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Captain America: The Winter Soldier is first and foremost a rousing sequel, the kind that makes you giddy that the Marvel movie pipeline is working at full capacity. It's also a film we're unlikely to see screened at the Obama White House thanks to its anti-NSA message. The new film offers some political undercurrents not seen in most superhero epics, from fears of government spying to the need for unvarnished transparency. It's all fused to a Marvel-approved template starring actors who know precisely how to bring two-dimensional characters to the big screen.

Walt Disney World has spent more than a year rolling out a $1 billion system that changes how visitors do everything from enter their hotel rooms to ride Space Mountain. But a few weeks ago a front desk agent at one of Disney’s marquee hotels was still wrestling with the technology. “Behave, you naughty thing,” a Wilderness Lodge reservations clerk muttered at the malfunctioning management system. Scolding didn’t work, but a computer reboot finally did. So it has gone with MyMagic+, an ambitious effort to make Disney World more profitable by making its 30 million annual visitors happier. The multifaceted...

Disney's Oscar-winning Frozen has become the top-grossing animated film of all time, surpassing the $1.063 billion earned by fellow Disney/Pixar title Toy Story 3. Frozen now occupies the No. 10 spot on the list of the biggest global blockbusters and is the first billion-dollar title from Disney Animation Studios. It has earned $398.4 million domestically and $674 million internationally for a total $1.072 billion.

<p>As for Mara's ethnicity? She's not Native American. Folks are passing around an online petition that asks Warner Bros. to "stop casting white actors to play people of color."</p> <p>2. If you're particularly ticked off when a white character is played by a person of color, then you're probably not pleased that Michael B. Jordan (Friday Night Lights, The Wire, Fruitvale Station), who is black, was cast as the Human Torch in Fantastic Four. Human Torch is a superhero who, as his name hints, can engulf his body in flames, control nearby fires and fly. When he's not on fire (though he usually is), the comics show that he's a blonde, white guy named Johnny Storm. (There was an android Human Torch once. To the extent that androids have ethnic identities, the android's was probably Anglo-Saxon.) If casting a black actor to play a white superhero irks you, this probably will, too.</p>

The highly anticipated next installment of the "Star Wars" franchise will be set 30 years after "Episode VI: Return of the Jedi," Walt Disney Co.'s chief executive officer Bob Iger said on Tuesday at the company's annual shareholders meeting. Disney purchased "Star Wars" production company LucasFilm for $4.05 billion in 2012 and announced it would release three new films in the popular sci-fi series. Fans have been avidly awaiting details of the next film, "Star Wars: Episode VII."

Frozen, the Oscar-winning Disney cartoon adapted from Hans Christian Andersen, is a vehicle for pro-gay propaganda as well a promoting bestiality, according to a Christian radio show in Colorado. Pastor Kevin Swanson of the Reformation Church, who hosts Generations Radio, denounced the film as "very evil", and that Disney was "one of the most pro-homosexual organisations in the country". Swanson said: "You wonder sometimes if maybe there's something very evil happening here ... I wonder if people are thinking: 'You know I think this cute little movie is going to indoctrinate my 5-year-old to be a lesbian or treat homosexuality...

Guests travel to Walt Disney World seeking the ultimate vacation experience, and Disney continues to develop new ways to deliver the best possible vacation. The company has invested over a billion dollars in their MyMagic+ system, which employs wearable technology and RFID (radio frequency identification) chips to fine tune and customize guests’ experiences. Disney has high hopes for MyMagic+, but so far many guests aren’t sold on the idea.

A few days ago, Disney World announced that unless Boy Scouts of America (BSA) changed its policy on openly homosexual scoutmasters – namely, they’re not allowed – by January 1, 2015, the organization would lose funding from Walt Disney.The reason is simple – Disney says BSA violates the company’s non-discrimination policy: Disney does not give money directly to the national organization or local BSA councils. However, through its VoluntEARS program, Disney allows employees to do volunteer work in exchange for cash donations to the charities of their choice.Employees taking part in the VoluntEARS program will no longer be able to...

The Walt Disney Company has notified the Boy Scouts of America that it will withdraw all funding from the organization beginning 2015 unless the BSA overturns its policy of not allowing openly gay members to be leaders. The entertainment company has a VoluntEARS program through which its employees carry out volunteer work in exchange for cash donations to the non-profits of their choice. However, Disney has now announced that the employees taking part in the program will no longer be able to submit the funds to the Boy Scouts, according to CNN. Disney's corporate website says that the company's employees...

