Like the previous entries in the Looney Tunes Golden Collection series, volume 3 confirms how brilliant the Warner Bros. artists were and how durable their creations have proven. The set includes classics that every cartoon buff will recognize: "Duck! Rabbit! Duck!," "Robin Hood Daffy," "Birds Anonymous." Other selections are less familiar but significant in the development of the studio: "Sink…
Share in Walt Disneys extraordinary vision of pairing imaginative stories with spectacular music in Disneys 8th full-length animated classic. In the tradition of Fantasia, Make Mine Music is a glorious collection of nine musically charged animated shorts featuring such fun-filled favourites as Peter and the Wolf, Casey At the Bat, The Whale Who Wanted To Sing At the Met and Johnnie Fedora and A…
Disney's 1977 The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh may be the last word on (animated) Pooh because it so faithfully honors the first word on Pooh, penned in the 1920s by British storyteller A.A. Milne. Gently paced, subtly humorous, and blessedly understated, this adaptation reflects Walt Disney's original vision to develop the beloved British bear for a wider audience. The film is essentiall…
There is only one word that comes close to accurately describing the enchanting Mary Poppins, and that term was coined by the movie itself: supercalifragilisticexpialidocious! Even at 2 hours and 20 minutes, Disney's pioneering mixture of live action and animation (based on the books by P.L. Travers) still holds kids spellbound. Julie Andrews won an Oscar as the world's most magically idealized…
Melody Time (Disney Gold Classic Collection)
This 1962 special marked the last hurrah of Mr. Magoo, who starred in 43 cartoon shorts, including two Oscar® winners, from the UPA Studio between 1949 and 1959. Magoo appears as Scrooge in a Broadway production of "A Christmas Carol" in this minimally animated hour. The play-within-the-show features forgettable songs by Jules Styne and Bob Merrill: Tiny Tim ("played" by the animated character…
Solid entertainment from a new group of Disney animators. The story source is a Chinese fable about a young girl who disguises herself as a man to help her family and her country. When the Huns attack China, a call to arms goes out to every village, and M
Mitchell/Pitt/Shor/Trask/Liscinski ~ Hedwig & The Angry Inch
An ambitious experiment by the BBC that ultimately fails, Operavox attempts to condense six famous operas into animated half-hours. The limited time forces the filmmakers to present the stories in clunky English translations, while reducing the celebrated scores to musical mincemeat. The stop-motion animators come the closest to succeeding. Barry J.C. Purves captures the malevolent pleasures an…
Max Fleischer (1883--1972) was for years considered Walt Disney's only real rival in the world of cartoon animation. The man behind the creation of such legendary characters as Betty Boop and the animation of Popeye the Sailor and Superman, Fleischer asserted himself as a major player in the development of Hollywood entertainment. Out of the Inkwell: Max Fleischer and the Animation Revolution i…