I watched SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS right after reading the discussion here about traumatic events in Disney and reading the section on this film in “The Disney Version,” by Richard Schickel. Apparently, Disney got a lot of flack for scaring children back in 1937 and there was some controversy over it.

Schickel then launches into a lengthy and eloquent defense of Disney’s approach to the material and the value of including material that’s scary for children in such films. Here’s one section:

I don’t remember how old I was when I saw SNOW WHITE the first time (it was in a theater). I’m guessing about six. I don’t recall being scared. I found the witch ugly, but not scary. But then, I never got scared at the movies. I found real life and real adults to be much scarier.

I kind of ended with a whimper. Thought about trying an online rental of The Pirates! Band of Mischief since Netflix has the disc on VERY LONG WAIT, but cheaped out and watched some live action.

I watched Robin Hood for a Historical challenge--fun, and a great-looking BD if you have it. Also watched Captain Blood for this year's Historical.

Yeah, some of Ash's friends might have misspoke as far as "seeing" it, but it's clear what happens.

I watched a few episodes of this and thought it was fine but I'm not going to make an effort to watch the rest if I'm not getting credit. I did kind of a GL subchallenge this month with the GL Corps shorts and the Ryan Reynolds movie.

Understandable--we're cool, Ash.

That's one of the things I hope will be improved by the digital/cloud takeover.

Every time a new challenge participant becomes addicted, an angel gets its wings.

I get that. I just kept a minute count and didn't bother converting. Still, as with all challenges, you can elect to just keep a list and not format it to be counted among the results.

I didn't even bother with the checklist this year, in large part because I had no intention of watching animated commercials. That held no appeal to me whatsoever and from there it was pretty easy to adopt the "Forget it" attitude about attempting the checklist since it was going to be incomplete no matter what else I did. Watching 100 commercials was bad enough, but to keep track of their run times, too? Not happenin', cap'n.

I recall being taken to see it at a drive-in as a child. It was before my brother was born so I would have been four, five at the oldest. I don't remember it scaring me, though there's something about the drive-in setting that I think allows things to "breathe" more and not seem quite so overwhelming.

I remember we stopped at a grocery store before we went to the drive-in and I have a vivid memory of buying, or at least looking at, a canister of Morton's table salt. You know, the one that stands about 6" tall and has the young girl in the yellow slicker and umbrella in the rain against the really dark navy backdrop. Anyway, I thought about that girl during the scene where it rained heavily. The image of that salt logo has forever been associated in my mind with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

I also recall it being played for us for some reason in my child care services class my sophomore year of high school. I hadn't seen it in quite a while by then, and this time through I caught the witch's plot and that whole "Bring me the heart of Snow White!" thing seemed a whole lot darker than I had recalled from my childhood viewings. I reacted that time by wondering how it was that that wasn't *the* most talked about part of the film, in the way that Mola Ram ripping out that dude's heart is *the* most talked about part of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

Grrr Arrgh!!

Well, these challenges certainly have helped keep me sane in the last couple months. Me bored is not a good thing to see! And watching movies was a low pain activity for me (our DVD player is on the bottom shelf and it was not fun to change...however, it does have a 5-disc changer, so I only had to do it once a day, basically!)

I've found that everyone here has been really welcoming of this newcomer and thank everyone for fun discussions and help!

When I realized how many movies I was watching and seeing how fast my unwatched pile decreased is when I really started getting into them. I've felt a bit guilty about not watching movies as I buy them so this has definitely helped me lessen that guilt!

I am planning on slowing down for September. I'll probably lurk on the challenge list, but I don't think I'll join in too much. Maybe one or two. I don't want to get burned out and I'm looking forward to trying out the October challenge-though I think I'm going to focus on Halloween movies/episodes rather than Horror.

I did pretty good on the checklist. Finished it, except for some of the optional checks (ex. needed 4/10). The hardest part for me was the commercial one. I was scrambling to find ones that worked and it was a pain to calculate how long the commercials were. I enjoyed it a bit, so I wouldn't want to remove it-it did show me how many commercials are animated out there-but I'd vote for trimming it down to a manageable number-maybe 25 or so?

