The Blog is Back… And We Have Moved!

Just a heads up to anyone still checking this out, the blog has now moved to blogger.com.

SimbaCast – The Lion King Blog

It is a bit messy right now, but I’ll have it cleaned up soon enough.

Enjoying Shakespeare

In my post Hold That Thought!, I talked about how all three Lion King films are based on plays by William Shakespeare. Actually, not Lion King 1½ which is based on a play Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead which is based on characters from Hamlet. I only just found that out…

Anyways, the point is Shakespeare has helped Lion King and I said I was going to study Shakespeare. And I have started to do this through Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb. They have taken 20 of the classic Shakespeare stories and rewritten them for children.

Children?

Yeah, I’ve been listening to children stories, seeing that I like a kids movie…

Anyways, if you want to get an introduction to Shakespeare as well you can listen to recordings of the stories at LibriVox or read the text at Project Gutenberg.

Merchant of Venice it should be noted is referanced in Simba’s Pride, well worth a listen or read.

Lions vs Elephants

*Gasp* This post is coming two days late! So, what have I been doing?

Besides school, I’ve been having a whole bunch of fun in blender learning some more basic tricks. Such as how to add more then one colour to a single mesh:

Far, far from finished. But I like how it is coming. Now onto the “Real Lions” post…

Two weeks ago I highlighted a video about the Lion vs Hyenas, a battle we see in the Lion King film. Yet here now is a battle not shown in the movies, and as such is crying out for a fan fiction to be based on it. It is the “Lions vs Elephant” struggle.

Maybe it is just me, but the voice in the above film reminds me of Jeremy Irons, voice of Scar.

If you want to see more, this video is worth a look as well.

As I said above, this animal battle is ripe with a story worthy of the name, Lion King.

Circle of Life Project

I just saw this message over at http://fanart.lionking.org/ and it looks to me like this might have some promise.

http://www.skysoldja.com/index.html

The site needs some work…

OK, a lot of work. Its hard to navigate, gives little to no info on where the project is right now. When you navigate to a page so that you can listen to music or sound bytes they all load at once, and there are a number of other problems I won’t get into.

What matters is the idea. Will it work? Is it a good idea? Is the script a good story?

The answers, I have no idea. I think its cool because its along the lines of what I’m working on. But, I don’t know…

The first scene of the script totally lost me. I think the reason being there is no summary. So all these new characters are introduced and I’m left in the dust asking, what? Who, what, and when is this all taking place?
Then I go and see all this great art, but again I’m left asking, WHAT!

A white lion? Tons of males? Nuka had a brother? And I have to ask, is Nuka really Scar’s son. Oh wait, wrong post…

Anyways, I’m going to try and read this script, but I don’t know how well I’ll do with that. I’ll hope I can finish it, but somehow I doubt it. They’ve made one big mistake, the story is set in the pride lands with lions as the main charectures. Thus we’ll always compare it to the first film. Because of this I think it will come short, by a long ways.

However, I wish them the best of luck and hope they can clean up the site so it will be easy to follow progress.

Rafiki’s Slip Up – Version 1

As some of you may know, I’ve been fooling around with 3D Lion King animations in the free program, Blender recently. I keep trying new things with it and here is my latest. Still very much a work in progress as is every thing I do.

Please, let me know what you think!

Lion Guardians

**Warning – The Link in this Post Contains very Graphic Images of Dead Lions**

Today I’m going to show you guys another blog you can subscribe to about Lions. It is the Lion Guardians blog. The description:

Maasai murran and Lion Guardian co-ordinator, working to save the lions of Maasailand.

I for one will be throwing this blog into my feed reader and hoping for some good content in the future. Also of possible interest is the “Mara Triangle” blog. But beware of huge images.

The Lion King Returns to the Big Screen in 2008!

Yes, you read the title correctly. The Lion King will return to the silver screen in 2008, but not in the way you think. “Be Kind Rewind” is a new film coming out on February 22 staring Jack Black and Mos Def. Summary from the Internet Movie Database:

A man (Black) whose brain becomes magnetized unintentionally destroys every tape in his friend’s video store. In order to satisfy the store’s most loyal renter, an aging woman with signs of dementia, the two men set out to remake the lost films, which include Back to the Future, The Lion King, and Robocop.

