The Week of November 30th, 2010
GROUP EDITED by: TROY ANDERSON
SECTION by: Troy Anderson
PARKS AND RECREATION – SEASON TWO
Creators: Greg Daniels and Michael Schur
NBC/Universal
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Special Features
Parks and Recreation entered its second season with a focus that The Office has been missing for the last three and a half seasons. It’s fashionable to beat up on the Scranton crew, but Amy Poehler has found her feet with this show. Leslie Knope is a Michael Scott analogue, but she’s a knock-off that has been outperforming the original for the last year. Ditching mental retardation for warm-hearted personality, Poehler has turned Knope into the charming center piece of the best show on TV that you’re not watching. While NBC sodomizes their schedule for the Winter 2011 season, one can only hope that Parks and Recreation finds a bigger audience. That’s why I’m calling the delayed release of Season 2 as the best release of the week. For those of you with Netflix, check it out on Instant View.
FANTASIA / FANTASIA 2000
Disney
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Special Features
•
Feature length documentary Dali & Disney: A Date With Destino
explores the relationship of Disney and Dali and how this piece came to
fruition 50 years years after its inception
• The Schultheis
Notebook: A Disney Treasure – newly discovered detailed Fantasia
production notes shed light on special effects wizardry
• Disney Virtual Vault – BD Live feature
• Musicana – Walt’s inspiration for a sequel
•
Disney Family Museum – Explore the new Disney Family Museum in San
Francisco, California with Walt’s daughter Diane Disney-Miller
• Interactive Art Gallery
• Audio commentaries
• Disney View DVD Bonus
• Musicana – Walt’s inspiration for a sequel
•
Disney Family Museum – Explore the new Disney Family Museum in San
Francisco, California with Walt’s daughter Diane Disney-Miller
Fantasia is one of the greatest American animated films ever made. Fantasia 2000 was a film that I saw during its original theatrical run. The Fall Season is usually marked by the release of the Walt Disney Treasures releases, but I’ll take the recent slate of Disney offerings over the last two years of Treasures releases. The frontrunner for the WDT replacements this year are the stunning Blu-Ray debuts of both Fantasia films and Destino. While most of the Chewers are familiar with Fantasia, I’d like to draw attention to the inclusion of Destino. It was an animated short co-created by Disney and Salvador Dali that has been years in the making. The short was finally released in 2003. It was nominated for the Oscar…unfortunately, the short lost. While it’s stashed away in the special features of this Blu-Ray/DVD release, I’d recommend watching it first. Seeing something so exciting being brought to life for the first time on Home Video is a real treasure.
WAKING SLEEPING BEAUTY
director: Don Hahn
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SPECIAL FEATURES
• Why Wake Sleeping Beauty? – Overview featurette
• Untold Bedtime Stories – Deleted scenes from the feature
• The Sailor, the Mountain Climber, the Artist and the Poet – Celebrating Roy Disney, Frank Wells, Joe Ranft, and Howard Ashman
• Studio Tours – Randy’s tours, Roger Rabbit studio, Oliver studio, and the tour we shot at ARL
• A Reunion – Rob Minkoff and Kirk Wise
• Walt – What would Walt do AND compare Walt’s era and this era
• 3 webisode shorts
• Gallery – Art and Photo
Waking Sleeping Beauty can be called a softball documentary by those that wanted a hard-hitting look at the Katzenberg/Eisner years. I’ve seen the film three times in the last year and I can’t even begin to describe how amazing it is to see Disney being exposed with a semi-critical light. While the film knocks around The Black Cauldron and The Great Mouse Detective to set up later films, it’s still sad to see the classic Disney style being crushed by the corporate machine. Director Don Hahn almost seems wistful, as he guides us through the various moves and shake-ups that came to define The Mouse House from 1984-1994. I loved the special focus that it gave to Ashman/Menken and their impact on Disney.
MAKE-OUT WITH VIOLENCE