Walt Disney Treasures - Mickey Mouse in Living Color

Rating:
Summary: A "Treasure" For Any DVD Collection
Review: Review 5 of 7 for the set reviews

Mickey, the mouse that started it all, comes to life in color. These were the first 28 color cartoons featuring Mickey. Mickey Mouse was the mouse that started it all, and he made and overnight star of himself and his creator, an alter ego, Walt Disney. His first color cartoon was the minni masterpiece, "The Band Concert." This collection starts when you put in the first disc. After the "Walt Disney Treasures" preview, you are in the theater and the curtian lifts on Mickey Mouse. Leanord Maltin will be your host, and will tell you the things you will be seeing at the corner of Mickey Avenue and Dopey Drive on the Disney Studio lot. When you get to the menu, you may play all, go to 1935 or the 1936 cartoon years. You may also choose to play the Easter Egg, "Walt and Mickey" T.V. excerpted from the Disneyland Story. There is also an extra cartoon named "Parade of Award Nominees" for the 1935 Oscar ceramony. Then you may use captions, and play the introduction. The cartoons on this disc are: "The Band Concert," "Mickey's Garden," "On Ice," "Pluto's Judgement 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 final thing on disc one is the pencil tests for "Mickey's Fire Brigade," "On Ice," and "Pluto's Judgement Day." After that, disc two goes in. The curtains part and you see a menu featuring the play all, 1937 and 1938 cartoons, captions, gallery of art, theatrical posters, and photos, and the "Mickey In Living Color" eaturette with Leanord Maltin. The featurette discusses the mouse that started it all. There is another eater egg here. It is the cartoon shown at the 1939 World's Fair. It was a promotional film for Nabisco named "Mickey's Surprise Party." The cartoons on this disc are: "Hawaiian Holdiay, "Moose Hunters," "The Worm Turns," "Magician Mickey," "Mickey's Amateures," "Clock Cleaners,"Lonesome Ghosts," "Mickey's Parrot, "Boat Builders," "The Whalers," "Mickey's Trailer, and "The Brave Little Tailor." This set comes with a booklet. This has a letter from Leanord Maltin and a list of features and "Treasures." The final thing is a postcard size lithograph. It is a reproduction of the 1935 theatrical poster for the short "The Band Concert." All of this comes packaged in a tin case. This set is limited. There are only 150,000 copies. So get yours before it runs out. You and your children will love "Mickey Mouse in Living Color." It is a "Treasure," for any DVD collector...

Rating:
Summary: Nicely done
Review: A well-done set. Some of the source material is less than stellar, though, especially The Brave Little Tailor, in which one very important sequence contains enough dirt and dust to become a genuine distraction.

I just can't say that I am all that fond of this collection. I am glad to be able to add wonderful films like The Band Concert and Lonesome Ghosts to my collection, but I found a lot of the material to be rather bland. Mickey is, to me, entirely too nice and passive to be terribly interesting.

I find myself watching for Pluto, who always makes me smile, and Donald Duck, whose great sputtering rages are by turns hilarious and disturbing. Watching Donald being tortured by a group of violent brats in The Orphans Picnic isn't exactly my idea of fun. It's enough to make you wonder whether the kids are really orphans, or if their parents just abandoned them for being ill-mannered monsters.

On the whole, I much prefer the Silly Symphonies collection.

And they can keep Leonard Maltin's introductions. They aren't especially informative, and his pop-eyed stare and gee-whiz-aren't-these-films-grrrrrreat? attitude gets rather tired after a while.

Rating:
Summary: Great Shorts - Crappy Menus and Tired of Leonard
Review: Its a great collection of shorts! And really great pencil test cut-togethers of three different cartoons!

BLAH! The menu's are really ignorantly layed out with a lot of the shorts not listed, but 'hidden' as icons -- so you have to search to find the short you want to watch -- Really foolish! The annoying film critic, Leonard, keeps popping up all the time too! It turns out he doesn't have much to say, but he's in front of almost every cartoon blabbering!!!!

Rating:
Summary: love these cartoons.....
Review: but i HATE leonard maltin. he is a very annoying self-appointed "film historian" who seems to show up on way too many dvds. i'd rather have my eyes gouged out with a shrimp cocktail fork than watch him. thank goodness the dvd format allows quick forwarding through his sections, but it did ruin this (and the other) disney box sets for me.

