Archive for November, 2009

DVD Review: Walt Disney Treasures “Zorro: The Complete First Season” and “Zorro: The Complete Second Season”

Nostalgia is a tough sell when it comes to today’s children. With 21^st century kids used to quick, Michael Bay-paced edits and brilliant, flashing colors to keep their attention, sitting them down to watch a black and white television series from 50 years ago may seem like a lost cause. With the release of Zorro the Complete First Season and the Complete Second Season in deluxe DVD format, Disney is showing the utmost confidence that this adventure series will delight not only the diehard Disney fanatics, but future generations of TV watchers. Trust me when I tell you that if you sit down with your son or daughter to watch Zorro, they’ll love it, and you’ll find your inner kid bursting with enthusiasm.

When Walt Disney decided to produce his first primetime series, he went all out to ensure that what he was airing met the high standards he set for his studio, both in motion pictures and television. He smartly chose to adapt the pulp novels of Johnston McCulley and partly based his vision of the masked avenger on the wildly successful silent film starring Douglas Fairbanks.  The Fairbanks version of the hero was a lighthearted take, adding humor and charm mixed with swordplay and spectacular stunts. Disney hired top writers to produce the show, he built an elaborate, permanent set on the Disney lot, and he brought together a cast of talented character actors to bring to life the colorful characters he envisioned. In the role of Don Diego/Zorro, an unknown actor named Guy Williams was cast. While this may have seemed like a risk, the actor exuded charisma as the masked avenger out to defend the oppressed. Moreover, Williams had an everyman, relatable quality that draws you in and keeps you entertained. And entertained you will be. Read the rest of this entry

DVD/CD Review: “Readeez Volume Two” and “Songeez”

The following exchange has taken place in my home roughly four dozen times over the last 24 hours:

Me: I am a frying pan.

My daughter Sophie: (giggling) No, daddy, you’re a man.

Me: April fool, April fool, April fool.

Why, you ask? Only because the animated duo of Julian and Isabel Waters is back with another collection of the delightful (and educational!) animated musical shorts known as Readeez. Readeez Volume Two: Make It Up the Mountain includes 30 additions to the series that started with last year’s Readeez Volume One, and if you enjoyed the first batch, you’ll be pleased to know Volume Two is even better. The videos have a little more going on, there’s a slight theme tying them all together, and most importantly, the songs are even catchier and more varied. Read the rest of this entry

CD Review: Sarah Lee Guthrie & Family, “Go Waggaloo”

Sarah Lee Guthrie is Woody Guthrie’s granddaughter — and the youngest daughter of Arlo Guthrie, whose “Alice’s Restaurant” took satirical folk protest songs to a whole new level — so her first children’s CD, Go Waggaloo, carries a greater weight of expectation than most debuts. Then again, most artists don’t debut on Smithsonian Folkways, a label geared much more strongly toward the music of the past, but Guthrie’s music fits right in: Waggaloo adds a vibrant new thread to the tapestry of traditional American music, weaving together a seamless blend of original songs and Woody Guthrie covers to produce a lovely, yet wonderfully raw, hootenanny record for the whole family.

Go Waggaloo is credited to Sarah Lee Guthrie & Family, and the credits reflect that spirit: Songwriting credits are spread between Sarah, her husband Johnny Irion, and their daughter Olivia, and a whole passel of Guthries — plus family friends like Pete Seeger — show up on the recordings. The connections between the musicians — and from the musicians to the songs — translates into an album whose warmth is felt from the first sunny strains of the opening track, “Don’t I Fit in My Daddy’s Shoes?,” and lasts clear through to the final ringing chords of “Oni’s Ponies.” In between, you get a half hour of fun that includes the joyous title track, the startling morality tale “Oh How He Lied,” the lovely “Big Moon,” a transcendent group runthrough of the classic “She’ll Be Coming ‘Round the Mountain,” and much more. It feels less like an album than an accidental peek into a very talented family’s singalong, which fits right in with the Guthrie/Seeger musical mission statement: Singing is just as important as listening, and everything is more fun when we all join in. Read the rest of this entry

CD Review: Renee & Jeremy, “C’mon”

Lullaby albums are like the Christmas records of the kids’ music world — they’re evergreen sellers that don’t really need to be great as long as they conform to a fairly narrow, easily reproduced aesthetic. But like Christmas albums, sometimes a lullaby record comes along that’s really special, and such was the case with Renee & Jeremy’s 2007 debut, It’s a Big World. A magical blend of hushed acoustic instrumentation and beautiful harmonies, It’s a Big World proved that not all children’s albums from pop music refugees are created equal; in fact, sometimes, they even surpass the artists’ “grown up” work.

