Barney:
Most Huggable Moments
(HIT/Lionsgate DVDs)/Best
Wubbzy DVD Set (Anchor
Bay)/Enchanted Tales DVDs
(Golden Films/Cinedigm/including Snow
White)/Geronimo
Stilton: Operation Shufongfong
(E1 DVD)/In The Snow We
Go! (Bubble
Guppies/Team
Umizoomi/Nickelodeon
DVD)/Lost & Found
(2008/E1 DVD)/Nickelodeon
Holiday Gifts DVD Box Series
(Dora/SpongeBob/TMNinja Turtles/Winx Club)/Scholastic
Halloween Stories Collection DVD Box Set/Tad
The Lost Explorer
(2013/Gaiam Vivendi Blu-ray 3D w/Blu-ray 2D & DVD)/Thomas
& Friends: Animals Abroad
(HIT/Lionsgate DVD)
3D
Picture: B (for Tad)
2D Picture: C+/C+/C/C+/C+/C+/C+/B- & C+/C Sound:
C+/C+/C/C+/C+/C+/C+/B- & C/C+ Extras: D/C+/D/D/D/B-/C/D/C-
Main Programs: C+/C+/C-/C+/C+/C+/B-/C/C+
It
is not even the middle of October 2013 and we are seeing an
unprecedented onslaught of children's titles in a way rarely seen
before. It may include upgraded reissues and some familiar
favorites, but it is amazing how many are being issued in such a
small release window.
We
start with Barney:
Most Huggable Moments,
a DVD set that starts with the title disc (a sticker on the
paperboard slipcase says they are celebrating 25 Million hugs) and we
get 6 episodes altogether and the extras are five Music Videos that
are slight. The second disc is Barney's
Dino-Mite Birthday (Jimmy
Walker does not show up) was originally issued by Fox, has no extras
and that makes the claim that this set is ''loaded with bonus
features'' is untrue. It is a passable set that will help fans catch
up, but for us, it is just more of the same. We are late to covering
the show.
The
Best Of Collection Wubbzy DVD Set
is a collection of four character-based discs based on the Wow!
Wow! Wubbzy!
Series we have covered before and the Daizy!
installment is one we already covered at this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/12233/Cody+The+Robosapien+(2013/Anchor+Bay+DVD)/
The
other discs include Wubbzy
himself, dubbed Volume
One,
but volume numbers did not continue, Walden
and Widget
at seven episodes each, though Widget
adds an 8th
and the only extras are superfluous Music Videos and DVD-ROM
PDF-printable Coloring & Activity Sheets. That makes it a nice
introductory set for fans of the show and those interested, but
others might just want to go for a single DVD.
The
weakest wave here is the Enchanted
Tales
double features from Golden Films and Cinedigm that are the kind of
cheap VHS fodder you used to find on video shelves all the time back
in the day with poor writing, animation and forgettable ideas,
artworks and they are as boring as ever. The three sets are Snow
White/Princess
Castle,
Noah's
Ark/Tales
Of Egypt
and Night
Before Christmas/Christmas
Elves.
You
might get some curiosity interest, but I did not find any of these
good, though we have seen worse, but that does not say much. We have
seen all of this done better and with the fancier, better versions o
some of these titles available so inexpensively on DVD and even
Blu-ray, I would not bother much with any of them.
There
are no extras.
Geronimo
Stilton: Operation Shufongfong
is a four-episode set of the Italian/Canadian animated series from
2009 with the title fox a reporter who lands up in adventures that
include spy angles and humor. It is a good show, if not great and
this set runs 92 minutes. Meant for young children, I expect the
response to be mixed. They'll either like it or they will not, but
it did not stick with me and there are no extras.
In
The Snow We Go!
is a winter-themed Nickelodeon DVD with one Bubble
Guppies
episode (Happy
Holidays, Mr. Grumpfish),
two Team
Umizoomi episodes
(A
Sledding Day,
City
Of Lost Penguins)
and no extras. A single-disc to cross promote the shows, it is a
seasonal release that makes for a fine sampler, but not much else.
Lost
& Found
(2008) is a pleasant, short (under a half-hour) CG animated short
with Jim Broadbent narrating a young boy and his meeting with a
penguin. I wish it were longer, but based on the Oliver Jeffers
book, it is a nice experience. A Making-of featurette that is longer
than the main program, but with all this room, there should have been
more extras including some other shorts perhaps?
