4 New Disney Releases to Consider for the Ultimate Fan this Holiday Season
Disney has gotten very savvy about its ferociously devoted audience: Hard-core Mouseketeers can join D23 -- an official, corporation-sponsored fan organization that puts together conventions and allows the faithful early peeks at upcoming movies and park attractions -- and the company offers any number of ways for devotees to spend their money, from sportswear to worldwide vacations. Home video definitely plays a part in stoking the base -- buy those DVDs now, before they go out of print! -- and Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment has four new releases that will no doubt thrill their target demographic...and the people who drew them in the Secret Santa raffle.
Fantasia and Fantasia 2000 both make their Blu-Ray debuts this week in a lavish four-disc collection that also features Destino, the legendary collaboration between Walt Disney and Salvador Dali. Both Fantasias remain resolutely hit-and-miss, but at least the successful parts look breathtaking.
(Those of us of a certain age remember running out to see the original Fantasia in the theater during one of its many reissues, tantalized by the "Sorcerer's Apprentice" sequence but ultimately bored to death by the many orchestra-playing-classical-music bits. Be kind to your children, and skip ahead to the brooms-carrying-buckets and the hippos-wearing-tutus parts.)
Also newly released are three behind-the-scenes documentaries about the inner workings of Disney that you don't have to be an Epcot fanatic to enjoy. Waking Sleeping Beauty looks at the story behind Disney's return to the feature animation game with 1989's game-changing The Little Mermaid. Decades earlier, in the 1940s, Walt Disney took a hand in helping out with the Good Neighbor Policy, an effort brought to vivid life in Walt & El Grupo, from director Theodore Thomas (Frank & Ollie); this one would make a perfect double bill with Orson Welles' south-of-the-border exercise It's All True.
The best of the three is The Boys, about the talented Sherman Brothers, who wrote the songs for countless Disney classics, including Mary Poppins and The Jungle Book. Despite the fact that they hated each other and were completely estranged -- to the extent that their sons didn't really get to know each other until they made this fascinating film about their contentious fathers. Which just goes to show that Disney's theme parks might be "the happiest place on Earth," but that cheer doesn't necessarily extend to the studio.