disney

Dick Van Dyke was surprised by a few hundred people who came to sing and dance for his birthday. Most of them were dressed up as chimney sweeps like Dick Van Dyke's character Bert from Mary Poppins. 

At first he watched from a balcony like the king of exaggerated Cockney accents that he is. 


via Daily Mail 

But after a while he came down to join everyone and even sing along. 


via disneyexaminer

Something magical happens when this group of crochet enthusiasts meet to make dreams come true.

Former oncology nurse and mom Holly Christensen has started a group called The Magic Yarn Project, a clan of dedicated crocheters that meet to make Disney princess wigs for children with cancer.

A daughter of one of Christensen's friends was diagnosed with lymphoma so she decided to make a Rapunzel yarn wig. Here's what she told Babble:

"I knew she would be going through a difficult time, and that no one would be able to take her suffering away. I also knew that losing her long, curly blonde hair at not even 3 years old would be difficult for her, so I figured that the yarn wig could help bring a little magic and fun to a difficult time in her life."

Designs include princess Elsa and Anna from Frozen and princess Jasmine from Aladdin.

The group has a GoFundMe account set up to help fund even more wigs for children around the world battling cancer.

We've known about Disney's next animated movie Moana for a while now, but some specific details about who will voice the titular character and what she will look like have finally emerged.

Hawaiian-native Auli'i Cravalho has been tapped to voice the next Disney 'princess', following on the heels of the wildly-successful Frozen.

People got the exclusive on the story.

[W]hen Disney Animation began searching for a girl to voice the lead in its next princess movie Moana– about a young teen from 2,000 years ago who sets sail to fulfill her ancestors' quest – Cravalho didn't think she was good enough to audition.

"I was getting through my freshman year, and there were already so many great submissions over YouTube," the 14-year-old Native Hawaiian tells PEOPLE, which features an exclusive first look at the movie in this week's issue.

"Moana is such an amazing character," says Cravalho, who lives in the town of Mililani with her mother, Puanani. "She's brave, she is so empowered, she knows what she wants and she's not afraid to get it, and I think that's something that I can relate to as well. I just love watching how she goes along in this wonderful movie and grows as a person and helps her culture along the way."

And what's more, she'll be joined by Dwayne Johnson, who's voicing that cool looking dude there.



These images are also the first we've seen of what Moana will look like.

So, what do you think? Interested? Hyped?

Researchers over at Disney are really thinking outside the lines.

This super impressive video shows off an app they made, which turns colored pictures in a coloring book into 3D, moving models.

The video can be a little dry, but when it shows what the app can do, it will blow your freaking mind.



What is this sorcery???

The whole thing reminds us of what Microsoft showed at this year's E3, where they pulled Minecraft up from a table by using a Hololens.

It's kind of a cross between that and this virtual reality app that lets artists draw in the space around them.

We've said it before, but we really are on the cusp of a landmark period for technology influencing art and how it's made. Sit back on enjoy it!

If there aren't singing orangutans in this movie, the whole thing is a bust.

Disney continues its foray into live action remakes with the newly released trailer for next year's version of The Jungle Book.

It's got some really big voice acting names to it, a kid that looks a heck of a lot like Mowgli and some pounding drums in the soundtrack. So that's something. At the very least, it looks better than the 1994 Jason Scott Lee version.



That bear looks lost.

For whatever reason, Disney has recently decided to go back its well of immortal cartoons and remake them with live action. It's a strategy they appear to be doubling down on, because it seems like that's a phrase some Disney exec would have used when talking about this strategy.

The first of these remakes was this years Cinderella. Next will come this probably-songless remake of Jungle Book. Then for 2017, Disney is already working on a live action Beauty and the Beast. And last July, they announced they would work on a live action, Tim Burton remake of Dumbo.

You could probably thrown this year's Maleficent in with the bunch, but we're mostly talking about specific remakes rather than reimaginings. The world is full of complications.

But for now, we can just sit back and imagine what Christopher Walken will sound like as King Louie. Because that's probably going to be the best part.

Are you excited for The Jungle Book or any of these live action remakes?

Virtual reality is coming, y'all. And it's going to do crazy things.

As another example of the ways we haven't even explored yet, filmmakers gave Disney animator Glen Keane an HTC Vive virtual reality headset and some painting software. Keane worked on some of the most classic cartoon films like The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast. But now he gets to virtually step inside of his drawings and create them in a 3D space.

Completely wild and beautiful.

Engadget goes into some more detail about it.

The film, directed by Ashley Rodholm, shows how virtual reality allows Keane to finally bring his characters to life. "When you draw, you're expressing something that's real, visceral," he says in the short. "By making a line, it's sort of a seismograph of your soul."

Instead of a paper and pencil, Keane draws life-sized versions of Ariel and Beast in the short with an HTC Vive headset and the 3D painting app Tilt Brush app (which is now owned by Google). And rather than just being static on a page, he's able to walk around his characters as if they were fully three-dimensional.

I mean, look at this. It's something out of a magical fever dream.

The future can't get here soon enough.