Who Framed Roger Rabbit: Vista Series: Finally off the backlog is a film I preordered a few years ago. Roger Rabbit comes in a great two disc set chocked full of extras. Strange that it takes me so long to watch certain things.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit came to theaters in 1988. I was a normal five and a half year old when one day my dad decided to take my brother (then aged 9) and myself to the local movie theater to see the new cartoon / live action film all the kids were talking about, Who Framed Roger Rabbit. My dad seemed to think I could handle it and while I did do remember laughing at some parts, I was scared to death at the climax.

While my dad was usually a good parent, he made a bad decision taking me to a film I wasn't ready for (one I didn't let him repeat two years later with Dick Tracy.) I was actually so scared that this film traumatized me to a point where I would not watch the VHS copy we had of this film at all and never saw the film again until I decided to give it a second chance when it was the Sunday afternoon movie in High School.

Now I love the film and it's no surprise given the lush recreation of post war Hollywood and the scores of classic cartoon characters from various studios interacting. Plus Mel Blanc, Mae Questel et all were still alive at the time to provide the voices for their respective characters. Sadly, all have passed on since 1988.

The film is great but take my advice and really know your kids before showing it to them.

Labels: Cartoons, Comedy, Disney

The Absent-Minded Professor: Here we have perhaps the greatest live-action movie Disney ever made.

Fred MacMurray plays Professor Brainard. He's the typical college professor who is so involved in his research that he neglects to attend his own wedding, three times! Of course all was not in vain as he missed it while discovering a great new source of energy: flubber!

The rest of the story plays out just as one would expect a Disney movie to do. There's the usual family friendly situations coupled with quite a few

This is definitely recommended. Just be sure to skip the colorized version as well as the incredibly terrible remake starring Robin Williams.

Labels: Classics, Comedy, Disney

Walt Disney Treasures: The Chronological Donald: Volume Two: There are very few DVD releases that I look forward to these days. There is one exception, however, and that is the line of Disney Treasures that get put out each year. While I don't collect all of them, my brother does, I have been very satisfied with the releases that have come out so far and this is no exception. In fact, I'm almost positive I watched this before but it was still listed on my backlog, so here goes.

Donald Duck has always been my favorite Disney character. I think part of it has to do with how he was always the second banana to Mickey and unlike Mickey was not guaranteed to come out on top in the end. Plus watching the crazy duck lose his temper was always a highlight. This set highlights the cartoons I was most familiar with growing up and those are the World War 2 era. These cartoons were when Disney was at its peak in the shorts department and the quality shines here with an enjoyable set.

Der Fuehrer's Face is on here which is, if you haven't heard of it, a cartoon when Donald dreams that he lives in Nutzi-land and has the great Spike Jones title song. While it is wartime propoganda it stands, in my opinion, as the best Donald Duck short ever made.

Labels: Cartoons, Disney

Mulan: Special Edition: 2-Disc Set: Taking a break from the normal, I decided to go ahead and watch Mulan. While Disney has not really made a great animated film since Beauty & the Beast, I will concede that this one was no as bad as their more recent films. While the art style was nice, resembling classic Chinese paintings yet still looking "Disney-ish," the story was decidedly modern and Westernized and so it felt a little awkward at times. It also follows the Disney tradition of straying entirely from the source material whenever possible. Of course, the original poem wasn't really much in the way of detail, it certainly wasn't the horrible history revision and politically correct nightmare of Pocahontas.

Of course being the strange man that I am, I watched this film in the Mandarin dub only and have never seen the original English version. It's kind of cool to hear Jackie Chan and Coco Lee play the characters of the film quite well. As far as the music goes, I actually preferred the Mandarin versions of "I'll Make a Man Out of You" and "Reflection" to their English counterparts.

This leads me to the extras. One extra on the DVD is a music video with Jackie Chan doing the Mandarin version of "I'll Make a Man Out of You." To American audiences unfamiliar with his music career it must seem really odd for this stuntman to sing in a rather corny music video but Jackie can pull it off. It's too bad they didn't add anything Coco Lee's version of Reflection if anything was ever made, of course.

For the record, I will not be watching the made for DVD sequel as I find such sequels are unnecessary and most likely suck, especially when they come from Disney.

On a side note, I found the VHS tape of Under the Umbrella Tree episodes and thus I plan to watch a few of them in the coming days. This is great but I fear my backlog, which is now at 180, will stagnate for a while and barely reduce in size.

Labels: Cartoons, Disney