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Who remembered that Oprah Winfrey is an Academy Award nominated actress? Anyone? She's not just a free car giver and Supreme Overlord of Publishing, you know. Oprah was cast in Steven Spielberg's The Color Purple within a year of her talk show debut, and her first film role got her an Oscar nom. She hasn't made a lot of films since then, but she landed voice roles in two big movies in the past couple of years, in Bee Movie and Charlotte's Web.

Now she can add a Disney movie to her resume, as she's been cast in Disney's upcoming 2D movie The Princess and the Frog, the latest in their long tradition of Princess movies. Oprah will be playing the main character's mother, a role that was previously said to have gone to Angela Bassett.

I've been curiously following The Princess and the Frog for some time now, yes, admittedly because of all the hub-bub surrounding its status as Disney's first movie with a black princess. More than that, though, it's the setting that intrigued me. New Orleans, 1920s Jazz Age? Sounds like a great period for a Disney musical that wants to be a little different. It's really too bad that the movie is still going to use Randy Newman songs. I know he's Pixar's go-to guy and he'll probably do a decent job, but wouldn't it be way, way cooler to populate the film with authentic Jazz numbers and Cajun music? Lilo & Stitch's use of Elvis songs was extremely refreshing, and I had wished that Disney would do more of that kind of revisiting of the classics for their soundtrack.

Here's the teaser trailer, again:

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