Editorial Product Review: essential video:One of the brightest nuggets from Disney's golden age, this 1937 film is almost dizzying in its meticulous construction of an enchanted world, with scores of major and minor characters (including fauna and fowl), each with a distinct identity. When you watch Snow White's intricate, graceful movements of fingers, arms, and head all in one shot, it is not the technical brilliance of Disney's artists that leaps out at you, but the very spirit of her ...
Editorial Product Review: essential video:The film that officially signaled Disney's animation renaissance (following The Little Mermaid) and the only animated feature to receive a Best Picture Oscar nomination, Beauty and the Beast remains the yardstick by which all other animated films should be measured. It relates the story of Belle, a bookworm with a dotty inventor for a father; when he inadvertently offends the Beast (a prince whose heart is too hard to love anyone besides himself), Belle boldly takes ...
Editorial Product Review: :Disney's first animated feature in CinemaScope is now available in widescreen presentations on video, and it is definitely good to get the whole picture. One of the studio's most original and charming movies, the 1955 film tells the story of a rakish, street-smart dog named Tramp, who helps an aristocratic pooch named Lady out of some trouble and then commences a romance with her. Sweet, funny scenes abound, and the combination of innocence and sophistication would have done ...
Editorial Product Review: essential video:Groundbreaking on several counts, not the least of which was an innovative use of animation and stereophonic sound, this ambitious Disney feature has lost nothing to time since its release in 1940. Classical music was interpreted by Disney animators, resulting in surreal fantasy and playful escapism. Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra provided the music for eight segments by the composers Tchaikovsky, Moussorgsky, Stravinsky, Beethoven, Ponchielli, Bach, Dukas, and Schubert. Not all the sequences were created ...
Editorial Product Review: :Imaginatively rendered but slightly chilly, this 1951 Disney adaptation of the Lewis Carroll classic is also appropriately surreal. Alice (voiced by Kathryn Beaumont) has all the anticipated experiences: shrinking and growing, meeting the White Rabbit, having tea with the Mad Hatter, etc. Characterization is very strong, and the Disney team worked hard to bring screen personality to Carroll's eccentric creations. For a Disney film, however, it seems more the self-satisfied sum of its inventiveness than a truly engaging ...
Editorial Product Review: :Disney's 1959 animated effort was the studio's most ambitious to date, a widescreen spectacle boasting a gorgeous waltz-filled score adapting Tchaikovsky. In the 14th century, the malevolent Maleficent (not dissimilar to the wicked Queen in Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs) taunts a king that his infant Aurora will fatally prick her finger on a spinning wheel before sundown on her 16th birthday. This, of course, would deny her a happily-ever-after with her true love. Things almost ...
Editorial Product Review: essential video:From the moment that Prince Eric's ship emerged from the fog in the opening credits it was apparent that Disney had somehow, suddenly recaptured that 'magic' that had been dormant for thirty years. In the tale of a headstrong young mermaid who yearns to 'spend a day, warm on the sand,' Ariel trades her voice to Ursula, the Sea Witch (classically voiced by Pat Carroll), for a pair of legs. Ariel can only succeed if she ...
Editorial Product Review: essential video:Disney's 1967 animated feature seems even more entertaining now than it did upon first release, with a hall-of-fame vocal performance by Phil Harris as Baloo, the genial bear friend of feral child Mowgli. Based on fiction by Rudyard Kipling, the film goes its own way as Disney animation will, but the strong characters and smart casting (George Sanders as the villainous tiger, Shere Khan) make it one of the studio's stronger feature-length cartoons. Songs include 'The ...
Editorial Product Review: essential video:Disney's 1967 animated feature seems even more entertaining now than it did upon first release, with a hall-of-fame vocal performance by Phil Harris as Baloo, the genial bear friend of feral child Mowgli. Based on fiction by Rudyard Kipling, the film goes its own way as Disney animation will, but the strong characters and smart casting (George Sanders as the villainous tiger, Shere Khan) make it one of the studio's stronger feature-length cartoons. Songs include 'The ...
Editorial Product Review: :Disney's adaptation of the beloved fairy tale became a classic in its own right, thanks to some memorable tunes (including 'A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes,' 'Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo,' and the title song) and some endearingly cute comic relief. We all know the story--the wicked stepmother and stepsisters simply won't have it, this uppity Cinderella thinking she's going to a ball designed to find the handsome prince an appropriate sweetheart, but perseverance, animal buddies, and a well-timed entrance ...
This raw work-flow application isn't the Holy Grail many hoped it would be, but Apple Aperture 1.5 could make life easier for photographers who need to cull, retouch, and output large numbers of photographs quickly and efficiently.
This raw work-flow application isn't the Holy Grail many hoped it would be, but Apple Aperture 1.5 could make life easier for photographers who need to cull, retouch, and output large numbers of photographs quickly and efficiently.