Category: Cartoons & Animation - Children - Children's Video - Family - Movie
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DVD The Last Unicorn
A story line that truly deserves the A-list treatment, The Last Unicorn is memorable for its attempts to stay faithful to its origins, the Peter Beagle novel of the same name. The animation is vintage Rankin/Bass, and that's too bad; but there's an undeniable strength in this tale and telling. A unicorn (Mia Farrow)--she believes herself the last--searches for any others of her kind, while avoiding the malevolent Red Bull, the agent believed to have destroyed the rest of the herd. Along the way, she is mistaken, ignored, attacked, and obsessed about, finally finding help from a magician named Schmendrick (Alan Arkin) and a knight named Prince Lir (Jeff Bridges). A haunting film that pays homage to mythology and the people who love it. --Keith Simanton
This is a movie I kept waiting for it to be released in DVD, a movie from a little of the crew of Ghibli Studios.
Full of magic, hope, and human nature.
I highly recomend it
Don't Let Your Kids Watch This!!
To this day, I still remember watching The Last Unicorn. Why? I was only about 5 years old and it haunts me to this day. PLEASE. If you love your kids, don't let them watch this unless they're at least 10 years old and unimpressionable. I had nightmares from this show for months. If you're older, this is a great show. It's refreshinng and different. Now that I'm older, I love it, but I will NOT show it to my children. Really, it should be rated PG10 or something. Way too scary for little kids in the G category.
Lousy sound, lousy video. Stay away!
Don't buy this DVD! This DVD is playing in my living room right now, and I took the opportunity to get away and write this review. We popped this into the player and settled in for our Friday family movie & pizza night on the couch. I've never seen this movie, and I don't think I ever want to watch it all the way through. The picture and sound quality are both so lousy that I can't stand to watch for more than 5 minutes. I bought this as a surprise for my wife, who loved this as a kid. And as much as she loves it, she's even noticed how warbly the sound is and isn't enjoying it very much. Also, being full screen, not wide screen, much of the picture is cut out. There's some scene where two characters are talking to each other from opposite sides of the TV screen, and you can hardly see them... you mostly just see a castle wall.
Enough of the technical shortcomings of the DVD. Now for the subjective, opinionated stuff:
I'm not a fan of the fantasy genre, and I'm *really* not a fan of the animation style... it grosses/creeps me out, even as an adult. Same guy that did the Hobbit cartoon way back, I think. Give me Looney Tunes, thank you very much. And for getting a G rating, there are some things in there that I hope my kids repress. A tree thing with boobs? Some cussing? Plenty of creepy & frightening images.
Soundtrack: I saw that America did the music. OK, I like "Ventura Highway" and I like hearing "Horse With No Name" once a year or so. But the music score for this movie is driving me nuts! There's a duet between the used-to-be unicorn and the prince that's just plain painful to listen to. It's so bad, I feel awkward FOR the people singing it. I love Rush, Coheed & Cambria, B-52s, Bob Dylan... so I can tolerate really annoying vocals & bad singing. But this duet was over the top.
On the plus side, we've got a dog. So if I leave the DVD on the floor tonight, it'll be all chewed to shards by morning.
In his book, Robert C. O'Brien called his brave widow mouse "Mrs. Frisby," but Disney escapee animator Don Bluth must have thought kids would laugh the wrong way at that. They renamed her "Mrs. Brisby" for NIMH. That acronym stands for the National Institute of Mental Health, and the rats that live near Mrs. Brisby came from NIMH--they have strange ways. But they're the only ones who can save her house and her children, so Brisby seeks them out with the help of a humorous crow (Dom DeLuise). The magic gets laid on a little thick but this is Don Bluth's most successful attempt to achieve a complete, sincere, animated film. It's often forgotten, but it's a true surprise and a rare treat in the vast wasteland of insubstantial children's fare. --Keith SimantonMore Info about this DVD Actor(s): Derek Jacobi - Elizabeth Hartman - Dom DeLuise Director(s): Don Bluth DVD Release Date: Released the 06 March 2001 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Jim Henson's fantasy epic The Dark Crystal doesn't take place a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, but like Star Wars it takes the audience to a place that exists only in the imagination and, for an hour and a half, on the screen. Recalling the worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien, Henson tells the story of a race of grotesque birdlike lizards called the Skeksis, gnomish dragons who rule their fantastic planet with an iron claw. A prophecy tells of a Gelfling (a small elfin being) who will topple their empire, so in their reign of terror they have exterminated the race, or so they think. The orphan Jen, raised in solitude by a race of peace-loving wizards called the Mystics, embarks on a quest to find the missing shard of the Dark Crystal (which gives the Skeksis their power) and... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Jim Henson - Kathryn Mullen Director(s): Jim Henson - Frank Oz DVD Release Date: Released the 05 October 1999 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Wolfgang Petersen (In the Line of Fire) made his first English-language film with this 1984 fantasy about a boy (Barret Oliver) visualizing the stories of a book he's reading. The imagined tale involves another boy, a warrior (Noah Hathaway), and his efforts to save the empire of Fantasia from a nemesis called the Nothing. Whether or not the scenario sticks in the memory, what does linger are the unique effects, which are not quite like anything else. Plenty of good fairy-tale characters and memorable scenes, and the film even encourages kids to read. --Tom KeoghMore Info about this DVD Director(s): Wolfgang Petersen DVD Release Date: Released the 04 September 2001 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Much like Richard Adams's wonderful novel, this animated tale of wandering rabbits is not meant for small children. It is, however, rich storytelling, populated with very real individuals inhabiting a very real world. The animation is problematic, sometimes appearing out of proportion or just subpar; but it seems to stem from an attempt at realism, something distinguishing the film's characters from previous, cutesy, animated animals. A band of rabbits illegally leave their warren after a prophecy of doom from a runt named Fiver (Richard Briers). In search of a place safe from humans and predators, they face all kinds of dangers, including a warren that has made a sick bargain with humankind, and a warren that is basically a fascist state. Allegories aside, Down is engaging and... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Martin Rosen DVD Release Date: Released the 26 March 2002 Usually ships in 7 to 11 days
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