Zac Efron, a graduate of Disney’s star machine and teen heart-throb of the “High School Musical” series and “17 Again,” is not the biggest fan of his own movies.

And he’s not the only one. “Twilight” stars Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart are not exactly talking their own work up either.

With his latest film “Me and Orson Welles” due out next month, Efron told Nylon Guys magazine, “It’s the first time I’ve ever watched a movie (that I’m in) and in the end I’m like, ‘OK! I didn’t check my watch once!”

In fairness to Efron, he is only 21 year-old, so it’s not like he has the long list of movie credits of, say, a Jack Nicholson. Maybe it takes him a while to get warmed up, and he will have some other favorite roles after “Me and Orson Welles.”

But that does not sit well with some Disney fans.  At the Disney fan website, DisneyDreaming.com, they whipped up an article titled “Zac Efron Disappoints Us Again” after his latest comment.

“C’mon Zac Efron, really? We love your movies, and we support all of your roles,” the short article states. “And on top of that, we PAY to watch your movies in theater, purchase them on DVD and buy paraphernalia with your face on it. The LEAST you could do is act like you enjoyed those movies too.”

Wow, who knew those Mickey Mouse ears could be so sharp?

“Twilight” star Robert Pattinson recently told a British publication that watching himself on-screen is painful, especially when it comes to this year’s art house film “Little Ashes,” in which he played Salvador Dali.

“It’s like self-flagellation, so why would I bother,” Pattinson said in the piece. “… It was hard to watch my first scene in which I turn up in this funny little hat.”

Meanwhile, Pattinson’s “Twilight” co-star Kristen Stewart is also feeling some ennui. She tells Interview magazine that the hype around her movie has her feeling the blues.

“The sad thing is that I feel so boring because ‘Twilight’ is literally how every conversation I have these days begins - whether it’s someone I’m meeting for the first time or someone I just haven’t seen in a while.”

The question is whether the rest of the public is getting bored with Efron, Pattinson, Stewart et al as well?

John Lasseter, the Walt Disney Co’s chief creative officer, walked onto the stage at the company’s D23 Expo in Anaheim, California, on Sunday wearing a suit jacket over a Hawaiian shirt, and the crowd greeted him with the cheers and shouts usually reserved for a conquering rock god. At one point, a fan held up a flashing red Buzz Lightyear toy the way someone might hoist a cigarette lighter at a concert.

With an adoring audience of more than 3,000 Disney fans before him, Lasseter spent much of the presentation talking about Disney’s new push to reclaim its former glory in hand-drawn animation, an artform the studio abandoned after 2004’s box office failure “Home on the Range.” Lasseter is known for pioneering computer-generated imagery (CGI) on animated movies like “Toy Story” at Pixar Animation Studios, but he went to great lengths to promote Disney’s upcoming projects in that other style of filmmaking, which paradoxically Pixar helped to make less popular through the success of its CGI movies before Disney acquired the studio in 2006.

Lasseter described Disney’s upcoming hand-drawn movie “The Princess and the Frog,” set for a Dec. 11 release, and he offered more details on the new “Winnie the Pooh” movie that Disney announced earlier this week, as a hand-drawn film set for release in spring 2011.

“Honestly, this is the most blessed production I’ve ever worked on,” Lasseter told the crowd about “Winnie the Pooh.”

Aside from its box office potential, “Winnie the Pooh” could also fuel a merchandising line of fuzzy animal characters that has been one of Disney’s highest sellers.

Lasseter said Burny Mattinson, an animator who worked under the late Walt Disney and was involved in two 1960s “Winnie the Pooh” movies, will contribute to the latest “Winnie the Pooh” film. And he said the latest project will try to match the look of those 1960s films, such as by using watercolors the way the original animators did.

The fact that Disney has upped its investment in hand-drawn animation even before seeing how well “The Princess and the Frog” performs at the box office this year shows the studio is committed to the artform. Lasseter told the D23 crowd that when he joined Disney after Pixar was bought by the company, he said on his first day under his new bosses that he wanted to bring back hand-drawn animation.

Later, at a news conference, Lasseter said hand-drawn animation is “gorgeous.”

