Sleeping Beauty (DVD)

Connect to Facebook/Twitter, recommend via email and much more.

---

Video:
The image quality is nothing short of gorgeous. Originally presented in Super Technirama 70 and Technicolor, the entire movie has painstakingly been restored frame by frame to its former glory, much as the studio did earlier with "Snow White." Disney claims that over 118,000 individual cells were cleaned and polished to give us the product we now have. It shows. Remastered to THX standards and presented in both a 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen (2.13:1 across my own television, given a degree of overscan) and a standard pan-and-scan fullscreen, the picture is glorious. The colors and definition are outstanding, and the transfer is clean and clear, with practically no grain, haloes, or moiré effects.

Audio:
Disney has remastered the early stereo sound, too, this time in Dolby Digital 5.1 surround, although, truth be told, there isn't a lot of surround to go around except in minor musical ambience reinforcement. The sonics are very smooth, but there is not much to hear at the frequency extremes, the lowest bass and highest treble, nor is there much in the way of dynamics. It's pleasant enough sound, mind you, just not special in any significant way as measured by today's audio standards.

Extras:
The set is beautifully packaged in a slim-line, two-disc box enclosed in a lovely cardboard slipcase. However, once you inserted disc one the player, it's as frustrating as always to make your way to the movie. First off, you have to click through the various FBI warnings and such; then you have to know to click "Menu" or you wind up watching twenty minutes of advertisements and trailers; then you have to wait for the Main Menu to eventually fade into view; and, lastly, you have to click "Next" several more times to get by the Disney logos that precede the film. Whew! It makes a guy wish there were just the movie involved.

Disc one contains a choice of the standard or widescreen versions of the film, the DD 5.1 soundtrack, and spoken English in both widescreen and fullscreen presentations. French and Spanish are available in the fullscreen rendering only, which may be a problem for some listeners. There are also English captions for the hearing impaired. The main bonus item on the first disc is an audio commentary with a whole flock of the production's surviving filmmakers, including Eyvind Earle, the art director; Mary Costa, the voice of Aurora; Ollie Johnston and Marc Davis, two supervising animators; Frank Armitage, a background painter; Mike Gabriel and Michael Giaimo, two Disney artists; and hosted by Jeff Kurtti, a Disney historian. However, this commentary is only available in the widescreen version. To conclude the disc, there are Sneak Peeks at other Disney titles and a THX Optimizer set of audiovisual tests.

Disc two contains the bulk of the extras, and like so many bonus discs these days it's divided into a myriad of different categories, requiring dozens of separate clicks and a literal road map in the enclosed booklet insert to navigate. Why, oh, why can't we get something like a forthright, matter-of-fact documentary for a change, perhaps divided into chapters, that correlates all these little items? Maybe it wouldn't seem like there was so much material available, but it would be a whole lot easier to get around.

Anyway, disc two is divided into two main categories, "History and Behind the Scenes" and "Games, Music & Fun." Among the many extras in the first group are "Once Upon a Dream: The Making of Sleeping Beauty," sixteen minutes; "The Peter Tchaikovsky Story," part of a Disneyland television broadcast of 1959, thirty minutes; and "Grand Canyon," the 1959 Academy Award winner for Best Live-Action Short Film, twenty-eight minutes, which features the famous music of Ferde Grofe. Why "Grand Canyon"? It was paired with "Sleeping Beauty" when it premiered. In addition, there are a whole lot of other bits and pieces like "The Music," with Mary Costa reminiscing about Walt Disney and the making of the film; "The Design," with Leonard Maltin and others discussing the unique look of the film; a "Restoration" segment; a "Widescreen to Pan-and-Scan Comparison"; and a multitude of photo galleries, bonus shorts, 3-D virtual galleries, and theatrical trailers too numerous to mention.

Among the extras in the second group are a "Rescue Aurora" interactive game; a "Princess Personality Game"; a "Sleeping Beauty Ink and Paint Game"; a "Disney's Art Project"; a "Once Upon (Another) Dream" music video; and a "Once Upon a Dream" sing-along song. In all, there are some thirty-eight different items on disc two that a person can click on and experience. I found it all a tad overwhelming, and probably too much of a good thing considering the brevity and simplicity of the movie itself.

Parting Shots:
As I say, maybe "Sleeping Beauty" still works for children, if it doesn't put them to sleep, but I know I was far more disappointed than I thought I would be when I saw it again after a forty-year lapse. The story is so modest and straightforward, the action so commonplace and derivative, and the art work so rigid and direct, the movie made little impression on me beyond its excellent restoration.

---

Connect to Facebook/Twitter, recommend via email and much more.

---