Alice in Wonderland: 60th Anniversary Edition

Never one to let an anniversary pass without some sort of commemoration, Disney is celebrating Alice in Wonderland‘s 60th birthday by bringing its adaptation of Lewis Caroll’s classic tales to Blu-ray for the first time. Disney aficionados will note with disappointment that Alice received a DVD upgrade last year (the appropriately titled “Un-Anniversary” edition) — a strange bit of rapid-fire double-dipping for a movie with a mixed legacy, to say the least. Is it worth owning again? Read on.

Synopsis: This Disney feature-length cartoon combines the most entertaining elements of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. Chasing after the White Rabbit, who runs into view singing “I’m Late! I’m Late!,” Alice falls down the rabbit hole into the topsy-turvy alternate world of Wonderland.

Video: Disney’s cultivated a spotless reputation for its archival animated Blu-rays, and Alice in Wonderland continues that winning streak — whether or not you regard it as one of the studio’s classics, it’s never looked as good as it does here. This is arguably more important for a movie like Alice, where narrative structure takes a back seat to visual splendor, than it is for any of the studio’s more highly esteemed films; this is the kind of movie where you just need to sit back and watch it without asking too many questions, and this new 1080p transfer makes it easier than ever to do so. Colors are brilliant, with inky blacks, and extremely minimal signs of Alice‘s age. Would that we all look so stunning when we’re 60.

Audio: Disney has given Alice what it’s calling an “enhanced home theater mix” in 5.1 DTS HD-MA sound — whatever that means. Just bear in mind that this is, after all, a 60-year-old film; the new soundtrack isn’t as flat as older versions, but it isn’t going to drop you into the middle of an (ahem) audio wonderland — it’s the kind of thing you probably aren’t going to notice much while you’re watching the film, which is actually a pretty solid compliment. Disney has polished Alice‘s sound without going overboard.

Special Features: Quite a bit of the bonus content is ported over from the “Un-Anniversary” edition, all of which is presented in standard definition, but Disney has added some interesting stuff — most notably a rather exhaustive (and really pretty interesting) feature-length documentary, Through the Keyhole: A Companion’s Guide to Wonderland, that you can watch separately or as a picture-in-picture track. Other new clips are sprinkled throughout the bonus features, including an HD live-action introduction filmed by Walt Disney in 1959, and a few very short odds and ends, such as a pencil test clip and some soundstage reference footage, presented with commentary from Kathryn Beaumont, who played Alice in the film.

Also of interest to hardcore Disney fans will be the ability to watch the film in “DisneyView” — in other words, with newly painted sidebars on the left- and right-hand sides of the screen. The artwork changes with the film, and if you’ve seen it put to use in previous Disney Blu-ray releases like Pinocchio and Snow White, you know it’s a nice, subtle addition that helps compensate for the aspect ratio gap.

Bottom Line: Walt Disney struggled for years to bring Alice in Wonderland to the screen, and it’s easy to see why — Carroll’s story doesn’t exactly lend itself to the film treatment. From a narrative standpoint, it’s kind of a mess, and as a result, movie versions — including this one — tend to come across more as random collections of trippy vignettes than anything else. That’s more or less the case here, and it’s compounded by the piecemeal approach Disney took to making it; five directors had a hand in Alice, and the transitions aren’t always seamless.

Still, if it isn’t a classic, Alice in Wonderland is certainly an enjoyable piece of animation, particularly for fans of Disney’s more avant garde efforts from the era. If you purchased the “Un-Anniversary” edition last year, it’s hard to justify reinvesting in Alice, unless you really care about seeing it in true hi-def — but if you’ve yet to add it to your collection, this is definitely the version to own.

Related articles

• What Makes a Princess? Alice In Wonderland: 60th Anniversary Special Edition (momstart.com)
• ‘Alice in Wonderland’ 60th Anniversary Blu-ray Review: Wonderful Nonsense (moviefone.com)
• Derrick: Alice in Wonderland Blu-ray: 60th Anniversary Edition (blu-ray.com)
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Fantasia/Fantasia 2000

Even if you’re the type of person who thinks of Disney as a soulless princess factory, you’d be hard-pressed to deny that 1940′s Fantasia is one of the most ambitious animated films of all time — and its sequel-ish thing, Fantasia 2000, was a gutsy-albeit-neutered attempt to recapture the freewheeling, untrammeled creativity that once defined the studio. Arguably Disney’s all-time creative peak, Fantasia now comes to Blu-ray with a 7.1 soundtrack — and Fantasia 2000 in the bargain. With Disney’s spotless hi-def record and the classic source material going for it, it’s got to be a must-own, right?

