Untapped goldmine: Disney Princesses 'to the rescue'.

There is a spot near the beginning of Peggy Orenstein's Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture that details the origins of the Disney Princess brand that originated around 2000.  Long-story short, the compromise for allowing all of the various Disney princess characters to appear on the same merchandise was that they not actually interact with each other in any way.  You may not realize it, but you've never actually seen a Disney Princess t-shirt or storybook with Jasmine and Belle playing tennis together or Aurora and Cinderella picking out party gowns.  They are always staring either at us or off into the distance, but never at each other.  I bring this up because in the midst of all the 'who should be in Expendables 3' or 'who should be in that female Expendables spin-off', I realized that Disney was in fact practicing a remarkable bit of restraint when it came to financially mining their properties.  Imagine: Jasmine, Belle, Mulan, Cinderella, Aurora, Pocahontas, Snow White, Ariel, Tiana, Rapunzel all in one spectacular adventure to do some kind of derring-do and/or saving the proverbial day.  Of course since most of their arch villains are suffering from a slight case of death, the already-established antagonists would be pretty limited (although Jafar and Dr. Facilier would be the easiest to resurrect since they both perished via magic).  But putting aside the whole 'art' argument, can you imagine how such a film wouldn't gross hundreds of millions of dollars in theaters?  Can you imagine how many untold millions of DVDs or Blu-Rays such a thing would sell? Say what you will about the alleged greed of the Walt Disney studios, but it says something that they haven't leaped at such a seemingly obvious opportunity to rake in untold amounts of money.

Scott Mendelson        

No better moviegoing memories: A defense of and celebration of midnight movie screenings...

"I want you to know that, if I did have a son, and the opportunity presented itself to wake him up to watch a baseball game or to listen to the president on the radio, or for absolutely no reason at all..."

The Colorado theater shooting happened just over a week ago, during a period when I was out of town and thus unable to churn out any immediate thoughts.  In retrospect, I may be grateful for that.  Mass shootings are an all-too common occurrence in America, but this time felt different.  I've long argued that one of the problems with American society is that they tend to make every major tragedy and/or scandal about them, something that arguably goes back to the death of Princess Diana Spencer in August 1997.  Yet this time I couldn't help feeling like I had been specifically targeted.  After all, these weren't just moviegoers, but midnight moviegoers.  They weren't just midnight moviegoers, but midnight moviegoers watching a Batman film.  Whether by random decision (Holmes had allegedly intended to attack a shopping mall but changed his mind) or explicit targeting, the assailant this time around specifically picked people like me and you.  The readers of this site are arguably not general moviegoers per-se, but just the sort that flock to midnight screenings as a matter of habit.  And James Holmes, for reasons that may or may not become apparent over the next few months, didn't just commit mass murder in a place I consider sacred.  No, he opened fire and shed blood during a midnight screening, of a Batman film no less.  And as the week has seen all sorts of the usual finger-pointing, much of it being the usual 'the movies made him do it' nonsense that we haven't seen much of since Columbine.  But more than a little of the blame-game has been directed at the very institution of midnight screenings and the fevered anticipation that makes them so enjoyable, however absurd that seems on its face. Intentional or no, Mr. Holmes has sullied and bloodied an institution that I hold very dear, an institution that I someday hope to share with my children when the opportunity presents itself.  As such, right or wrong, I'm taking that just a little bit personally.