by Roger Ash In anticipation of the release of The Princess and the Frog on DVD and Blu-Ray tomorrow, Disney hosted a virtual roundtable with the film’s directors, Ron Clements and John Musker. When Johanna asked if I’d be willing to attend, I jumped at the chance. First, I love Disney animation, and the return to [...]
Ponyo is the newest Studio Ghibli movie to come to DVD in the U.S. Thanks to Ed’s laptop, I was able to sample this in Blu-Ray. (Although we had a bit of trouble getting the thing to talk to my television. I thought it would be as simple as plugging in the cable to the [...]
This is why some people get so upset about big companies putting out projects for girls, or analyze their phrasing, or worry about what it means: Disney Restyles Rapunzel to Appeal to Boys After the less-than-fairy-tale results for its most recent animated release, “The Princess and the Frog,” executives at the Burbank studio believe they [...]
I was curious (heh) to see this direct-to-DVD sequel of the 2006 movie, even though I hadn’t watched the original, because of the names associated with it. The celebrity voices in Curious George 2: Follow That Monkey include Tim Curry (a stage magician), Matt Lauer (what else? a newscaster), and Jerry Lewis (whom I didn’t [...]
It’s an alternate Earth, a place where Lex Luthor heads up the good guys and the characters most like “our” Justice League are murderers. (Hmm, maybe that’s not so different from current comic continuity. The darkening of superhero comics makes it hard to tell the good guys from their “evil twins” these days.) Anyway, Luthor [...]
I’m kind of glad to see companies willing to do extended marketing these days, instead of going crazy up until release day and then acting as though they’ve forgotten their movie/DVD ever existed. For example, Lionsgate released the direct-to-DVD animated film Planet Hulk at the beginning of the month, and now they’ve put out an [...]
The next DCU original animated film, Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths, is out tomorrow. Here’s a sample clip that explains the premise. Also of note is that this disc contains the first DC Showcase short cartoon, starring The Spectre. Right now, while it’s still technically a pre-order, Amazon has the two-disc special edition at [...]
On March 2, Disney will release Ponyo on both DVD and Blu-Ray.
Ponyo DVD Special Edition Ponyo Blu-Ray
List price $29.99 US List price $39.99 US
The hand-drawn Ponyo, inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid, tells of the story of a five-year-old boy and his magical goldfish, who becomes a girl. The film’s “star-studded voice cast” includes [...]
As part of a family movie promotion, Warner will be dropping the list price on the single-disc editions of Superman/Batman: Public Enemies and Green Lantern: First Flight from the current $19.98 to $14.98 on March 16.
Superman/Batman: Public Enemies Green Lantern: First Flight
So if you were planning to buy them, hold off a month to check [...]
After releasing two volumes each of the Saturday Morning Cartoons series for the 1960s and 1970s, Warner has announced the 1980s version. There’s no volume number in the title shown in the image, so this may be the only one planned. The two-disc set will have 11 cartoons and one extra feature for a total [...]
Warner Home Video has released the following clip in which Lex Luthor (voiced by Chris Noth) explains the premise of Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths, due out on February 23.
Review by Johanna and KC Carlson The newest Peanuts DVD release, You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, is a bit of an oddity. It’s a 1985 adaptation of the 1967 stage musical of the same name. The animated characters perform comedy sketches and songs from the show, only without the framing of a stage. There isn’t [...]
Iron Man, Reed Richards, Dr. Strange, and an unidentified fourth member of their secret group (which by process of elimination and comparison to the comic story is likely Black Bolt, but he would be too complicated to explain to movie viewers) banished the Hulk from Earth because they couldn’t overcome his destructive force. His spaceship [...]
Lionsgate will be releasing the original animated Marvel movie Planet Hulk on February 2nd. But Comics Worth Reading has a chance for you to win a copy of the two-disc special edition DVD the day before! Simply post a comment here saying which comic character you’d most like to see the Hulk beat up and why. [...]
Disney has just announced that The Princess and the Frog will be available on DVD and Blu-Ray on March 16. This seems really quick to me, since the movie only opened wide on December 11.
As of last weekend, the movie had only just made $100 million domestically, so maybe that’s why they want to [...]
I’ve previously run articles on a couple of the impressive, more-than-complete DVD sets Shout Factory has released for fan-favorite cartoons Transformers and G.I. Joe. Now, Amazon has the DVD box sets for just about half off.
Buy the Transformers 25th Anniversary Matrix of Leadership Collector’s Edition List price $170 US, now $87.
Buy G.I. Joe A Real American [...]
Review by Roger Ash CBS and Paramount have finally released a complete set of Ralph Bakshi’s Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures as a three-DVD set. These are DVDs that have been eagerly awaited by fans of the series (myself included) for decades. How big of a fan am I of the series? I asked to write [...]
Warner Home Video has provided these images from the upcoming DC Showcase: Spectre short that will be included on the Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths special edition DVD, due out February 23. Click for larger versions. As described by the publicity group, “The Spectre focuses on a detective story with an ethereal twist, featuring [...]
I know plenty about Warner animation, with all the DC superhero movies they do, and Disney’s Pixar, but I didn’t know anything about Blue Sky Studios, the animation division of 20th Century Fox, until I read this NY Times article. They’re responsible for, among other things, the wildly successful Ice Age series. Dawn of the [...]
Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures by KC Carlson Out this week is Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures, a 3-disc DVD collection of the 1987-1989 Ralph Bakshi-directed Saturday morning cartoon series. It’s considered by animation historians one of the early examples of the modern-day kid-vid animation resurgence. (And all it took was to actually make the cartoons funny!) [...]
