Wednesday, December 29, 2021

Mickey's Twice Upon a Christmas: The DVD

I'll just stick this here, I suppose.  Why am I going on at such length about this trivial media property that no one cares about?  It is a great mystery.  I guess it's just fun to go on and on and on about nonsense!  Distracts from current events, anyway.  Though less than you'd hope, because they're mostly nonsense too.  Anyway, here's the DVD front cover.  As far as I can tell, the NTSC and PAL versions are the same:

Well all right then.  Seems to sorta be cheating to include character models that are non-CG, or least that don't look remotely like the CG of the film.  But what can you do?  The snowflakes in Mickey's ears kind of look as though the ears are made of glass--like a rear-view mirror--that's been partially broken.

Also, if they were trying to make "Find Out Who's Been Naughty and Who's Been Nice" into a beloved catchphrase, I don't think they quite hit the mark.

But the real point of interest--that might be overstating it a bit--is the back cover, which is substantially different for the NTSC and PAL versions:


You'd think the PAL version would be marketed at a UK audience, but as you'll see if you look closer, it specifies that it's only for sale in Australia.  It's interesting to compare the two.  You'll see that the copy is basically the same, but the phrasing has been switched around for unclear reasons.  Is the movie about "the importance of opening your heart to the true spirit of Christmas," or is it about "discovering the true joys of Christmas?"  Holy wars have been fought over less.

The NTSC version makes a somewhat halfhearted effort to hype the content with "Who will make Santa's list?" and "Minnie and Daisy put on an ice spectacular," whereas the pal version, I suppose, trusts the material to sell itself.  The former has art that you'd probably describe as more Christmas-y, but if the ice skating sequence were any cop, featuring it, as the latter does, would probably be the better way to go.  As it happens, it's not, but...well, fake it 'til you make it, I guess.

Note also the special features.  They both feature the dubious-looking feature about Michelle Kwan, and they both include "all things deleted," though only the PAL version is willing to commit to the idea that this constitutes behind-the-scenes fun with the filmmakers.  Also!  They both include "Guess What Donald Is Singing? [sic]," so that's fun.  Ooh!  Can I guess?  Is it "We Wish You a Merry Christmas?"  What a swell game this was.  Also, "Santa's Workshop Challenge."  But only the Aussies get the unelaborated "Santa's Sort," and only us dumb Americans get to decorate their DVD menu and print some bangass holiday printables, so I guess it's a toss-up.  Well, the American version DOES include "Disney's Fastplay™," a feature that nobody has ever wanted ever, so there IS that.

But if you are concerned about accessibility, you will also notice that there are significant differences there, if these boxes are to be believed: the US version includes French and Spanish language tracks; the Australian one doesn't feature those, but it DOES have English, Spanish, and Portuguese subtitles, for whatever extremely arbitrary reason.

But ferget this!  If you're interested in having the movie on some kind of physical media (you weirdo), you'll probably buy one of the various two-fer sets including both Once and Twice Upon a Christmas.  There are bunch of different versions of this, and it's hard to sort them all out, but let's just look at the back of this one blu-ray:

Well, that is what it is.  Not that interesting, although it's kind of funny that the description for Twice persists in including that "Find out who's been naughty and who's been nice" line, even though they seem to have given up the idea of making it their catchphrase.  But it's just too good to not include!  I'm also sort of intrigued by that "Gift of the Magi Storybook" feature.  Am I to understand that someone actually wrote a prose version of the cartoon for inclusion on the disc?  I suppose you can just have an intern do if you want to save money and don't have even a tiny bit of quality control, which, I can attest, Disney DVDs extremely do not.  Could be interesting, but it is to be doubted.  I would have thought it was just the original O. Henry story if it didn't specify "Mickey & Minnie's version of."  It's actually pretty weird: they make these classic, timeless movies (present company not included) and then lard the disc with the most lazy, godawful "bonuses."  Some really mixed messages here.

And yet, I think what's obvious is that the best--really, the only legitimate--way to enjoy either one of those movies is on VHS tape.

Goddamn--if you get a former rental copy, it may even include a Blockbuster Video commercial uptop!  How sweet would that be?  Well, whatever.  Happy holidays.

3 comments:

  1. This may shock you but I actualy OWN the copy of this movie. But I'm not a weirdo, am I???

    And in the spirit of the brake between Christmas and New Years I put on the DVD for the first one in Santa knows how many years to check out how the eurpean version is doing... I both it back when it came out for the first tiem.

