The countdown is on: Disney brings “Fantasia” to Blu-ray on Nov. 30. The release, which had been expected earlier this year, packages the original 1940 film with its semi-sequel, “Fantasia 2000.” The animated films will be available in a four-disc…
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The release, which had been expected earlier this year, packages the original 1940 film with its semi-sequel, “Fantasia 2000.”
The animated films will be available in a four-disc Blu-ray Combo Pack ($46) and as a double DVD package ($40). Disney, as it often does with its film properties, plans to make the “Fantasia” set available for “a very limited time.”
The Blu-ray “Fantasia” & “Fantasia 2000″ Special Edition
Disney vows “pristine 7.1 Digital Theater System Hi-Def Surround Sound” and a “state of the art” restoration of the original film.
“Fantasia” marries its eight animated pieces with swirling and pastoral classical music played by the Philadelphia Orchestra and conducted by Leopold Stokowski. Composers include Tchaikovsky, Moussorgsky and Bach.
(The 2000 version’s new animations were accompanied by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.)
The most famous bit in “Fantasia,” of course, stars Mickey Mouse as “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.” Close behind are the dancing plump hippos and “A Night on Bald Mountain.”
Here are some of the “Fantasia” extra features on Blu-ray:
The “Fantasia 2000″ Blu-ray extras include “A Date With Destino,” the Salvador Dali-Walt Disney short that wasn’t officially completed until the Roy Disney era. The seven-minute “Destino” debuts in HD. There’s also a feature-length documentary look at “Destino.”
For modern audiences, “Fantasia” thrills and disappoints — the well-known segments soar above the rest of the animated pieces, which tend to drag for casual viewers. That, perhaps, was part of the inspiration for “Fantasia 2000.”
At any rate, keep the remote handy and “Fantasia’s” greatest hits will play like magic at the family’s Thanksgiving gathering.
This is a bad week for mainstream releases. You might want to hit the jump for much more notable indie fare.
Marmaduke
Ah, Marmaduke. It delivered what we expected — a family film to stay away from unless you’re an undiscerning and forgiving kid. William Goss wrote in his review: “The under-ten crowd will no doubt delight by the goofy voices, the doggy dancing, the sprinkled-in scatological stuff, while the adults … well, for any adult, to watch Marmaduke is to stare into the gaping, digitally-enhanced maw of fluffy mediocrity for a ninety-minute stretch of valuable lifetime.” Skip it on DVD and Blu-ray.
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Spread
Before Ashton Kutcher was killing alongside Katherine Heigl, he was finding the gigolo Spread late last summer. An indie romance about a loser whose life revolves around sugarmommas and his new, pushing-40 squeeze (Anne Heche), Jette Kernion called it “a fake butter substitute of a movie, delivering only an oily imitation of what it promises.” Skip it on DVD.
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Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married Too?
Now it’s time for a Tyler Perry sequel. Eric Snider really loved hated the film, writing: “But Perry handles everything so amateurishly, with on-the-nose dialogue and a complete lack of subtlety or nuance. … Part of me wishes all of Why Did I Get Married Too? were as whacked-out as the Patricia/Gavin story, because then at least it would be campy fun. But most of the drama is much more tame and derivative than that .” Skip it on DVD and Blu-ray.
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Filed under: DVD Reviews, New on DVD, Home Entertainment
Continue reading Spin-ematical: New on DVD for 8/31
Of all of the American classic-modern horror filmmakers revered today – the Tobe Hooper, Wes Craven, George Romero – John Carpenter is probably my personal favorite. His output during the 1970s and ’80s was the most consistent, and most consistently interesting, although Halloween is good enough by itself to earn him permanent canonization. There’s a certain amount of classicism in his films – the Howard Hawks influence, no doubt – that gives them a timelessness that transcends their budgetary limitations, conceptual shortcomings, or period details. And even if the events in Escape From New York seems especially hokey given that they were supposed to have taken place in 1997, the film suffers none thanks to a great performance by Kurt Russell as Snake Plissken, and of course the brilliant rendering of a futuristic post-apocalyptic world by Carpenter.