Two years later, Renee & Jeremy have returned with C’mon, a markedly more uptempo collection that proves the duo isn’t only capable of soothing little ones to sleep. But don’t worry — these songs retain the peaceful warmth of It’s a Big World, thanks to comforting melodies and the soft embrace of Renee & Jeremy’s intertwined voices. It’s a more varied effort, but it doesn’t feel any less cohesive than the first; ballads like “Is It Really Any Wonder” blend seamlessly into peppier tracks like “Mama Papa Love,” and at just a shade over half an hour long, C’mon will reach the final notes of its closing track, “Rely,” long before you’re ready for the album to end. (The solution: hours on repeat.)

C’mon touches on familiar themes such as patience (“Right Now”), sharing (“Share”), and familial love (“Mama Papa Love”), but it does so with uncommon intelligence and grace. In a crowded kids’ music marketplace where hyperactive noise is often overpowering, Renee & Jeremy keep things simple, contemplative, and honest. This album will be a gift for you as much as it is for your children.

Blu-ray Reviews: “Up” and “Monsters, Inc.”

How do you make the Blu-ray release of one of the best movies of the year even bigger? Bundle it with a disc and a half worth of bonus features, plus a DVD, plus a digital copy of the film.

Oh and if you’re Pixar, you do it on the same day you bring one of your earlier smash hits to Blu-ray — and attach just as much extra content to that release, too.

Since debuting with Toy Story in 1995, Pixar has defied expectations by not only cranking out smash hits while helping pioneer a brand new type of animation, but by opening up new vistas in the stuff that really matters — like, you know, storytelling. They’ve shown us what happens to our toys when we’re out of the room, peeked into the hidden lives of bugs and fish, proved that monsters are just as scared of kids as kids are of monsters, exposed the travails of former superheroes, let us hear cars talk, put a rat in the kitchen, and made us fall in love with a robot janitor. Every time they announce a new movie, the odds of it not living up to its predecessors grows — has a studio ever held a perfect batting average for this long? — so when it came out that Pixar’s 10th feature would follow the adventures of a grumpy old man who sails away in a house to which he’s tied thousands of helium-filled balloons, bets were high that Up would mark the spot where the house Buzz Lightyear built fell down.

How about that? With 98 percent at Rotten Tomatoes and almost $650 million in worldwide box office receipts, Up made it a perfect 10 for Pixar — and if you missed it in theaters, now’s your chance to bring it home in glorious high definition. Read the rest of this entry

DVD Review: “Aliens in the Attic”

I’ve now seen Aliens in the Attic one and a half times, and after each viewing, my seven- and ten-year-old both exclaimed how awesome it is. For kids, this movie has all of the elements to make it awesome: cute aliens, adventure, a Disney star (Ashley Tisdale), neat gadgets and lots of physical humor. As a parent, I thought Aliens in the Attic was pretty awesome, too. The first thought that came to mind when I watched this movie (penned by Mark Burton and Adam F. Goldberg) was how it follows the model of those great Spielberg films from the ‘80s, like Goonies and Gremlins. Indeed, there were several moments in Aliens in the Attic when director John Schultz emulated the camera style of those slickly produced, slapsticky Steven Spielberg productions. Because of this approach, this film was a throwback to my youth and made it as much fun for me as it was for my kids.

In the film, Carter Jenkins stars as Tom, a straight ‘A’ kid who’s throwing his grades in order to look cool. He’s tired of being a mathlete and the butt of the jokes for all of his peers. Even among his family, Tom feels like a loser and an outsider and thinks that his brainpower will never get him anywhere. Tom has an older sister, Bethany (Tisdale) and an adorable little sister, Hannah (Ashley Boettcher). After they’re reprimanded for trying to fix his grades by hacking into the school computer, Tom and his sisters are dragged on a family vacation by their parents (Kevin Nealon and Gillian Vigman) to spend time at a summer house with their uncle (Andy Richter), their Nana (Doris Roberts) and their three cousins, Jake (Austin Butler) and twin boys, Art and Lee (Henry and Regan Young). Showing up unexpectedly is Bethany’s skeezy boyfriend, Ricky (Robert Hoffman), a college student lying about his age in order to score with his recent high school graduate girlfriend. Read the rest of this entry