New videos added to my YouTube channel

With reference to my YouTube posts in June this year and also July 2010, I have added 24 more new videos into my YouTube channel over the past two days, so there are now just over 300 great videos in my channel in total.

The new videos include trailers, movie clips and featurettes from Pixar's "Monsters University", Disney's "Planes", Illumination's "Despicable Me 2", Disney's "Frozen" and Marvel's "Thor: The Dark World". And if you're interested, there are over 100 free Flash online games based on these and other movies and cartoons in the Dan-Dare.org and FlashyOnlineGames.com websites.

Disney and Pixar trailers and film clips

I've been putting lots of great Disney and Pixar videos into my YouTube account recently, all collected together into playlists to make it easier for you to watch groups of related ones:

Pixar Monsters, Inc. and Monsters University videos

Disney Wreck-It Ralph videos

Pixar Cars 1, Cars 2 and Disney Planes videos

Despicable Me 1 and 2 videos

DreamWorks Rise of the Guardians videos

I hope you enjoy them! And remember, you can play loads of great free Disney and Pixar games directly in your web browser here:

Dan-Dare.org's Disney and Pixar games site

Pixar's Cars 2 is released in the US today

Pixar's eagerly awaited new film "Cars 2" goes on general release in the US today. Early reviews of the movie have been somewhat mixed, but what do film critics know about anything, lol! (Only joking!) I'm sure it will be a great film for all the family to enjoy, just like last year's Toy story 3 and the other recent Pixar classics such as UP, WALL-E and Ratatouille.

Fans in the UK will have to wait until July 22nd to see it, but at least that's a bit less of a wait that usual for Pixar's films to cross over the Atlantic Ocean!

To celebrate the release of Cars 2 today here are 12 official Cars Flash online games featuring fan favourites Lightning McQueen, Mater, Doc Hudson, Luigi, Guido, Flo and Ramone that you can play completely for free:

  Cars: McQueen and Mater Tractor Tipping

  Cars: Lightning McQueen's Desert Dash

  Cars: Lightning McQueen Racing Demo

  Cars: Doc Hudson's Time Trial

  Cars: Mater to the Rescue!

  Cars: Mater's Memory Game

  Cars: Luigi and Guido's Tire Rush

  Cars: Luigi's Casa Della Tires

  Cars: Flo's Fuel Game

  Cars: Ramone's Coloring Book

  Cars: Ramone's Painting

  Cars: Interactive Movie Poster

Would you like some more great free Pixar stuff? You can find Cars 2 wallpaper pictures for your computer, plus over 100 more awesome Disney and Pixar games, at my Free Disney and Pixar Online Games site. I hope you like it.

(See also here)

Toy Story 3 reaches $1 billion in worldwide box office takings

Last Friday saw Disney/Pixar's "Toy Story 3" become only the seventh film ever to reach the $1 billion worldwide box office mark, and it is now currently sixth in the all-time chart having overtaken "Batman: The Dark Knight" in the process.

Given that "Alice in Wonderland" also crossed the $1 billion mark earlier in the year, 2010 has been an amazing year for Disney, and in fact it is the first time that a studio has had two $1 billion movies in the same year.

See my previous post about Toy Story 3 for links to a fantastic collection of free Toy Story online games and wallpaper background pictures (or alternatively see here and here).

Disney/Pixar's Toy Story 3 is released in the US today!

It's out at last, "Toy Story 3" goes on wide release in US and Canadian cinemas today. Hoorah! I am sooooo looking forward to seeing this film because every Pixar movie to date (such as UP, WALL-E and Ratatouille for example) has been an absolute classic, and early reviews suggest that Toy Story 3 merrily continues that trend. Oh joy!

Fans in other parts of the world will have to wait a little longer to see it though, which is always my one and only gripe about Pixar - why can't they release their films around the world on the same day like many of the other movie companies? It won't be released in England until July 23rd and Thailand until August 12th for goodness sake! Oh well, better late than never I guess.