“I never quite understood why the studios thought people wouldn’t want to watch it,” he said. “What audiences didn’t want was bad movies.”

He also said that certain stories, like “The Princess and the Frog” with its strong element of fantasy, work better as hand-drawn animation than a movie like the 1995 “Toy Story,” which amazed audiences with the realistic  detail that computers were able to impart to common household objects, like plastic toys.

But even as Disney increases its commitment to hand-drawn movies with “The Princess and the Frog” and “Winnie the Pooh,” the studio still plans to make most of its upcoming animated movies with CGI, and at his D23 presentation, Lasseter showed clips of those projects, to cheers from the crowd. The projects include “Cars 2,” which is set for a summer 2011 release and which Lasseter said will feature the original cast of cars motoring around Europe, with its ubiquitous scooters and its rules of the road so different from those the characters are used to back in the United States.

Lasseter said that the movie will take iconic European structures such as the Eiffel Tower and graft design elements from cars onto them.

While audiences have shown they like CGI in movies like Disney/Pixar’s “Up,” which made more than $415 million this year at worldwide box offices, Disney’s return to hand-drawn style is still unproven. If “The Princess and the Frog” is a hit this year, expect much more than just “Winnie the Pooh” to come out using Disney’s old style of filmmaking.

In a sign of the merchandising potential the Walt Disney Co bought with its $4 billion purchase of comic book house and movie studio Marvel Entertainment,  Marvel on Tuesday teamed up with ring-tone company Vringo to launch a new service — cell phone videos of characters like Wolverine, Captain America and the Fantastic Four.

Customers can view animated clips of Marvel characters on their mobile phones, and turn them into video ringtones. In addition to video ringtones, Vringo also has a service that allows customers to call their friends, who would then see a Marvel super-hero or villain on their phones, and identify the caller that way.

The Marvel video clips available on cell phones can be seen here.

Disney officials have cited the merchandising potential of Marvel as one reason that the deal makes sense for them. Now that we know that Marvel characters who have long graced lunch boxes and T-shirts can invade cell phones, can the day be far away when we see your iPod comes equipped with Spider Sense? If it can ward off bad music purchases, it’s all good.

Many of the movies entering theaters in the next few weeks may be forgettable afterthoughts unfurled on the post-summer masses, but at least some of the reviews promise to be memorable now that a pair of veteran critics are back at the helm of the influential TV show “At the Movies.”

The series, a descendant of the longtime vehicle for Roger Ebert and the late Gene Siskel, relaunched at the weekend with familiar faces Michael Phillips (right) of the Chicago Tribune and A.O. (Tony) Scott of the New York Times.

While comfortable on the screen, their mild-mannered personalities tended to cancel each other out. Politeness and consensus ruled as the cerebral duo joined every other critic on the planet in trashing Sandra Bullock’s “All About Steve,” and then heaped praise on Mike Judge’s “Extract.” Even when they offered differing recommendations, on the Patton Oswalt drama “Big Fan,” it turned out that they were more or less on the same page anyway. Perhaps the contents of the untouched coffee cups separating them on the austere set need a little spiking.

Speaking of recommendations, the “see it,” “rent it” and “skip it” designations remain. The show is unable to use the famous “thumbs up” and “thumbs down” assessments, which are controlled by Ebert and the Siskel estate.

“At the Movies” slid into irrelevance in the past year after syndicator Disney installed a pair of fresh-faced critics quickly branded as lightweights. The studio had taken the dramatic step after failing to reach a new contract with Ebert, who has not appeared on air since leaving in 2006 to undergo thyroid surgery that has since robbed him of his voice.

In his absence Chicago Sun-Times columnist Richard Roeper, who came aboard after Siskel died of a brain tumor in 1999, kept the flag flying with a series of guest co-hosts, including Phillips and Scott. The revolving door kept things fresh, and tensions occasionally surfaced when the opinionated Roeper shut down his less-polished guests: Perhaps an edgier third critic, such as Roeper or former guest host Robert Wilonsky of the Dallas Observer, would restore a gladiatorial tone to the show.

