Eddie Collins

Adapted from the Grimm fairytale, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is chillingly dark in places, reflecting its roots in European folklore, but the deft Disney touch ensures that the overall tone remains light and the story develops apace, swept along on the perfect musical score. Any lingering gloom is quickly dispelled by the superbly characterised dwarfs and by the humorous antics of the various irresistible fauna that threaten to steal the show in several scenes. The pioneering animation is breathtaking and songs such as "Heigh Ho, Heigh Ho" and "Whistle While You Work", now firmly embedded in popular culture, are seamlessly interwoven with the action.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs happens to be an interesting technological milestone in cinema history--it is also an enduring masterpiece of family entertainment. To the millions who have fallen under its spell over the years, this magical fairy tale remains one of Disney's most enchanting and best-loved films. Only Grumpy could resist. --Helen Baker
Great seller, 2010-01-20
I was looking for a christmas present for a family member and couldn't think what to get until I remembered this family member loves Disney classics. So I did some investigative work to find out what Disney classics they didn't own, I found out they didn't own "Snow White and the seven dwarves". I immediately came onto amazon to search for the movies as I knew I could get a better deal here than on the high street. I found this copy of "Snow White" was the double disc edition and was cheaper than in the high street, it had all the relevant information that was needed. So i bought the item and was surprised at how quick it arrived with the xmas post. Would recommend and definitely buy from again

Adapted from the Grimm fairytale, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is chillingly dark in places, reflecting its roots in European folklore, but the deft Disney touch ensures that the overall tone remains light and the story develops apace, swept along on the perfect musical score. Any lingering gloom is quickly dispelled by the superbly characterised dwarfs and by the humorous antics of the various irresistible fauna that threaten to steal the show in several scenes. The pioneering animation is breathtaking and songs such as "Heigh Ho, Heigh Ho" and "Whistle While You Work", now firmly embedded in popular culture, are seamlessly interwoven with the action.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs happens to be an interesting technological milestone in cinema history--it is also an enduring masterpiece of family entertainment. To the millions who have fallen under its spell over the years, this magical fairy tale remains one of Disney's most enchanting and best-loved films. Only Grumpy could resist. --Helen Baker
Great seller, 2010-01-20
I was looking for a christmas present for a family member and couldn't think what to get until I remembered this family member loves Disney classics. So I did some investigative work to find out what Disney classics they didn't own, I found out they didn't own "Snow White and the seven dwarves". I immediately came onto amazon to search for the movies as I knew I could get a better deal here than on the high street. I found this copy of "Snow White" was the double disc edition and was cheaper than in the high street, it had all the relevant information that was needed. So i bought the item and was surprised at how quick it arrived with the xmas post. Would recommend and definitely buy from again

'Young Mr Lincoln', which has been out of print for sometime and gets a deserved transfer to DVD, now gets to find a wider audience, and is one of the films to which radical Jane Fonda refers to in her recent biography 'My Life So Far' when discussing her conflicts with her father (Henry Fonda's sometime conservative nature is juxtaposed against 'The Grapes of Wrath' & 'Young Mr Lincoln' by Ms. Fonda). 'Young Mr Lincoln', along with films like 'The Big Sleep', 'The Harder They Fall' & 'Johnny Guitar' became a reference point for the early thinking of the critics-turned-auteurs, the French New Wave. It became a case study of that cahiers-du-cinema notion that a particular director's films had an auteurist notion behind them - Ford given the same treatment Alfred Hitchcock was (Francois Truffaut changing the view of Hitch - the shift from entertainer to auteur). Even the sometime caustic critic Pauline Kael described 'Young Mr Lincoln' as "one of John Ford's greatest films." Master Soviet-filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein ('The Battleship Potemkin', 'October')said of it, "Its source is a womb of popular and national spirit. This could account for its unity, its artistry, its genuine beauty." This reminds you that pre-Cold War, pre-McCarthyism, the USA had flirted with communist-socialist ideas found in works like 'Ten Days That Shook the World', 'USA' & 'Waiting for Lefty.' It also reminds you that 'Young Mr Lincoln', like 'The Grapes of Wrath' came out of the Great Depression and the ethos of the New Deal.

'Young Mr Lincoln' is also a key biopic, being made in the late 1930s on the back of such Hollywood-biopics as 'The Story of Louis Pasteur' & 'Juarez' - the famous Warners/Dieterle cycle of biopics that refashioned the genre towards a notion of entertainment over factual/historical accuracy (Daryl Zanuck was also key in this type of thinking)Thus, the biopic as we know it was formed from films like 'Young Mr Lincoln' - beating a path towards such key examples of the genre as 'Night & Day', 'Reach for the Sky', 'Patton', 'Raging Bull', 'Reds', 'Malcolm X', & 'A Beautiful Mind.' Here, Lincoln is placed into a courtroom plot not far from 'Amistad' or 'To Kill a Mockingbird' that may or may not be true (sadly I don't know enough about Abraham Lincoln to confirm!) - clearly seeing Lincoln's early life in event form as symbolic of his later work as a great American president who ended slavery (though of course, it would be close to a century later that the Civil Rights movement would begin to move the US from a South African-style segregation).