Anyway, to celebrate the occasion of the film's release today, here are 16 different official Toy Story 3 related Flash online games for you to play for free:

  Buzz Lightyear: Operation Alien Rescue

  Toy Story: Bowl-o-Rama

  Buzz Lightyear: Space Ranger Training

  Buzz Lightyear: Space Ranger Training 2

  Buzz Lightyear: Target Practice

  Buzz Lightyear: Galactic Shootout

  Toy Story: Woody to the Rescue

  Toy Story: Woody's Big Escape

  Toy Story: Catch That Moving Van

  Buzz Lightyear: Flight for Distance

  Toy Story: 2-in-1 Shooting

  Toy Story: Jigsaw Puzzles

  Toy Story: Memory Match-Up

  Toy Story: Woody's Rodeo

  Toy Story Lego: The Claw

  Toy Story: Etch-A-Sketch

And there's more..... 16 different Toy Story 3 desktop background wallpaper pictures are also included with the games, and you can find everything, together with over 100 more awesome Disney and Pixar games, at my Free Disney and Pixar Online Games site. A special page displaying all 16 of the Toy Story 3 wallpapers can also be found here: Toy Story 3 Wallpaper Collection

Finally, you can watch my large collection of official Toy Story 3 movie trailers, film clips and featurettes in my YouTube channel here: Toy Story 3 video playlist

Enjoy! :-)

(See also here and here)

Shrek Forever After (Shrek 4) is out today

The fourth and final part of the Shrek film series, "Shrek Forever After" - also known as "Shrek: The Final Chapter" and "Shrek 4" - is released in the US and Canada, and also here in Thailand, today. (It will be released in England on July 2nd.)

To celebrate this occasion, here are six different official Shrek 4 related Flash online games that you can play for free:

  Shrek Shreds

  Shrek 'N' Slide

  Shrek: Concentration

  Shrek: The Battle of the Belch

  Shrek: Eyeball Dropper

  Shrek: Ogre Baby Word Scramble

There are also two different Shrek Forever After desktop wallpaper backgrounds included with the games, one featuring Shrek and the other featuring Rumpelstiltskin.

You can find all these free goodies, together with lots of other brilliant related games and wallpaper, at my Free Shrek and Other CG Movie Online Games site.

Finally, you can watch my collection of official Shrek 4 movie trailers, film clips and featurettes in my YouTube channel here: Shrek 4 video playlist

Enjoy!

(See also here)

Disney's The Princess and the Frog online games and wallpaper

Disney's latest cartoon feature film, the traditionally animated "The Princess and the Frog", was released in the US in November last year, but it was only released in the UK last Friday. I have no idea why Disney delay UK releases like that, they do it with a lot of their films - see my post about them doing it to Pixar's "UP" last year for example. Ho hum.

Anyway, the new film is the classic "princess kisses a frog" fairy tale retold with a modern twist, and it heralds a somewhat brave return by Disney to hand-drawn animation for the first time in over 5 years after a number of successful computer-generated 3D films such as 2007's "Meet the Robinsons" and 2008's "Bolt".

The gamble seems to have paid off nicely, with the film performing very well at the box-office and being nominated for 2 Oscars: Best Animated Feature Film plus two separate nominations for Best Original Song (see my previous post about that here).

To tie in with the film, here are four free "Disney's The Princess and the Frog" online games plus two free "Disney Princess" online games for you to enjoy (which include some Princess and the Frog wallpaper and Disney Princess wallpaper in multiple sizes too):

  Princess and the Frog: Bayou Adventure

  Princess and the Frog: Tiana and the Tiara

  Princess and the Frog: Magic Gumbo Mix

  Princess and the Frog: Magic Match

  Disney Princess: Hidden Treasures

  Disney Princess: Magic Garden Mayhem

Bonus free download: "Disney's The Princess and the Frog" colouring pages

All the above fun and games, together with hundreds more Disney and Pixar games and wallpapers, can be found in the Disney and Pixar Free Online Games site.

(See also here)

Pixar's Up is favourite for animation Oscar

My favourite animated film from last year, Disney/Pixar's wonderful "Up" (see my previous posts about it here: Up Flash online games and here: Up is released in the UK), is seen as the clear favourite to win this year's Oscar for best animated film, according to an article in Yahoo! today:

(Quote)
The animation category at this year's Oscars ceremony presents a crowded field of singing frogs, sly foxes and spunky kids, but despite some tough competition, the high-flying adventure movie "Up" is expected to float away with the Oscar.

Disney/Pixar's "Up" this week became the only animated film apart from 1991's "Beauty and the Beast" to land a best picture nod, and the movie about a boy and an old man who fly off in a house tied to balloons is also nominated in the animated category.

There, it's up against Twentieth Century Fox's "Fantastic Mr. Fox", the Walt Disney Co's "The Princess and the Frog", Focus Features' "Coraline" and European production "The Secret of Kells", which critics say was a surprise choice, because it played in only a handful of U.S. cinemas.

