Summer advice: Watch lots of old movies and TV shows with your kids. (Somehow, it doesn’t have the same ring when you yell out to your family, ”Family time! Everyone come watch ’CSI: Miami!’”
Case in point: A lovely collection called “The Tortoise and the Hare,” a part of the Walt Disney Animation Collection of Classic Short Films.
The compilation includes the Academy-Award winning 1934 “The Tortoise and the Hare.” (It won for Short Subject-Cartoons) as well as other short films such as “Babes in the Woods,” “The Saga of Windwagon Smith,” The Goddess of Spring,” and “Toby Tortoise Returns.”
The title story will be familiar to many viewers as the classic children’s fable, and one of the best-loved underdog stories around. A couple of interesting items: the hare is named Max Hare after the boxer Max Baer, and---who knew?--the tortoise was the inspiration for another character named Tommy Tortoise, a Sonic the Hedgehog character.
Like many Disney films of an earlier era, what’s particularly appealing is the incredible details and the gorgeous backgrounds. Also notable is the slightly surreal quality that pervades each story, lending many of them an eerie, old-fashioned air.
But you don’t need to know any of that to enjoy a completely different style and approach to animation than most of what you and your kids see these days.
Just sit back, relax and enjoy the show.
Tags: Animation, Family Time
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From:
Mary
06/30/2009