Synopsis: Fantasia, Walt Disney’s animated masterpiece of the 1940s, grew from a short-subject cartoon picturization of the Paul Dukas musical piece The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Mickey Mouse starred in this eight-minute effort, while the orchestra was under the direction of Leopold Stokowski. Disney and Stokowski eventually decided that the notion of marrying classical music with animation was too good to confine to a mere short subject; thus the notion was expanded into a two-hour feature, incorporating seven musical selections and a bridging narration by music critic Deems Taylor.

The first piece, Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor,” was used to underscore a series of abstract images. The next selection, Tschiakovsky’s “Nutcracker Suite,” is performed by dancing wood-sprites, mushrooms, flowers, goldfish, thistles, milkweeds and frost fairies. The Mickey Mouse version of “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” is next, followed by Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring,” which serves as leitmotif for the story of the creation of the world, replete with dinosaurs and volcanoes.

After a brief jam session involving the live-action musicians comes Beethoven’s “Pastorale Symphony,” enacted against a Greek-mythology tapestry by centaurs, unicorns, cupids and a besotted Bacchus. Ponchielli’s “Dance of the Hours” is performed by a Corps de Ballet consisting of hippos, ostriches and alligators. The program comes to a conclusion with a fearsome visualization of Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain,” dominated by the black god Tchernobog (referred to in the pencil tests as “Yensid,” which is guess-what spelled backwards); this study of the “sacred and profane” segues into a reverent rendition of Schubert’s “Ave Maria.”

Video: Disney has made a show of reissuing Fantasia every so often, but since flopping during its initial theatrical run, it’s been one of the studio’s black sheep — pretty much all anyone thinks of with regards to the movie is that “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” sequence, and until classical music and/or dialogue-free animation become hugely popular, that probably isn’t going to change. All that said, the Fantasia/Fantasia 2000 Blu-ray/DVD combo pack is probably about as good as it’s going to get for these movies — and that’s fine, because they look outstanding here. Disney has yet to release an archival Blu-ray that didn’t blow me away, and this set is no exception. Fantasia‘s visuals are pure, clear, and stunning, with rich colors and deep, inky blacks; while some evidence of the film’s age pops in here and there, it’s very minor, and never detracts from the immersive warmth of the picture. This is classic hand-drawn animation at its finest.

Fantasia 2000, meanwhile, is more of a mixed bag; technically, it’s superior to the original, but because Disney got a little fancier with the animation, mixing CGI in with traditionally drawn sequences, it’s aged a little less cleanly than Fantasia. (For example, nothing in Fantasia looks as clunky as the computer-animated whale sequence.) On the other hand, some of the 2000 passages really are stunning, such as the “Rhapsody in Blue” sequence, which uses Al Hirschfeld-style lines to evoke a clear New York vibe. As a standalone film, it doesn’t work nearly as well, but as an appetizer-sized appendix to the original, it has its moments.

Audio: Impeccable. Disney used Fantasia to meld classical music with animation, but as much care as the studio took with the animation side of the movie, it’s really an audio showcase. This is perhaps less true for Fantasia 2000, which started as an early IMAX release, but it’s no less of a workout for your home theater speakers — together, they provide wall-to-wall sterling sound, and hours of classically themed magic for the family. I was thrilled; my five-year-old daughter, who listens to enough classical to have a favorite composer (Tchaikovsky), was enraptured. Plenty of Blu-rays have spotless soundtracks — very few of them take advantage of the medium this thoroughly.

Special Features: Here’s this set’s weak point, if you’re really looking for one: the Fantasia/Fantasia 2000 relegates the making-of features from the previous DVDs to BD-Live status, which is bound to be an annoyance for folks who either don’t have broadband or don’t have Blu-ray players with built-in wifi capability. It’s a puzzling omission, but there’s still plenty of bonus content to choose from, from the somewhat lame (a glorified commercial for the Disney Family Museum) to the fascinating (three audio commentaries for Fantasia and two for Fantasia 2000). You also get a nine-minute featurette on Musicana, Disney’s planned annual Fantasia addendum, a feature-length look at the Disney/Dali collaboration Destino, and more.