Filmmakers and critics say the nominated movies are all very different, all very good, and rival the dramas in the coveted best picture category.

"Animation actually outdid the live-action movies this year, it's an extraordinarily competitive field in terms of quality," said Peter Hammond, a critic with Los Angeles Times awards tracker TheEnvelope.com.

But Hammond said "Up" is the "overwhelming favourite" in the animated category.

The five animated movies include two that came out in 3-D ("Up" and "Coraline"), two made with tiny figurines manipulated through a painstaking process called stop-motion ("Fantastic Mr. Fox" and "Coraline") and two hand-drawn films ("The Princess and the Frog" and "The Secret of Kells").

"It's really cool, because I feel like a number of years ago all the films were in the same zone, all trying to do the same type of thing," said Pete Docter, co-director of "Up," which was made with computer-generated imagery.

"And now it's so many different approaches to it, that it shows that animation is in a healthy place," Docter said.

The Oscar field for animation was widened to five films this year, from its usual three, because of the amount of eligible films.

Even so, Tom O'Neil of TheEnvelope.com said some high-quality films failed to make the list, most notably Oscar winning Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki's "Ponyo."

Henry Selick, the director of "Coraline," agrees.

"'Up' is a masterpiece and most likely will win, but there's a lot of great animated films, many of which did not get in the list of five nominees," he said.

For his part, Selick said that to compete with the likes of Disney/Pixar, he had to "take a chance on a different sort of story, a different sort of look."

"Coraline" is about a young girl who escapes mom and dad through a magical passageway in her home, but finds things were better with her real parents.

For the film, Selick hired one crew member whose only job was to knit miniature sweaters for the characters.

"The Princess and the Frog," a musical about a New Orleans waitress who falls in love with a foreign prince-turned-frog, is Disney's first hand-drawn animated film in six years.

The film has made more than $100 million (62.9 million pounds) in the U.S. and Canada since its November release, and the Oscar nomination could help as it expands its overseas roll-out, which Disney said has already brought in more than $100 million.

It looks like a success now, but in making "The Princess and the Frog" Disney was taking a chance that audiences would again go for a hand-drawn film, after years in which Pixar-style computer animation set the standard.
(End quote)

I am surprised that the highest grossing animated film of last year, Blue Sky's excellent "Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs" didn't get nominated for an Oscar, or even mentioned in the above article.

You can play hundreds of quality online games, and choose from hundreds of desktop wallpaper backgrounds, related to movies, cartoons, TV shows, video games and so on by following these links:

Top 10 Movie-related Online Games of 2009

Movie, Cartoon and TV Online Games Collection

Mario, Sonic, Nintendo and Sega Online Games Collection

Disney's A Christmas Carol movie is released today

A new Disney movie version of Charles Dickens's classic 1843 story, "A Christmas Carol", is released worldwide today, following its premier in London three days ago.

The film is directed by Robert Zemeckis and stars Jim Carrey in a multitude of roles, including Ebenezer Scrooge as a young, middle-aged and old man, and the three Christmas Ghosts who haunt Scrooge. It is a 3D computer-animated movie produced using the process of "performance capture" (digitally recording the actions of human actors, and using that information to animate 3D character models), similar in style to two of Zemeckis's previous films, "The Polar Express" (2004) and "Beowulf" (2007).

Having watched a few of the trailers for it, I have to say it looks marvellous - a very different style of computer-animated movie compared to the others released this year.

Here are some great free Disney's "A Christmas Carol" online games for you to play (which also include some Disney's "A Christmas Carol" wallpaper backgrounds too):

  A Christmas Carol: Scrooge's Star Ride

  A Christmas Carol: Ghostly Adventure

  A Christmas Carol: Rooftop Surfer

  A Christmas Carol: Penny Pincher


As a bonus, here is a game based on Robert Zemeckis's 2004 3D computer-animated Christmas movie, "The Polar Express":

  The Polar Express Ticket Chase


And just in case you want to play even more movie-related online games, here are links to some collections of games based on other top family movies of the past 12 months:

Astro Boy online games

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince online games

Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs online games

Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen online games

Disney/Pixar's UP online games

Star Trek online games

Monsters vs. Aliens online games

Disney's Bolt online games

Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa online games

You can find all these games, plus hundreds more, in the
Free Movie, Cartoon and TV Online Games Website. Enjoy! :-)