New on DVD

New on DVD

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Rated G
Available on DVD and Blu-ray
In spite of being a huge Disney fanatic, I’ve never been that much of a fan of Snow White as a movie.  That being said, I’ll freely admit that I do understand that it is arguably the most important animated film ever made.  When Walt Disney suggested the idea of a feature-length animated film in the 1930s, the idea was unheard of.  After all, why would anyone want to watch a cartoon that is more than 5 minutes long?  The movie was supposed to be a disaster, and had it been anything less than it was, who knows if we would have had the rich tradition of animated films since.  One of the special features on the disks even suggests that The Wizard of Oz was only greenlit after Snow White’s success, and without the success of this particular fantasy, we might have never have seen the likes like Dorothy or Luke Skywalker grace the screen.  I’d say that makes a movie important.  The film itself has numerous special features, but my favorite is an interactive tour through Hyperion Studios, the studio that housed the early Disney artists.  A+



The National Parks: America’s Best Idea
Unrated
Available on DVD and Blu-ray
Filmmaker Ken Burns brings us his next masterpiece with this look at our national parks in this twelve hour documentary that was almost a decade in the making.  Exploring the history of natural treasures and the reasons why some of our great leaders tried to protect them, Burns uses archival footage in combination with stunning cinematography from the majority of our national parks, to augment the masterful storytelling that we have come to expect from him.  While Burns has impressed us in the past with his documentaries on Jazz, Baseball, and WWII, I can’t help but feel that this is his both his best looking and most compelling story yet. A


Man vs. Food
Unrated
Available on DVD
Three of the things I love most in life are entertainment, food and travel, so there’s no surprise that I’m hooked on the Travel Channel’s hit show Man vs. Food which follows Adam Richman as he travels around America discovering its greatest pig-out spots.  In every city he visits, he also takes one of its famous food challenges, from eleven pound pizzas in Atlanta, to tackling eight plates of breakfast tacos in Austin, to wolfing down the world’s hottest curry in New York City.  The show is very addictive and the only thing the DVD lacks is a trip to H-Town.  The nerve!  A-

Assassination of a High School President
Rated R for sexual content, some nudity, language, and drug and alcohol use – all involving teens
Available on DVD
When a budding high school journalist is tricked into committing a character assassination piece against the reigning student body president, he tries desperately to both get his mistakes corrected and blow the whistle on the real guilty party.  Distracting him along the way is the president’s ex, played by Mischa Barton, who he unexpectedly becomes romantically entangled with.  The pic makes for a decent enough high school drama/mystery, but fails to reach any real significance with its complicated plot.  Also, the addition of Bruce Willis as the principle whose biggest concern is to get kids to stop chewing gum in school was funny at first, but got a little silly after a while.  That being said, the film is very convincing at portraying rich white kids as vindictive little monsters and some of the worst villains you could possibly go up against.  C+


IMAX: Dinosaurs Alive!
Unrated
Available on DVD and Blu-ray
Dinosaurs Alive! takes a look at many of the different dinos from millions of years past, how we found out about them, and what their particular skills and traits were.  On a big IMAX screen, with 3D glasses, this film is truly impressive and really does come alive.  Unfortunately, on a anything smaller, and in 2D, the results are less than impressive.  The science is very basic and overly dramatic, and the film, at less than an hour, is not exactly compelling.  The documentary on how the film was made is actually a nice special feature worth checking out though.  C