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Alice in Wonderland (Masterpiece Edition)

Alice in Wonderland (Masterpiece Edition)

List Price: $29.99
Your Price: $22.49
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Superior edition of already classic film
Review: I was quite hesitant to buy yet ANOTHER re-release of this often overlooked classic, but the parties responsible for this magnificent transfer have truly outdone themselves. This film has NEVER looked so pristine, so colorful- it was truly as if I was watching it for the first time.

Aside from the superfluous Disney trailers/ etc., the extras are quite thorough and informative. A must for any Disney purist.

... So, where's "Cinderella" and "Bambi"?

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Excellent 2-disc set!
Review: Walt Disney's underrated cult masterpiece " Alice in Wonderland" has been given a great 2-disc set featuring THX digitally remastered picture and sound quality. There is even a heck of a lot of great extras like a new Chesire Cat song that has been cut out and now fully redone for this DVD, lost songs, The original 1950 Coca Cola disney promotion show with Edgar Bergan and his two famed dummies, trailers, art gallery, poster gallery and more.

Add this to your Disney collection and cherish a masterpiece of fun and wackiness.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: great movie, something wrong with dvd
Review: I love this movie, and everything but there is a problem with the dvd on the second discs still gallery it stops and goes to the dvd screen saver. I bought this at Wal-mart and am planning on returning it, hopefully I just got a bad disc I did notice siginfigant scratches on the disc. This is just a warning to all the disney buffs out threre. However the disc one plays fine. I hope we don't have another Two Towers exteneded edtion dvd bug on our hands.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Alice falling in curiosity...
Review: Alice sits with her tutor outdoors, but she is bored with the books lacking pictures. She begins to pay more attention to her cat as she suddenly catches a glimpse of a dressed rabbit. The rabbit grabs her curiosity and she follows the rabbit into a hole. In the hole she trips and she falls into what seems to be an abyss that leads to a fantasy land where things are not as they appear, and they appear as she has never known before. Alice in Wonderland is based on Lewis Carroll's novel with the same name and his story brings the audience through a fantastic adventure where Alice's curiosity brings several philosophical ideas in regards to general curiosity. The film is an interesting adventure for both young and old, as it unveils adult contemporary themes as well as eye-catching phenomena for the young, which ends in a marvelous, yet odd, cinematic experience.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Buy it for the extras - perhaps the best ever.
Review: I'm sure everyone has seen the film but what really sets this collection off is the second disc of extras. Many DVD's have hours of extras that are comprehensive but not very interesting. The extras on Alice are must sees, as far as quality goes, the best ever. Walt Disney's film was being promoted at the same time Walt began exploring television, in fact Disney's very first TV show, a 1950 Christmas Day special featuring Kathryn Beaumont (Alice), Walt Disney and Edgar Bergan and Charlie McCarthy is presented here in its entire 60 minute length (including vintage Coca-Cola commericals written into the show). Also presented is the entire 30 minutes of the Fred Waring show which debuted some of the music in live staged acts also starring Beaumont and Chesire Cat Sterling Holloway (the DVD says just excerpts but all they cut were the commercials!) There is also a 15-minute television special featuring Walt riding his minature railroad through the studio soundstages as we see behind the scenes footage. Kathryn Beaumont appears in most of the extra footages and we see how much of it was performed as if it were a stage play so that the artists could be inspired. In fact, by the time you finish all the extras you would have thought you just watched the entire film in live-action. There is also a recent short where Beaumont talks about the music from Alice and Peter Pan (also starring Beaumont) and how they were connected. What really makes these extras pop is the restoration of film clips that appear in the older specials. The Fred Waring Show appears to be grainy as expected from a 50+ year old show, but when it shifts to a segment with Walt Disney (obviously filmed at the Disney studios), it appears Disney went back to their original stock that was in good condition and replaced the older segment. They also inserted restored color versions of film clips in their originally broadcast black-and-white TV specials (the Disney Channel showed these all in black-and-white so this was a real surprise when I saw them here in full clear color). About two hours of extras, all of it very entertaining.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: BETTER TRANSFER THAN THE FIRST DVD
Review: I'm not going to bother discussing the movie itself, rather compare the two editions of the DVDs available, incase anyone is wondering whether it's worth it to get this version if they already own the first single-disc version that came out a few years ago.
The transfer is incredible, like night-and-day compared to the original release. The soundtrack isn't as noticable of an improvement since a tremendous job was already done for the first edition. I had always thought the picture on the first DVD release looked great, until I saw this new Masterpiece Edition. It's amazing that there can be THAT much of an improvement from DVD to DVD. The old version has lots of specks and dirt and grain that's been removed, the picture flickers less, everything is sharper and more defined.
It is TOTALLY worth it to buy this version if you already own the first DVD. You can toss the other one away, the improvement on the picture is worth the 20 bucks.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The Definative Version
Review: This is the definative version of Alice in Wonderland, one of my favorite Disney cartoons. It is presented in its original format of 4:3 (for the person wondering about widescreen, it was not used until 1953, two years after the release of the movie; Disney's 1st widescreen movie was Sleeping Beauty), with beautiful colors in the new transfer. The movie stays very close to the two Lewis Carol books, and has many great extra features. Highly recommended.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: love,love this movie
Review: I just love this version of the movie. I loved it when I was a kid and now my 5 year old watches it and loves it. shes been so into the first disc that we haven't even watched the second yet. This is a great movie and would highly recommend it. Thanks for brining it back.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Alice in Stingy-Disneyland
Review: What a disappointment! I anxiously awaited the new Masterpiece Edition of Disney's Alice in Wonderland -- as no doubt did many other Disneyphiles -- only to be left sadly unfulfilled. This is one of my faves, and I hoped for something special, especially at the price.

