They'll all be at The Sculpture Barn in New Fairfield on Saturday, Oct. 25, lending their talents to a launch party for the Wyatt Foundation. The new organization aims to raise awareness and support for finding a cure for Duchenne and Becker Muscular Dystrophy ­-- two of the 42 types of MD. The hope is that this new nonprofit will also serve the needs of individuals and families affected by a host of chronic or terminal diseases and disabilities.

The organization was formed by Joanne and Wayne Keeley and named for their oldest child, Wyatt, 11, who was diagnosed with Duchenne when he was 3. Duchenne is "an always terminal, muscle-wasting disease, which affects one in 3,500 male children," said Joanne Keeley.

Eventually, Wyatt, like all Duchenne patients, will be confined to a wheelchair and finally lose the battle sometime in his late teens.

For now, though, Wyatt's need to find a suitable place to play has inspired his parents to pursue a special goal through the foundation. They would like corporate involvement in order to build a "boundless playground," similar to one in Stamford, "where special needs children as well as other kids can play," said Wayne Keeley.

This is not the first time the Keeleys have focused their energy on projects that help others dealing with illness. A writer, teacher and media attorney, Wayne Keeley created a fictional one-act play to raise awareness about Duchenne. He and his wife have also worked with organizations such as Parent Project Muscular Dystrophy and the Jett Foundation.

The vehicle for the Wyatt Foundation's debut is the Oct. 25 party they've dubbed "That's Entertainment." It is, said Wayne Keeley, "an immersion into arts, entertainment, fine food and wine, and a silent auction."

Featured in this mix will be performances by stage and screen actor Samuel Wright, aka Sebastian the Crab and Mufasa, Broadway dancer Elizabeth Parkinson, the Doug Wahlberg Band and acoustic guitarist Marc Huberman.

Kelly Burger, a very special person in Wyatt's life, will also be a guest performer. Burger, Wyatt's music teacher at the Meeting House Hill School, will be singing "This is the Moment," one of Wyatt's favorite songs.

Though Wyatt is a bright, well-spoken kid ­-- who tends to see a glass half full rather than half empty ­-- he also tires easily and falls a lot. He's ambulatory now, but in school is dependent on a wheelchair.

When asked to describe how she sees Wyatt, Burger didn't hesitate.

"He's a great kid," she said. "He's a kind, cheerful soul and a great student. He always has a smile and always can make you laugh."

In her classroom, she added, "there's no stopping him. He's able to physically participate in class activities because of a special chair that enables him to move about. If he needs a hand, his paraprofessional (since the second grade) Patti Canale, is there to help."

Helping the Keeley family to make this launch a success is the area's business community. Food is being catered by Tom Devine of Ciao! Catering and Events and Two Steps Downtown Grille. Wine has been donated by Stew Leonard's Wine Shop and desserts and a cake will be coming from The Goodie Shoppe in New Fairfield. Flowers have been donated by the Village Flower Shop, also in New Fairfield, while photographs will be taken by White Light Inc. of Bethel. All print and Web materials have been created by Dactyl Technologies of Danbury.

Joanne and Wayne Keeley, and their two younger children, Dylan, 9, and Sarah, 7, are looking forward to the fundraising party. And so is Wyatt.

"I'm excited about it," he said. "I'm going to meet a lot of people who are going to be playing and singing my favorite songs. It should be a lot of fun."

The fundraiser is Oct. 25, 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. at the Sculpture Barn, 3 Milltown Road in New Fairfield. For more details on the event or about donations and sponsorship, call (203) 312-9804, e-mail thewyattfoundation@gmail.com or visit thewyattfoundation.org.

Tickets are $75 per person ($100 at the door) and may be purchased by sending a check payable to The Wyatt Foundation, P.O. Box 8030, New Fairfield, CT 06812.

The sweeping overhaul will transport visitors to the California of the 1920s, when Walt Disney first arrived in Hollywood. In the same way that Disneyland's Main Street evokes Disney's hometown of Marceline, Mo., at the turn of the last century, the new California Adventure will follow the young animator on his journey to Los Angeles.

Instead of Sleeping Beauty's castle, California Adventure will feature a towering structure reminiscent of Hollywood's golden era: a recreation of the Carthay Circle Theatre in Los Angeles where Disney premiered the movie " Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" in 1937. A Red Car trolley, recalling the Pacific Electric Railway, will clang through the new entrance area, conjuring up the bygone era -- and winking at Walt's love of trains.

Also on the drawing board is a 12-acre expansion of the park that will bring to life the town of Radiator Springs, the setting for Disney/Pixar animated film "Cars," with three new attractions including the E-ticket "Radiator Springs Racers."

Sketches illustrate the planned changes for the Paradise Pier, which will take on a nostalgic feel and feature classic Disney characters in new boardwalk games re-themed as attractions, such as Mickey's Fun Wheel (now the Sun Wheel.) One highlight is the planned "World of Color" nighttime display of water effects, color lighting and music to bring new energy to the pier.

