If you’re burned out on all the traditional children’s holiday fare, Shout! Factory has a cure for what ails you: 110 minutes of yuletide adventures from everyone’s favorite Parisian kid-lit superstar. Aside from a few random samplings of the books, I’m not all that familiar with the Madeline franchise, but my daughter is currently deeply in love with Madeline’s Christmas and Other Wintery Tales, and I’m totally okay with that. From a technical or storytelling standpoint, there’s really nothing special about any of these five segments, but the Madeline cartoons have a quiet, medium-paced charm that’s hard to resist; they aren’t loud or in your face, they’re just pleasant stories about pleasant girls who occasionally face relatively minor obstacles. That may sound dull, and really, Madeline isn’t for everyone. But for kids like my daughter,
Read More »The Tigger Movie: Two-Disc 10th Anniversary Edition (2009, Disney) purchase from Amazon Nobody raids the vaults like Disney. Even now, in the era of the DVD’s death spiral, most studios refrain from pathologically reissuing catalog titles — particularly those that were never terribly popular in the first place — but Uncle Walt’s house has always treated everything it’s ever done (or almost everything, anyway) like a timeless classic. Which is why you shouldn’t raise your eyebrows (but probably will anyway, if you’re anything like me) at the double-disc 10th anniversary edition of The Tigger Movie, an enjoyable trifle that Disney sort of half-heartedly shooed into theaters roughly a decade ago. Part of a sort of low-profile renaissance for A.A. Milne’s beloved characters at the studio, The Tigger Movie is a kissing cousin to Winnie the
Read More »Making the jump from grown-up rock to children’s music is all the rage now, but Farmer Jason — a.k.a. Jason Ringenberg, the erstwhile leader of Jason & the Scorchers — has been doing it longer than most; he made his first foray into the kid-pop market in 2003 with A Day at the Farm with Farmer Jason, and since then, he’s divided his time between post-Scorchers solo records (such as 2004′s Empire Builders) and appearances as his agriculturally inclined alter ego, who has been rocking the junior set in concert and a local access PBS series, bits of which have been repurposed for his new DVD, It’s a…Farmer Jason! Given its humble origins, the DVD is about as endearingly low-budget as you might expect, despite a NASCAR-type block of corporate logos emblazoned on the back
Read More »Trout Fishing in America – My Name Is Chicken Joe (2009, Secret Mountain) purchase this book/CD/DVD (Amazon) Trout Fishing in America celebrates its 30th anniversary this year — and the fact that you most likely didn’t know that, but have never heard a lick of the roots duo’s music, explains why they won’t be commemorating the occasion with a lavish boxed set, sold-out arena tour, or all-star tribute record. They will, however, be taking a fond look back at some of the most popular songs from their multiple forays into kids’ music with My Name Is Chicken Joe, a beautifully made ersatz best-of that sets their song “Chicken Joe” alongside some eye-catching illustrations from artist Stéphane Jorisch to create a handsome, albeit plot-free, book to go along with the 11-track CD. And if that isn’t
Read More »Pinocchio (2009, Walt Disney) purchase this Blu-ray/DVD (Amazon) Okay, see, here’s how you get cash-conscious consumers to climb aboard a new, more expensive technology bandwagon: You release lovingly curated, value-stuffed titles like Disney’s recent string of “platinum edition” Blu-ray/DVD combo packs. It helps, of course, that Disney is forever taking its classic titles out of print for years at a time, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that this 70th anniversary reissue of Pinocchio is well worth the $25 it’ll cost you through Amazon. (If you don’t own a Blu-ray player, and don’t think you’ll be buying one in the next 5-10 years, Pinocchio is also being released as a two-DVD set, with the same bonus features.) As with last year’s Platinum Edition reissue of Sleeping Beauty, the freshly scrubbed Pinocchio is truly
Read More »Gustafer Yellowgold’s Mellow Fever (2009, Apple-Eye) purchase this CD/DVD (Amazon) Back in the days when I didn’t have kids and therefore remained rather blissfully unaware of most children’s entertainment, I operated under the (pretty reasonable, I think) assumption that most of it was more or less linear, and easy to understand. I mean, it stands to reason, right? If you’re trying to entertain an audience that isn’t going to process anything you don’t explicitly spell out on the screen, you’re going to make sure it’s all spelled out, right? I was totally wrong, obviously. Do you hear that bitter laughter? That’s the sound of other parents, remembering the days when they were new to the lawless frontier that is kids’ entertainment. I started to get my first inkling of just how weird this stuff can
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