At a party over the weekend a deliciously nerdy debate broke out about two things. One, what cartoon is the sexiest of all? And two, whether it is acceptable or creepy to find animated characters sexually attractive? Fueled by strong margaritas, a battle against the rising sun, and too many active imaginations on one patio, the group came to the unanimous decision that sexy animated characters are just an added bonus from the directors to our awaiting eyes. These characters are generated to appeal to both children and adults, and just like in tradition film the actors need to be attractive enough to keep us locked in. But what does our animated crush say about us?

Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White; they’re all fairy tale characters that have recently been mined for darker, more adult re-tellings on the big screen. If Hollywood is good at anything, it’s taking a trend and running with it, so it’s no big surprise that Sony is now looking to do a bleak retelling of The Little Mermaid, especially since Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides recently opened and had a big scene full of angry, killer mermaids. I give it two weeks before we’re reporting on a remake of Splash. “The Little Mermaid” started off as a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, got a very high profile Disney animated adaptation, and eventually inspired Carolyn Turgeon’s book “Mermaid: A Twist on the Classic Tale.” It’s this book that Sony has optioned to turn into a feature. Unlike Disney’s take on the character, this time the story is told not from the perspective of the mermaid, but of a desperate young princess. She needs to marry a prince in order to create a political bond with a rival Kingdom, or her home is pretty much going to be in shambles. So, she makes a long journey to his kingdom in order to try and get the marriage together. Unfortunately, when she gets there she finds out that the prince has already fallen in love with a beautiful young mermaid who has sacrificed her fishy ways in order to spend her life with them. That bitch. The book will be [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s the movie blogosphere’s diversity action plan. Because too many movie blogs just regurgitate press releases, post POV videos of street luge or bring you the same 25 stories that everyone else already has. We take those 25 stories, smash them together, wipe away the blood and mix ‘em with the best links we can find in a nightly tradition known to its friends as Movie News After Dark… For those Hobbit fans who aren’t completely sold on Peter Jackson doing the thing in 3D, see the above picture. If Gandalf approves, how can the world disagree?

You’d think my walk home from Rango, a movie that consistently kept me laughing like a madman for two hours, would be one of elation and knee-slapping fun memories. Not so. As my laughter subsided, I realized — man, I just saw an animated movie that centered on a sociopathic lizard who takes a contemplative, hallucinatory look inward to discover his true calling in the world. Whoa – suddenly that fart joke had a lot more resonance. There are universal questions everyone asks themselves at some point in their lives. Ideas, complications, internal debates that spring out of existence and challenge us as individuals. Some turn to spirituality. Others take back packing trips through difficult-to-pronounce regions of the world. But after watching Rango and looking back through a lengthy history of Hollywood’s animated films, I wondered: why not turn to cartoons?

‘The Princess and the Frog’ doesn’t have the greatest of stories or the most interesting characters, but it’s a welcome return to a classical style of animation and a form of animated storytelling that Disney appeared to have written off.

I’ll get excited every time Hayao Miyazaki makes a new film. But apparently Disney has some difficulty figuring out how to make a trailer that accurately portrays anything about a film’s plot.

Mister Hand is excited to see what happens with a live-action adaptation of Disney’s Mulan — provided they ditch all those not-so-sweet tunes.

Everyone knows that the Ken doll is Barbie’s secret love slave (ok, maybe not so secret) and this fact will be committed to celluloid in Pixar’s 2010 release of Toy Story 3, where the pair – brace yourselves – “embrace”.

It is safe to say that many of you are fans of Sin City, or at least warm-blooded enough to be interested in the scintillating ladies that graced it’s posters. As well, we have all grown up with such Disney classics as The Little Mermaid, Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast and Snow White. So when I tell you that someone, namely artist Curt Rapala, decided to combine the two into a set of six posters, you should all be just a little interested. I know that I was. Below you will find his entire gallery, six posters taken from the exact posters for Sin City, but this time with popular Disney femmes in place of the real life actors. My personal favorite is the one pictured above as well, in which Ariel from The Little Mermaid stands in for Jessica Alba as Nancy. As Rapala explains on his website, this is one of those projects that really has a unique appeal: I loved the idea from the moment I thought it up, so I had to pursue it. There’s just something so incredibly awesome about the idea of juxtaposing something brutal, harsh, sexy & violent, like Sin City, with something wholesome, fun, and child-friendly, like Disney. Have a look for yourself at some of the brilliant posters below, and be sure to visit Rapala’s website NotAFishingLure.com for the high resolution versions and other cool art.