Despite its brilliant and ebullient mix of music, merriment, and menace, Walt Disney’s Sleeping Beauty was a box-office disappointment on its initial release. Its $6 million price tag, the highest ever for an animated feature, certainly kept the film from breaking even during its premiere theatrical engagements (though subsequent reissues certainly brought it well into the black) even with its 70mm Technirama presentations and a six-channel stereophonic soundtrack, both utilized in an animated feature for the first time. Today, after continual home video incarnations have kept the film in the public eye and have caused serious reevaluations of the film’s stunning craftsmanship (that unique combination of the stately yet stylized backgrounds and the staggeringly detailed attention to the characters), Sleeping Beauty has taken its true place of honor with Disney’s other classic tales. This new Diamond Edition of the movie is its second Blu-ray release coming six years after its initial Blu-ray presentation. Sadly, though there are a few new bonus features placed on the disc, much that made that initial Blu-ray release special are no longer here, and with the video and audio transfer seemingly the same, it would be hard to recommend anyone with the earlier set to trade it in for this new one.
Studio: Disney
Distributed By: N/A
Video Resolution and Encode: 1080P/AVC
Aspect Ratio: 2.55:1
Audio: English 7.1 DTS-HDMA, Spanish 5.1 DD, Other
Subtitles: English SDH, Spanish, French
Rating: G
Run Time: 1 Hr. 15 Min.
Package Includes: Blu-ray, DVD, Digital Copy
keep case in a slipcoverDisc Type: BD50 (dual layer)
Region: ABC
Release Date: 10/07/2014
MSRP: $36.99
The Production Rating: 5/5
Outraged after being omitted from the list of invited guests for the presentation of their newly born baby daughter, wicked sorceress Maleficent (Eleanor Audley) casts a spell on Princess Aurora (Mary Costa) that she will prick her finger on a spinning wheel before her sixteenth birthday and die. Unable to completely defeat the evil spell, the good fairy Merryweather (Barbara Luddy) alters the spell to one of everlasting sleep until awakened by true love’s first kiss. To further impede the possibility of the spell’s inevitable result, Merryweather together with her two friends Flora (Verna Felton) and Fauna (Barbara Jo Allen) take the princess deep into the forest to live as peasants until the danger is over and the young royal can be returned to her parents. On the day of her sixteenth birthday, however, the princess meets a young man (Bill Shirley) in the forest and falls in love with him, unaware that he’s Prince Philip, the man she’s been betrothed to since birth. Sadly for her, their meeting for that evening is interrupted when the fairies take her back to the palace to the arms of her eager parents. But Maleficent isn’t done with her spells, and she quickly takes action to see that her original pronouncement can come true.
There is no denying that the adaptation of the original Charles Perrault version of the fairy tale by Disney writer Erdman Penner has Disneyfication written all over it with the three fairies alternately doting (Flora), dotty (Fauna), and sassy (Merryweather), warring over things like the color of Aurora‘s ball gown and how the cottage should be cleaned, the achingly stupid henchmen of Maleficent who have no luck finding the princess despite their best efforts leaving the dirty work to the witch‘s toxic raven, and the ultimate confrontation between good and evil raising the excitement level of the piece to a spirited and even frightening crescendo. Still, those very elements give the film its unique enchantment, a combination of the mirthful and the macabre that have kept it a favorite despite its initial lukewarm reception by both critics and public.
The casting is superlative in all of the roles. The three fairies are played by actresses who either had experience in Disney features or adapted well to its demands, and their individual performances give Sleeping Beauty much of its most distinctive identity. Mary Costa’s operatic training acquits her well in handling the musical portions of the film for Princess Aurora with songs adapted from Peter Tchaikovsky’s ballet of the story, and she’s a believable innocent in the story portions, too, as she surrenders to the lure of first love. But the film’s pièce de résistance is Eleanor Audley’s magnificent performance as the malevolent Maleficent. Already acclaimed as the best wicked stepmother ever in Disney’s Cinderella, she takes her poisonous intentions to new heights as evil personified as the venomous sorceress. When seen as a child, who doesn’t vividly remember his terror in her final transformation at the film’s climax, and those moments are among the most intense in any Disney animated feature.
Sleeping Beauty’s peerless sophistication in animation with those stunning Eyvind Earle designed background paintings that give the film a stately brilliance and the classic music adapted by George Bruns make it one of the all-time animated classics and one that is so completely different from any of Disney’s other celebrated masterworks.