Bottom Line: Quibble if you must with the special features, but the bottom line is that this is the best either of these features have ever looked or sounded, and at roughly $25, this is one hell of a bargain for a four-disc combo pack sporting Blu-rays and DVDs of both movies. Do you love animation? Do you love music? This deserves a spot in your collection, no questions asked.

The Sound of Music

One of the most enduring musicals and family films of all time, The Sound of Music celebrates its 45th anniversary by making its Blu-ray debut — and not just any ol’ debut, either: Fox has pulled out all the stops with this transfer, adding a new 7.1 DTS-HD soundtrack and tons of bonus material to go with the meticulously remastered footage. They might be middle-aged now, but the hills are still alive, and they’ve never looked or sounded better.

Synopsis: One of the most popular movie musicals of all time, The Sound of Music is based on the true story of the Trapp Family Singers. Julie Andrews stars as Maria, a young nun in an Austrian convent who regularly misses her morning prayers because she enjoys going to the hills to sing the title song. Deciding that Maria needs to learn something about the real world before she can take her vows, the Mother Superior (Peggy Wood) sends her off to be governess for the children of the widowed Captain Von Trapp (Christopher Plummer).Video: Fox has been guilty of cutting corners with its archival Blu-rays in the past, but with The Sound of Music, they prove they know how to buckle down and do it right. The studio went all the way back to the original negatives for this set, rescanning it at 8,000 lines, and all that care and attention to detail shine through every moment of the film. If any digital noise reduction was used, you can’t see it; Music looks as bright, clean, and warm as the day it was released — if not better. Presented at its original aspect ratio and given plenty of space on a 50GB disc, this is a tribute to the folks manning the studio vaults — and the kind of movie that makes a persuasive case for owning a Blu-ray player.

Audio: In addition to the older Dolby 4.0 surround track, the 45th Anniversary Edition includes a 7.1 DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack, mixed with as much care and precision as the video. In a lot of cases, putting this much time into an older movie’s soundtrack might seem like wasted effort, but The Sound of Music lives up to its name, with some of the most well-known songs in American cinema. They’ve really never sounded better than they do here, and the soundtrack doesn’t stop there — this is one of the finest mixing jobs I’ve heard, brilliantly balancing dialogue with ambient noise and the score, and making it all sound perfectly natural in the process.

Special Features: They spread out over two discs, starting with a pair of audio commentaries (one from director Robert Wise, one from Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer) and “Your Favorite Things” mode, which gives you the option to watch the movie with picture-in-picture trivia, storyboards, on-screen lyrics to the songs, and more. You also have the option of listening to the songs separate from the film, with or without “sing-along” mode, which displays lyrics.

Disc Two is all special features, and there are tons of them, divided into sections. Section One includes 24 featurettes, none more than seven minutes in length but all entertaining in their own right, looking at everything from on-set films to the making of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s score. The second section offers a uniquely fascinating series of shorts that provide multiple views of 18 scenes from the movie, all between one and three minutes in length. Section Three offers hours (and I do mean hours) of films about the film — you get “From Fact to Phenomenon” (90 minutes), “My Favorite Things: Julie Andrews Remembers” (60 minutes), and a pair of 80-minute features about the music, as well as a smattering of brief audio interviews with the cast and crew.

Moving on, you also get various rare clips, including Maria von Trapp’s appearance on The Julie Andrews Hour, screen tests, photo galleries, and the introductory segment Andrews filmed for the last deluxe Sound of Music release (five years ago, but who’s counting?) Finally, the second disc is rounded out with assorted bits of publicity material surrounding the film’s original release, such as television and radio clips.

While a lot of this content will be familiar to fans who purchased the 40th anniversary edition or other versions, it’s hard to complain when you’re sorting through so much of it, and the 45th Anniversary Edition presents them with a nifty (albeit rather time-consuming) series of interactive menus. It’s hard to imagine what else anyone could ask for from a reissue of the film.

Bottom Line: I’ve studiously avoided musicals for most of my life; in fact, this viewing of The Sound of Music was my first. Was it as hokey as I’d feared? Yes. And is that part of the movie’s tremendous charm? Absolutely. Filled with gorgeous cinematography and timeless songs, this is family entertainment at its finest — they just don’t make ‘em like this anymore. Fortunately for us, they don’t really need to; buy the 45th Anniversary Edition, and you can immerse yourself in the film as often as you like. (My kids have already seen it three times, and they’re not done with it yet.)

