Editor's Note: Al Lutz has a great update on Mice Age today where you'll have all details about the effects on Disneyland of the Disney Parks and Resorts new organization announcement.

LIFE Magazine at Disneyland's Pirates of Caribbean , Sept 1967

Recently, after one of my "LIFE at Disneyland" post, a good friend of mine Imagineer sent to me a kind email telling me how he was pleased to see this rare LIFE pictures. And he added that it remembered him an old LIFE issue that was released at the opening of Pirates of the Caribbean in 1967.

What? A LIFE issue with LIFE pictures shoot at the opening of Pirates of the Caribbean more than 40 years ago? I had to find it, and the most difficult was to find the right "date" of the issue. I succeed to find the date, and also find a copy of it on ebay. As there won't be enough original copy of the magazine available for everybody, i'm sharing today these pictures with you. At that time, back in 1967, LIFE photographers were the best news magazine photographers in the world, so no need to say that the pictures are good.

Life did a four pages article on POTC, and on the first double page you can find this great portrait of the Pirate auctioneer - picture above.

Or this one of the pirates in jail and the dog with the keys.



And also this one of the prisoners in the dunking the mayor scene.



They also shoot images of a boat moving in the burning city scene.



LIFE photographers went also backstage at WDI and shoot two pictures of the imagineers at work on the Audio-Animatronics. Here is one of them working on a AA goat...



...and here is another imagineer at work on a pirate Audio-Animatronic.



Now, i suppose that you would be really interested to read the article itself, wouldn't you? That's why i took pictures for you of the whole pages. They are in high resolution, so if you double-click on them you should be able to read the text of this memorable LIFE article.

Here is the first double-page...



Here is page 3...



...and Here is the page 4 - half-page, in fact for these last two.



If you want to find a copy of the original magazine, it is the LIFE issue of September 15, 1967 and there is twelve copies available on EBay. But the the front cover picture was not one of Pirates of the Caribbean. No, the "main" article of this LIFE issue was on...Joseph Stalin's daughter!



All pictures: copyright Time-Life

WALL-E won Best Animated Film Academy Award !

Yes! WALL-E won tonight the Best Animated Film of the Year Academy Award and the Oscar goes to Andrew Stanton and all Pixar animators, and, of course, WALL-E!



Disney and more send its best congratulations to Andrew Stanton and all Pixar animators who worked on this gorgeous animated movie. I personally loved it, so of course i am very happy that WALL-E won the academy-award!

Mmmmh, i think WALL-E is a little bit surprised by his new friend...



Here is Andrew Stanton receiving the Award last night.



Here is a video of Andrew Stanton backstage sending his best thanks.



And here is another video of Andrew Stanton backstage - as well as the winner of the short animated academy award - with Jack Black and Jennifer Aniston after he received the Oscar.



To celebrate this Award you can open a bottle of champagne or stay with WALL-E and have some fun with the WALL-E Pinball on the official website. Just like a real Pinball, with animated effects when the ball hit Eve or the Rocket !

AND for those of you who didn't succeed to watch the Oscar last night and Hugh Jackman fantastic ceremony opening, here is the video!



Pictures: copyright Disney-Pixar

Short Animated Oscar Winner : La Maison en Petits Cubes

WALL-E won the Oscar tonight but Presto didn't won the Oscar for Best Short Animated. It is a Japanese movie who did, and it's called "La Maison en Petits Cubes" which, surprisingly, is a title in french language.

However, i just discovered this short animated and it's beautiful. It's not "fun" at all like Presto can be, no "cartoonish" style, but it's full of poetry and it's talking about life. Take a Minute to discover it in this two-part video below, and all my congratulations to the director and everybody who worked on it!







Youtube videos thanks to ronjon9

The Watchmen movie is coming, and it'd better be good

Watchmen is one of the most awaited movie of the year, and the movie is the adaptation of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons genius graphic novel acclaimed by almost everybody who've read it and listed by Time magazine as one of the "100 best novels of the 20th century", nothing less.

