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Sleeping Beauty (50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition) [1958]
from Disney
starring Mary Costa, Bill Shirley, Eleanor Audley, Verna Felton
directed by Clyde Geronimi

Features:

• PAL

Editorial Review:

Disney's 1959 Sleeping Beauty was the studio's most ambitious effort to date, a lavish spectacle boasting a gorgeous waltz-filled score adapted from the music of 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 sixteenth birthday. This, of course, would deny her a happily-ever-after with her true love. Fortunately, some bubbly, bumbling fairies named Flora, Fauna and Merryweather are on hand to assist.

It's not really all that much about the title character--how interesting can someone in the middle of a long nap be, anyway? Instead, those fairies carry the day, as well as, of course, good Prince Phillip, whose battle with the malevolent Maleficent in the guise of a dragon has been co-opted by any number of animated films since. See it in its original glory here, alongside Maleficent's castle, which, filled with warthogs and demonic imps in a macabre dance celebrating their evil ways, manages a certain creepy grandeur. --David Kronke, Amazon.com

Customer Reviews:

• Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0

• 5 stars for the film, only one for the DVD
  I'm afraid I have to agree with the earlier reviewer who said there is a fault with the DVD.
  I have a 4:3 television and set my DVD player to letterbox. The film does not play in the correct aspect ratio, losing some of the picture at either side. Considering that one of the selling points of the 50th anniversary edition is that you get the entire original picture this is really disappointing. In addition, the picture appears to be somewhat squashed together so that the characters in the film appear... more info

• They don't make 'em like this any more
  This has always been my favourite Disney film, and I am so glad it's been given the loving restoration it deserves.
  The fantastic detail and 1950s graphic take of gothic and medieval styles is positively breathtaking. For Walt Disney it was ground breaking (and almost bankrupting) to create something so meticulously detailed and stylistically consistent right down to the backgrounds, and the result is beautiful and atmospheric. The extras are all interesting, detailing the conceptual side of things,... more info

• Pink! Blue! Pink! Blue! PINK!
  My daughter, like many others, is obsessed with Disney Princess and has watched this a few times now.
  I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the transfer. The picture quality is superb - and the animation is the smoothest I've seen in a hand-drawn feature. It's probably wrong of me to assume that an animated film released 50 years ago wouldn't have the same level of animation quality as a modern film, and this has certainly quashed my preconceptions.
  The story is simple, and the humour is... more info

• Sleeping Beauty
  This region 2 UK 50th anniversary 2 disc edition has I'm sad to say, an authoring fault. It is not properly flagged as anamorphic 16x9, it appears the initial batch as I have had two copies now, are non anamorphic, resulting in the main feature playing with black bars on all four sides of the screen, rather than the usual widescreen bars top and bottom.
  And before anyone asks, I have my dvd player and screen set up correctly.
  

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