The Crimson Wing

Good for more than just prettying up Christopher Cross album covers, the flamingo is a fascinating creature that rarely gets its documentary due — but all that has changed with Disneynature’s The Crimson Wing. Don’t believe flamingos can hold your attention for 78 minutes? Turn on your hi-def set and prepare to get pink.

Synopsis: Discover one of nature’s last great mysteries in The Crimson Wing, a miraculous story of love, courage and survival from Disneynature, the studio that brought you Earth. In a place like no other on the planet, the dramatic and desolate Lake Natron in northern Tanzania, you’ll witness a spectacle unlike anything you’ve seen before: a million crimson-winged flamingos arrive to continue the circle of life. Focusing on the adventures of a single chick set against a backdrop of never-before-filmed landscapes, The Crimson Wing is a visually stunning journey into the life and struggles of the mysterious and inspiring flamingo. Video: You can’t have a nature documentary without spectacular visuals, and The Crimson Wing‘s 1080p transfer brings it to home theaters in all its brilliant glory. This is a movie about thousands upon thousands of birds, so there’s often an awful lot to take in on the screen, and there are moments when the picture can’t quite keep up — but the errors are slight, and really, unless you’re looking for flaws, you’ll be too busy gaping at the screen to notice. The colors are rich, the contrast is clear, and the details are crisp; The Crimson Wing is a feast for the eyes.

Audio: This isn’t exactly Shark Week, so don’t expect a lot of booming action, but the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtrack has plenty of dynamic range, and a fine balance between the birds and the score (supplied by something called the Cinematic Orchestra). The Crimson Wing is definitely toward the slower, more contemplative end of the nature documentary spectrum, and the soundtrack is a fine companion — absorbing, but never showy or distracting.

Special Features: Most movies of this sort don’t include a whole lot in the way of bonus content, and Crimson Wing is no different; the only really substantial features are the “filmmaker annotations” track, which adds pop-up/picture-in-picture content like trivia and interviews to the film, and five brief featurettes (all together, they add up to about 20 minutes in length). The rest of the special features are basically throwaway stuff, like a screensaver and trailers for other Disney films; having said that, Wing does pack in a DVD copy of the movie, which is always a great added value, especially for family titles like this one.

Bottom Line: Parents of young children will likely be of two minds about Crimson Wing — on one hand, it’s great to see Disney reviving the nature documentary tradition they established with their True Life Adventures series decades ago; on the other hand, this is a deceptively dark and violent film for a G-rated feature. Personally, I think it’s important for kids to understand the violence of nature — but even for sensitive adults, there are some parts of this movie that will be difficult to watch, like the scenes of baby flamingos being hunted by storks or struggling under the weight of salt spurs. As with anything else, you should either watch it first or watch it with your kids; don’t trust Disney to do your babysitting for you. All that said, though, this is an excellent documentary, unusually thoughtful and stunning to look at in the bargain.

Oceans

We seem to be living in an unusually prolific time for nature documentaries — I think this is the third underwater doc I’ve reviewed for Dadnabbit in the past year or so — but who’s complaining? We know next to nothing about the world around us, particularly the ocean, and between filmmaking innovations and the advent of hi-def home theaters, exploring the planet from the comfort of your couch is more fun than ever. For their follow-up to Earth, Disneynature decided to plunge into the sea with directors Jacques Perrin and Jacques Cluzaud, and the movie they fished out — the appropriately titled Oceans – is another worthy addition to your HD wildlife collection.

Synopsis: Disneynature, the studio that presented the record-breaking film Earth, now brings Oceans to the screen. Nearly three-quarters of the Earth’s surface is covered by water, and Oceans boldly chronicles the mysteries that lie beneath. Directors Jacques Perrin and Jacques Cluzaud dive deep into the very waters that sustain all of mankind –exploring the playful splendor and the harsh reality of the weird and wonderful creatures that live within. Featuring spectacular never-before-seen imagery captured by the latest underwater technologies, Oceans offers an unprecedented look beneath the sea in a powerful yet enchanting motion picture.

Video: Movies like this are all about the picture, and with Oceans, Disneynature extends the impeccable track record they started with Earth. It is, in a word, dazzling. Perrin and Cluzaud take a meditative approach to their filmmaking, never forceful or showy, and it’s the perfect approach for this beautifully photographed film; they let their subjects — and the breathtaking levels of detail their cameras capture — speak for themselves. This is showroom stuff, the kind of thing you can take out and turn on to impress your non-HD friends.

