Today, Disney released a teaser for their upcoming return to 2D, hand drawn animation feature, The Princess and the Frog. It’s being helmed by long time Disney animation directors, Ron Clements and John Musker, and also sports animation by Mark Henn, Andreas Dejas, and Eric Goldberg. Every one of those names are heavy hitters. Needless to say, as this is not only Disney’s but all of Hollywood’s first tradionally animated feature film since 2002’s Treasure Planet 2004’s Home on the Range, this teaser is gaining a lot of attention. Check out the teaser here at Disney’s site!

It sports your typical princess story with a not-so-typical black female lead. A first for Disney and I believe feature animation. Some critics of the teaser say the acting is bland and cookie-cutter, and that the designs are boring. I disagree. I think the acting and animation are spot on, and the designs are what one would expect from Disney. Its also a movie that is probably going to appeal to a younger audience.

I have absolutely no problems with any of that. The fact that there are so many animators out there bashing this teaser because its not offering “anything new” need to recognize the fact that The Princess and the Frog is a Disney product through and through. To be anything else would betray the Disney name, and would ring hollow. The Disney stands for a very specific thing: family friendly entertainment that doesn’t pander with top notch production values. When Disney forgets that, that’s when it fails (see: The Black Cauldron).

Hey there Shamoozal Fans! We’ve just added 14 Brand new Avatars for you to download and enjoy. They’re 150 x 150 and average 50Kb so they should conform to most Message Boards out there. So show some Shamoozal pride and slap on one of your favorite Shamoozal GFGames characters!

We’ll also be adding some new desktops and forum sigs in the coming days, so keep an eye out! Download them here.

For years I’ve been denying the MP3 revolution so to speak. I remember when I had a bunch of MP2’s (yes, ther once was MP2s) on my old computer, and when MP3’s came out I remember being blown away by the jump in sound quality. We couldn’t do anything else with the computer while playing an MP3 then. Even moving the mouse made it skip. What a dinosaur that computer was…a whopping 486 with 8MBs of RAM.

I don’t even have a scary collection of CDs. I just had no desire whatsoever to rip them all, and it didn’t bother me to grab a few CDs for the car or to bring in to work. A few weeks ago I suddenly realized I had like 10GBs of MP3s on my hard drive…not including any of my CDs, and figured it was time to make a purchase on an mp3 player.

I went with the Zune. Admittedly, I’m not a fan of Apple and I’m not a huge fan of iTunes either (don’t get me started on the iTunes store and the amazing rat trap that is). However, the 80GB iPod Classic was looking attractive, but I wasn’t willing to just go and buy what everyone else does. So I looked into the Zune and actually find it to be a really nice alternative. While the resolution is less than the iPod’s, the screen is bigger. I’ve been watching “Flight of the Conchords” on it and it looks really nice. The “Zune Pad” allows you to simply brush your finger on it to scroll through long lists. Clicking the pad allows you to jog through a step at a time. I like this feature because sometimes on the iPod I have trouble getting the click-wheel to stop where I want it to.

Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay – John Cho and Kal Penn return as stoners Harold and Kumar who are heading to Amsterdam when they are mistaken for terrorists. They’re sent to Guantanamo Bay where they have to escape and run from the feds. And drugs are involved.

Doomsday – a deadly virus destroys the population of Great Britain. Thirty years later, a team of specialists, led by Rhona Mitra, are dispatched to one of the quarantined areas of freaks in an effort to develop a cure. Madness Ensues!

Shine A Light – a collaboration between The Rolling Stones and Martin Scorsese. The famous director shoots a film documentary style during a show on their 2006 Big Bang Tour.

Okay, so I’m about two weeks late in posting this, but I just wanted to give a big thanks to everyone who donated during our NES Marathon for Child’s Play. You can read all about what went down that night by clicking here. We ended up raising $1,336 during the 24 hour drive and we couldn’t have been happier with the results. Of course, we couldn’t do it without everyone’s huge support during the night.

A big thanks to everyone!

All the names after the break.

Steven Wilkinson
John Manfre
Brian R Wall
Ted Kulp
Keith Lauchlan
Brian Summers
James Summers
Ryan Elias
Jeffrey Hawthorne Jr
Chris Waters
AJ Visco
Curtis Scott
Michel Gauthier
Shannon Moscariello
Roth Sothy
Joseph Cammisa
Jason Solan
Dana Moscariello
Andrew Pleasants
Amy Durr
Mary Pacifico
Posten Houser
Jeff Winter
Matthew Williams
Lou Barrios
Luis Ybarra
Frank van ‘t Ende
Ashley McDoanld
James Pennock
Jacqueline Egge
Patricia Summers
Loretta Summers
Adam Borden
eX hYpe
Frank Summers
George Damminger

That’s right folks. Next weekend is SRP time. Get ready for more nonsense from your favorite podcasters this Saturday, August 2, at our normal time of 8PM EST. As always, you can catch us LIVE through our UStream account and watch the mania unfold before your own unbelieving eyes. Plus, you can chat with us live there too, and thus complete the circle of life. We always embed the video feed and chat room here at the Nerdlog, but for whatever reason UStream doesn’t allow you to log into your account from here. You’ll have to follow the above link to do that.

So mark all 15 of your iCalendars for this Saturday. Its going to be awesome.

A Talladega reteaming.
A resurrection of a series.
Two movies take on the powerhouse that is The Dark Knight. In case you have been living under a rock for the last week, TDK has broken all kinds of box office records with it’s already over $200 million stashed.

Step Brothers – Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly are two adult men who have been spoiled their entire lives. When their single parents end up getting married, they unexpectedly become step brothers and start a sibling rivalry.

21 – Inspired by the true story of five students from MIT who train with one of their professors, Kevin Spacey, to become experts in card counting in blackjack. They go to Vegas to take the casinos for millions. Also starring the kid from Across the Universe and Kate Bosworth.

That’s the only big new release today.
But there’s a whole bunch of other crap in case you’re interested.
L.A. Ink Season 1, Robot Chicken: Star Wars, Spaced entire series, Las Vegas Season 5, Comedy Central’s TV Funhouse, Steve-O: Out on Bail, Masters of Horror Season 2, and Case Closed Season 1. There’s some other stuff and a buttload of blu rays too so check JoBlo’s DVD Clinic Release Dates.

A cage rattling superhero returns.
A musical father search.
Animated apes in space.
Three movies do battle, but everyone in the entire world knows the outcome.

The Dark Knight – Christian Bale returns as Bruce Wayne/Batman. This time around he teams up with Gotham’s Lieutenant Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman) and District Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) to take on the city’s biggest villain, The Joker (Heath Ledger). Maggie Gyllenhaal takes over Katie Holmes’ role as Rachel Dawes.

ColdHardFlash.com wrote a nice little post about “The Last Copy” today. Thank you, Aaron! In other news, “Man-Bot: Stomach Crunch” is being featured in this week’s episode from Channel Frederator.  Head on over to both ColdHardFlash.com and Channel Frederator to check out some really great animated shorts. Both are regular stops for myself. Enjoy!