prefer Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros. Know that's not quite fair since they're both later films and quite clearly took a lot of lessons from The Reluctant Dragon,
Still, hand on my heart I can't quite stop myself making that comparison, unfair as it may be. I've mentioned it in the notes to One Pony's Curse, but The Three Caballeros is, no joke, my favorite Disney movie.
still, for those of you with NetFlix the movie is on there. Might be worth a peek if you've got a boring hour. The thing didn't blow my socks off, but I'm glad I saw it. Nice bit of film history.
...Just be aware that we're talking about a time-capsule from the 40's. I'll applaud the Disney corp for having quite a few female workers for back then, but the whole staff is whiter than a blizzard in Antarctica, and there were a few rather shocking (if blink and you miss them) racial stereotypes in the 'Baby Weems' segment.
Nothing on the level of, say, Songs of the South, but thought I'd mention it.
Credit were its due, though: Starting the movie in black & white and only moving into Technicolor when entering the 'Rainbow Room?' That was a genuine nice surprise I wasn't expecting, and it was a fun tech gag even by today standards. Made me smile, at least. 
(Watched on request but can't remember from who and where. Sorry. It appears I miss-remembered, and was thinking of TheStratovarian recommending Flight of Dragons to me. Gha~a. Oh well, guess you guys are going to get one more of these soon in that case. 
)
I hadn't heard of the reluctant dragon before. But flight of dragons was one I had as a kid. Took me forever to refind it as i never could catch it to find the name.
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Yeah...
Can't say it was an hour outright wasted, but I did feel a bit sheepish on realizing I'd just watched the 'wrong' movie just becuse it had 'Dragon' in the title.
And, you know, Disney movie so i thought it must be that one, right?
Still, think I've found a copy of the right dragon movie now, so going to give that a go.
3329504 It's certainly different, and I sorta dread the review coming up for it. Its one of those childhood movies, and seeing it given some good, if critical reviews, sorta does make you antsy.
If The Flight of Dragons was Disney movie it would be much less esoteric now.
They just didn't showed janitor staff.
Or men who stamped all these Fords, for example.
Face it, it's not even question of racism, it's question of skillset. Education was much more worthy and less available in 40s than today. Now you have Bachelors of Liberal Arts begging on the street.
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...Hate to admit it, but you've got a point with that. It was a different time, after all.
Still, it was one of those can't stop seeing it things. Even the most unimportant bit-part in the background so quickly gone you need to freeze the frame was as dolled up as the main character, and I don't think I as much as saw a light tan.
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Just don't start have tantrum after seeing any un-PC thing like this woman:
http://www.beesgo.biz/horp.html
Hilarious "game". Butthurt is seeping through the every word.
By the way, I got perfect score (Hint: Hitler is very boring writer)
Meanwhile in Germany:
http://www.infowars.com/pc-crowd-in-germany-follows-nazi-example-destroys-books/
3000 books processed into pulp because they have bad words. FFS, "negro" is not even a slur. For the most European languages it's a perfectly normal word.
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Eh, wouldn't go that far. Was mostly that I noticed it, and thought: 'Huh, that sure was a thing that just happened.'
Kinda like how The Jazz Singer and its remake both use blackface. 1927 that was OK, and sweeping historic stuff like that under the rug won't do anybody any good.
thenation.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/1233597447-large2.jpg
Now, a movie from 1980 and set in that same time-frame? That one should have known better.
See what I mean? Both are cringe worthy to a modern audience, but one of them at least has the excuse of being from a different time.
And on a personal note: Ye gods, how was that last one ever considered a good idea? If it had been a straight remake set in the 20's it would have at least been a brave artistic choice to show the 'greatest generation' with warts and all.
But again, just repeating that blackface plotpoint when the rest of the movie takes place in 1980? That's just racist and lazy.
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According to wikipedia, plot is
So it's a perfectly normal scene. He could even get away with it (I'm pretty sure all others wore some make-up too, so it's less noticeable already from 3-4 meters and his europoid face could be attributed to mixed ancestry) if not a white hands.
Why we can bust our gut watching "Some Like It Hot" but can't laugh watching white man in pretty tame and believable blackface?
I didn't even know about the live-action scenes until I was in university because I grew up with a VHS release that had been edited to just the cartoon parts. (Same for "Mickey and the Beanstalk" from Fun and Fancy Free)