Audio: You might not think Oceans‘ audio would matter much, but the filmmakers clearly disagreed, putting together a deeply immersive DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtrack that takes advantage of each channel to surround the viewer. The narration is usually the worst part of these movies, but Pierce Brosnan acquits himself admirably here, and while he takes up the center, the sounds of the ocean and its residents blend with Bruno Coulais’ beautiful score to fill in the rest. It’s soothing, oddly hypnotic, and altogether impressive — one of the best I’ve heard, really.

Special Features: You don’t really look for tons of special features in movies like Oceans, and the selection here is typically slim — a smattering of bonus videos, a self-congratulatory Disneynature profile, and a deeply unnecessary music video from Joe Jonas and Demi Lovato take up the bulk. But the one feature worth accessing is really pretty terrific: the picture-in-picture “Filmmakers Annotations” track that adds interviews, trivia, behind-the-scenes clips, and other footage to the movie. When your kids ask to watch Oceans again (and they will), do it with this turned on.

Bottom Line: It’s easy to be cynical about any major corporation that undertakes a public greening campaign, and Disneynature is no different. But there’s no arguing with the quality of the studio’s offerings, which also include the flamingo documentary Crimson Wing (to be covered in another post). In a kids’ entertainment landscape littered with noisy cartoons and crappy toy tie-ins, there’s a lot to be said for a movie this quietly contemplative, and one that makes such a carefully considered effort to teach viewers about the interconnected (ahem) nature of life. Dive in.

There’s nothing the folks at Disney love more than reissuing old movies, so it’s fortunate that they’re so good at it. Their ongoing Diamond Series, which already includes some must-have hi-def classics — including Pinocchio and Snow White — adds another spotless jewel to its crown with this remastered, expanded edition of Beauty and the Beast.

Originally released in the fall of 1991, Beauty and the Beast cemented the unlikely comeback Disney started with 1989’s The Little Mermaid; an affirmation that the studio had left behind B-level animation like The Black Cauldron, it grossed over $375 million and was an awards magnet, netting two Oscars, three Golden Globes, and four Grammys. If Mermaid raised the bar for modern animation, Beast set the standard. It was a peak Disney would find it increasingly difficult to reach over the next decade, but that’s another story — we’re here to talk about this three-disc set.

All of Disney’s Diamond Series releases have looked and sounded flawless, and Beauty and the Beast is no exception. As a father, I’m ambivalent about the overall message of most Disney movies, and as a consumer, I find their incessant “limited time only” reissues repugnant; that being said, it’s awfully hard to argue with entertainment this beautifully crafted, in a package this lovingly curated. I’ve seen a lot of Blu-ray reissues, and nobody comes close to Disney in terms of content or presentation — they clearly don’t rush their conversions, and they don’t skimp on the added content, right up to the way they bundle DVD copies in with the Blu-rays (a decision so smart I can’t believe it hasn’t been done away with).

In hi-def, Beauty and the Beast looks and sounds superb, thanks to a flawless 1080p conversion and DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 soundtrack. The movie was originally released during a golden moment in animation technology, when computers were sophisticated enough to use for a little visual spice, but not so ubiquitous that they overwhelmed the hand-drawn art; as a result, it survives the conversion better than, say, The Black Cauldron probably would, because the seams don’t show as clearly. In a word, it’s lovely, and any fan of the film will be thrilled to own it.

They’ll also be thrilled to dive into the set’s copious bonus materials, which spill over into a second disc and include three versions of the movie (theatrical, extended, and picture-in-picture “work in progress”), an audio commentary track from co-directors Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise with composer Alan Menken, storyboards, a feature-length documentary, games, storyboards, all the added content from the old DVD release, and more. Until Disney can bring Walt Disney back to life and bundle his reanimated corpse with the Ultra Mega Diamond Edition, this is absolutely the definitive version to own. Simply excellent.

As we’ve discussed here in the past, it’s fashionable to hate Disney, and there are some good reasons for that — but if you’re going to build a spinoff franchise, the Tinker Bell movies offer a case study in the right way to do it. Tink is a recognizable character, but she wasn’t the basis of the classic film she starred in, and that frees up the studio to tell all kinds of stories about her without interfering with parents’ fond Peter Pan memories — and tell those stories with computer-generated animation, to boot.