Disney's sizable investment, to be spent through 2012, comes atop the $1 billion the entertainment giant committed to build the park, which opened in 2001, and $100 million more spent on new attractions. The stakes for Disney are higher than boosting anemic attendance at California Adventure, which has always been overshadowed by Disneyland.

"What's at stake for Disney is their reputation," said Gary Goddard, head of Gary Goddard Entertainment.

Visitors to Disney's California Adventure will get their first glimpse of plans for the reimagined park Monday, when the Walt Disney Imagineers put dozens of working models, concepts and sketches on display in the Golden Vine Winery.

While all the characters from the original animated movie are represented — the sleeping beauty Aurora, the valiant Prince Phillip and the three kindly fairies, Flora, Fauna and Merryweather — the castle walk-through really belongs to the wicked Maleficent. More than half the scenes inside the castle belong to the villainess. In fact, we never actually see the castle’s namesake princess awake. (Read a scene-by-scene breakdown of the re-created Sleeping Beauty castle walk-through.)

Disney Imagineer Tony Baxter, who shepherded the walk-through restoration, understands that the best new Disneyland attraction is an old attraction conceived by Walt Disney himself. Resurrecting the past plays into one of the Anaheim theme park’s core assets: nostalgia.

“I still have very strong memories of taking a journey through this castle,” said Baxter, Disneyland’s chief Imagineer.

The castle walk-through closed shortly after 9/11, in the ensuing weeks when terrorism fears gripped the nation. While no reason was given at the time for the shuttering of the largely unsupervised self-guided tour through the iconic symbol of American pop culture, Disney now admits the tired and dated 1970s remodel of the attraction needed a rest — pun intended. In either case, the walk-through remained closed for the better part of this decade — long enough for the casual visitor to forget it ever existed and far too long for the die-hard fan.

The original castle walk-through opened in 1957, two years after the theme park debuted and two years before the movie premiered. For 20 cents, visitors walked through a labyrinth of staircases, past a series of dioramas that told the story of “Sleeping Beauty” — essentially a life-size three-dimensional pop-up storybook preview of the animated movie.

Each tableau employed a series of smoke-and-mirror illusions — multi-layer scenery, forced perspective views and ghost effects — to create the impression of the detailed and elaborate hand-painted set coming to life.

“They had to use extreme forced perspectives to make these things feel much bigger than they were,” Baxter said. “It meant that they were bending depths and using mirrors to trick your eye into thinking you were looking a great distance.”

Walt Disney tapped animation artist Eyvind Earle, who would later work on the “Sleeping Beauty” movie, to design the walk-through scenes. Earle teamed with Imagineer Ken Anderson, who turned the walk-through concepts into architectural drawings.

The A-ticket attraction resulted in what Baxter called “the zenith of our artistry,” with much of the future “magic” to be found later in the Haunted Mansion and Pirates of the Caribbean taking embryonic form in the castle walk-through.

“That was the first application in Disneyland of some artistically brilliant and technically stunning special effects,” Baxter said.

Like any work in progress, the 1957 walk-through featured story concepts that never made the movie and omitted crucial scenes that ultimately made the film’s final cut.

The climatic battle between Prince Phillip and Maleficent’s dragon was nowhere to be found inside the castle. And the penultimate kiss that awoke beauty was inexplicably missing — not to appear until six weeks after the walk-through’s opening (at Walt Disney’s insistence).

Instead, the castle walk-through story ended with a shadowy silhouette of Maleficent that brought children to tears and traffic to an abrupt halt in the narrow stairwells. So much for happy endings. (The spectral antagonist lasted only a few months before disappearing for good.)

Other gags worked much better — with identical bottleneck-inducing results. A series of medieval dungeon doors offered visitors the enticing opportunity of peeking through a keyhole. The clever illusion took your own eye and superimposed it on the faces of imprisoned goons. The mesmerizing effect stopped stooping visitors in their tracks — further backing up queues in the cramped castle. As a result, the popular scene was boarded up within a year.

Another early concept — involving visitors walking outside the castle to peer over the turrets and parapets — never made it past the planning stages.

By 1977, the original castle walk-through had run its course and Imagineers ripped out the guts of Earle and Anderson’s work to install a version of the story more faithful to the movie. The ill-advised move replaced the hand-painted cutouts with costumed figurines that looked like Barbie dolls. The inferior substitutes didn’t hold up well over time.

“In 2001, we took a long, hard look at it and we said, ‘Gee, you know, this doesn’t live up to what people remember in the movie,’ ” Baxter said, being as charitable as possible.

With the 50th anniversary of the movie on the horizon, the decision was made in mid-2007 to re-create the walk-through by mapping the 1950s hand-painted scenes onto turn-of-the-millennium computer-generated cutouts.

But after the closure of the walk-through in 2001, layer upon layer of additions — fireworks displays, faux snow-making machines, elaborate Christmas decorations — had chewed up precious real estate inside the castle.