Once Upon a Dream
Waltzing (Pink!, Blue!)
Video Rating: 4.5/5 3D Rating: NA
The film has been framed at 2.55:1 in a 1080p transfer using the AVC codec and appears to be the same encode from 2008 (some A/B comparisons revealed nothing different that I could spy). Any discussions about original aspect ratios seem somewhat pointless when scouring the beauty of this transfer. There are a couple of places that display a momentary line twitter where long shots contain lots of close line arrangements, and there is one odd moment where the film seems to freeze at the end of a shot. For those who despise the smooth, slick look of Disney animated classics on these Blu-ray releases, there will be some complaints about the transfer even though the animation lines all appear to be solid and not affected by any digital tampering. The depth and solidity of the color, the endless details in those astonishing background paintings (it’s very tempting to pause on the forest scenes to drink in the depth of intricate detail in the artwork), and the three dimensional clarity without a hint of banding or other artifacts are all things of rare beauty. The film has been divided into 30 chapters.
Audio Rating: 4.5/5
The DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 mix will be for those who are just now adding those back surround channels to their surround systems a delightful surprise. There is more directionialzed dialog and singing than ever before (the sequence where Aurora wanders around the forest singing and humming while Prince Philip tries to find her offers the surround system a delightful workout and places the listener squarely in the center enjoying the aural activity from all directions). Bass is stronger in this mix than it ever was on VHS, laserdisc, or DVD releases and is even more impressive than that heard in theatrical showings. Finally, the subwoofer has something to do during the 75 minutes of the film! If the dragon sequence lacks just that last bit of thundering oomph, it’s only a minor objection. Still, the orchestrations are lush and beautifully delivered in the lossless track (one can actually hear the division of the singing ensemble with the lower voices in the left soundfield and the higher voices in the right)! With this mix, the audio of the film comes close to matching the splendor of the visuals in this stupendous achievement. The disc also offers in Dolby Digital 4.0 the original theatrical sound mix, and it sounds nice and full though certainly not as impressively distinct as the lossless remix.
Special Features Rating: 4/5
Audio Commentary: Disney historian Leonard Maltin and Disney animation executives John Lasseter and Andreas Deja take part in pointing out all of the majestic and entertaining qualities of the film while offering background information on its production and the personnel involved with its creation.
Deleted Scenes (HD): three scenes storyboarded early in the production process and then eliminated are presented separately: “Aurora Tempted” (2:58), “Maleficent’s Arrival” (1:58), and “The Faire” (7:48).
Once Upon a Parade (8:49, HD): Sarah Hyland spins a tale of how the Disneyland Festival of Fantasy Parade was saved by a quick-thinking peasant girl (whom she plays in the story).
The Art of Evil: Generations of Disney Villains (9:49, HD): Frozen’s animation supervisor Lino DiSalvo and veteran Disney animator Andreas Deja discuss not only villains they’ve animated (Deja did Gaston, Jafar, and Scar) but also the Disney arch enemies through their run of animated classics paying particular attention to celebrate Marc Davis who animated Maleficent.
@DisneyAnimation: Artists in Motion (4:27, HD): Disney visual development artist Brittany Moon constructs a statuette of Maleficent completely in paper.
Beauty-Oke (2:32, HD): sing along with “Once Upon a Dream.”
Restoring the Soundtrack (10:50, HD): an interesting featurette on the original recordings of the music and the restoration and remixing of the audio for its inclusion on the Blu-ray release.
Picture Perfect: The Making of Sleeping Beauty (43:32, HD): an exhaustive description of the years of effort which went into making this zenith of Disney’s traditional animation features with recent and vintage interviews with those involved in its production.
Eyvind Earle: The Man and His Art (7:33, HD): a too-brief mini-biography of the great artist, not only about his work on Sleeping Beauty but also his career as a portrait painter and his difficult early years.
Promo Trailers (HD): 101 Dalmatians, Cinderella, Maleficent
DVD/Digital Copy: disc and code sheet enclosed in the case.
Trailer
Overall Rating: 4.5/5
Though it has not ported over many of the very special bonus features that were contained in the original 2008 Blu-ray release of Sleeping Beauty (there was one entire Blu-ray disc just devoted to bonuses plus the Cine-Explore feature on the film disc), this new Diamond Edition does contain the wonderful audio and video encode which presents the film at its glorious best. Highly recommended!
Reviewed By: Matt Hough
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