Fox Home Entertainment recently released Escape From New York on Blu-ray, which is the reason for this otherwise unprovoked rumination on the merits of Mr. Carpenter. And while I won’t devote more attention to deconstructing the quality of the film itself, it seemed like a prime candidate for the latest installment on “Making the (Up) Grade,” especially since it’s the sort of film that benefits from improved presentation and expanded bonus materials.
Filed under: Action, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, DVD Reviews, Fandom, New on DVD, 20th Century Fox, Home Entertainment, Comic/Superhero/Geek
Continue reading Making The (Up) Grade: Escape From New York
The Last Song
Nicholas Sparks. Miley Cyrus. I’ll hand this one over to reviewer John Gholson: “The Last Song is not one of Sparks’ stronger efforts — a shaggy, rambling screenplay that doesn’t have a narrative so much as it loosely assembles a series of moments that Miley Cyrus can storm away from while saying, “You never told me about (fill in the blank)!!!” Though he does say, in the end, that it’s “tolerable,” that’s not much to go on, so Skip It on DVD and Blu-ray.
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Furry Vengeance
It’s just not a good day for new, mainstream stuff. If you don’t want Miley, you can dig into Brendan Fraser taking on another crappy family comedy. (If not great dramatic roles, couldn’t he at least find good family fare?) In her review, Dawn Taylor wrote: “Fraser merely serves as mugging, gibbering foil to a bunch of angry animals who do terrible things to him. Sometimes, movies of this nature are quite funny — Gore Verbinski’s Mouse Hunt comes to mind — but usually they are not. This one isn’t.” Skip it on DVD and Blu-ray.
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Continue reading Spin-ematical: New on DVD and Blu-ray for 8/17
Between my junior and senior years of college, I studied abroad in Great Britain and Scandinavia for a month studying the film movements in those regions. I had a great professor who showed us all sorts of terrific old British and European films, introduced me to filmmakers like Bergman, Tony Richardson and Derek Jarman, and in the spectrum of attendees, who vacillated between shopaholics looking for an excuse to visit Hard Rock Cafes in London and folks sincerely interested in learning about international cinema, I was more or less the group’s ultimate film nerd.
Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger were two of the filmmakers we learned the most about, although in the span of one month, we covered so many other simultaneously I didn’t get to show them my full attention. Since then – a pathetically long 14 years – I’ve been otherwise occupied with classics like That Darn Cat and Patch Adams, and have devoted far too little time to catchin up on their collective achievements, even if I’ve since become a hardcore fan of Powell’s Peeping Tom.
All of which is why I was especially excited to revisit one of their greatest films, The Red Shoes, when the good folks at Criterion re-released it on Blu-ray. Already a marvel of color and cinematography, I could scarcely imagine how good their classic might look in high definition. But does it still seem as magical and moving some 62 years after its initial release? That’s what I was eager to find out in this week’s Shelf Life.
Filed under: Classics, Drama, Music & Musicals, Universal, DVD Reviews, Fandom, New on DVD, Home Entertainment, Shelf Life
Let’s say $200 falls out of the sky. Even more incredibly, there are no bills to pay. That buggy iPhone 4 can wait. I’m headed for the virtual video store, where the Criterion Collection loyally awaits. Good timing. With Blu-ray…
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Date Night
Steve Carrell and Tina Fey play a married couple from New Jersey who head off for a romantic evening in Manhattan. In her review, Cinematical’s Jenni Miller sighed: “It’s frustrating when the funniest parts of a movie are in the trailer. But in a new twist on an old annoyance, you have to wait until the credits roll to see the really funny stuff.” Skip it.