By the time Imagineers stepped back inside the castle in 2007, they found the walk-through in disarray. Like excavators on an archaeological dig, Baxter and company discovered complete sets from the 1957 version still intact behind untouched 1977 scenes. In other places, air conditioning ducts snaked through long-abandoned scenes. They wondered how some sets — 20 feet tall in places — were ever shoe-horned into the castle’s tight confines.

Disney archivists tracked down the original 1957 concept art and blueprints, but deciphering the complicated layouts proved daunting — like trying to figure out a half-century-old multi-layered jigsaw puzzle. Only one photo existed of the original walk-though — a thumbnail-sized slide from an old Viewmaster toy.

Over the ensuing 18 months, Baxter and his team set about deciding what to remove, what to leave intact, what to reinstate and what to improve. And how to strike a delicate and seamless balance between the original concept and the new elements.

“We’ve definitely got everything and then some of what was there before,” Baxter said. “I don’t think anybody will be disappointed that it’s not what they remembered.”

Content will be available free for seven days and will then be available again on-demand after airing on free TV.

Series available as part of the service will include "Lost," "Desperate Housewives," "Grey's Anatomy" and "Scrubs."

Fernando Madeira, Terra Latin America prexy, said the new offering would drive online advertising revenues for Terra TV, which boasts eight million unique users per month.

Terra Latin America has portals in 18 countries and around 60 million unique visitors monthly.

New programming on Terra TV will also include Disney films such as "The Incredibles," "King Arthur" and "Flight Plan."

Director Kenny Ortega will join the trio on the red carpet in Sydney on November 10, followed by Melbourne on November 12.

The High School Musical series follows the story of basketball captain Troy (Efron) and brainy but shy Gabriella (Hudgens) who discover they have a secret passion for singing and try out for the student musical.

In the third film, the students hit senior year. Amidst a basketball championship, prom and a big spring musical, Troy and Gabriella vow to make every moment last as their college dreams put the future of their relationship in question.

The High School Musical series has sold 15 million CDs, 50 million books and 4.8 million video games and spawned stage shows, concerts and an ice tour since the first TV movie screened in 2006.

"The Nightmare Before Christmas" began with a poem by Burton that was considered a special or video short. Years later the movie was released in 1993. This was not your average Disney film; first of all, it was done in gorgeous stop-motion animation. Second, it was considered too dark and scary for Disney, so they released it under Touchstone Pictures instead. Yet it exceeded expectations by making $50 million. With several DVD versions and two runs of 3-D releases, "The Nightmare Before Christmas" has risen from being just a cult classic to a genuinely beloved film. Original, bizarre, and absolutely gorgeous, this movie takes all of the Gothic beauty of Burton's particular style and marries it to Disney's positivity and musical affinity.
The film is about Jack Skellington, the most beloved and favored leader of the fantastical Halloween Town. It is a world where Halloween creatures thrive and plan their entire year around that one special day when they can come out and play. The movie manages to make monsters, ghosts, ghouls, vampires, and others into scary yet sympathetic characters. Jack is weary of his job and longs for something new and exciting. He accidentally stumbles upon Christmas Town and falls in love with its different feel and purpose. When he tries to bring it to his town, they simply do not understand and warp it to their perception of the world. Jack allows them to do so and steals Christmas away to serve his own obsessive need. In the meantime, ragdoll Sally hides her love for Jack and sees where his path will take him. Jack has to accept who he is, where he belongs, and find a way to save Santa Claus from the evil Oogie Boogie before it is too late.

"The Nightmare Before Christmas" is a movie full of dark humor, weird imagery, and a soul so deep it seems misplaced in a children's film. The stop-motion animation is stunning, and the setting is a monstrous kind of wonderland. Each character design is detailed and flawless, both terrifying and amusing. This movie was released in Disney Digital 3-D in 2006 and 2007. Well get ready, because it is here again. Every scene has been re-imagined to fit the 3-D world, and it is more entertaining to watch than ever. A limited 3 week engagement begins October 19. To find out if it is coming to a theater near you, keep an eye on the official website at disney.go.com/disneypictures/nightmare.

Winner Announced in Taylor Morrison Dream Home Giveaway

Business Wire - Jennifer Draa, a single mother from Citrus Heights, Calif., has won the Taylor Morrison Dream Home Giveaway which generated more than half a million entries from all 50 states.

Inspired by the Innoventions Dream Home at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, Calif., which opened in June, the sweepstakes was held June 20-Aug. 20.

"Providing the most positive home buying experience we can is at the top of our customer service goals," said Sheryl Palmer, president and CEO of Taylor Morrison, Inc., headquartered in Scottsdale, Ariz. "There's nothing more positive than providing a family with a new home that they otherwise might have delayed for now. We were able to fast-forward the dream a little."

On the corporate level, Palmer said the giveaway was an overwhelming su