For those of you who've never read the graphic novel, and even if the Watchmen story is far from Disney universe, i strongly suggest you to read it as soon as you can. It's a masterpiece. When Watchmen was released 20 years ago in 1986-87 it was a comic book revolution. Nothing was the same after Watchmen and you will understand why when you will read it as i really don't want to spoil to you the story.



Alan Moore who wrote the script is a true visionary genius and this is one of the reason why we had to wait so long to get a movie adaptation. Zach Snyder is finally the one who did it, but many other directors beginning by the great Terry Gilliam tried to do it. After two years working on a script adaptation, Gilliam finally stopped saying that he thought it was impossible to "reduce" the Watchmen at a two and a half hour movie. Well, that should be the lenght of Zach Snyder's movie and believe me there is so many fans of the Watchmen all over the world that the movie had better be good.

For what i've seen so far, it seems that the graphic part of the Watchmen should be more or less quite well recreate. But recently some one minute movie clips were released and the least i can say is that the actors didn't look extremely convincing to me. Of course we have to see all this in the continuity of the movie, and so i will give the "benefit of the doubt" to Zach Snyder until.....next thursday morning when i will see Watchmen at a press screening ( Watchmen is released March 6 in the U.S and March 4 in France ). Then we'll see if this Zach Snyder is as "visionary" as he claims he is in each trailer or movie poster.

You can count on me to write my review thursday in the evening, and i promise you that even if i'm a Watchmen super-fan since 20 years i will be totally objective. Really.



For those of you who would like to read the book before seeing the movie, I've found for you on Amazon.com the right link for the graphic novel. 416 pages of pure genius for only $10.37, that's the deal of the month, isn't it!



Pictures: copyright Warner Bros

An Imagineer's Second Life

For most of you a WDI Imagineer is somebody who creates a theme park - or at least attractions for Disney. Whether he is show designer, show producer, sculptor, model specialist, architect,etc... But what happens when a former Imagineer - decides to leave WDI? What do they create if its not an attraction? This is what I will talk about today.

Eddie Sotto is a former WDI imagineer who began as a Main Street show designer/producer on DLP. It is my favorite Main Street. While he was at WDI, he also worked on the development of Disneyland's Indiana Jones Adventure, and eventually ran his own concept studio within WDI, where his team could explore new ideas. That period yielded many new projects for TDL including "Pooh's Hunny Hunt" or Tomorrowland concepts like "Sci-Fi City", as well as "outside the berm" projects like "Encounter" Restaurant at LAX, or New York's ABC "Times Square Studios" and many others.

In late 1999, Eddie was hired away from WDI to be the creative director of an internet media company, then got involved creating television pilots for Mtv, Current, ABC, and Showtime networks, and eventually in 2004 founded SottoStudios, his own "think tank" where they have been busy designing everything from the Ferrari experience within Steve Wynn's Las Vegas resort to ClubAston, a "Bond-esque" Aston Martin dealership where you design your DB9 at a Martini bar and it is presented to you inside a bank vault.

On January 16, Eddie's latest project "Rivera", a modern latin Restaurant opened in Downtown Los Angeles, just a block from Staples Center (Laker's home) and the Nokia Theater. Rivera is the middle name of the chef, John Rivera Sedlar. A man noted for his gourmet latin cuisine. They met as a result of Sotto bringing in chefs to lecture at WDI on how to better marry the dining experience to the attractions. they later worked on Encounter together and it was a hit.





So, I called Eddie in L.A - who also gently provided me his artwork and some CGI renderings - and had a little interview with him about the Rivera. He explained it this way:

E.S: Form follows food. That was the takeaway from the WDI lectures John gave and it really impressed me. John is amazing at presentation and thinking about the design and food in the same breath. It's all one experience to the guest. He is so into the details that he has flower petals pressed onto each handmade tortilla so they become art in themselves. It's like John Hench said, "it's about the longshot and the closeup". Everything matters to him and every course is an an attraction. This made sense to me. Why at EPCOT do we serve heavy Lasagna for lunch, then eject the bloated guest into the Florida heat, only to put them piping hot on a spinning thrill ride? It's out of sync. How do we rethink places as complimentary experiences, not just rides and restaurants? Experiences are systems. Ever since then I was looking for a chance to work with a Chef. Rivera was there to bring it all together because this Chef sees the room as just a bigger plate".