Sounds like fun to me! See the trailer here on YouTube.

Fan-Art by Kivuli

Yeah, I know. This is a day late, so lets see if I can make this extra good.

Today I will highlight art by Kivuli. She has 190 Lion King pictures on lionking.org, most of them all of a very high quality. I’m going to review two of them but she has done many more then two pictures. Check out Nuka’s Presentation, Sarabi and Zira, and Taka’s Scar. Now for the pictures I’m going to review.

Zira’s Exile

I’m not going to talk about the amazing characters or the empty background, instead I will discuss if this fits into Lion King canon. For those who don’t know what Lion King canon is, a podcast is coming about that.

So, first question is the timing. When does this take place?

It could not have happened between when Scar is killed and before Simba steps up and takes his place as king, which was were I thought it could go at first.

And as the pride lands are still relativly “dead” looking I believe it safe to say this event as shown must have happened close after the end of the rain which “clensed” the pride lands. So far, so good. This picture can fit into the Lion King timeline as an event right after the rain. But their is one stumbling block.

Where is Kovu? Only Nuka is shown and he is shown as a young cub. But as Kovu has already been born at this point and is the youngest he should be the one Zira is carrying. And not only is Kovu the youngest, but he is Scar’s heir, he should be the one in Zira’s mouth.

In the end I would suggest that this pictures shows an event we assumed happened, but its details are a little off. Why are there only three Lioness being outlawed? This picture is great to look at and well done to Kivuli but there are still some unanswered questions.

Mufasa’s Death

She’s got Scar and Sarabi down perfect here, I love it! Mufasa looks very much like Simba and the Hyena is something to laugh about, but overall another great image. Does it work with the Lion King canon?

It would if it wasn’t for the caption she game it:

“Who can loves me like Sarabi loves my brother?”

If we compare this to the musical, that thought must be thrown out. Scar apparently did not consider having a queen until after his bout of madness and Zazu tells him that Mufasa had a loving queen. It is presented as if that is when Scar first thinks about having a queen and cubs.

I have no doubt the lioness visited Mufasa’s dead body, but Scar did not slink away wanting a queen.

I hope you enjoyed. Think I’m wrong? Tell me below by leaving a comment.

Look Familiar?

Tell me, what do these images have to do with the Lion King?

The above are some of the greatest combos ever seen on a screen. Yet we all know the list is incomplete until you add these guys:

Interesting that the “Timon” is not always skinny and “Pumbaa” is not always fat. For example, in the first picture Hardy is the fat guy yet he is very similar to Timon. While the skinny guy, Laurel, seems to be the stupid one. But underneath (just like with Pumbaa) he has a brilliant mind.

If your fan of Timon and Pumbaa it is well worth your time to take a look at the classic Laurel and Hardy.

Hold That Thought!

Last night, as I tried to fall asleep, I was think about the Lion King movies we have had up to this point. I compared Simba’s Pride to The Lion King 1½ and realized Simba’s Pride lives in the shadows of the first film and thus it is not as good. Because it tried to create a new epic, it doesn’t have as much quality as the first one. Both movies try and have “epic” stories so you have to compare them.

But what 1½ did was make fun of the first one, so you can’t compare them. Never once would you think “is the original better then 1½?” It wasn’t trying to live up to anything.

Next I started thinking about my own story. I have this great, epic journey planed. But the problem is if it is epic it will be compared in peoples mind against the first film (and even second film). Can I write a story better than the first one?

Not a chance.

So now I need to ask myself, what should I do with my fan fiction?

Actually, I need to take a step back even before I begin asking that. There is something else my fan fiction is missing which the three movies have. If my story is to have the “Lion King feel” I need to add this and fast! What is it missing?

Shakespeare.

All the Lion King movies are loosely based on a play/story by William Shakespeare. My story needs to have the same. Ideas, anyone?

P.S. I do have a podcast planned, I just need time to record it.