Just in time to keep the kiddies entertained during a snowstorm come two more fantastic new Disney Home Entertainment releases, 101 Dalmatians The Diamond Edition and Alexander and the No Good Horrible, Terrible, Very Bad Day. Each of these releases have something special and bring the warmth of Disney Entertainment to your home theater starting February 10, 2015.
Alexander and the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day
Release Date: February 10, 2015
Alexander and the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day is the movie version of the beloved children’s book, that follows Alexander and his family on a day that just does not go their way. The movie is definitely aimed at an older audience but is still appropriate for all
audiences. Alexander is a kid who constantly has bad days, and grows tired of everything going right for everyone else in his family and on his birthday wishes that the tables get turned, and boy do they ever! This film had a number of important lessons told throughout but the most important is family. Steve Carrell and Jennifer Garner are each great in their roles as Alexander’s parents who are struggling to keep things together on their no good very bad day. In addition to the movie, there were a number of very interesting Bonus content on the release including meeting the author of the book, Judith Viorst and her son, the inspiration for Alexander and the book, who now is grown and what it means to them to have this story come to life. There is the obligatory bloopers reel, a video diary from the film’s star, Ed Oxenbould and an in depth look at the making of the film’s biggest scene, an Australian Outback party with a real life crocodile!
While there were a couple of oddities and moments of doubt in this film for me there were more good things that make this a great snow day pick! Three out of five Mickey heads on this one!
101 Dalmatians – The Diamond Edition
Release February 10, 2015
The second release is the re-release of 101 Dalmatians this time in the Diamond Edition. In previous columns I have written my thoughts about Disney’s frequent opening of the vault to re-introduce classics and from time to time it is well worth it and others it feels like nothing more than a money grab, and truth be told when I first heard this was coming, I felt this was the latter. Then I realized that neither of my sons was terribly familiar with the movie, that they had only seen brief images of the movie from commercials on the Disney channel and that when I mentioned it my youngest immediately thought of the live-action version and had no interest. This seemed like heresy to me so I insisted we watch it. We all know the movie and story and nothing has changed there. I will say that from the very first few moments of the movie I did notice how nice the 1961 cartoon looked. There was a clear improvement made to the clarity of the picture, but it still showed the lines from the drawing which was very cool to see.
The most interesting piece of this release, however came from the Bonus Features. The bonus features included a number of different pieces, DisneyView, a new animated short featuring Thunderbolt, Dalmatians 101 – hosted by Cameron Boyce, Lucky Dogs and my favorite Walt Disney Presents, “The Best Doggoned Dog In the World” from 1961.
For those unfamiliar with the movie, Thunderbolt was the star of the old west television show the Dalmatians were watching and left off at a cliffhanger (literally), by saying tune in next week to see the conclusion to this episode. Well Disney made good on that, granted 54 years later, but this release contains that conclusion. This is the sort of thing that makes these re-releases a little more exciting, where there is new materials presented in the same fashion and style that they were originally presented in, and that Disney need look no further than it’s own catalog for new material. I hope to see more of Thunderbolt and this way of thinking in future releases.
Being born in 1978 precluded me from seeing the weekly television series Walt Disney Presents as hosted by Walt himself, but this release brought those lights back up presenting an episode which originally aired in February of 1961 called “The Best Doggoned Dog in the World”. I will admit I never have gone back to watch the hours and hours of footage put together for this series, but this bonus feature opened my eyes because of how great it was to see and hear more from Walt than the typical and brief clips that play from time to time. In this feature Walt presents a number of different types of dogs and talks briefly about each of them, including his own dog. The most time in this episode is dedicated to a feature that shows an adventure of two border collies (a dog which I coincidentally have) and the help they provide to their cowboy master in herding some sheep. It is clear of Walt’s admiration not only for cowboys but dogs is made evident through this great feature.
In the end this wound up being one of the best re-releases Disney has put out and with the newest generation being as unfamiliar with the Dalmatians as they are a very important re-release. We are thrilled to add this to our collection of Disney Drive movies! Four out of five Mickey heads on this release!
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