Let the mirror be your guide

Rising up out of burning bright flames, the familiar face of the ghost in the Magic Mirror slowly appears as the DVD starts up, speaking words of welcome to its new master. To be honest, I hadn't expected too much of this, and was very pleasantly surprised that the mirror has been animated with great skill and voiced by a good actor, who does a great job with some rather witty and amusing monologues. Whether the mirror's opening banter is still so amusing the tenth time, I'm not so sure, and I didn't get the opportunity to test whether any of the mirror's opening words can be skipped.

Your navigational tools

Cutting to a wider shot, the mirror magically pulls back a curtain to reveal the navigational options, and explains them one by one. Disney's strategy here is clearly to make DVD novices feel comfortable with navigating a high-content DVD - an experience that current DVD users take for granted but which might baffle technophobes new to the wonders of this technology - without boring those already familiar with navigating these kinds of DVDs. Disney has in this case done a great job in catering to both audiences in this writer's opinion.

One of the additions to the familiar repertoire of choices available here ('Play Movie', 'Scene Selection', 'Bonus Features', 'Setup') is the new Guided Tour option. This is the most obvious gesture towards the intended audience new to DVD, and offers a choice of two showcases of the extras and features available on the release (one for each disc). Seasoned DVD users will have little use for this feature, with its rather embarassing banter between the mirror and Disney VP Roy E. Disney and unhelpful explanations by Angela Lansbury, but it might prove a welcome addition to some.

Beyond the mirror

Selecting the 'Bonus Features' option leads to a CG rendering of the witch's lair, with the camera panning down to her book of spells. The wind blowing in from the storm outside turns the open page showing the apple spell to the next, which presents the extra options available on that disc. The CG environment is highly detailed and perhaps even a little too polished, but the animation offers a nice way of browsing through the extras, each of which is carefully documented, introduced and explained.

The main extra on the first disc is a 24-minute featurette titled 'Still the Fairest of them all: The Making of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs'. It includes new interview footage from several faces familiar from the recent Fantasia Anthology DVD box set, and is for the most part quite similar to the featurette that appeared on the 1993 VHS and LaserDisc release, down to most of the archival footage that has simply been re-used. Like that earlier documentary, this featurette once again makes the mistake of hastening through the backgrounds much too fast, most likely in the name of accessibility, resulting in a documentary that will provide real interest only with viewers unfamiliar with the previously available material. Other extras on the first disc include a Silly Symphony Goddess of Spring (not available on the Region 2 release) that served as an exercise in realistic human character animation, a sing-along song, an interactive children's game and - *gasp* - Barbra Streisand performing the song Some Day My Prince Will Come, about which the less said, the better...

Here comes Snow White... again!

Since its extraordinarily successful opening in 1937, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs has been released theatrically in the US no less than seven times. This may not be quite as amazing a feat as Disney would have us believe, as it has been standard Disney policy to re-release their animated features periodically (especially before the advent of home video). Still, it's great fun to watch the theatrical trailers as they re-introduce the movie throughout the years, with changes in fashion and tone, and in the way the movie is presented.

Missing Pieces

One of the most welcome extra features on Disc 2 is the Deleted Scenes section, which holds five fully-animated bits and pieces of footage excised from the final film. The longer selections are pencil-animated, but 'The Witch at the Cauldron' and 'The Bedroom Argument' are fully inked and colored. This is great stuff for Disney fans, as most of this footage has never been available outside the well-guarded Disney archives.

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