It is no surprise that 20 years later, Aladdin, quite possibly the most amazing and crowd-pleasing film in the Disney Renaissance, still holds up. While the film is ever more than the sum of its parts, two decades of having songs and characters ingrained in our brains and pop culture have shown just how transcendent the film was, and continues to be. A colorful mix of great voice talent, witty writing, dazzling visual splendor, and of course the songs that nearly everyone knows the words to contribute in making this animated effort an outstanding cinematic achievement. There are plenty of other places to find gushing and glowing reviews of this…
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Off the Shelf…’The Little Mermaid’
Walt Disney Studios can stake their claim on a myriad of things, one of which is having some of the very best Blu-Ray transfers out there. Adding to their growing list of re-released classics getting the HD treatment is The Little Mermaid. This adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen‘s iconic and timeless story is one of the studio’s gems and nearly defines what it means to be Disney – it’s colorful, creative, engaging, emotional, funny, fanciful and perfect for fans of just about any age. Many times, Disney pics are near Herculean productions that necessitate the skill of not one but a duo of directors at the helm. Enter Ron Clements…
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Off the Shelf…Walt Disney’s ‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame I & II’
The Hunchback of Notre Dame, is a very different type of Disney film and further a bold step for Walt Disney Feature Animation. To some Hunchback can be considered a classic as well as a paradigm shift that marks a divergent tone in series of features previously found in the Disney catalog. For years Disney films were filled with a mix of fanciful characters and/or led solely by an assortment of cute and fuzzy (sometimes feathered) animals. But when, save for The Lion King, have we got a misunderstood male character that was actually a male (read: human, not animal)? The answer, we think, is never. Anyway this story, about…