The lovelorn vampires of “Twilight” will vie for top honors at the Teen Choice Awards on Aug. 9 with the singing stars of “High School Musical 3: Senior Year.”

“Twilight” garnered 12 nominations, ahead of 10 for “High School Musical 3.” Miley Cyrus and the teen soap “Gossip Girl” also scored 10 each, while event hosts the Jonas Brothers snagged nine.

The ceremony will be held at the Gibson Amphithreatre near Hollywood, and will be broadcast on Fox the next day. Fans aged 13 to 19 can each vote once daily for their top picks at teenchoiceawards.com.

“Twilight” stars Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart were respectively nominated for choice movie actor and actress in the drama category. The film’s other nods included choice movie in both the drama and romance catgories. Taylor Lautner, Nikki Reed and Ashley Greene will compete for fresh face awards, and Cam Gigandet for the villain award.

The only head-to-head competition between “Twilight” and “High School Musical 3″ in the movie category was in the liplock category: Stewart and Pattinson vs. Vanessa Hudgens and Zac Efron. Cyrus was also nominated, along with her “Hannah Montana 3″ co-star Lucas Till.

Efron was also nominated for choice movie actor in the music/dance category, alongside co-star Corbin Bleu. Till and “Hannah Montana” co-star Jason Earles will also compete. In the actress race, Hudgens and Ashley Tisdale were up against Cyrus. Cyrus also picked up nominations in the TV and music races, and in random races such as choice female hottie.

Call it a Cannes-style recession, courtesy of Disney magic. Even though there are fewer people at this year’s film festival — merchants say business is down some 30 percent — the opening night premiere party for the movie “Up” still lit up the Croisette late Wednesday night.

The new Disney/Pixar animated movie about an old man who ties balloons onto his house and floats into the air on the journey of a lifetime opened to solid reviews by critics, and fans at last night’s premiere almost unanimously seemed to buy into its sentiment.

But beyond the Disney/Pixar celebration, the party mood that generally grips this playground for the rich and famous on the French Riviera was decidedly subdued. There were fewer yachts in the bay, fewer loud discos pumping music onto the beach and several restaurants and bars that would usually be packed with opening night crowds had, in fact, closed for lack of business.

Still, as they say in entertainment, “the show must go on,” and Disney put one on late Wednesday night. One small item of note, however. Typically at these premieres, there will be plenty of food and drinks on hand, but it did not go unnoticed by anyone at the Disney party that the food was, for the most part, only fruits and candy — hardly a feast for Cannes. Then again, these are tough times, even in the film business.

The first film has been shown at Cannes and it is already a hit, which will come as welcome relief in the general climate of economic crisis that has surrounded the start of the festival.

Disney/Pixar’s “Up”, the story of retired balloon salesman Carl Fredricksen, thrown together with a keen but clumsy boy scout called Russell, has been hailed as “arguably the funniest Pixar effort ever” by The Hollywood Reporter and as a “tremendous film” by Britain’s The Guardian newspaper.

Director Pete Docter said he was inspired by film-makers of an earlier era like Frank Capra and “Up’s” debt to old movies is obvious.

Three dimensional digital effects give a remarkable visual depth to the adventure of the gruff old widower and the zealous young stowaway who float away to South America in a house borne aloft under a string of balloons. As the pair swing precariously through the clouds above the jungle green or flee a bounding pack of dogs, the 3D effects add a dazzling dimension to the tale. But beneath it all, the film is an old fashioned story of love and redemption in the classic Hollywood manner that would have done the old master proud. “Walt Disney always said that for every laugh there has to be a tear,” said producer and Pixar boss John Lasseter. Many a tear certainly seemed to be creeping out from under the special 3D goggles at the press screening and it was faintly disconcerting to see so many hardened reporters blubbing silently away as the credits rolled.

None of that will hurt of course and amid all the gloomy talk of recession and cancelled parties, “Up” added an undoubted “feel good” element at Cannes that will doubtless translate into huge commercial success. “Boxoffice-wise, the sky’s the limit for ‘Up.’” , The Hollywood Reporter, for one, opined.
Four years in the making, “Up” was conceived well before subprime mortgages, a collapsing financial system and ever-mounting jobless rolls became the stuff of daily headlines.