A.L : So did it materialize as an experience?

E.S: It's a Pan-latin menu (tamales to tapas and more) with a heavy emphasis on Tequila. John wanted to serve "flights" of tequilas, meaning several tastes in small glasses that are custom mixed for each guest. This "flight" notion became the inspiration for the design of our own ultimate First Class seat, of polished bronze with a stainless tray table. The chair stays on the ground, you do the flying. They became the heart of our Samba lounge. To help your mind become airborne, kaleidoscopic "hallucinations" of agave plants, aztec masks, and spanish art, randomly appear and vanish across a 40' video wall.

Below, from the first sketches to CGI renderings to the final result, the "ultimate First Class seat".










A.L : As long as you don't land in the Hudson River...

E.S: "Now that's an experience! See, the one thing chain Restaurants seem to be lacking is "special". What we mean is being truly memorable with a sense of ceremony. What happened to salads tossed at our table, flaming drinks, or special dishes you just could not eat elsewhere? That's why we have the custom tasting chairs. Each chair was designed to fit a plate that John had ordered from Dubai. That's the whole idea of experiential design. It's working the food and the design out in lockstep. Start with the "wow" and work backwards to achieve that. We all opted to be the "anti-chain" restaurant and just make it special.





A.L : What about the design itself, what inspired that?

E.S: "One of the things Sedlar said is that he didn't want a cliche'd mexican restaurant. No Sombreros on the walls. He wanted the food to be the latin flavor. Clean, modern and minimal. Very hard to do and still make it inviting. We had to make it authentically L.A too. One of the inspirations was the concrete blocks of a Lloyd Wright Neo-Mayan Sowden house here in Los Feliz.

Here is a picture of the Lloyd Wright's Sowden House.



So I too landed on abstracting the order and texture of "blocks" with "carvings" as on Mayan pyramids. So that was the inspiration for our exterior grillwork, the R logo, and the wall of 400 crystal Tequila "blocks" that form the walls of our Sangre dining room.






E.S: Each bottle represents a "block" of John's own extra anejo Tequila, each features a member's name while locked into the wall as part of a private reserve. A turn of their key allows the member to remove the walnut brick and "drink the architecture" at their table. If you look closely at the walls you may find the names of some famous Imagineers too. Start with the half consumed bottles!"
The whole experiment was meant to blur the lines between the interior and the food in a way that the story can be consumed by all the senses. When they all play together the result is richer and you tap into emotions and create an experience. (I bet you think I've been having tequila right now!)








E.S: All these elements are very unique (Conquistador Helmet lamps are a nod to LA's Brown Derby hat lamps) and I often get asked who made all these things. In fact, Scenario Design, the same company that has been building many of your favorite Disney attractions (Nemo,Toy Story Mania, DLP TOT and more) built the tasting chairs, bottle shelves, lamps, grillwork and so much more. Without them (and help from Imagineer Deb Gregory) we would not have been able to pull this place off."

Below, a picture of the hat lamp from Brown Derby, 1926 Hollywood...



...And a Conquistador Helmet lamp at the Rivera.






So I guess the things that never change once you leave WDI, is that you never get tired of creating memorable experiences for your guests and doing whatever it takes to wow them."

Thanks Eddie...More coincidental is the WDI address in Glendale is Flower Street, and Rivera is located in downtown L.A in a street called...Flower Street! (The Walt's restaurant in DLP does this too) Could the Rivera be the next Imagineer's hangout? I thought that since so many aspects of this touch WDI and Disney you might be interested.

If you're a Disney fan living in Southern California, you should make a dinner reservation at the Rivera. Not only you will eat great food in a sumptuous decor, but you might meet some Disney imagineers as well. And just keep an ear open, just in case at the fifth tequila they begin to talk about WDI secret projects!

www.riverarestaurant.com
www.sottostudios.com



Eddie Sotto's Artwork: copyright Eddie Sotto

Pictures: copyright Rivera - Eddie Sotto