Monthly Archives: March 2010

Dadnabbit Contest: Win a Disney Easter Basket!

Don’t feel like shelling out to fill your kids’ Easter baskets with toys and candy this year? Never fear! Disney’s giving away a whole bunch of stuff to celebrate the holiday, and if you’re our lucky winner, all you’ll have to do is accept delivery of this mound of April bounty from your sweating, angry mailman.

Here’s what you (and, uh, your kids) stand to win:

Winners will receive a Disney-themed Easter Basket that values over $200, including Blu-ray & DVD Combo Packs for the exciting new releases of Ponyo, The Princess and the Frog, Toy Story and Toy Story 2 Special Editions; a special Princess Tiana & Prince Naveen Wedding Doll Playset that is only available in Disney Stores, an adorable Ponyo plush toy, and assorted holiday chocolates and Easter eggs.

Sounds pretty great, right? Here’s all you have to do: Our esteemed Managing Editor, Jason Hare, has pretended to hide an egg somewhere in his hometown of Astoria, Queens. Your job is to take a look at the Google map of Astoria and try to figure out where he hid it. Send Jason an e-mail with your guess, and if you come closest to the imaginary egg’s real location, you win this big ol’ basket full of righteous Disney swag!

CD Review: Ratboy Jr., “Smorgasbord”

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They’re called Ratboy Jr., their album comes in a brown sleeve made out of 100% recycled paper, and its second track includes the words “everything is wonderful, including the dirt.” I probably don’t need to tell you what kind of music to expect from Smorgasbord, but just in case you’re still unclear, I’ll spell it out for you: Don’t expect a lot of studio polish, and if you’re the type of parent who’d rather see your kid at Gymboree than splashing in the mud, or if you greet things like composting with an eyeroll, then you should probably stick with your Laurie Berkner CDs.

But if you like wild and woolly funky folk, feel free to dive face-first into Ratboy Jr.’s Smorgasbord‘s 15 tracks of fun. Charmingly ragged harmonies, warm brass, and a slightly jammy aesthetic all add up to a wonderfully down-to-earth listening experience that manages to feel as expansive as any Phish record while keeping every song under four minutes. The songs have a decidedly eco-friendly tilt (“Worms,” “Dirt,” “Living in the Trees”), but they treat the benefits of natural living as an implicit matter of course rather than something that needs to be taught. It’s just a fun time, man, and as a dad who appreciates a nice rootsy recording, I hope Ratboy Jr. brings us back to the table for many more helpings of polish-free pleasure. Everything is wonderful, indeed.

Smorgasbord – Ratboy Jr.

Blu-ray Review: “The Princess and the Frog”

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Even if you aren’t the kind of person who tends to get caught up in hype, you have to admit that last year’s Princess and the Frog made for a pretty killer story. The studio that invented longform animation, then abandoned it for CGI, returning to its classic roots…led by the guy who directed Toy Story and helped start sounding traditional animation’s death knell in the first place? What could be more perfect?

Well, in Disney’s eyes, the movie’s eventual $264 million worldwide gross could have been a little bigger — and as far as most critics were concerned, The Princess and the Frog was a solid, albeit disappointingly slight, effort that didn’t quite live up to its advance billing. (Not that anything could have, but whatever.) For a studio that spends an inordinate amount of effort trying to make filmgoers believe each of its releases is a certified classic (except Song of the South, right? Ha ha), the lavishly promoted Princess was a bit of an embarrassment.

Scrub away all that hype, though, and Princess is actually quite a bit of fun. If you’re the type of parent who, like me, sort of detests the whole Disney princess thing to begin with, the movie won’t do much to change your mind — despite a few surface changes to the studio’s formula, it’s very much the slice of happily-ever-after fairy tale that the title indicates — but it’s beautifully animated, with vibrant characters, gorgeous visuals, and a gently rollicking set of songs from one of my favorite artists of all time, Randy Newman. I mean, hey, it’s Disney. What exactly are you looking for, if not peerless craft in service of a storyline that probably doesn’t quite deserve it? Continue reading →