The sight of an animated sequel or spinoff isn’t exactly encouraging, especially of the CG variety, so from the outside, the Tinker Bell movies might look like cheap cash-ins on a classic film. But this is John Lasseter’s Disney, where quality is king; if you’re allergic to fairy cartoons, then it’s doubtful that anything here will change your mind, but if you’ve avoided the Tinker Bell spinoffs because you suffered the horror of Return to Never Land or Lady and the Tramp II: Scamp’s Adventure, then dive right in.

Like the first two installments of the Tinker Bell saga, The Great Fairy Rescue takes place before Tink meets Peter Pan, Wendy, or any of the other characters from her most famous adventures. Unlike the others, however, Rescue functions as a more direct prequel to Peter Pan. The story, which picks up after Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure, follows the headstrong Tink (Mae Whitman) to the annual Fairy Camp, where she ignores the warnings of fellow fairy Vidia (Pamela Adlon) and ends up locked in a “fairy house” built by young Lizzie Griffiths (Lauren Mote), who takes Tink home, thus setting in motion the titular rescue. (It’s actually Vidia who ultimately needs rescuing, but still, the story starts here.)

Rescue expands the mythology of the series (we learn that fairies are responsible for painting butterfly wings, putting the strips on bees, and can’t fly in the rain) while making room for some cute callbacks to Peter Pan, like Tink’s discovery that pixie dust can make people fly, or that when she talks, humans only hear the sound of a bell. We’re also treated to a few glimpses of the impetuous, sometimes violent nature she displayed when we first met her. It might boast eye-popping, up-to-the-minute visuals (and more on that in a minute), but Tinker Bell and the Great Fairy Rescue is built on rich, clever storytelling that ties into the Disney tradition more strongly than you’d have a right to expect.

On Blu-ray, this movie is a surprising treat. With its stellar archival releases, Disney has demonstrated that it knows its hi-def stuff, and Great Fairy Rescue finds them continuing to make amends for the decade they spent using the home market as a dumping ground for subpar product. It may not have quite as much polish as your average Pixar release, but it still boasts a rich color spectrum, deep detail, and a broad, immersive soundtrack experience. In other words: It looks and sounds great.

But all of that counts for naught if the kids don’t like it, and I’m here to tell you that Tinker Bell and the Great Fairy Rescue has been one of the bigger hits of the year with the pint-sized testers here at Dadnabbit HQ. Both of my kids (Sophie, nearly five, and Owen, almost three) enjoyed the first two installments, but they really took a shine to Rescue — in fact, as the closing credits rolled after their first viewing, they bolted out the back door and into the yard, flapping their arms and pretending to be fairies. How much more of an endorsement do you need?

Not counting the gasp she let out when she saw the box, those were the first words my four-year-old daughter said while we watched IMAX: Under the Sea, and that pretty much set the tone for 40 minutes of stunningly rich, beautifully filmed aquatic exploration. These days, it seems like just about every major movie lands on IMAX screens, but once upon a time, they were the near-exclusive domain of short nature documentaries — which means that even though it might look like a trifle next to Clash of the Titans (or whatever big-budget action movie is playing at your local IMAX theater), Under the Sea is really more of a gentle throwback.

Director Howard Hall has plenty of experience working underwater — his previous films include Into the Deep, Island of the Sharks, and Deep Sea — and Under the Sea is every bit the visual treat you’d expect from someone with Hall’s résumé. His camera lingers over fish that don’t look like fish (hence my daughter’s early exclamation), fish that do unexpected stuff, and fish that are just plain fun to look at, with the pleasantly subdued Jim Carrey serving as narrator every step (stroke?) of the way. If you wanted to quibble, you could take issue with the inordinate amount of time the movie spends on the cuttlefish, but between its deadly tongue and its color-changing skin, there’s plenty of spectacle to go around.

Under the Sea is completely family-friendly, avoiding most of the honey-don’t-look death and violence intrinsic to most nature documentaries; aside from the cuttlefish dispatching its prey, about the worst thing that happens is a sea turtle chomping on a jellyfish. This isn’t a film that’s out to educate viewers about the circle of life — if it has a message, it’s more along the lines of “the sea is really neat, and we should be taking better care of it.” Who can argue with that?

