Sleeping Beauty (Special Edition)
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VHS Movie Reviews of Sleeping Beauty (Special Edition)
Movie Review: Impressive
Summary: 5 Stars
OK, I always thought Sleeping Beauty was one of Disney's least exciting offerings from their classic animation films. Although I saw in the theaters when I was very young, I mostly know it from the VHS version. But my wife said it was her favorite so when it came out on Blu Ray, I picked it up.
Just a few points on why it is so impressive. First, the BR version displays the full original aspect ratio, you get to see the film in full Cinemascope. Second, the transfer to BR looks flawless, you'll see details in the animation you didn't know where there. I kept staring at it in awe. Finally, the sound quality was full and clean.
So put that all together and it actually makes the semi-flat characters come alive and the kinda lame plot seem exciting. Overall, BR gave me a new appreciation for Sleeping Beauty, and I can't wait for future Disney BR releases. (Beauty and the Beast next, please?)
Oh, and how awesome is it that they threw in the DVD version too?
Movie Review: Very nice restoration
Summary: 4 Stars
Disney Home Video kindly sent me this DVD, in exchange for an honest review.
Movie: This is a very traditional fairy tale romance, with Princess Aurora being the only child of a king, betrothed at birth to Prince Phillip, the only child of another king. At the grand party to celebrate Aurora's birth, almost everyone attends, including the good fairies, Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather. However, the powerful, evil fairy, Maleficent, is not invited. Maleficent attends anyway, to bestow a "gift" on the child: a curse that, upon her sixteenth birthday, she would prick her finger on a spindle and die. Maleficent then disappears. Flora and Fauna had already bestowed the gifts of beauty and song, and Merryweather adds the gift of amending Maleficent's curse to be that Aurora would falls asleep, instead of die, only to be awakened by the kiss of her true love.
Of course, Princess Aurora does not die, but the road to the inevitable Disney ending includes magic, a dragon, intrigue, an unexpected romance, lots of singing, an enchanted forest with many creatures, kidnappings, and, of course, a spinning wheel with a spindle. The ending will not disappoint the little ones, but there is some suspense along the way.
Much is made of the Super Technirama 70 film method that was used, but I did not see it as noticeably better than similar-era animation. I prefer the look and the animation of Disney's original Bambi, with its incredibly rich colors. This DVD does involve a new digital restoration, and the before-and-after samples show a definite enrichment in color and detail resolution.
The songs and the singing were very nice. It was more music-based than I had expected or remembered. It had been many years since I last saw this film.
Voice Cast:
Mary Costa as Princess Aurora
Bill Shirley as Prince Phillip
Eleanor Audley as Maleficent
Verna Felton as Flora
Barbara Luddy as Merryweather
Barbara Jo Allen as Fauna
Taylor Holmes as Stefan
Bill Thomson as Hubert
Everyone does a very respectable voice performance, at least. The two who stood out were the good but mischievous Merry weather (Barbara Luddy) and, by far the star in this aspect, Eleanor Audley as the drippingly, snidely evil Maleficent. Maleficent made a truly scary villain, and it is my guess that she was the prototype for Cruella De Vil of the 1961 Disney One Hundred and One Dalmatians. It is probably no coincidence that both movies were directed by Clyde Geronimi.
I would have liked to have seen a bit more attitude to the characters, but I had to remind myself that the film goes back to 1959. Aurora pined a bit too much for me, although Phillip, Merryweather, and Maleficent certainly had enough attitude. Maybe, Princess Fiona of Shrek spoiled me!
Extra features: Immediately following the movie, on the same disc, is a music video of an upbeat, fairly contemporary version of a song from the movie, Once Upon A Dream, sung by Hannah Montana's Emily Osment. It is fairly good, and adds to the Prince Charming fantasy from the movie.