I liked the time keeping aspect in that I liked seeing how much time was put in. However, I know I ended up counting at least 3 or 4 times because I'd lose track or find a mistake and have to go back and recount. I think time works the best as animation is so diverse-so many types and lengths out there. It'd be hard to just count how many you've watched.

I watched a couple movies on my have to see list-Iron Giant, Princess Mononoke-and can now cross them off. Got through some animation on TV that I've had sitting around forever because I thought it take that long to watch, but ended up going through it pretty quickly. Still love Disney's Tangled. For some reason, that one makes me laugh out loud. I've watched it several times now and is one of my top five Disney movies-Frying pans, who know?

Loved watching so much Jonny Quest. I finally DVR'd it and have been enjoying watching the episodes when I have some free time. Still one of my favorite kids cartoons!

Tried some new anime but still haven't found anything I like as much as Miyazaki's works. Have one more that came just came into the library too late for the challenge. I'll pick it up this week and see if I have a winner in that one! (Summer Wars, I think? Something like that).

and I've just totaled my running time: 116hr 11min

did my personal goal of watching the entire Fraggle Rock show.

I started the Criterion Challenge on Saturday and got off to a slow start this weekend. I started five films, but only finished two by last night. I started jonesing for more anime so I put in a Gundam tape that I'd started for the Animation Challenge and finished it. Then I put in the "Future Boy Conan" movie compilation, edited from Hayao Miyazaki's post-apocalyptic TV series from 1978. It's in Japanese with no subs., but it's so full of action and beautiful to watch that I don't mind. Besides, if you've seen NAUSICAA and CASTLE IN THE SKY as many times as I have, it should seem pretty familiar since so many elements from "Future Boy Conan" turned up later in those films.

So I figure I'll alternate this month between Criterion titles and more anime.

I have a couple sets I didn't finish but I'll be able to finish them off in the horror and comedy challenges.

Special Note: coyoteblue put a lot of effort into their list and then just fell off the face of the Earth, halfway through August. There were a couple posts elsewhere after the last list update and then they went away. It is a mystery.

If I made any time errors, let me know and I'll update.

Thanks, Mister Peepers!

I kinda flamed out. I probably watched at least another 10 hours but it was too much work to get it into the table, especially after I fell behind on my updates. Even so, I still ended up in the top 10.

by far my favorite 'challenge'

ohhhhh, and I was so close to five hours, but just not close enough.

Look who's alive!

I liked putting the list together and seeing who the lurkers are, creeping out of the woodwork with less than 100 posts on the site but they've been here for years. I also had to make a table because my normal basic and lazy formatting wasn't working right this year, so I had to figure out tables.

Congrats to the winners!

Special congrats to LJG765 for kicking butt on her second challenge! If she does this in October...

Thanks Mister Peepers!

Awesome table! I love the way tables the moderators put together gives a broader context. You get to see where you fall in the pack. I am afraid that I may be a lurker! I never comment as much as I would like.

Congrats to the winners!!!

Not last!

Congrats to the winners and thanks to Mister Peepers!

Nice job MP!

I apologize again for not quite finishing my list and totals. Looks like I was at about 14 hours, I'll try to find all the discs and finish the total fwiw.

did any one use their wild cards?? I like to see what folk interpret wild cards as.

But you only needed 4 minutes more of something else to jump up one spot. Squeezing out one lone Looney Tunes short while sitting on the toilet is all you would have needed

spare me the imagery ...

I don't know about that...Horror isn't my favorite genre and I'm planning on joining in on the challenge but using Halloween movies rather than horror. So...just not sure how much I'll get in that month.

Congrats to the winners!

Thanks, MP!

Probably just as well that I didn't know I was so close to one day....

Another poor showing for me. And most of the stuff on my list is stuff I would've watched anyway, so I really put even less effort into this one than into the last three or four Challenges. But the worst thing about it is at least with the last few Challenges I know that I used my time doing other things I wanted or needed to do instead of watching movies. I have no idea what I wasted my time on last month when I could've been watching cartoons.