The Walt Disney Company will cut funding to the Boy Scouts of America, beginning in 2015, because of a policy that bans gay adult leaders in the organisation. In December the defence and aerospace giant Lockheed Martin said it would no longer donate to the Boy Scouts, because of the same policy. Last May, the California Senate voted to revoke the organisation’s charitable status. The Boy Scouts organisation said it was “disappointed” by Disney’s decision, which will affect its ability to serve children, Deron Smith, a Boy Scouts spokesman, said in a statement on Sunday. Disney does not provide direct...

Walt Disney World has jumped on the bandwagon of businesses pulling their funding from Boy Scouts of America, as the organization still refuses to end its ban on openly LGBT adults. Charitable contributions will no longer be made to BSA or local troops as part of Walt Disney World's "Ears For You" grant program. SNIP As the straight son of a lesbian couple, Wahls has been working to reverse the BSA's policies of discrimination and exclusion. Since its inception in 2012, Scouts for Equality has succeeded in influencing seven major corporations - including Lockheed Martin, Caterpillar, Major League Soccer, Merck,...

A Cincinnati traffic reporter has gained national attention for his dramatic on-air parody of a Disney movie song. WKRC's Bob Herzog changed 'Let it Go,' sung by Princess Elsa in the animated movie 'Frozen,' to 'Just Don't Go' to reference the winter weather. As images of cars skidding on ice and traffic conditions play, Herzog dramatically sings lines like: 'I must share what dispatchers say, all the traction's gone. School's closed or at least they're on a delay.'

It might be the happiest place on earth, but your wallet won't be feeling any happier after splashing out even more to 'experience the magic' of Disney. The cost of going to the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World just got more expensive. Although Disney won't specify the reasons behind the increase, the Florida parks are home to the company's new high-tech wristband-based ticketing and ride reservation system, called MyMagic+ which cost the company $1.5 billion. ......................................................... Disney World has raised the one-day ticket price to the Magic Kingdom by $4 so that it now costs $99 before taxes for...

The pop stars surprised the audience at Cyrus’ Staples Center show with a lip-lock reminiscent of Britney Spears and Madonna’s 2003 VMAs kiss. Katy Perry is still kissing girls and liking it, but maybe not as much as she used to. The "Dark Horse" singer was caught in a passionate lip lock with none other than Miley Cyrus during the 21-year-old singer's Los Angeles concert on Saturday night, but a YouTube video shows her pulling away from a full-on make-out session with Cyrus.

Is communism making a comeback? On its face, the question seems more than a little absurd. The Berlin Wall came down over 24 years ago. We are more than 22 years removed from the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. All that remains are the Stalinist museum pieces of North Korea and Cuba, the former an isolated country known mainly for its absurd dictator and starving population, the latter a beautiful island stuck in a 1950s time warp due to backwards economic and social policies. Even China, the one major power still ruled by...

An Egyptian radio host who calls himself the official voice of Donald Duck on Disney Middle East was fired after sending anti-Israel tweets. Wael Mansour tweeted the news of his firing on Feb. 6, six months after his tweet against Israel. “Disney decided I am no longer the official voice of DonaldDuck in it’s middle-east dubbed cartoons because of an anti Zionism tweet. Proud!” he tweeted. Here is the tweet that lead Disney to end my role as Donald Ducks official voice in Arabic dubbed cartoons in the ME pic.twitter.com/ZLdpN1NrMF — Wael Mansour (@Wa2elMansour) February 6, 2014 He then retweeted...

After House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) announced Tuesday that the vote on an increase of the debt ceiling would have no strings attached he exited by signing "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" from the Disney 1946 movie "Song of the South"... to short to excerpt

Donald Duck will be getting a new voice in Arabic -- Egyptian voice artist Wael Mansour was fired by the Walt Disney Company over his ranting on Twitter last August, in which he expressed his virulent hatred of Israel and earnest desires for the Jewish state's destruction. Mansour's tweet read "I truly wish #Israel is demolished, I hate Zionism, I have so much hate inside me with every child they murder or land they seize!" He added "I don’t know why insulting #Israel & #Zionism is ‘Anti-Semitic’?! They are just a bunch of Polish/ Ethiopian immigrants roughly 70 years old."...

News spread last summer that the Disney Channel was planning to introduce a lesbian couple for the first time on one of its children’s TV programs. That’s exactly what happened during Sunday’s episode of “Good Luck Charlie,” when a child with two mothers was prominently highlighted..... The same-sex scene had long been anticipated. A representative for Disney detailed last summer how the network carefully approached the subject. “This particular story line was developed under the consultancy of child development experts and community advisers,” the Disney representative said. “Like all Disney Channel programming, it was developed to be relevant to kids...

<p>The Disney Channel has gone all Glee, introducing its first-ever lesbian couple on the family series, Good Luck Charlie, on Sunday.</p>