After that comes another music video, running almost thirty minutes, featuring The Grand Canyon Suite by Ferde Grofe;, accompanied with video of the Grand Canyon, including the dramatic scenery, amazing sequences of storms and cloud changes, and the native wildlife. Both the music and the video are excellent, and I only have two minor quibbles with it. First, I am not sure why this video is there, as it does not seem connected, in any way, to the movie. I guess that Disney is just using this as an opportunity to introduce children to more classical music. The other quibble involves a few of the wildlife sequences, showing predator-prey situations, involving a cougar and an antelope, and a golden eagle and a large owl, and a hare and a small rodent. The music is fitted around these sequences to suggest that predators are villains and prey are pitiable good-guy victims. In all these sequences, there is no bloody climax (this is a Disney movie, after all), and the music suggests this is victory. Well, it is victory for the prey, but it is also possible starvation for the predator. Maybe I am over-thinking this, but that was my take on it. I still enjoyed this video segment.
The next video is a vintage one, with an introduction by Walt Disney, on where the movie concept came from, and mainly about the life of Peter Tchaikovski. It is very nicely done.
All of the above is on Disc One.
On Disc Two, there are a host of bonus features:
There is a simple word game, with six basic variations. It appears, from the pace of the instructions and the level of the task, to be aimed at pre-schoolers, as it is a basic word-object pairing game.
Another extra feature is a basic waltz instruction program, with two parts. One part shows the basic steps, and the player is guided toward picking the steps in the right order. The other part involves actually dancing in the forest; the player chooses the role of Aurora or Phillip and is taught to do the basic moves in the right order.
A virtual walk-through of original Sleeping beauty castle. This is like taking a tour of a Disneyland exhibit.
A never-before-seen alternate opening sequence. This was interesting and would have been a perfectly acceptable choice of how to start the movie.
A sample of the songs that were deleted from the original movie. Several features on the making of the movie, with a heavy emphasis on the artists who did the animation, finish up the bonus features.
-- Chris McCallister, author of Coming Full Circle
Movie Review: What Size Is Your Set?
Summary: 4 Stars
What? Disney's released another two-disc edition of "Sleeping Beauty?" Why, pray tell? Because they can? Because poor Disney-addicted saps like myself will fall for the ruse and pony up more of our hard-earned cash, even though we already own the Special Edition that was released a mere five years ago? You can tell I was skeptical. But there are some wonderful new extras on this release that weren't included in the last, and for hardcore fans, they're definitely worth having. And the film itself...? Well, for those of you who have never seen "Sleeping Beauty," by all means snatch it up. This may not be Disney's most entertaining film in terms of story line, but it's certainly its most visually gorgeous. The look of the film is based on ancient tapestries and medieval artwork, and the way that the studio's animators and background artists have translated them to the screen (led by the brilliant, visionary Eyvind Earle), is nothing less than breathtaking.
The biggest drawback to any edition of "Sleeping Beauty," and it's not necessarily a small one, is that the scope of the film, its visual, widescreen beauty and impact will be completely lost on a conventionally sized television. If you don't have a big screen TV, it's almost not worth the investment.
So, if you have the old edition of the film, try selling it on Amazon and put the money towards getting the new one. If you don't have either, just be aware that the size of your set may seriously effect (or enhance) your enjoyment of this most beautiful and unique of Disney's masterpieces.
Movie Review: Amazingly clear video and audio
Summary: 3 Stars
Having been a fan of previous Disney efforts on Platinum DVD, I was looking forward to their first "classic animated film" release in HD on Blu Ray... then I found out their first outing would be Sleeping Beauty. For me, of the "classics" in Disney's line up, Sleeping Beauty is the weakest effort put forth on the story side.
Despite my general apathy towards Sleeping Beauty, I bit the bullet and decided to purchase it on Blu Ray to see just what it is that Disney has in itself for these HD releases. In terms of the release, I couldn't be happier.
First, let us take a look at the story. We all know the story, most likely, by now. Sleeping Beauty, or Princess Aurora, is born, is granted gifts of physical beauty and beautiful voice, but is also then cursed with dying on her 16th birthday thanks to Maleficent. The final gift is one of, instead of death, one of eternal sleep until the princess is awakened by her true love.
Here the story takes a nose dive as you are instantly transported to the 16th year of the girl's life, where the movie just seems to fly by and is extremely light on story telling.
