Disney CEO and chairman Robert Iger has spent 15 years trying to make Shanghai Disney a reality and now he’s only two years away from walking through its gates. He shared an image yesterday with 450 of the company’s stockholders of what the central 11 acres of the park will look like, including the park’s signature castle. This one, just to put a little exclamation point on things, will be taller than any of the castles in Disney’s five other parks, the Phoenix Business Journal reports.

What Iger didn’t get into is that the new park is close enough to serve as some competition to the one on Lantau Island, Hong Kong, that opened in 2005 and only just turned a profit last year, the L.A. Times reports. Close to half of the visitors to the park—which is 52 percent owned by the Hong Kong government and 48 percent owned by Disney—come from mainland China. Continue reading...

Film: Brave
Brands Spotted: 0 (if you don't count Scotland)
Standout Placement: N/A
Most Memorable Placement (positive): N/A
Most Memorable Placement (negative): N/A
Overall Product Placement Integration Grade (1-10): N/A
Comments: Some critics have called Brave, Disney/Pixar's new film, formulaic. It's an easy conclusion to reach. The idea behind Brave appears to be taking the popularity of young women archers (cue The Hunger Games, and already a Brave-themed attraction at Disney Parks), pinching some themes from other recent popular franchises (How to Train Your Dragon, Shrek), updating the Disney Princess juggernaut, and wrapping the whole thing in the aura of an earlier epic Scottish tale of bravery (Braveheart*). But Brave's guts aren't the only formulaic element of the film.Continue reading...

Basketball-mad North Carolina generally goes a bit nuts when March Madness rolls around since it has some serious roundball powerhouses in Duke, North Carolina State, and the University of North Carolina. But if residents of the Tar Heel State want to get celebrating a little early, the N.C. State Wolfpack is giving them something to howl about.

OK, it might not be basketball, but N.C. State has just won ImagiNations, the annual Disney Imagineering contest for college students who “conceive and propose a new Disney theme park, attraction, restaurant, resort hotel, product or other themed entertainment experience,” according to Disney.Continue reading...