DVD
Review of Walt Disney Treasures: Mickey Mouse in Living Color
Review
by Shannon Muir
Overall
Rating: 9 out of 10
Individual
Ratings
Feature:
10 out of 10
Sound: 10 out of 10
Picture: 9 out of 10
Bonus Materials: 9 out of 10
Navigation: 9 out of 10
Content
Summary
- 2
Disc set
- 27 cartoons total (1 hidden)
- All cartoons in color
- Bonus features: "Walt and Mickey" excerpt from DISNEYLAND
TV series; 3 pencil tests from 1935; Gallery of artwork
- Region 1 encoding
More
Info From Amazon.com

Review
The
shorts on this 2 disc set cover the Mickey Mouse films released
to theaters between 1935-1938, plus a special bonus from 1939.
Disc 1 contains the 1935-1936 shorts "The Band Concert,"
"Mickey's Garden," "On Ice," "Pluto's
Judgment Day," "Mickey's Fire Brigade," "Thru
the Mirror," "Mickey's Circus," "Mickey's
Elephant," "Mickey's Grand Opera," "Mickey's
Polo Team," "Alpine Climbers," "Moving Day,"
"Mickey's Rival" and "Orphan's Picnic." The
cartoons for 1937-1938 are presented on Disc 2 -- "Hawaiian
Holiday," "Moose Hunters," "The Worm Turns,"
"Magician Mickey," "Mickey's Amateurs," "Clock
Cleaners," "Lonesome Ghosts," "Mickey's Parrot,"
"Boat Builders," "The Whalers," "Mickey's
Trailer," "Brave Little Tailor," and "Mickey's
Surprise Party" from 1939.
Film critic
Leonard Maltin hosts the collection, providing commentary to give
you and overview of the collection before going to the menu on
Disc 1. On Disc 2, you proceed straight to the menu and have the
option of selecting a more historical commentary by Maltin from
the list of choices. The historical commentary, also called "Mickey
in Living Color," which serves as Leonard Maltin's tour guiding
you from Mickey's solo career, through the addition of friends
like Donald Duck and Goofy, and how they later eclipsed Mickey.
Generally,
the shorts seem well preserved in picture and sound quality. I
would say the sound quality crisp and clear throughout, and good
vibrant color across the collection. Some noticeable evidence
of shaky picture and fading appears in a few shorts, such as "Clock
Cleaners" from 1937 and "Mickey's Trailer" from
1938, but this is rare. The cel dirt on "Brave Little Tailor"
tends to be painfully evident against the dark backgrounds. Again,
this is the exception and not the rule.
The two-disc
set offers three bonus features, plus two hidden "easter
egg" features. The first bonus feature, "Parade of the
Award Nominees" from Disc 1, is a short specifically created
for the 1932 Academy Awards dinner depicting the acting nominees
of the year, not originally intended for viewing by the masses.
More importantly, this short marked the color debut of Mickey
Mouse, where the general public would not see him in color until
1935. What makes this short interesting, whether or not you recognize
the acting nominees being depicted, is the fact that Mickey's
pants are not their now-trademark red. No commentary is provided
regarding the color change. Disc 2 contains a Gallery which features
production artwork of "The Band Concert," "Thru
the Mirror," "Lonesome Ghosts," and "Clock
Cleaners," along with promotional art for practically all
the shorts.
Disc 1's hidden
feature is a piece called "Walt and Mickey," black-and-white
footage of Walt Disney chronicling the history of Mickey Mouse
from his beginning as a solo act, to joining his friends, through
Mickey's debut in FANTASIA. The piece is excerpted from THE DISNEYLAND
STORY (an episode of the DISNEYLAND series) circa 1954. It's fantastic
to hear Walt tell in his own words about how Mickey's popularity
grew, and with it, the achievements of Walt Disney Animation.
Hidden on Disc 2 is Leonard Maltin introducing "Mickey's
Surprise Party," which is billed as a "rarely screened
cartoon" done for the 1939 New York World's Fair, followed
by the cartoon in its entirety.
The piece
of bonus material I most enjoyed came from Disc 1, found in the
regular menus (i.e. not "hidden"). The pencil test,
a detailed precursor of today's far rougher animatic, was employed
to get the fluidity of the animation down using pencil and camera
before any inking began. Director Ben Sharpstein saved several
pencil tests in his garage, which his family donated in recent
years and are now on this DVD set. Available are the pencil tests
for "Mickey's Fire Brigade," "Pluto's Judgment
Day," and "On Ice." A really fun (not to mention
educational) feature is that when you use your ANGLE button on
the DVD player, the view will switch back and forth between the
pencil test and finished product. To me, as someone in the animation
industry (or even to recommend to anyone studying the animation
industry), I felt this feature alone made this specific collection
worth having.
While not
truly bonus material per se, something common in DVD releases
is multiple language tracks and subtitle offerings. That really
isn't the case on this collection, which only offers English-language
captions for the hearing impaired. Perhaps I am biased, given
that I live in Southern California, but I found it odd that at
least Spanish-language subtitles were not provided, given the
huge influx of Spanish-language media in recent years here in
the United States, and just to provide some semblance of options
since most other animated DVDs I've encountered do offer at least
one subtitled or dubbed foreign language. That said, I believe
the Mickey Mouse shorts speak through action and the dialogue
is ancillary. They can be enjoyed without the words, which makes
them so universal.
Navigation
on this collection tends to be straightforward. A yellow, transparent
Mickey Mouse head-shaped icon highlights your selection on the
main and caption screens. On the actual shorts menus, the red
titles turn yellow when they are the active selection. The only
difficult part to navigate is the Gallery Bonus Feature on Disc
2. All the available pages start out being shown to you inside
little Mickey Mouse head cutout shapes, but still as a full-size
portion of the original artwork and not as thumbnails. So unless
you know what you seek, it's tough to skip to a specific image.
It's far easier to scroll through the images at full screen size
one by one until you find what you wish to see. I found that a
little frustrating.
One last note,
I've seen a coming attractions on Disney DVD trailer that included
THE SPIRIT OF MICKEY, previously available on VHS. THE SPIRIT
OF MICKEY contains four of the Mickey Mouse shorts -- "The
Band Concert," "Thru the Mirror," "Orphan's
Picnic," and "Mickey's Trailer." It does leave
open the possibility that the other shorts featured on this set
could be released on other DVDs in the future, but they'll likely
not be packaged all in one place like this again... and that's
one of the best reasons to own this collection.
PROS:
- Complete collection of theatrically-released shorts from 1935-1938
- The ability to shift from bonus feature pencil tests to actual
theatrical short and see the flow of action
- Mostly easy navigation
CONS:
- Gallery difficult to navigate
Note:
These discs are part of a four-title collection called WALT DISNEY
TREASURES, each title with a limited run of 150,000 copies. The
other animated title is SILLY SYMPHONIES; the two live-action
titles in the set are DISNEYLAND USA and THE ADVENTURES OF DAVY
CROCKETT. Each set in this collection comes in a tin, with a dual-sided
clamshell case contained inside. The limited edition pressing
number is stamped only on the tin, with no matching type of "Certificate
of Authenticity" inside the clamshell case on or the discs
themselves.

You can order
Mickey Mouse in Living Color (note: limited edition) by clicking
here.
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