Atlantis: Lost Empire (Quebec Version - French/English)Kirk Wise Gary Trousdale  
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Journey to the center of an animated feature with Disney's ingeniously engineered Special Edition. Taking a cue from The Matrix and Moulin Rouge, the commentary track by the directors and producer is enriched with an optional "Visual Commentary" feature, which whisks the viewers into behind the scenes featurettes on key sequences. Choose your own level of interaction in the second supplemental disc. "Tour" a comprehensive two-hour documentary with peeks at the wealth of additional materials you can "Explore" by theme or "File" through by topic. Among them: scores of design galleries, four cut sequences of varying completeness (including the fully animated original opening scene), a mythic mock history of the legendary "Shepherd's Journal" (complete with sample pages), and an Atlantean language primer by creator Mark Okrund. It's a journey almost as involved as Milo's, but a lot less tiring. —Sean Axmaker

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Disney Presents ALADDIN The Return of JafarToby Shelton  
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The legend continues in Disney's ALADDIN: THE RETURN OF JAFAR, the second movie in Aladdin's magical saga! When Jafar's last wish was granted, he became the most powerful genie of all. But it came with a price — entrapment in a magic lamp! Now he has escaped and he has only one thing on his mind: revenge against Aladdin! A thrilling new adventure begins as everyone teams up against this evil sorcerer. From battling thieves on flying horses to dodging flames inside an exploding lava pit, it is up to Aladdin — with Princess Jasmine, Abu, Carpet, and Genie by his side — to save the kingdom once and for all! Get ready to share all the magic, music, and mystery of ALADDIN: THE RETURN OF JAFAR — with five showstopping songs and exciting new bonus features!

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102 DalmatiansDVD  
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Don't be fooled by the title. Rather than 102, there are 4 reasons to like this sequel to the successful live-action remake of Disney's animated classic. There are the 101 spotted pooches, Glenn Close back in fine form as Cruella De Vil, Oddball—the spotless dalmation pup—and Waddlesworth, a parrot who thinks he's a rottweiler (and is voiced by Monty Python's Eric Idle). There are just as many reasons to be disappointed. Like most sequels, the story line is virtually a rewrite of the first, the secondary casting isn't as interesting, the dialogue merely serves to move the plot along, and the third act substitutes mean-spiritedness for comedy. After a period of rehabilitation, Cruella has returned to her old tricks. Once again, she simply must have a spotted coat and will go to any lengths to get ahold of the 102 dalmatians needed to make one with a hood. She sets her sights on the pups owned by her probation officer, Chloe (Alice Evans), and the owner of a local animal shelter, Kevin (Ioan Gruffudd of Horatio Hornblower). Her servant, Alonso (Tim McInnerny), and flamboyant furrier Monsieur Le Pelt (Gerard Depardieu, in one ridiculous outfit after another) are drafted to aid in her quest. It should come as no surprise that Chloe and Kevin fall in love, Oddball helps to save the day, and Cruella is defeated. Children should enjoy the animal high jinks, but adults are less likely to be enamored by this perfectly competent, but relatively charmless affair. —Kathleen C. Fennessy

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The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. ToadClyde Geronimi Jack Kinney  
*****
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This 1949 Disney feature has never been available on video in its original form until now. The 68-minute film contains two shorts: The Wind in the Willows and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. The former is a lively version of Kenneth Grahame's book of animal adventures, including Mr. Toad, a rambunctious sort with a passion for motorcars. Basil Rathbone narrates the story. Sleepy Hollow is the Washington Irving story of a stuffy schoolmaster and his ability to win the love of the fair Katrina from the brutish Brom Van Brunt. Many fans will see a resemblance to Disney's masterpiece created some 40 years later, Beauty and the Beast, in style and story. The end is still scary enough to send youngsters under the table. Bing Crosby supplies the narration, character voices, and songs. The opening number in a library including two stories has been included in this good-looking restoration. The shorts were made in Disney's prime, a year before Cinderella, and the look is wondrous. The exaggeration of Ichabod's skinny frame and his slumping horse is a glorious example. —Doug Thomas

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The Adventures of Huck FinnStephen Sommers  
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Huckleberry Finn's age has been scaled down in this 1993 Disney film in order to accommodate star Elijah Wood's young years at the time. But that's not the only concession Mark Twain's great American novel must make to Disney revisionism. Wood's Huck, as adapted for the screen by writer-director Stephen Sommers, is all rascal and only nominally a philosopher, which takes a lot of the soul out of Twain's extraordinary story about Huck's enlightenment while traveling with the slave Jim (Courtney B. Vance) along the Mississippi river. Big chunks of the journey are also minimized in significance, and not just for the sake of storytelling economy. Jason Robards Jr. and Robbie Coltrane brighten things up, but overall this is an unnecessarily simplified version of an important story. —Tom Keogh

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101 DalmatiansClyde Geronimi Wolfgang Reitherman  
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Back in 1961, Walt Disney got a little hip with 101 Dalmatians, making use of that flat Saturday morning cartoon style that had become so popular. The result is a kitschy change in animation and story. Pongo and Perdita are two lonely dalmatians who meet cute in a London park and arrange for their pet humans to marry so they can live together and raise a family. They become proud parents of 15 pups, who are stolen by the dastardly Cruella De Vil, who wants to make a fur coat out of them. Cruella has become the most popular villain in all of Disney; she's flamboyantly nasty and lots of fun. But it's the dalmatians who shine in this endearing classic, particularly those precocious pups. Telling the story from the dogs' point of view is a clever conceit, a fundamental flaw of the live-action remake. —Bill Desowitz

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TronJeff Bridges, Bruce Boxleitner, Steven Lisberger  
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The surprising truth about Disney's 1982 computer-game fantasy is that it's still visually impressive (though technologically quaint by later high-definition standards) and a lot of fun. It's about a computer wizard named Flynn (Jeff Bridges) who is digitally broken down into a data stream by a villainous software pirate (David Warner) and reconstituted into the internal, 3-D graphical world of computers. It is there, in the blazingly colorful, geometrically intense landscapes of cyberspace, that Flynn joins forces with Tron (Bruce Boxleitner) to outmaneuver the Master Control program that holds them captive in the equivalent of a gigantic, infinitely challenging computer game. Disney's wizards used a variety of cinematic techniques and early-'80s state-of-the-art computer-generated graphics to accomplish their dynamic visual goals, and the result was a milestone in cyberentertainment, catering to technogeeks while providing a dazzling adventure for hackers and nonhackers alike. Appearing just in time to celebrate the nascent cyberpunk movement in science fiction, Tron received a decidedly mixed reaction when originally released, but has since become a high-tech favorite and a landmark in special effects, with a loyal following of fans. DVD is a perfect format for the movie's neon-glow color scheme, and the musical score by synthesizer pioneer Wendy Carlos is faithfully preserved on the digitally remastered soundtrack. —Jeff Shannon

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