Disney

Oh, Disney.

Via The Chicago Tribune:

Chicago Sun-Times movie critic Roger Ebert and columnist Richard Roeper are cutting ties with the TV franchise that Disney-ABC Domestic Television has syndicated nationally for 22 years.

Each cited major changes they say Disney plans to make to the movie-review program that for three decades has forced filmmakers and studio executives on both coasts and beyond to pay heed to judgments of their work in Chicago, the heart of flyover country.

I never manage to remember when the show is on, and so I rarely watch it on purpose — but that isn't the point. The point is that whatever Disney's doing, it's so unpleasant that both men are leaving. The other point is that while sometimes I've been utterly perplexed by Ebert, at others — and especially recently — I've found his gentle touch and strong personality completely absorbing. (You just have to read him online, not in the seemingly chopped up versions that appear in some print outlets.)

Ebert's statement is here; Roeper is quoted at length here. I don't even like Roeper, not one whit, and I'm still sad.

And ineloquent, too. Why does it have to be a Tuesday today?

From a recently received press release:

Disney Forces Machine Head Cancellation
In a stunning last-minute move, Walt Disney Properties have pressured promoter Live Nation into canceling Machine Head's performance tomorrow night at the House of Blues venue in Anaheim (on their Disneyland property). Citing violent imagery, undesirable fans and inflammatory lyrics as the reason, the diversity-impaired corporation began pressuring the promoter on Saturday to cancel all upcoming heavy metal concerts, placing Machine Head under an internal "review process" that took 5 days before bothering to convey their alarming decision to the band late yesterday - less than 48 hours before their Black Tyranny Tour was to kick off at House of Blues Anaheim on Friday night.

More here.

Now, to be honest, I don't know the first thing about this band. But I find numerous things to take issue with in Disney's actions here — not least that they ought to know who they're booking before they book a show. "Undesirable fans"? Come on, now, kiddos. You just hosted Bat's Day in the park and now you want to ban heavy metal from the House of Blues? (No, not that goths and metalheads are the same, silly; just that Disney's picking and choosing of which subcultures they approve of bothers me.)

Anyway. Like you needed another reason to avoid the Mouse Kingdom.