Rating:
Summary: masterpieces
Review: These are some of the greatest cartoons ever. I particularly love the 1935 ones, they have the best action. THe band concert is amazing. THe bit when the tornado lifts the band up-awesome. MIckey's garden is trippy, there's a great sequence when the garden grows like a jungle. This is 30 years before haight ashbury! THen mickey's fire brigade, which is chock full of action. The cartoon starts brilliantly with the intro title burning up! On ice is another gem, still funny today. Great music as well. THe attention to detail in these cartoons is scary. THe amount of work that went into each one, the artistic creative juices and the sweat and toil. A different era. THe quality of disney shorts went down after they began making features and also the strike of 1941 , when walt disney didn't supervise everything as much as he used to. So these cartoons are from the golden age and are 'treasures'. There are some real gems in the 1936 list. Mickey's polo team is great action, with the marx bros and charlie chaplin and laurel and hardy. THru the mirror is particularly fine, almost perfection. Some great stretch animation of mickey . Moving day has donald duck filled up with gas (propane maybe) and he is propelled around the house. THen pete lights up his cigar and bang. Mickey's rival has some great action too. 1937 - clock cleaners and lonesome ghosts shine, especially clock cleaners with the goofy skyscaper routine. Incidentally, there is a part in this cartoon when donald originally says to the spring, 'says who'.... Now they have him say something completely unintelligible. A minor quibble.
1938 has brave little tailor and a rare minnie mouse appearance. The whalers has a funny bit when goofy throws cold water onto a flaccid cannon and it hardens up. They left that bit in.

Overall, it's a great set. Buy.

Rating:
Summary: Across the centuries
Review: My father told me how when these films were new, he and his pals would erupt with joy, and how when the theater didn't show one they chanted "What! No Mickey Mouse!"

Now, in another century, my late father's two year old grandson can enjoy them all over again.

These are art for the ages.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful! Please give us more Disney Treasures!
Review: I picked up all four of these Disney Treasures collections and absolutely LOVE them! Disneyland, USA could have included much more, but the others, such as Mickey Mouse in Living Color, were WONDERFUL! This is what I'd like to see more of! Complete sets of Disney Cartoons, uncut and including Easter Eggs! I pray that we get more sets like this! Sets for Donald, Goofy, and Wartime shorts, Mickey's other cartoons, everything, no matter how controversial, that Disney has ever animated! No Mickey Mouse fan, or Disney fan, should be without this two disc set! It features Mickey's early color cartoons. Now, if you're bothered by the different look that Mickey Had in the early years, and are only comfortable with the way he looks today, this isn't for you. But if you just plain love Mickey, don't wait around! Don't hesitate to pick up all four of the currently available, limited edition, Walt Disney Treasures Collections: Disneyland, USA, Mickey Mouse in Living Color, Davy Crockett, and Silly Symphonies. And I hope we get sets like this of Duck Tales, Gummi Bears, and all those other great Disney TV shows too! And we're still waiting for unedited versions of Make Mine Music, Melody Time, and various other films that have been made PC for the whining babies of our time! I won't hold my breath for Song of the South!

Rating:
Summary: By far the best Disney dvd release
Review: This has to be the best of Disney's dvd releases, along with the others of the WALT DISNEY TREASURES collection.

What Disney needs to do now is release the black and white Mickey's, as they did a few years ago on laserdisc. It also wouldn't hurt to provide a supplemental disc of Disney's pre-Mickey shorts. What about Donald and Goofy? Over 400 shorts were produced by the Disney studios, lets hope we see more.

Hats off to Disney for this series.

Rating:
Summary: One of the best
Review: This a a great work of animation. Everyone is having a lot of fun and the artists are at their peak.The chairs dance, the radio joins in, and Mickey out-does Fred Astair, dancing on a top hat with a match for his cane.

(The software that comes with this DVD did not work on our XP computer, but alternative software from the computer manufacturer should be fine.)

Rating:
Summary: Very good, but a few flaws...
Review: First the good:

This is by far the best compilation of Mickey shorts available to the public to date. Disney produced 87 Mickey shorts in the 30's - by far the most prolific period of Mickey Mouse Cartoons (there were only 120 made from 1928 to 1953). 27 of these shorts are contained on this disc, which constitutes more than half of the color Mickeys made. He was already a sensation before he went to color; these shorts firmly established him as an American icon. To the animation fan, it can be argued that this disc contains some of the best cartoon "acting" of the golden age of animation. By no means should a serious fan avoid this disc.

The not so good:

These shorts have not been remastered. I'm not even sure they come from the best available print. Some of these shorts have looked better on the "Ink and Paint Club." The cartoons in this package contain flaws that some could consider unacceptable, or at least annoying - colors going out of register (albeit probably not noticeable to the casual viewer), a few sound problems (rare, but a bit annoying), dust and dirt. Watch the "Brave Little Tailor" in the scene where Mickey kills the seven flies. The amount of film debris present is alarming - it almost looks like it's snowing. Some have said that the recent remastering of Snow White has resulted in an ultra-clean presentation that takes away from the period animation. Well...this disc certainly doesn't present THAT dilemma. It's not unacceptable as the good far outweighs the bad. But I would have thought Disney to spend a bit more time on presenting the best possible versions of these pieces.

Overall:

An absolute must for the animation collector. Concerning the comments about the mastering - it's highly unlikely that Disney will remaster these shorts in another package. Grab it while it's available as this is supposedly a limited release of 150,000 copies....