Next, comes the video. For this release (and the DVD edition), Sleeping Beauty has been digitally restored and as such, there is no dust, dirt, scratch or any other type of film error to be seen on this release. The colors are bold and vibrant and jump off the screen; as designed. It is presented in 1080p, using the AVC codec. For the first time ever on a home release, we are presented with the film as originally intended, in the full 2.35:1 aspect ratio. Previous efforts have all put forth 4:3 letter boxed editions. Disney has done an amazing job in the video department for this title, and if you want an animated movie to show off the power of your HD system, this is certainly a contender. If you really concentrate, however, there are some issues in certain scenes. In one forest shot, for instance, Aurora/Briar Rose, is seen from a distance and is quite blury. I will assume this is a source issue given it seems to be an anomaly over all, but it is still a bit disconcerting given the clarity given to the rest of the film.
As I've said of numerous movies on Blu Ray before, this is the best the movie has likely ever looked, especially on a home theatre.
As for the sound, Disney has also restored and remastered the audio (also on the regular DVD). On the Blu Ray the audio is presented in two formats; first is the newly remixed DTS HD Master Audio (English) format and also the original 4 channel "stereophonic" (English) soundtrack is also provided in it's restored glory. There are no pops, no hiss and absolutely no issues to be heard in either mix. Again, to fall back on a familiar description, this film has never sounded better. One complaint some may have is the lack of other audio options; the only soundtracks available are in English, while on the DVD several other options, such as French and Spanish (both included on the DVD but not here) and also a lack of subtitle options in other languages as well. A bit puzzling given the DVD has these options available, as do other Disney Blu Ray releases.
When it comes to extras, as with Disney's previous Platinum DVD releases, this Blu Ray comes with a second disc chocked full of extras. The first disc includes the Grand Canyon short that accompanied the theatrical release (in HD), a commentary, a trivia game, music video and Dragon Encounter, a show case for 7.1 audio. Also included with the film is a BD-Live capable disc where you can chat with others watching the film (assuming they are on your "friends" list) and some other on-line features. I didn't delve too deeply into the BD-Live options given my lack of enthusiasm for them, however I can see where someone might enjoy it; I don't.
Then you have the second disc which is all bonus material. There are several games (geared towards children mostly), several featurettes (one as long as 43 minutes) on the creation of Sleeping Beauty and restoring the audio, a longer story board only alternate opening sequence, deleted songs and a few more featurettes ported from the previous DVD release of Sleeping Beauty. The last bits, those ported from the original DVD release, are the ONLY ones in standard definition.
If you enjoy extras to accompany your DVDs and Blu Ray discs, this one should surely please you.
One other extra, that is supposedly only available for a limited time, is the first DVD from the Platinum DVD release (you get the film and bonus features available on disc 1 of the set). So if you don't have a Blu Ray player/PS3 but know one is in your future, you can purchase the Blu Ray now and still enjoy the film while waiting for your Blu Ray player.
In the end, the movie, while lackluster in my opinion, is presented in as perfect a method as possible today. If you are a fan of the film, you will be astounded by the clarity of this release and likely couldn't be happier. If you are like me in that the movie itself doesn't do much for you, this release won't likely do anything to change that opinion.
Movie Review: Is it just me?
Summary: 4 Stars
This review is for the recently released Sleeping Beauty (Two-Disc Platinum Edition). The colors are gorgeous, love the widescreen presentation, but I have an issue. I have a 40" flat screen LCD HD television (but a non-HD DVD player) and when I play this DVD I notice a lot of blurring of the crisp edges, particularily when the characters are in motion. It's especially noticable in the opening sequence ("Hail to the Princess Aurora"), and when Kings Stefan and Hubert are toasting the impending marriage of Aurora and Phillip ("Skumps"). Those are the worst instances I've noticed so far, but it's all through the film. When the fairies wave their wands or move too quickly the wands and the outlines of their clothing have a zig-zag appearance instead of crisp edges. Even when chracters turn their heads sometimes it's noticable. Something makes me think it's not a defect with the disc itself. I'm not sure if this is just because TV technology has progressed so far beyond the original animation, or maybe my standard DVD player isn't up to snuff. Or maybe it's an issue with the restoration. Anybody else with a large screen television notice the same thing, or is it just me?