On Blu-ray, Under the Sea is about as eye-popping as you could hope, so clear and vibrant you might swear you’re looking at at CGI creation, and the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround soundtrack, while it doesn’t exactly give your system a workout, offers a nice balance between Carrey’s narration, the (distractingly cutesy) sound effects, and the music. If you really wanted to find an axe to grind with this package, it’d be with the bonus materials, which consist of a glorified commercial for the film and a series of fairly dull webisode-style clips offering a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the expeditions. Sea is currently going for $26.99 at Amazon, and you can get a lot more bang for your buck on the Blu-ray market than a 40-minute movie with a few minutes of extras thrown in. In theaters, Under the Sea was shown in 3-D; perhaps the studio is waiting to unload the really good stuff for when 3-D televisions arrive later this year.

Well, in Disney’s eyes, the movie’s eventual $264 million worldwide gross could have been a little bigger — and as far as most critics were concerned, The Princess and the Frog was a solid, albeit disappointingly slight, effort that didn’t quite live up to its advance billing. (Not that anything could have, but whatever.) For a studio that spends an inordinate amount of effort trying to make filmgoers believe each of its releases is a certified classic (except Song of the South, right? Ha ha), the lavishly promoted Princess was a bit of an embarrassment.

Scrub away all that hype, though, and Princess is actually quite a bit of fun. If you’re the type of parent who, like me, sort of detests the whole Disney princess thing to begin with, the movie won’t do much to change your mind — despite a few surface changes to the studio’s formula, it’s very much the slice of happily-ever-after fairy tale that the title indicates — but it’s beautifully animated, with vibrant characters, gorgeous visuals, and a gently rollicking set of songs from one of my favorite artists of all time, Randy Newman. I mean, hey, it’s Disney. What exactly are you looking for, if not peerless craft in service of a storyline that probably doesn’t quite deserve it?

The story takes place in New Orleans, where we meet Tiana (Anika Noni Rose), a hardworking waitress who scrambles from shift to shift while trying to save enough money to open the restaurant her father dreamed of owning while he was alive. The town is abuzz with the arrival of Prince Naveen (Bruno Campos), a cash-poor scion of Maldonian royalty who’s running out of time to find a wealthy bride before his parents disown him. Enter Tiana’s blowsy childhood friend Charlotte (Jennifer Cody), the daughter of the town’s wealthiest man (John Goodman), who has her sights set on marrying a real prince and throws a party to get his attention.

Meanwhile, the prince runs afoul of a scurrilous voodoo man (the always wonderful Keith David), who turns him into a frog and makes Naveen’s butler (Peter Bartlett, known to One Life to Live fans as Nigel) look like the prince. Eventually, Naveen hops into Tiana, who’s working at Charlotte’s party — and if you watched the trailer, you know he cajoles her into kissing him, at which point she becomes a frog too. Adventure (and a talking alligator voiced by Emeril Lagasse) ensues. You know the drill: Cue a few song and dance numbers, some mild peril, and an ending where, against all odds, the bad guy gets his just desserts. There are no surprises here, but that’s sort of the point. As I said, it’s all very well done, and if the storyline is a little more mature than some of Disney’s other animated features, don’t worry — my four-year-old was positively spellbound by the characters, even if some of what they were doing went over her head. Any time you have talking animals on the screen, you can pretty much bank on kids enjoying themselves. (Notable exception: Fritz the Cat.)

If you’ve picked up any of Disney’s Blu-ray catalog reissues, you know no one takes advantage of the format like the Mouse House. I’ve seen Blu-ray reissues from the ’90s that look worse than Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs; whatever the studio’s flaws are, they know what they’re doing when it comes to hi-def titles, and that includes The Princess and the Frog. The movie’s palette is as bright and rich as you’d hope, given the story’s New Orleans location, and this 1080p transfer brings every hue and shadow bursting onto the screen. It’s stunning — and unlike, say, Snow White, it has a fully immersive DTS HD Master Audio soundtrack to match. Even if the audio/visual presentation was all Princess had going for it, the Blu-ray would be the version to own.

But, of course, there’s more. In fact, Princess comes bundled with an array of bonus features, including deleted scenes (works in progress, but still worth watching), behind-the-scenes featurettes, art galleries, a game, a Ne-Yo music video, and commentary tracks from co-writers/directors John Musker, Ron Clements, and Peter Del Vecho, plus BD-Live content. Disney’s selling the title in a variety of configurations, but if you’re going to go Blu-ray, you might as well get the triple disc Blu/DVD/digital pack; it’s $7 more than the single-disc Blu-ray version, and unless you’ve got a portable Blu-ray player in your car, it’ll save you the headache of jumping through whichever hoops conversion takes. (As curious as I am about Disney’s “keychest” technology, which is supposed to allow you to take your movies wherever you want them to go, I’ll miss the pleasing heft of these triple-disc sets.)

