Disney Movie Rewards

[Ben]

You have to go for Frank And Ollie, Rand...it's an excellent disc.

[Randall]

Oh, I'll get it one way or another, eventually. The fact that I have the VHS version has made the disc that much less tempting. There always seem to be other priorities, and Amazon's never had it on sale.

[EricJ]

I've been tempted to get Treasure of Matecumbe, but not enough to spend points on it, and besides, like "Donald in Mathmagic Land", it's already gone to retail.
(And I'd get "Sky High" on Blu, if I hadn't already weakened and bought it back when it was one of Disney first and only five Blu-ray disks and I was getting desperate.)

So now, I'm just letting my Alice-Bambi-Nausicaa-Tron points accumulate, hoping they'll bring out another back-surplus Disney Treasures Tin.
Fortunately, that left me enough to blow some points on the D23 Sweepstakes. (Sheesh, if they're going to start doing point-entry contests now, and get all Coke Rewards about it...)

Frank & Ollie IS a good companion to the recent Waking/Boys/Grupo trilogy, though--Disney just didn't know how to market documentaries back then, when nobody watched them.

[Daniel]

New Rewards:

Quack Pack -- Vol. 1 DVD
Babes In Toyland DVD
Million Dollar Duck DVD
Walt Disney Treasures: The Adventures Of Oswald The Lucky Rabbit DVD

[EricJ]

Hmm, nobody bought the Oswald tin when it came out, either.
(Not that we still don't applaud Iger for the symbolic effort, just that there was realistically no chance of making millions off of it. It's got a good Leonard Maltin documentary, though, just that there's only so much Ub Iwerks you can watch.)

And Toyland was a weak effort (their first live-action musical three years before Poppins, and what a difference), but might be good for "free".

[Randall]

Toyland was a neat production, and I wouldn't mind grabbing it for "free" myself. Even Million Dollar Duck is tempting, as I've picked up a lot of the lesser catalog titles with DMR and most are worth watching to some extent.

The Oswald set is awesome. OK, I haven't actually watched mine yet, but I love the idea of it.

Thanks for the update, Dan!

[EricJ]

Think "Snowball Express" is also new: Harmless bit of 70's-sitcom Dean Jones fluff with ski/snow pratfalls, but more palatable than Million Dollar Duck--Siskel & Ebert both claim to have walked out on that one.

[Ben]

Hmm, nobody bought the Oswald tin when it came out, either.

At least two here did!

...there's only so much Ub Iwerks you can watch.

And you call yourself a "fan"


Thanks for the head's up, Dan, and nice to see some more of those "Magic In The Memories" titles starting to show up after being quite overpriced on first release (near $20 for a pan-and-scan barebones disc is pushing it for even uber-fans).

Babes In Toyland has some wonderful things in it: it reminds me of George Pal's tom thumb, and some of the animation effects are very good. I can pass on Quack Pack, but Million Dollar Duck is a must for me: Tony Roberts as Dean Jones' neighbor is classic and has some very funny delivery on some of his lines. Sure, it's as dated as some of the other Disney pictures of the era, but it also has some very funny moments that still make me chuckle thinking about them.

Snowball Express is even better: still a very funny family comedy that - give or take some now obvious matte and back projection effects - is a terrific comedy that beats the likes of what passes for the equivalent today. Man, just thinking about those two brings back the theme music to my mind: now I'm going to have to dig out Snowball for a watch soon (an open matte transfer if I remember right), and put $1,000,000 Duck (correct title spelling - how pathetic is that!?) on my Movie Rewards wish list!

Actually, now I think about it, those two recent Vault Disney titles might just push me up high enough to redeem that now (yep, and then down to just 20 points again). Groovy!

[EricJ]

Babes In Toyland has some wonderful things in it: it reminds me of George Pal's tom thumb, and some of the animation effects are very good.

I remember dismissing it because it'd been too Disneyfied to fit Tommy & Annette, and that it changed the lyrics and wasn't the "real" Victor Herbert operetta--
(And frankly, Pal's Thumb was a mess compared to Brothers Grimm.)

Then I looked up Herbert's real book for the musical on Wiki, and...eek! Suffice to say, NOBODY's done an accurate version of the musical since 1910, and even Laurel & Hardy weren't a faithful adaptation either.
But of the two, I'll concede it's fun watching Disney's, just to watch Henry Calvin and Gene Sheldon intentionally doing their Laurel & Hardy imitations from the old Zorro series.
I'd probably even spring for it, if I didn't already have the "Backstage Party" episode on the Your Host Walt Disney set.

(Just checked out the Disney Treasures version of Zorro:S1 from the library, and wondered whether to save up--But looks like the one on DMR's site is still the old bare-bones Movie Club version, and not the quality Treasures wave from a while ago. )

[Randall]

Plus, the movie club version is colorized. Personally, I`m happy to have the original B&W eps in the Treasures tins.

