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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #106 in DVD
• Released on: 2008-10-27
• Rating: Universal, suitable for all
• Format: PAL
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 75 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Disney's 1959 Sleeping Beauty was the studio's most ambitious effort to date, a lavish spectacle boasting a gorgeous waltz-filled score adapted from the music of Tchaikovsky.

In the 14th century, the malevolent Maleficent (not dissimilar to the wicked queen in Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs) taunts a king that his infant Aurora will fatally prick her finger on a spinning wheel before sundown on her sixteenth birthday. This, of course, would deny her a happily-ever-after with her true love. Fortunately, some bubbly, bumbling fairies named Flora, Fauna and Merryweather are on hand to assist.

It's not really all that much about the title character--how interesting can someone in the middle of a long nap be, anyway? Instead, those fairies carry the day, as well as, of course, good Prince Phillip, whose battle with the malevolent Maleficent in the guise of a dragon has been co-opted by any number of animated films since. See it in its original glory here, alongside Maleficent's castle, which, filled with warthogs and demonic imps in a macabre dance celebrating their evil ways, manages a certain creepy grandeur. --David Kronke, Amazon.com

Synopsis
A brand new DVD package to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Disney classic Sleeping Beauty. The timeless story tells of Princess Aurora, cursed by the evil sorceress Maleficent to die on her 16th birthday after pricking her finger on a poisoned spinning wheel. Despite being brought up in secret by three good fairies as Briar Rose, the curse comes true. Can her true love, Prince Philip, battle Maleficent and her spells and wake Aurora from her ageless sleep?

DVD Bonus Features

Audio Commentary
Princess Fun Facts
"Once Upon A Dream" Music Video
Disney Song Selection
Picture Perfect: The Making Of Sleeping Beauty
Alternate Opening
4 Deleted Songs
Storyboard Sequences
Live Action Reference
Sleeping Beauty Art Galleries
Sleeping Beauty Castle Walk-Thru Attraction
Publicity
The Peter Tchaikovsky Story
Four Artist Paint One Tree
Briar Rose’s Enchanted Dance Game
Sleeping Beauty Fun With Language Game

Synopsis
A beautiful princess born in a faraway kingdom is destined by a terrible curse to prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel and fall into a deep sleep which can only be awakened by true love's first kiss. Though the titular princess is on par with the rest of Disney's essential heroines, most of the fun arises from the trio of charming fairies entrusted with her care: Flora, Fauna, and Meriweather. Meanwhile the evil Malificent may just be Disney's most chilling villainess. This classic makes wondrous use of Tchaikovsky's same-titled ballet score, which earned SLEEPING BEAUTY an Academy Award nomination for Best Scoring of a Musical Picture.

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Customer Reviews

Spectacular
Unfortunately demand from the public caused Sleeping Beauty to be almost rush released a few years ago. Now it's fantastic to have this classic back getting the 'Platinum Edition' treatment it deserves.
The digital restoration makes Sleeping Beauty look incredible... beautiful is kind of an understatement. If you researched into this film you'd discover that Walt's vision was for the art to carry the movie. Being able to see Sleeping Beauty in its original widescreen splendidness certainly highlights that. The restoration really makes those colorful backgrounds stand out. It's incredible to think that this entire movie was produced by hand even though some of the special effects look like they could have been produced in the computer editing process (that kind of editing wasn't invented in the era of this movie though). Sleeping Beauty truly was the end to an era.
The extras are the standard kind of thing we've come to expect from Disney's 'Platinum' series... deleted scenes, a making of featurette, deleted songs, an alterate opening and some games for the really young ones. The 'making of' is extremely informative and a must for anyone fascinated by the art of this movie. Disney have kept this fresh for the new generation by having Emily Osment of Hannah Montana fame sing a new version of 'Once Upon A Dream' in an exclusive music video just for the DVD.

They don't make 'em like this any more
This has always been my favourite Disney film, and I am so glad it's been given the loving restoration it deserves.

The fantastic detail and 1950s graphic take of gothic and medieval styles is positively breathtaking. For Walt Disney it was ground breaking (and almost bankrupting) to create something so meticulously detailed and stylistically consistent right down to the backgrounds, and the result is beautiful and atmospheric. The extras are all interesting, detailing the conceptual side of things, and added a whole new perspective on what was always my favourite childhood film (even though I was terrified of Maleficent and convinced she was under my bed).

Amazing as the new computer technology is, it just doesn't for me have the artistic soul and wonder of this kind of traditional animation (no offence to those talented folk who work long and hard creating it, it's just not my bag). Now we strive for 3D realism, in movies like this it was for a blending of styles/genres and a stylistic vision that I feel lost in the computer age. I doubt we'll see animation like this again, and for me that's a crying shame.

And on the character side of things... Flora, Fauna and Merriweather still crack me up, twenty years later.

Reconsidering Walt Disney's "Sleeping Beauty" as a restored classic
I have been trying to remember the first time I saw Walt Disney's "Sleeping Beauty," and I cannot remember if I ever saw it in a theater, caught it on television some time, or never sat down to watch it until it came out on videotape. What I did remember is not being particularly impressed by the movie. Certainly I did not consider it to be a classic Disney animated film like "Bambi" or "Cinderella," which is a way of saying that it was not on my "must have" list of Disney movies. Then I watched this 50th Anniversary Platinum Edition of "Sleeping Beauty" and all I can say is that however I saw this film for the first time it was NOT in this expanded version that has restored the original Super Technirama 70 dimensions of the film. I would have remembered a film that had art this gorgeous, even when it is this stylized and even when the music is classical high brow stuff. In the final analysis, "Sleeping Beauty" is clearly like no other Disney animated film, and that is a good thing.

Disc 1 includes "Grand Canyon," a contemporaneous Disney feature (1958) that combines photography of the national park with Ferde Grofe's "Grand Canyon Suite," and it would be the classical music that is the common denominator to the main feature. Disc 2 has Games & Activities over in the Cottage, while the Castle is devoted to the Backstage Disney special features. The games are pretty much geared for younger children (e.g., see "mop" and click on the item the word represents), so most of the goodies on the second disc are for the adults. There is a new documentary on "The Making of 'Sleeping Beauty,'" which combines archival footage with contemporary interviews. The "Never-Before-Seen Alternate Opening" and "Deleted Songs" are not animated but storyboard drawings accompanying the original, more traditional Disney-like, songs that were written for the film before Walt decided to go primarily with a score based on Tchaikovsky's ballet version of the fairy tale.

If you have picked up any of these platinum editions, then you should be well versed in the sort of extras you can expect here in terms of storyboards, artwork, live-action reference footing, music video by some teenage singer, etc. The other one that stands out here is the fully immersive virtual tour of the Sleeping Beauty Castle Walkthrough, a Disneyland attraction that actually existed before the part opened and years before the movie was released.

Besides reminding us again that Walt Disney was a true visionary, the special features highlight the pivotal role of Eyvind Earle, the film's production designer. It was Earle who was given an amazing amount of freedom by Walt to design the settings and to paint most of the film's elaborate background paintings (which usually took a week to do, rather than a single day like in most animated films). The interviews with surviving members of the studio make it clear that Earle did not play well with others, but he was fully committed to creating a unique animated film and now that we can see the expanded version, there is no denying that is exactly what they accomplished. Consequently, I am confident I can remember in the future that "Sleeping Beauty" is a beautifully stylized animated film that is a unique jewel in the Disney crown.