The Disney Compendium

So THIS comes across the blogmaster's desk ... along with this digital message which was thrown over the transom:

Hello Steve,

My name is Valerio Paccagnella and I deal mainly with film critics and comics. I have just completed a very large project called The Disney Compendium. It 'a kind of "virtual book", an encyclopedia of Disney animation full of cards that analyze each short or feature film ever produced at Walt Disney Animation Studios from 1920 to the present.

It's a strictly non-profit project which I hope to spread as much as possible, so you want it to show. If you like, help me to spread it? ...

Sure, why not? I'm must hanging around here, catching up on my foot swinging, so it seems like a copacetic idea to me. ...

The whole thing is pretty damn impressive, even if it is in Italian.

Valerio Paccagnella has taken every last millimeter of Disney cartoon entertainments, spread them out on an Italian marble examination table, and picked each short, each feature and TV production apart, leaving nothing untouched (or so it seems after a cursory perusal).

It's got silent films, sound films, live-action movies, each in its own section. Also, too, a whole lot of information on animated productions from 1920 to the present. Wondering what the Compendium might say about a Disney feature from the middle 1980s, I opened up The Great Mouse Detective ... or as it's called here, Basil l'Investigatopo.

The opening paragraph is in a foreign tongue from the Mediterranean area, but the Google translation goes like this:

In the early 80s, the Disney Company was undergoing some strong upheavals. During the making of The Fox and the Hound (1981) the old guard of Disney animators had left the studio, entrusting the future of animation in the hands of a group of promising new artists. The next The Black Cauldron (1985) was thus the first film made independently by this new team, but the inexperience derivatives problems were being felt, partially compromising the end result. It was then that two entertainers left the project and began to develop on their own a completely different film, based on the series of books written by Eve Titus Basil of Baker Street. The two entertainers were John Musker and Ron Clements, who in the future would have directed some of the most important films of the Disney Renaissance. To assist them in the direction of this new movie the two would find Dave Michener and veteran Burny Mattinson. ...

There's a lot more, but you get the general idea.

The site is definitely worth checking out, especially if you're fluent in Italian. And even if you're not, there are lots of pictures, data, and Google Translator stands at the ready.