    From what I can see we (The Europeans) go the Australian version [I guess all non-American countires look the same to you guys, huh? Are we are a joke to you?]


    I went true the features :

    - Michelle Kwan thing is only three minutes long and it's just the basic showing how they film her and what they used for refrence and what they sketch as they where filming her, with ocasional comment from her ("Wow! I so see myself in Minnie mouse") and even gives awkard look as the filmamers desribe what they want from her (like you can tell she is the profesional and they don't know what they are talking about). I don't think even if you are a hardcore Kwan fan it's that interesting (she dosen't do anything that impressive). This pretty much felt like "Welp, we shot her for a hour so we better make some actualy good use of this footage". Or am I to cinical? "Wow! This is just like that time Walt Disney got Bella Lugosi to pose as a refrence to Charnabog in Fantasia! People deserve to see this soon-legendary footage!" - that's more like it.


    - Deledet Scenes... Well, this is interesting. As it dosen't feel like what you would expect from material like this where it's usualy a brief introduction and then they let the scene plays out. Here it was all about them talking about abonded concepts with shots of storyboards, so it's not as much showing the scenes as much them describing the scenes, with the directors/writers acting very self-congratulatory (11 minutes all together) The cut ideas include Donald as a conductor instructing orhestra doing 12 days of Christmas (with apperance by the Mad Hatter with bagpipes!), Mickey as a detective solving mystery of stolen cookies (which was going to be a noir parody and felt most interesting to me), more Minnie vs. Daisy stories like one about them seting up a parade or another about baking contest (before they got the ice skating idea) and FINALY a story how Minnie and Mickey MEET for the first time (ON CHRISTMAS) and they actualy talk that they love that one so much they hope it maybe made some day (I can't wait!)

    - And the games... Which I only glanc over. Frankly even as a kid I never liked DVD games as they are hard to play and usualy more annoying then amusing. I always found that features pointless.

    I don't have the "Once Upon Christmas" DVD (the shame!) but I can only guess that the story-book thing is just screen grabs from the movie with some voice-over summary of the story. The read along are often lazy like that, which even makes little sense as a feature for toddlers, why not show them the movie which is longer and will keep them quite for longer? At best it's at least includes a NEW story with new illustrations.

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  2. What the heck is a "FAMILY-FRIENDLY widescreen"??? Is the implication that the usual widescreens dont like my family? :(

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  3. To be fair that's decent amount of features at the time.

    I recall DVD's of some of lessers Disney classics had very "simbolic" amount of bonus stuff - like for example "Sword in the Stonne" only had a brief featured on making of the songs for the movie + singalong + two shorts - "Goofy Knight for a day" and "The Brave Little Tailor" (in other words the amount of heart put into that part of DVD was "What meddival themed shorts do we own so we can splap it into a bonus section and call it a day?")

    As I said I don't see the point of some of the minigames. I recall one DVD had a feature called "THE MANY HATS OF MICKEY MOUSE" where it's just had drawings of hats, you click on one and it just palyed you a short clip from the short... fascinating.

    Of course I remember how features packed for example the DVD for The Incredbiles was, which not only had tones of bonus materials but those you would normaly asumed is pointless filler where actualy clever and felt like expending on the universe - For example you got interviews with all the superheroes from the movies (who only make a cameo in the movie) or Mr. Incredible 70's TV series badly animated short with optional commentary by Mr. Incredible and Frozone (the later being angry as the short is unautorised)


    OF COURSE today DVD' bearly got any features. Some time ago I got "Raya and the last Dragon" and only bonus thing was a short that was attached to cinematic release of the movie + sneak peeks/trailers (yaaay...?), while "Luca" didn't include any. True, its now all about Bluerays, but it woudn't suprise me if Blurays soon will be as bonus feature-less as the DVD as their way to make you go to streaming, which I don't care for that much.

    [BTW - The reason why I still buy DVD' despite owning a blueray players s is - a) It's three times cheaper 2) As great bluray quality is DVD still looks good, especialy with animation so I don't see that much need to agian spend three times as much 3) I'm sorry, but when it comes to older stuff SOMETIMES bluray transfer makes the movie look worse, like "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" whic now looks so clean it's lost a lot of atmosphere and the use CGI stick out and looks painfuly bad, while it's blured seamlessly on DVD ]

    Long story short I'm guessing that sadly "Encanto" DVD won't include bonus shorts in form of "El Gaucho Goofy" and "Blame it on the Samba" (Yes I know! That's the joke!)

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