Nickelodeon
Holiday Gifts DVD Box Series
reissue four of their popular titles with a poster, sticker sheet,
coloring books and 4 crayons per release. I nice idea that makes
sense as upgrades for the regular DVDs, they are as follows with
links to our coverage of the original releases with all the same
older extras...
Dora's
Christmas Carol
DVD
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/10377/Dora+The+Explorer
It's
A SpongeBob Christmas
Blu-ray/DVD set
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/12375/It's+A+SpongeBob+Christmas+(2012/Nickelodeon
Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles: Rise Of The Turtles
DVD
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/12051/Adventure+Time:+Fionna+&+Cake,+Volume+Four
and
Winx
Club: The Secret Of The Lost Kingdom
DVD
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/11751/Dora
Though
not a Volume
Two
or direct sequel to the Scholastic
Halloween Stories Collection DVD Box Set,
that we reviewed at this link...
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/10475/Scholastic+Storybook+Treasures:+Halloween+Stori
It
has practically the same title, but repeats three singles we covered
before: Dem
Bones
(also featuring Dinosaur
Bones,
Hush
Little Baby,
The
Fox Went Out On A Chilly Night
& The
Erie Canal),
The
Day Of The Dead
(narrated by Rita Moreno; also featuring The
Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid Of Anything,
Kitten's
First Full Moon
(narrated by Joan Allen) & Fletcher
and the Falling Leaves)
and Teeny-Tiny
& The Witch-Woman
(also featuring The
Boys With Two Shadows,
Los
Gatos Black On Halloween
(narrated by Maria Conchita Alonzo), What's
Under My Bed?
and King
Of The Cats).
All three discs have Read-Along subtitles, Dead
adds interviews with all the authors of all the shorts save Fleischer
and Witch
adds an interview with Gatos author Marisa Montes. Not bad.
Tad
The Lost Explorer
(2013) is our big theatrical release, a 3D CGI feature film from
Spain that is a sometimes shameless knock-off of Indiana Jones (they
had to give the film series a special thank you credit in the end
credits) and has Kerry Shale voicing the title character who wants to
be an archeologist, but is not very competent. He gets his chance
when an actual archeologist friend cannot make a journey to Egypt and
madness ensues. A few moments work, but we have seen all this
before, though the CG is not that bad, if not state-of-the-art.
Cheech
Marin voices a shady, comical friend named Freddy, Ariel Winter is
Sara the live interest and fellow explorer and the rest of the voice
cast is pretty good. There is some audience for this release, but I
was only so impressed as it made me think of the superior A
Monster In Paris
in several similarities. There are surprisingly no extras.
Finally
we have Thomas
& Friends: Animals Abroad,
the latest DVD single in the series running 55 minutes and offering
five episodes. It is not a bad set and a good intro, give or take
the King
Of The Railway
Blu-ray we reviewed at this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/12347/Adventure+Time:+Jake+The+Dad+(Cartoon+Netw
Two
music videos are the only extras, but the show is decent and this set
works.
We
get mostly 1.33 X 1 presentations throughout the DVDs including
Barney,
Wubbzy,
Enchanted,
Nickelodeon,
Scholastic
and Thomas
with Enchanted
(due to old masters used) and Thomas
(via its soft style of animation) are the poor performers while the
1080p 1.85 X 1 MVC-encoded 3-D - Full Resolution digital High
Definition image on Tad
is the visual winner her, surpassing the decent-if-limited 2D 1080p
1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer Blu-ray and
definitely the
anamorphically enhanced DVD version that is passable for the format
at best.
That
leaves the anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on Geronimo
and Found
looking good, but being a bit soft so they do not surpass the other
DVDs as expected.
The
DTS-HD MA
(Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix on Tad
is the best sonic presentation here as expected, yet its soundfield
is not always consistent and the lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 DVD mix
is surprisingly weak as if there is some coding error. The rest of
the DVDs offer lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo that is better, save
Enchanted
(a little harsh and noisy in all cases) and we get lossy
Dolby Digital 5.1 on Geronimo
and Found,
but they are on the quiet, limited side with little to offer beyond
stereo.
-
Nicholas Sheffo