Death at a Funeral
“The British stiff-upper-lips caricatures that populated the original are out, replaced by a grieving African-American family in Los Angeles,” says our own William Goss. Chris Rock, Martin Lawrence, James Marsden, Zoe Saldana, Danny Glover, and Columbus Short are among the player in “a broad comedy as likely to earn chuckles as it does groans.” Skip it.
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The Joneses
The movie is “a dark and funny satire about consumerism,” in the estimation of Eric D. Snider. The Joneses are “a picture-perfect family, attractive and slim, with great teeth and apparent affection for one another. Steve (David Duchovny) and Kate (Demi Moore) are the parents; Jenn (Amber Heard) and Mick (Ben Hollingsworth) are their high-school-age children.” All is not as it appears, however. “Even with its small defects,” our man Snider says, “The Joneses feels fresh and original, smart and tart.” Buy it.
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Also out: Letters to God, Triage
Filed under: DVD Reviews, New on DVD, Home Entertainment
Continue reading Spin-ematical: New on DVD and Blu-ray for 8/10
Kick-Ass
At this point, is there anything left to say about Kick-Ass? Real people become vigilante superheroes. It’s been done before, but this time, it’s got a jaw-dropping Hit Girl, a role that’s made one Chloe Moretz a sensation. In his review, Todd Gilchrist wrote: “as a full-length film, Kick-Ass is a great comic book come to life, but not much else. A faithful recreation of the rhythms of episodic funny-paper storytelling … [it] never quite finds enough cohesion or dramatic clarity to become a fully satisfying film.” If you’re on the fence, you’ll want to rent it, but for the rest, Buy it on DVD or Blu-ray
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Diary of a Wimpy Kid
It’s the story of a wimpy, wise-cracking kid making his way through middle school, but as John Gholson reviewed, it “should’ve been titled Diary of a Selfish, Dishonest Punk.” He continues: “It would all be unpleasant if it wasn’t funny. … If you’re a parent who’s been forced to sit through a barren desert of painfully unfunny family comedies, Diary will feel like an oasis.” Buy it for the family movie shelf on DVD or Blu-ray.
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The Ghost Writer
Ah, the film Roman Polanski finished during his house arrest. It’s a mixture of highs (Olivia Williams) and lows (Kim Cattrall), leading Dawn Taylor to write: “the arguments begin in one’s own head as to whether this movie is deliberately, stylishly melodramatic, or a tad clunky by accident.” She concludes that “there are moments of brilliance that make it more than worth tolerating the missteps,” but I’m not so sure. Rent it and see for yourself on DVD or Blu-ray.
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Also out: After.Life, Blood Done Sign My Name, To Save a Life, Open House, Greek Tycoon, Cop Dog, Finding Bliss
Filed under: New Releases, DVD Reviews, New on DVD, Home Entertainment
Continue reading Spin-ematical: New on DVD for 8/3
Yes, it’s news we already knew, but for those who were waiting for the man himself to get up in front of a large crowd and finally confirm that he’s indeed directing The Avengers, then, well, scratch that sucker off your bucket list. The announcement came during The Visionaries panel earlier today, which featured a discussion between Joss Whedon and J.J. Abrams.
Unfortunately Whedon didn’t reveal any additional information about the film, due out in 2012. It’s assumed that during the Marvel panel on Saturday Whedon and Marvel will announce the cast of The Avengers — hopefully with a Bruce Banner cast (maybe Adrien Brody? Maybe not.) and … an Ant-Man, perhaps? During today’s Masters of the Web panel, Edgar Wright (the assumed director) shot down all Ant-Man questions, saying no one is cast and that he hasn’t really worked on the script at all this year.
So, at current count: Whedon is a go, and we’re now waiting on official confirmation of the full cast and which characters will be involved. Additionally, Edgar Wright says Ant-Man has not been cast to his knowledge. Is Whedon really the guy to deliver this to the screen, or do you proceed with caution considering his big-screen experience to date?
Filed under: Fandom, Comic/Superhero/Geek, ComicCon
