Between the abysmal Mirror, Mirror and the upcoming Bella and Thor Battle Aileen Wuornos (you make know it as Snow White and the Huntsman) it seems remixing and revising the classic Snow White premise is the hot new trend in Hollywood—as long as it’s relatively cheap that is, as a post-John Carter Disney has announced they’ve halted development on their own Saoirse Ronan-starring Snow White revision.

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Studio chairman Rich Ross was let go today from Disney, after a tumultuous two and a half year run as the head of the studio.  He came into to replace Dick Cook, who ran it for eight years. Heads of studios tend to fall into two categories: those who hope be like the old school heads and stay in the position until they’re virtually dead, or fresh blood that often last for a brief spell. But what does this really mean for movies?

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Well, in case you were hoping to avoid any potential spoilers about who would survive the ending of the upcoming Avengers film, Marvel and Disney went ahead and spoiled that somewhat by announcing today that the sequel to 2011’s Captain America will be seeing the First Avenger return to the big screen on April 4, 2014.

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Since its release in 1991, Beauty and the Beast has been one of the crown jewels of Disney animation. Until 2009′s Up, it was the only animated film to be nominated for best picture, and showed that The Little Mermaid was no fluke. It signaled the great 90′s renaissance of the studio, leading to Aladdin and The Lion King. Now it’s hitting theaters in a 3-D edition. And here’s what you need to know.

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After the success of The Lion King 3-D, Disney announced they were going to dimensionalize some of the older films, and first up is Beauty and the Beast, the 1991 Academy Award Best Picture nominee. It’s going to hit theaters January 13, 2012, with a Tangled short film attached, Tangled Ever After. Not a bad package. Check out the trailer…

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D23, named after the year the Walt Disney Company was founded, was started as fan service. For most people, Disney is the films they grew up with and watched with their parents, and watch with their children – or even by themselves – and Disneyland (especially if you don’t live in California) is a place to go to once, maybe twice. For the D23 crowd, Walt Disney and its various products are a lifestyle choice. The hardcore run the gamut. From babies to the very old, from the physically fit to the couch potato, being at D23 means you probably have a season pass to Disneyland.

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I’m often inclined to give family movies a pass (as evidenced by my favorable review of Mr. Popper’s Penguins), if only because sometimes you’ve got to drag the family to a movie theater just to get them all to shut up for 2 hours.  Don’t worry, I sympathize here for you.  If you needed this critic’s permission to pack up the family and go to the multiplex, here it is:  Cars 2 is the ticket to buy this weekend.  It’s a big, colorful, noisy spectacle that will please broad audiences looking for a good time, especially small children.

But this is a Pixar film!  They’ve made some of the most emotionally resonant films of the last decade!  It’s impossible not to compare Cars 2 to the rest of their catalogue, and as soon as you begin to, it breaks down.  Read the rest of the review (and more car puns!), after the jump…

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Disney and Pixar have really revved up the publicity for this week’s release of Cars 2!  Did you see what I did back there, by the way?  That was a hilarious car pun.  Listen, I’m just trying to appeal to the Cars crowd here.  It seemed to work for those studios, at least.  Do you have any idea how popular this franchise is?!  $2 Billion dollars a year in merchandise and licensing!  I’m just trying to follow the formula here.  Anyway, director John Lasseter (pictured above) gathered with the film’s stars, Michael Caine, Owen Wilson, Larry the Cable Guy, Emily Mortimer, and Eddie Izzard, to discuss the new film with members of the press.  Check out some highlights of what was said, after the jump…

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Mickey Mouse fans, get this: did you know that the 80-something icon, despite having been featured in a bevy of short films, cameo roles, cartoons, straight-to-video releases, and video games, has never actually starred in his own theatrical feature?

That is, until now.  Maybe.

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