This original short is a bonus feature on the 9 DVD. I kind of wish I had watched this first, because the feature is such a vast improvement that I feel I'm being unfair toward the short. The story happens so quickly that it almost feels like a non-sequitar. [clipped for spoilers]

The animation is decent, though it's far less striking than the work of the feature (to be expected, certainly). While watching this, I had the strong sense why someone felt there was enough going on to justify the expense of being explored in a feature film. It teases of an entire world, which is of course something that shorts do very well. Still, what happens here moves so quickly that I could easily see audiences wondering what they had just seen.

The gender-bending plot, inserting the marginalized Mulan into the war between the Chinese and the Huns, works nicely. There's the obvious feminist theme of admitting women into the "men's world" that Disney does well. Mulan is one of the stronger heroines in the Disney canon, her objectives being to do right by her family and her country - meeting a man isn't even on her To Do list. In fact, the minor romance between Mulan and Shang feels entirely unnecessary and forced. Fortunately, it's not given enough attention to prove much of a distraction.

Mulan has been relegated to the lower depths of the Disney canon since its release, which is quite a shame because there's a lot to appreciate here. The songs are, frankly, rather generic but Jerry Goldsmith's score is one of his finer works from the 90s. The action pieces were terrific, imbuing the film with a grand scope and intensity that elevated the animation visuals - themselves nothing to sneeze at in the first place. The voice cast was likewise solid, particularly Ming-Na as the titular Mulan (I've liked her ever since she was on The Single Guy). I was taken out of the movie by Eddie Murphy as Mushu, constantly reminded of his work as Donkey in the Shrek series (a job I'm certain he got in large part because of his voice work here).

There are some WTF? moments, though, particularly an entire scene involving skinny dipping. It invites a lot of questions, I would think, from younger children such as, "Why are all those guys running into the water naked together?" I confess, I was surprised to see Disney go there. It's played for laughs, but I'm sure it made more than a few parents squeamish. Also, some of the action is a bit more straightforward than we're accustomed to seeing from Disney. It's animated beautifully, but I suspect some found it a bit grittier than they had anticipated.

It's also interesting to watch this 1998 film in our post-9/11 world; one can scarcely imagine Disney putting out a film today in which a woman lies her way into the military to undertake participating in a war in the name of honor. All any of us really want by now is for our men and women in uniform to come home safely; the idea of enlistment in the pursuit of social status just seems somehow insulting in light of how many lives have been lost over the last decade. In 1998, though, war was still something we could imagine as a grand adventure. Mulan is a curious reminder of what life used to be like.

This wasn't high on my To See list, but then last August when I saw crazy, stupid, love. and developed my writer's crush on Dan Fogelman, I became a lot more interested to see it. Funnily enough, we actually owned it on DVD (involuntarily ordered from Disney Movie Club), and I never got around to watching it. I wound up checking it out from the library on Friday.

I was initially confused and startled by the leap from the opening adoption directly into the action of what is revealed to be the TV series. Once I finally caught up to what was actually going on, I warmed up to Bolt fairly quickly. It's Inspector Gadget as The Truman Show, turned into Sullivan's Travels with a healthy dose of Toy Story along the way. The story isn't terribly original, but the humor is sharp and the pace is brisk.

Not a lot to say about this 4 minute short. It's kind of amusing, but entirely throwaway fantasy of Rhino's. It's, you know, whatevs.

I know I found a few last year, all shorts iirc, but anyone else have ideas for Criterion animation combinations for our last day?

Heavy CGI stuff maybe? Armageddon?

I think I agree with you that Disney would probably not put it out right now, but I think it has less to do with war than it does with showing how to be strong.

I disagree on the music though. I really like the songs. Even when I hadn't watched the movie in years, I had at least a couple on my iPod. "I'll make a Man out of You" would always get me singing along!