The films of Don Bluth have been a much more reliable source of franchise than I would have ever imagined. The Secret of NIMH got a sequel, though it took 16 years; An American Tail got three sequels, one of which played theaters; All Dogs Go to Heaven, despite being wildly perceived as a failure, […]
The dream of Sullivan Bluth Studios, later Don Bluth Entertainment, came to a miserable end late in 1994. Over the previous nine years, the company (the second one co-founded by Bluth) had ascended as high as An American Tail in 1986 and The Land Before Time in 1988, the first two animated features ever to […]
It would comfort me, somehow, if A Troll in Central Park felt like the people who made it didn’t care. The unacceptable trashiness of the end results might be more tolerable if it felt like they knew they were throwing it away. Alas, this film, the second animation released by Don Bluth Entertainment in 1994, […]
The drastic tumble that animation director and producer Don Bluth took in the 1990s is shocking and even a little bit sad. His career in the 1980s was dedicated to the idea that there was a better way to do animation than the clunky kiddie junk that Walt Disney Feature Animation had been reduced to, […]
A review requested by a contributor who wishes to remain anonymous, with thanks for donating to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. And now we come to a question of some real urgency: what the living hell happened to Don Bluth at the start of the 1990s? There’s a simple answer to that, […]
A review requested by KayMartha12, with thanks for contributing to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. I like the idea of liking Titan A.E. It’s the kind of movie that, I hold, there should be more of: space operas that really dig into the possibilities of a galaxy full of things that aren’t […]
Kara Wild’s donations to the Carry On Campaign were in service of a double feature of animated features from a critical point in the commercial history of American animation: two competing studios’ attempts to out-Disney Disney when the Mouse House was just about to topple from the position it at held for over 60 years […]
When I decided – like a damn idiot – to spice up my 45-day Disney retrospective by also taking into consideration the four films directed in the 1980s by former Disney animator Don Bluth, who in that time came very close to shattering his former employer’s once-iron stranglehold on American theatrical animation, there was one […]
The war for dominance in American animation between Don Bluth and the Walt Disney Company had gotten a bit more intense with their dueling mouse movies in 1986, but that had nothing on the pissing match the two studios engaged in late in 1988. Both companies released a new feature on November 18 of that […]
One would be hard-pressed to come up with two films better suited to direct comparison than Disney’s The Great Mouse Detective and Don Bluth’s An American Tail. Both are animated features created by Disney-trained animators. Both are about mice. Both are period pieces set in the late years of the 19th Century. Both were released […]
As I have discussed elsewhere, 1979 saw Don Bluth, one of Disney’s best and brightest animators, leave the company fold, declaring (and rightfully, if you asked me), that The House That Walt Built was no longer true to its architect, and that if there was to be a proper heir to the Disney spirit of […]