[GeorgeC]

It was definitely a good idea to buy Zorro while the tins were fresh...

I don't know that many of them were printed.

I'm a Guy Williams fan -- liked the guy in both Lost in Space and especially Zorro -- and I wasn't going to miss them.

Always the possibility of a re-release if something new gets done with Zorro. The character hasn't suffered bad adaptations like The Lone Ranger has lately so I don't it's toxic to be associated with him.

The funny is the Disney Zorro series was only two seasons (plus one compilation movie) long... it just seems like it ran longer than that!

[Randall]

Well, they were long seasons.

I know Ben's a big fan of the show, while I only finally saw it with the Treasures sets. And I agree--- Williams is great both in Zorror and in LiS.

[Ben]

I got the first DMR Zorro set not realizing the episodes had been colorized, but didn't mind too much: I guessed that was the best we were going to see them at all on DVD, and at least one can turn the color down (unlike a pan-and-scan title, where you can't add any image back!).

Then the WDT Zorro tins came out, and in black and white to boot. As a Treasures fan, I naturally picked up both (well, one was a review set) to complete my collection of all the tins, but I have to say that when the second DMR Zorro season came up for grabs I did spend my points on securing a copy. I wouldn't have ever spent real money on the colorized editions, but since it was only rewards points it wasn't a big deal. It would have been odd not having both seasons on the shelf, since my Treausure tins were complete and are stored separately.



Guy Williams was great on TV and a shame that he never really progressed to a big movie career as he was a more than capable actor. Lost In Space was always enjoyable thanks to him, especially when Jonathan Harris went off the deep end into self-parody towards the end and he kind of kept it together. He's also a good swashbuckler in the entertaining B-movie Captain Sindbad, the Byron Haskin-directed spectacle.



I actually love the character himself, though only through the movies (not having read any of the pulp books). The Tyrone Power movie in the 40s is big fun, as are the cliffhanger series (of the few chapters I've ever seen). Disney's series is perhaps the most entertaining and consistent translation (and great for TV of the time), but I truly love Martin Campbell's recent epic action blockbusters. A 1970s TV movie with Ricardo Montelban is absolutely awful, as was the comedy version Zorro And Son, which was sadly my introduction to the character.

My Dad had grown up with the Disney series, and we set down to watch Zorro And Son together. After the build-up he'd given me it was a crushing disappointment to both of us (it lasted less than half a season, though I would very much like to see them again just for old time's sake, as well as the short-lived Herbie: The Love Bug show of the same year, 1983).



I think the original series ran for 80 episodes, plus the four one-hour shows and (I think) actually four movies, which were made from previous episodes. So they've been shown over and over in various editions, including the colorized ones in the 1990s. I can't see them coming out again anytime soon - especially in black and white - but the DMR sets are still there for those that really want to see them.

[GeorgeC]

Guy Williams was great on TV and a shame that he never really progressed to a big movie career as he was a more than capable actor. Lost In Space was always enjoyable thanks to him, especially when Jonathan Harris went off the deep end into self-parody towards the end and he kind of kept it together. He's also a good swashbuckler in the entertaining B-movie Captain Sindbad, the Byron Haskin-directed spectacle.

Sometimes the limelight isn't what people want. That kind of attention and "yes-men" all around you -- it's toxic.

The guy who played The Green Hornet on TV retired from acting very soon after that series finished. He made his money doing other things and was happy.

Guy Williams retired to Argentina in the early 1970s from what I've heard and was very happy there for the remainder of his life. He stayed something of a celebrity there because of the Zorro TV series and was treated well locally...


************

Ironic thing is that with all the craziness about racial politics and ethnicity in the US -- it's gotten worse during my lifetime; too much emphasis on differences in spite of what we get told officially, and federal (in)action has made the situation much worse in areas of the country -- Zorro, a Hispanic (Mexican of Spanish noble blood) character, was created by a white guy! ==> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zorro

This point is lost on people = it's NOT who creates the character or WHAT the character is (although a nice, likeable fellow or gal is preferrable to a monster or complete jerk), but that the character has characterististics that are memorable. Zorro's an icon like The Lone Ranger, Batman, and Superman. It's an established fact (by admission of Bob Kane) that Zorro influenced Batman.

[Daniel]

June Newletter code: Y7ZE67KL2G

And a few new rewards:

"Beauty And The Beast" Keepsakes Box (Back in-stock)
"Pirates of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides" Neoprene Laptop Sleeve
"Cars 2" Themed RealD 3D Glasses For Kids
Gnomeo & Juliet Bobble Heads Set

I'm definitely redeeming the bobble Gnomes. They look so cute and really look like the characters. The attention to detail is amazing! The expressions and poses they chose are perfect. These don't look cheap, off model/scale or ugly like bobbles they've had in the past (points to Toy Story, bleh!) And the neat thing is, if they're made of resin (like they appear to be) it kind of resembles real gnomes. Makes them more special in a way!