Bottom line? While John Lasseter may not have brought Disney back to traditional animation as resplendently as he ushered in the CGI era, The Princess and the Frog is still a thoroughly enjoyable addition to the studio’s legacy, and this is the best-looking version on the market, with plenty of bonus content and a relatively affordable price tag to boot. If yours is the type of household that does a lot of wishing on a star, consider this another bright one in the firmament.

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.

Up tells the story of Carl Fredricksen (Ed Asner), a widowed balloon salesman who once dreamed of high adventure in the jungles of South America, but ended up building a life with his wife instead — and since her death, he’s watched his neighborhood slowly be taken over by developers who would like nothing more than to buy his property and turn it into a plot for just another new building. Faced with losing his house and being committed to a rest home, Carl improvises by turning the entire building into an airship, finally setting sail for those jungles — with a surprise guest in tow. Eight-year-old Russell, a Wilderness Explorer Scout who’s been pestering Carl to let him help out around the place so he can earn a badge, just happens to be on the porch when liftoff occurs, and just like that, audiences have a mismatched duo to root for.

Eventually, Carl and Russell touch down at the mythical Paradise Falls, where they meet a talking dog named Dug (voiced, to great comic effect, by co-director Bob Peterson) and find themselves smack in the middle of a struggle between…well, I don’t want to give anything away. Suffice it to say that Up is more than just an opportunity for Asner to be crotchety for 90 minutes — there’s all kinds of dashing adventure and derring-do going on here, as well as at least one sweetly blossoming friendship, as well as the small miracle of cutting-edge technology being used to explore what it means to get old. Toss in an opening 15-minute sequence that draws you in and breaks your heart without a single line of dialogue, and you’ve got much more than just another hit: Up proves Pixar is still deepening and expanding its craft.

And hey, it looks great on Blu-ray, too. CG ‘toons take full advantage of the format, pushing visual fidelity to its limits without having to deal with things like dirt, scratches, or the vagaries of real-life lighting; Up is no different, and you can purchase this set knowing you’re getting exactly what you pay for: a beautiful (and beautifully made) film that the entire family can enjoy — and then they can gorge on all the bonus features, which include shorts (Partly Cloudy, which played before Up in theaters, and Dug’s Special Mission, which functions as a sort of prequel), an array of terrific documentaries detailing the making of the movie (including the filmmakers’ research trip to the tepuis of Venezuela), and all manner of games, alternate scenes, and expanded content.

Making this even more of a banner day for Pixar fans is the Blu-ray release of the studio’s fourth film, 2001′s Monsters, Inc., which stars Billy Crystal and John Goodman as a pair of monsters who unwittingly bring an adorable little girl (who they nickname Boo) through her closet and into their world, where energy is drawn from the screams of children — and because kids aren’t as easy to scare as they used to be, there’s a bit of an energy crisis. Boo, for one, isn’t afraid of the monsters at all — and making matters worse is their belief that children are toxic, so her presence in Monstropolis problematic, to say the least. Though it’s generally regarded as one of Pixar’s weaker films (hey, it’s only at 95 percent at Rotten Tomatoes), Monsters still boasts a pair of terrific performances from Goodman and Crystal, as well as a typically terrific script, and it’s never looked better than it does here.

The Monsters, Inc. Blu-ray includes features from the original DVD release, such as the For the Birds and Mike’s New Car shorts, and adds a ton of new bonus content, from stuff you probably won’t ever watch again (a look at the building of the Monsters, Inc. ride at Tokyo Disneyland) to stuff you probably will (a retrospective round table with the filmmakers). In fact, an entire disc of extra material — you get to go on a tour of the studio, hear about “banished concepts” that didn’t make it into the film, and play a game — plus Disney’s now-traditional DVD and digital copy discs. Of course, any major Pixar fan most likely already owns the double-disc DVD edition that was released in 2002, and it’s still available — but as of right now, it’s only $7 cheaper, and this movie has absolutely never looked or sounded better. If you don’t own it yet, this is the version to own.