There is no audio commentary, and the art gallery is severely lacking. On both the "Snow White" and "Beauty/Beast" DVD sets (and others), there is virtual corridor after virtual corridor of conceptual drawings, abandoned concepts, and background sketches enough to follow the evolution of the production and marvel at the ingenuity of the Disney artists. Most of this is arranged by character. For "Alice," the stingy Disney people have arranged a couple dozen or so conceptual drawings in no discernible order with no captions or commentary. At one point, there are photos of Disney and his staff looking over mounted art and storyboards -- who am I looking at and what are they doing? What about the input of Mary Blair, whose art informs the entire production? Where are all the abandoned characters: the Lion and the Unicorn, the White Knight? In short, the story of the evolution of Disney's Alice is almost completely missing from this set. True, there is a song by the Cheshire Cat and a segment on how one song ended up in "Peter Pan." But anyone looking for an excursion into the world of the art of Disney's Alice will be all too disappointed (which is too bad, because the art of Disney's Alice is more creative than that for "Beauty/Beast") as will anyone interested in the process that goes into making a Disney masterpiece.

Why is there no audio commentary? Who puts out a DVD in this day and age without any audio commentary?

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: This film has NEVER looked better!
Review: They really did a great job on the image in this DVD!
1. The backgrounds are super clear. You can literally see every brushstroke. On some backgrounds, you can even see the grain of the illustration board they were painted on. WOW!(The backgrounds on the older Alice DVD were always muddy and contrasty.)
2. The same goes for the characters. The ink lines delineating each moving thing are sharp and clear. Goodbye ugly film grain!
3. Colors have been corrected. On the older DVD, Dinah the cat looked almost pinkish-red, and the Mad Hatter's skin tone looked like he had a heat rash. On the new DVD, Dinah is reddish brown, and the Hatter is slightly in the pink.
4. The film transfer on the older version tended to wobble around slightly as the film went through the machine. The new version does NOT wobble at all. Steady as she goes!
This new DVD version looks as good as(if not better than) ANY animated film created on state-of-the-art equipment these days. Sounds great, too.
So, how were the bonus features?
*The Cheshire Cat song--Good recording of a man who sounds remarkably like the late Sterling Holloway. Nice to see Kathryn Beaumont introduce it.
*Sing Alongs--If Karaoke is your thing, here ya go.
*Adventures in Wonderland set-top game--Not particularly challenging (yawn).
*Through the Mirror Mickey Mouse Cartoon--Nice extra.
*Trailers--Great to have.
*From Wonderland to Neverland--Right on! I never knew that the opening theme to Peter Pan was originally composed as Alice's daydream song. Kathryn Beaumont talks about this fascinating aspect.
*Operation Wonderland, Fred Waring Show, One Hour in Wonderland--Valuable from a historical point of view. Why NOT include them here?!
*Alice Comedy--Interesting to see that Walt Disney's original cartoons weren't all that super.
*Virtual Wonderland Party--I probably would have loved this if I were 4 or 5. They could have used this extra disc space to put on a running commentary of the film with Kathryn Beaumont, a Disney film historian and an animator or two.....
*Song Demos--interesting!
*Art Galleries--Mary Blair's color sketches reveal how much she influenced this film and are a treat for the eye. What a small number of them were included here!
Great Disc, beautiful presentation! A real treat for the eye and ear.


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