Bink & Gollie …and more stories about
friendship (Scholastic DVD)/Bubble Guppies: Sunny Days!
(Nickelodeon DVD)/The Roman Holidays:
The Complete Series (1972/Hanna-Barbera/Warner Archive DVD Set)/Superman Unbound (2013/Warner/DC Comics
Blu-ray w/DVD)/Twinkle Toes DVD Music
Video Collection (Inception w/Bonus CD)
Picture: DVDs:
C+/Superman Blu: B- Sound: C+/C+/C+/B & C+/C+ (CD: B-) Extras: C+/D/D/C+/C Main Programs: C+/B-/B-/C+/C
PLEASE NOTE: The Roman Holidays set is only available from Warner Bros. through
their Warner Archive series and can be ordered from the link below.
Here is a
new cycle of children’s releases to look at…
The
latest Scholastic DVD single is Bink
& Gollie …and more stories about friendship which offers four solid
shorts on the subject including the title short, A Sick Day For Amos McGee,
The
Other Side and the amusing Cat & Canary. With more extras than usual along with better
playback than usual, this is one of the best singles the company has released
to date and I think it has more playability than usual, which is impressive
considering the high quality source.
Extras include Read-Along function for all shorts and interviews with the
authors of three of the four shorts included: Tony Fucile for Bink & Gollie, Philip Stead for A
Sick Day For Amos McGee with its illustrator Erin Stead and Jacqueline
Woodson for The Other Side.
We get 2
hours of episodes in Bubble Guppies:
Sunny Days! from Nickelodeon DVD in what is more content than usual for
their singles, making it one of their better such releases as well. The show talks to kids as they watch, which
has a slightly creepy side for some, but is fine and this consists of six
episodes in all. The CGI show is simple
and child-safe, with this one having as much fun in the sun as any entry of
this show likely ever will. There are no
extras, but it is plenty of content for your money.
I had not
seen the 1972 Hanna-Barbera animated show The
Roman Holidays: The Complete Series for a very long time, but watching it
now 41 years later, I see it is one of their more underrated shows involving
the Holiday Family and life in 63 AD.
Taking a cue from the family-in-a-distinct era success of The Flintstones and The Jetsons, this is a clever attempt
to up the ante and offer more sly wit and jokes for more than just children
because many of the puns and era jokes are just to smart and mature for the
usual child audience then and now. That
might be why there were no sequel shows and the series was lost in the shuffle
of the company going sequel crazy and silly in the later 1970s and beyond.
There is
a talking lion (voiced by Daws Butler) as part of the otherwise human family,
the teens here are from the counterculture era the show was produced in, a
younger daughter is voiced by Pamelyn Ferdin (known for a few turns voicing
Lucy for Peanuts cartoons as well as fine live action acting), Dom DeLuise did
his first animation voice work here and Judi Strangis of Room 222 and soon Dyna Girl on Electra
Woman & Dyna Girl voices Groovia.
The
result is a fine gem I bet more people who saw it liked it than they’d remember
until they saw it again. It is smart,
fun and shows the studio wanted to expand in every way they could at the time. All 13 half-hour shows are here on 2 DVDs and
if they missed a Roman Empire joke, I sure
cannot think of it.
There are
sadly no extras, but it is a key Hanna-Barbera show worth your time.
James
Tucker’s Superman Unbound (2013) is
the latest self-contained animated DC Comics feature film, this time reintroducing
a new Brainiac and revised Supergirl, but at 75 minutes and with few new ideas,
is an attempted upgrade (and start of a possible new series of adventures) that
is no match for previous appearances of the Brainiac and Supergirl characters. Brainiac has been pumped up to be like Bain
meets the alien from Ridley Scott’s Alien
and Supergirl has a new attitude that does not always make sense and is wearing
a slight variant of her original 1960s outfit versus the white outfit from the
Bruce Timm TV shows or the matured 1970s outfit that was her character’s peak.
There are
some good moments and some money was spent on this one, but it is a
disappointment, mixed restart (to what is the question) and for serious fans
only. It might also be a little strong
for younger viewers.
Extras
include Ultraviolet Copy for PC, PC portable and iTunes capable devices,
Blu-ray exclusive featurettes: Kandor: History Of The Bottle City and a feature
length audio commentary track on its making, plus we also get 4 standard definition
bonus cartoon episodes from the TV animated series, digital comic preview of Superman:
Brainiac, preview for the next DC Comics feature straight to video:
Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox and featurette Brainiac: Terror &
Technology.
Finally
we have Twinkle Toes DVD Music Video
Collection aimed at very young females and a very short program at 35
minutes. The tween formula is in full
force here with forgettable songs, repetitive would-be music videos which
recycle footage more than they should and a remake of The Go-Gos’ We Got The Beat that has very little of
a beat or anything else about it that works.
I was not impressed at all, but I am not the audience, though I expect
they would eventually get bored with this one.
A Behind
The Scenes featurette and bonus CD are the only extras.
The 1.33
X 1 on Bink, Bubble and Roman are on
par with each other and have some softness and aliasing errors (Bink has the least and is one of
Scholastic’s cleanest releases visually to date), but Roman has the best color, even when it has the most cell dust,
aliasing and noise. The anamorphically
enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on the Twinkle
and Superman DVDs are no better
despite being cleaner. That leaves the 1080p
1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image on the Superman Blu-ray the best performer here, but with some noise and
detail issues of its own here and there, it is not as out in front as it should
have been.
The
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix on the Superman Blu-ray on the other hand is a sonic winner with a
consistent soundfield, warm recording, solid presentation and smooth overall
playback. The lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 on
the DVD version is comparatively weaker to the point that the lossy Dolby
Digital 5.1 on Twinkle, lossy Dolby
Digital 2.0 Stereo on Bink and Bubble and even lossy Dolby Digital 2.0
on Roman (surprisingly well recorded
for its time) can more than compete.
That
leaves the PCM 2.0 16/44/1 Stereo on the Twinkle
Bonus CD, which sounds better than its DVD counterpart, but can be a bit harsh
and have limits.
To order The Roman Holiday set, go to this link
for it and many more great web-exclusive releases at:
http://www.warnerarchive.com/
-
Nicholas Sheffo
