D52–A Year of Disney Animation

Anyone who has known me for more than about ten minutes can probably tell you that I’m something of a Disney geek. They might describe me as being an insane Disney fanatic, but I think that’s being slightly hyperbolic. Regardless of where I actually lie on the Disney Fan Spectrum, it’s safe to say I’m well above average. One of the easiest ways to see this would be to simply take a look at my movie collection, which contains nearly every Disney animated film, most of them in more than one format, some of them in three formats (yes, I still have my VHS tapes, despite not owning a working VCR for years).

It is this collection that motivated today’s post. There are so many great animated films, many of which I haven’t watched in years. In fact, when I looked into it, I discovered that Walt Disney Feature Animation has released 51 films. Combining that number with my desire to re-watch so many of them led me to deciding to undertake this project, which I’m calling D52. If you haven’t pieced it together for yourself yet, quite simply, my goal is to watch one of the Disney animated films each week for the next year, chronologically based on the year they were released. After watching, I’ll post my Flixster review (as I do after every film I watch) as well as write up some very brief thoughts here on my blog.

There will, no doubt, be weeks that I won’t have time to screen one of the movies, so rather than scheduling down to the week, I’m scheduling by the month. This allows you to have a general idea about when I film should be coming up, but also allows me some flexibility in viewing. As it stands, the schedule is as follows:

May 2012
1 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
2 Pinocchio (1940)


June 2012
3 Fantasia (1940)
4 Dumbo (1041)
5 Bambi (1942)
6 Saludos Amigos (1943)
7 The Three Caballeros (1945)


July 2012
8 Make Mine Music (1946)
9 Fun and Fancy Free (1947)
10 Melody Time (1948)
11 The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949)


August 2012
12 Cinderella (1950)
13 Alice in Wonderland (1951)
14 Peter Pan (1953)
15 Lady and the Tramp (1955)


September 2012
16 Sleeping Beauty (1959)
17 101 Dalmatians (1961)
18 The Sword in the Stone (1963)
19 The Jungle Book (1967)
20 The Aristocats (1970)


October 2012
21 Robin Hood (1973)
22 The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977)
23 The Rescuers (1977)
24 The Fox and the Hound (1981)


November 2012
25 The Black Cauldron (1985)
26 The Great Mouse Detective (1986)
27 Oliver & Company (1988)
28 The Little Mermaid (1989)


December 2012
29 The Rescuers Down Under (1990)
30 Beauty and the Beast (1991)
31 Aladdin (1992)
32 The Lion King (1994)
33 Pocahontas (1995)


January 2013
34 The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996)
35 Hercules (1997)
36 Mulan (1998)
37 Tarzan (1999)


February 2013
38 Fantasia/2000 (1999)
39 Dinosaur (2000)
40 The Emperor‟s New Groove (2000)
41 Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001)


March 2013
42 Lilo and Stitch (2002)
43 Treasure Planet (2002)
44 Brother Bear (2003)
45 Home on the Range (2004)
46 Chicken Little (2005)


April 2013
47 Meet the Robinsons (2007)
48 Bolt (2008)
49 The Princess and the Frog (2009)
50 Tangled (2010)


May 2013
51 Winnie the Pooh (2011)
52 Wreck-It Ralph (2012)


In addition to the Feature Animation films, there were also a number of animated films, usually handled by the Television Animation division, which were also released to theatres. Upon completion of the core Disney canon, I’ll also be looking at these. Currently, my plan is to do those weekly as well, but that may change in the next 52 weeks. The ones I’ll be checking out are:

Ducktales The Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp (1990)
A Goofy Movie (1995)
Doug’s 1st Movie (1999)
The Tigger Movie (2000)
Recess: School’s Out (2001)
Return To Neverland (2002)
Piglet’s Big Movie (2003)
Teacher’s Pet (2004)
Pooh’s Heffalump Movie (2005)

So that’s the goal. I hope you’ll find it interesting as I revisit many of these childhood favourites. I know I’m really looking forward to it.

Sleep well,

DTE