'Young Mr Lincoln' comes across as an old-fashioned entertainment, but also sits easily alongside the somewhat subversive nature of such films as 'I Was a Fugitive from a Chain Gang' & 'Sullivan's Travels' (the latter also reissued on DVD recently). I'm sure the content and philosophy of this film would wind up certain right-wing folks in the US, which is perhaps why Jane Fonda referred to it so often in context to her own radical work (e.g. 'They Shoot Horses, Don't They?', 'Coming Home'). A welcome issue on DVD and I think a key example of the Hollywood biopic - an important film that still deserves to be seen and has a content sadly lacking from the majority of contemporary American cinema.

As part of the firm’s Diamond Collection, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is crammed to the rafters with terrific and engaging extra features, which somehow find more things to say about a film that’s seven decades old. But it’s the attention that the main feature itself has been given that puts pretty much everyone else to shame.

You could be forgiven for thinking Disney might have been hamstrung by the age of the material here, but there’s little evidence of that with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The transfer here is stunningly good, with the film looking more as if it was made in the last few years rather than back in the 1930s. Consider the number of Blu-ray catalogue titles of just ten years ago that look quite shaky, and it’s all the more impressive an achievement. The audio, too, has been treated to a spruce up, and the whole disc feels like no detail was too much trouble. It’s a superb Blu-ray of a genuine classic film, and further proof as to why Disney is so highly regarded for its high definition discs. --Simon Brew
A Classic Film, 2010-01-15
Made in 1937, Walt Disney was told that he was taking a huge gamble in producing a cartoon lasting some 80 minutes or so which was unheard of at the time. However, many years later, it is now recognised as one of his finest creations and one of his most popular ever.

The story, quite simply, a beautiful princess has a jealous stepmother, the queen who plots to have her killed. She escapes when her would be assassin cannot carry out the deed, so she escapes into the forest until she finds by accident a cottage where the 7 Dwarfs live. These scenes between Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs are some of the best of this wonderful movie, exploring every emotion possible. The final scenes though are some of the most emotional ever, so even if you have seen it before, it still tugs at the heart strings

With the ever growing popularity of Blu-Ray it isnt surprising that this classic movie should end up on the new format. Bearing in mind the age of the movie though, it isnt pin-sharp; indeed some scenes are a little soft in detail. But, this enhances its charm and I for one do not have a problem with that. The movie is shown in 4:3 format and accessing the menu page you can add Disney View which provides coloured pillars which change from scene to scene either side of the screen instead of black bars. The soundtrack is very good too, in surround sound if you have a home cinema system.

The extras abound on the second disc and will keep fans happy for hours. With prices of Blu-Ray discs coming down, it is a good buy even though some critics will say that it is cheaper to buy the ordinary DVD version and upscale it.

It is a choice for the purchaser of course.

However, I will definetly recommend the Blu-Ray Version.

"Drums Along the Mohawk" does not start off as a movie about the American Revolution. Instead it begins as a movie about settling the frontier, which, at that point, was upstate New York. The focus is on a pioneer couple, newlyweds, Gilbert (Henry Fonda) and Magdalena (Claudette Colbert), called Lana. Martin is a farmer who brings his bride to the Mohawk Valley where their home is burned out by Indians allied with the British. The couple are taken in by neighbors after that happens and Martin joins the militia, but the settlers are going to need more men than that to fight the Indians and save the fort from attack.

Based on a novel by Walter D. Edmonds the screenplay for "Drums Along the Mohawk" is by Sonya Levien and Lamar Trotti, although William Faulkner worked on it without receiving credit as well. Edmonds' history novels were all set in upstate New York and "Drums Along the Mohawk" is about the warfare between the settlers and the Six Nations of the Iroquois allied with the British. The Battle of Oriskany in 1777, fought in a forest, was a American victory although their commander General Nicholas Herkimer (Ralph Imhof) died of his wounds in one of the moving scenes of the film.

This was the third film that John Ford made in 1939, following "Stagecoach" with John Wayne and "Young Mr. Lincoln" with Fonda; his next film would be "The Grapes of Wrath." Colbert and Fonda are the stars, but they are upstaged by several members of the supporting case, such as Edna May Oliver as Mrs. McKlennar and Arthur Shields as the Reverend Rosenkrantz. The old lady has such an iron will that she can make Indians take her bed out, with her in it, while they are burning down her home, and the reverend has a memorable scene in which he eases the suffering of a tortured settler. Fonda is young and earnest, while Colbert comes to terms with what it means to be living on the American frontier in troubled times.

More than anything else "Drums Along the Mohwawk" is about people coming to the realization that they are Americans, an interpretation more than amply justified by the film's final scene. These are not the Sons of Liberty living in Boston and dealing with the King's troops and all those burdensome taxes. These are small families living out on the frontier for whom the idea of the United States of America was as odd as a flag with thirteen red and white stripes with a circle of white stars on a blue field. Perhaps it is because it takes place off the main stage that "Drums Along the Mohawk" manages to hit the right notes.