... FOR "WALT DISNEY'S ANIMATED FIFTY (PART 2 - 'PINOCCHIO' EDITION)"

My second foray into Disney's fifty official Animated Classics. (For my Introduction/Part One, see here.) Again, do not hesitate to share your thoughts/memories/disagreements below.

Title: Pinocchio (1940; based on The Adventures Of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi)

The Plot: A wooden puppet boy, with a talking cricket as his guide, is led on a series of misadventures as he learns the value of leading a responsible life.

The Songs: "When You Wish Upon A Star," "Give A Little Whistle," "Hi-Diddle-Dee-Dee (An Actor's Life For Me)," "I've Got No Strings"

... FOR "WALT DISNEY'S ANIMATED FIFTY (INTRODUCTION / PART 1 - 'SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS' EDITION)"

Walt Disney's Tangled is the studio's fiftieth full-length animated feature, computer-generated or otherwise, to be released directly to theaters. That's 74 years, for those keeping track – a cinematic milestone that began with Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs in 1937. Since then, they've had their share of hits, misses, classics, stumbles and technological advances, but if there's one common bond between them, it's been an honest-to-goodness desire to entertain audiences worldwide. You can hardly fault them for that.

I haven't always been the most avid follower of that old Mouse House magic. I was too old for them, I guess, by the time I started gaining any real interest in movies. Princesses, Pinocchio, Alice In Wonderland and Mowgli and Baloo... not really my thing. Those songs... not the kind of stuff you'd find playing on regular rotation on my CD player at home. As an adult, though, that's when I started to get a sense of what the animators were actually up to – to appreciate the love and are that had been poured into every frame.

... FOR "SORRY SUPERHEROES"

I don't usually bother writing about these things, but sometimes an idea is just so patently ridiculous it's hard to pass up.

Case in point: A couple of comic book properties have been getting some major press over the past month, looking to grace our TV screens as a live- action drama and an animated kids' show (respectively) in the near future, and if this is indeed a sign of our times, I want out. It's one thing to turn a comic book into a viable franchise; it's another thing entirely to treat that same property with the respect it deserves, and then to pass that along to audiences. Do it right, and you get The Dark Knight. Do it badly and you get, well, Batman & Robin.