Back in the far-off days of my childhood, one of the most looked-forward-to treats of the the Bank Holiday weekends like Easter was the Monday teatime Disney 'special' on the BBC. It was just a clip show fronted by a popular children's TV presenter of the day, and there was usually a fairly limited repertoire of scenes they'd show, but.... well, that was probably a large part of the excitement: as with pop chart countdowns of the 'best of the year' or 'all-time Top 100', you're anxiously waiting to see when or if your own particular favourites will come up.
I wonder if Disney still licenses such a programme. Back in the 1970s, they usually kept their films off television altogether, so that they could maximise cinema takings from repeat runs. These shows were the about the only TV exposure the Disney films would get, 'teasers' to get you interested in the upcoming release and to remind you of past favourites you might like to see again. Since the advent of VHS and DVD, that approach to rationing the dissemination of their product has become defunct. It was such a popular format, though, and it has such nostalgia appeal for people of my sort of age, that I imagine they probably do still continue with it. It's one piece of 'home' I find myself surprised to be missing today....
So, here for your enjoyment - and a little nostalgia wallow, why not? - is one of the most reliably popular of all those Disney Time hits, The Jungle Book's showstopper, I Wanna Be Like You.
I wonder if Disney still licenses such a programme. Back in the 1970s, they usually kept their films off television altogether, so that they could maximise cinema takings from repeat runs. These shows were the about the only TV exposure the Disney films would get, 'teasers' to get you interested in the upcoming release and to remind you of past favourites you might like to see again. Since the advent of VHS and DVD, that approach to rationing the dissemination of their product has become defunct. It was such a popular format, though, and it has such nostalgia appeal for people of my sort of age, that I imagine they probably do still continue with it. It's one piece of 'home' I find myself surprised to be missing today....
So, here for your enjoyment - and a little nostalgia wallow, why not? - is one of the most reliably popular of all those Disney Time hits, The Jungle Book's showstopper, I Wanna Be Like You.
And, in case you fancy a little change from the usual, here it is in German (I wonder how long before someone tries dubbing this over Hitler's Downfall?). Or here (ah, YouTube!) there's a multi-language version, with 10 different languages.
I hadn't realised that King Louie was voiced by the legendary Italian band leader Louis Prima. Here's a great little clip of him recording the song for the film (with an introduction by The Jungle Book's director, Wolfgang Reitherman).
And finally... one of my old university chums was lucky enough to visit Cinderella's Castle with his family just recently (courtesy, yet again, of his wife's formidable talent for winning online competitions), and made this video tour of the place:
5 comments:
From the album 'Stay Awake' - featuring, among other covers of Disney songs, Tom Waits singing 'Heigh-Ho' - I present Los Lobos' cover of 'I Wanna Be Like You.'. You're welcome.
Ooh, high concept! Thank you, Weebs.
So, you went down to Hong Kong in the middle of Qing Ming?! How's that working out for you??
So far, so good. Of course, I've got to wait until visa offices reopen tomorrow before I can apply for a visa, and then once I get the visa I'll have to wait for the next train back up to Beijing on the 9th, so all in all I've got an afternoon's worth of work and four days of time-killing to do it in. Not too onerous a burden.
Loved the Los Lobos cover!
Your pal's tour of the Cinderella Suite (watched both it and Part 2 over at YouTube) reminded me of a video I did when I first moved away from New Jersey. One of my sisters had sent me some $$$ to rent a video camera and give the folks back home a long-distance tour of the town I'd moved to. (This was on VHS, the digital stuff back then being the province only of George Lucas & Co.)
Determined to make the most of the rental, I recorded something like two hours' worth of what I called "Mr. Simpson's Neighborhood" -- almost the whole thing in a single take, if I recall. No one, including me, ever watched it more than once. I don't have the silky voiceover talents of your friend.
Maybe you could revisit that project, JES, now that the digital technology is available to all.
There is quite a genre on YouTube of parodies of The Sopranos introductory sequence. I've often thought I'd like to try my hand at something like that for Beijing. Alas, not having a car or a video camera is something of an obstacle...
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