But its echoes of the sentimental comedies that audiences turned to for comfort and entertainment in the troubled decades of the 1930s and 1940s, seem oddly appropriate in an economy facing its worst crisis since the Great Depression.

Christmas is coming early this year, courtesy of a 40-city train tour of the United States to promote the upcoming  3-D animated movie “Disney’s A Christmas Carol.”

With a snowy backdrop complete with carolers, decorations and all the sights and sounds of Christmas, the four vintage rail cars will offer Americans a sneak peek of the new movie as well as artwork, costumes from the film and artifacts from the Charles Dickens museum in London.

The train starts off in sunny Los Angeles on May 22 and will makes 40 stops in 36 states, before ending its journey stopped at New York’s Grand Central Terminal from Oct. 30 to Nov. 1, in chilly weather that will be more appropriate for the film.

The movie, featuring Jim Carrey playing the Ebenezer Scrooge of “Bah, humbug!” fame, as well as seven other roles. It opens in U.S. theaters on November 6.

Last year, then 15-year-old Miley Cyrus was the runaway hit at 3-D theaters when her “Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour” made $31.1 million its opening weekend at U.S. and Canada box offices in only 683 theaters.

Cyrus’ old friends the Jonas Brothers, who gained fame on her Disney television show “Hannah Montana,” are looking to eclipse that number when their 3-D concert movie opens in 1,271 theaters on Friday, and hundreds of theaters have been sold out.

Movie industry watchers expect the Jonas Brothers at No. 1 on the box office this weekend, giving Walt Disney Pictures another trophy 3-D success on top of its “Best of Both Worlds” smash hit the weekend of Feb. 1, 2008.  

“I’m thinking it can at least do as well as the Hannah Montana movie,” said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box office tracking firm Media by Numbers. “It would totally surprise me if it somehow did less.”

But given how few theaters ”Best of Both Worlds” opened in, the question is how “Jonas Brothers: the 3D Concert Experience” will match up against it on a per-theater basis. Going into the opening weekend  of Cyrus’ movie, Fandango.com and MovieTickets.com, the top online ticket sellers, said “Best of Both Worlds” accounted for more than 75 percent of their ticket sales a couple days before the opening. As of Thursday, the two companies reported that advance ticket sales for “Jonas Brothers” were below 64 percent of all sales, which is still strong but not quite as stellar as “Best of Both Worlds.”

 Disney needs a big success from “Jonas Brothers” more than it did from “Best of Both Worlds,” after reporting on Feb. 3 that quarterly profits fell 32 percent to $845 million compared to a year ago. One factor working in “Best of Both Worlds” favor was that it was originally planned to run in theaters for only one weekend, which had parents and their kids rushing to theaters before it was extended, experts said. 

But regardless, Dergarabedian still expects ”Jonas Brothers” could make $40 million its opening weekend, which is not a bad take for any film. The box office numbers will be driven by girls, in line with the female-oriented success of 2008 films “Twilight,” “Sex in the City” and ”Mamma Mia!,” he said. Hollywood has often geared its movies toward teen boys, so the fact that girls can make a movie a hit has many in the movie industry taking note.

It’s not such a small world anymore.

One of  the Disneyland theme park’s oldest and most beloved attractions — “It’s a Small World” -reopens on Friday after a make-over and the addition of 29 Disney and Pixar characters including Lilo and Stitch, Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan to the cast of familiar child dolls from around the world.

Disney says some “subtle theme music” from Disney and Pixar films has also been woven into the familiar song that plays during the gentle boat ride that has been celebrating the children of the world and their message of peace and harmony since 1966.

On the refurbished ride, Mulan appears in the scene representing China, dolls dressed in Aladdin and Jasmine costumes ride a flying carpet in the Middle East scene, Alice (in Wonderland) shows up in the London scene and Woody and Jessie of “Toy Story” fame appear in a new “Spirt of America” attraction.

Disney said the changes were subtle and were made as part of a general refurbishment of the ride, including replacing a leaky water channel and the ageing boats.