LOS ANGELES: Disney staged the largest gathering of its princesses in history on Friday as it delighted thousands of fans with a star-studded preview of its forthcoming animation slate.
The spectacular moment came as John Lasseter, Pixar and Walt Disney animation studios chief, was introducing his filmmakers at the biennial D23 Expo to reveal new details, footage and images from a host of upcoming films.
“I’m so excited about our upcoming movies. They are all hilarious, emotional, beautiful and make you think,” Lasseter told a delighted crowd.
“It’s a great mix of incredibly creative and surprising new worlds and characters and stories we love returning to. Our filmmakers are putting so much heart into these films — I can’t wait for people to see them.”
There was a world-first screening of one scene from “Ralph Wrecks the Internet: Wreck it Ralph 2” that deliciously sends up Disney princesses from the studio’s history.
Lasseter revealed that directors Rich Moore and Phil Johnston had asked the original actresses for each to reprise their roles — and then one by one, they came on stage.
The gathering featured Auli’i Cravalho (“Moana”), Kristen Bell (Anna in “Frozen”), Kelly MacDonald (Merida in “Brave”), Mandy Moore (Rapunzel in “Tangled”) and Anika Noni Rose (Tiana in “The Princess and the Frog”).
Also called on stage were Irene Bedard (“Pocahontas”), Linda Larkin (Jasmine in “Aladdin”), Paige O’Hara (Belle in “Beauty and the Beast”) and Jodi Benson (Ariel in “The Little Mermaid”).
The sequel to Walt Disney’s “Wreck-It Ralph” (2012) — which comes out on Nov. 21 — leaves the arcade behind, venturing into the expansive universe of the Internet.
The presentation at the Anaheim Convention Center had kicked off with Bell introducing more than 6,000 fans to a new 21-minute featurette entitled “Olaf’s Frozen Adventure.”
Disney gathers princesses to showcase animation slate
Disney gathers princesses to showcase animation slate
Archeologists discover world’s oldest artwork in Indonesia’s Sulawesi
- Newly dated artworks are believed to have been created by ancestors of indigenous Australians
- Discovery shows Sulawesi as one of world’s oldest centers of artistic culture, researcher says
JAKARTA: Hand stencils found in a cave in Indonesia’s Sulawesi are the world’s oldest known artworks, Indonesian and Australian archeologists have said in a new study that dates the drawings back to at least 67,800 years ago.
Sulawesi hosts some of the world’s earliest cave art, including the oldest known example of visual storytelling — a cave painting depicting human-like figures interacting with a wild pig. Found in 2019, it dates back at least 51,200 years.
On Muna, an island off the province’s southeast, researchers have discovered new artworks which are faint and partially obscured by a more recent motif on the wall. They used a new dating technique to determine their age.
The cave art is of two faded hand stencils, one at least 60,900 years old and another dating back at least 67,800 years. This makes it the oldest art to be found on cave walls, authors of the study, which was published this week, said in the journal Nature.
Adhi Agus Oktaviana, a researcher at the National Research and Innovation Agency, or BRIN, and co-author, said this hand stencil was 16,600 years older than the rock art previously documented in the Maros-Pangkep caves in Sulawesi, and about 1,100 years older than stencils found in Spain believed to have been drawn by Neanderthals.
The discovery “places Indonesia as one of the most important centers in the early history of symbolic art and modern human seafaring. This discovery is the oldest reliably dated rock art and provides direct evidence that humans have been intentionally crossing the ocean since almost 70,000 years ago,” Oktaviana said on Wednesday.
The stencils are located in Liang Metanduno, a limestone cave on Muna that has been a tourist destination known for cave paintings that are about 4,000 years old.
“This discovery demonstrates that Sulawesi is one of the oldest and most continuous centers of artistic culture in the world, with roots dating back to the earliest phases of human habitation in the region,” said Prof. Maxime Aubert of Australia, another of the study’s co-authors.
To figure out the stencils’ ages, researchers used a technique called laser-ablation uranium-series dating, which allows for the accurate dating of ocher-based rock art. The method uses a laser to collect and analyze a tiny amount of mineral crusts that had formed on top of the art.
The study also explored how and when Australia first became settled, with the researchers saying the stencil was most likely created by the ancestors of indigenous Australians.
