Review: Frozen - Collector's Edition Blu-Ray + DVD + DC

Actors: Kristen Bell, Josh Gad, Idina Menzel, Jonathan Groff, Santino Fontana
Directors: Chris Buck, Jennifer Lee
Writers: Chris Buck, Jennifer Lee, Hans Christian Andersen, Shane Morris
Producers: Aimee Scribner, John Lasseter
Format: AC-3, Animated, Color, DTS Surround Sound, NTSC, Widescreen, Blu-ray, Digital, DVD-ROM, Multiple Formats
Language: English (DTS-HD High Res Audio), French (Dolby Digital 5.1), Spanish (Dolby Digital 5.1)
Region: Region A/1
Aspect Ratio: 2.20:1
Number of discs: 2
Rated: PG
Studio: Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment
DVD Release Date: March 18, 2014
Run Time: 102 minutes

Description: WALT DISNEY ANIMATION STUDIOS PRESENTS A CHILLY TWIST ON ONE OF THE MOST HUMOROUS AND HEARTWARMING STORIES EVER TOLD.

Fearless optimist Anna sets off on an epic journey - teaming up with rugged mountain man Kristoff and his loyal reindeer Sven - to find her sister Else, whose icy powers have trapped the kingdom of Arendelle in eternal winter. Encountering Everest-like conditions, mystical trolls and a hilarious snowman named Olaf, Anna and Kristoff battle the elements in a race to save the kingdom.

Animation: Frozen uses the new Disney Animation style, following Tangled and Wreck-It-Ralph. Not a lot of people care much for the new Disney style and would rather them go completely back to hand drawn animation. This movie however I don't think could have worked any other way. With all of the architecture of the ice buildings and how beautiful the snow was made, a simple hand drawn movie would not have worked. The ice looks like ice. The snowstorms look like an actual raging snowstorms. So as for environments, it was a good choice they went for this style and did not go with something like Beauty and the Beast or The Lion King. 

As for character designs, you got two beautiful princesses (who one becomes a queen shortly after the movie starts), two great looking possible suitors for the princess, a goofy looking reindeer, and an oddly shaped comic relief snowman. You really can not not like any of the designs.

Extras: There were quite a few extras in this release and some of them better then others. First we had the new short film "Get A Horse" featuring Mickey Mouse and friends. This accompanied the movie when it was first released and was a refreshing look at the iconic Disney character in his early black and white stages of development into a pop-out 3D look. I loved when it was shown before the movie in the theaters as well as it was an 8 minute "please silence your cell-phone" kind of cartoon which got the entire audience involved as Pete pushed Mickey out of his classic environment into ours, where he had to try to get back to his world and rescue Mickey.

Next we have "The Making of Frozen", which was kind of a joke. This was basically a way for Disney to try to squeeze a silly little musical number out of a few of the voice actors from the film. When the song and dance was over, we didn't get to see The Making of this film.

D'frosted: Disney's Journey From Hans Christian Andersen to Frozen however made up for it, as we get to go behind the scenes of the film and see some original artwork by Walt Disney's original animation team. Frozen apparently was meant to be a ride for Disneyland. And after the movie was finished being made, the creators got to see just how close their vision was to the original vision Walt Disney had.

There were about four deleted scenes included as well, which didn't really improve the overall story much. They were all cut for time, which is understandable as the movie did clock in at a little under two hours, which is a bit long for a typical Disney princess movie.

Last we have a few music videos of "Let It Go" performed by various artists from around the world for their countries specific movie release.

Out of the extras, you definitely need to check out D'frosted. It really has a lot of classic Disney concept stuff that all fans of Disney will enjoy, plus a look at maybe a future ride.

Story: Frozen begins with two young sisters who were very close. One evening, Anna, the younger sister, wakes up her older sister Elsa and wants to play. Using her magical ice powers Elsa builds snow hills and a snowman inside of one of the rooms, but when Anna gets a bit excited and starts to leap from snow hill to snow hill, Elsa gets scared and thinks she is going to get hurt so she uses her powers to try to save her, but instead ends up hitting her in the head. The King and Queen then take Anna to rock trolls who heal Anna's wound but with a price. Anna can not know about Elsa's powers for fear it might happen again. Elsa then decides to close herself up to Anna by locking herself in her bedroom for a decade.

A few years later, Anna and Elsa's parents die in a tragic shipwreck accident, making Elsa the new queen. It's coronation day and Anna meets a prince, Hans, from another kingdom who asks her to marry him the same day they met. Anna of course says "Yes" and goes to tell her sister the news. Elsa doesn't believe a person can fall in love with someone that they don't even know, which causes Anna to start questioning her sister. Elsa gets nervous and accidentally uses her powers before storming out of the kingdom and causing an eternal winter throughout the entire country side of Arendelle. Now its up to Anna and her friends that she meets along the way to save the day by bringing her sister back to fix what she started.

I know most everyone on this planet has seen this movie already, and if you have not then you must be living under a rock some place. What I love about this movie is it breaks away from everything Disney has taught us growing up. There is really no such thing as love at first glance. Anna eventually learns the hard way towards the end of the film, and its up to Elsa to really find herself to break this eternal winter.

This is the first time that we don't just get one Disney Princess, we get two! Even though one becomes the first ever Disney Queen. I love the relationship that the two share. The sisters' love for one another is really the first time Disney has went the way they did by not going the route of romantic love relationships, but showing us that the bond and love that two family members have is just as strong as any other kind of love.

Overall: I highly recommend this movie for everyone to see. I love Disney, but I haven't loved a Disney Princess movie like this since I first saw Sleeping Beauty as a child. Frozen is the new standard of Disney, and let's hope with their next animated movie they can bring out something as great as this new masterpiece they created.

Rating: 10/10 Let It Go...

Review: Marvel's Infinity (Hardcover)

Series: Infinity
Hardcover: 632 pages
Contains: Infinity #1-6, New Avengers #7-12, Avengers #14-23, Infinity: Against the Tide Infinite Comic #1-2
Publisher: Marvel (February 25, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0785184228
ISBN-13: 978-0785184225
Product Dimensions: 11.3 x 7.5 x 1.1 inches

Description: TO SAVE THE WORLD FROM EVER GREAT DANGERS, THE AVENGERS GOT BIGGER.

Yet when the oldest race in the universe marks Earth for destruction, it's time for Captain America to think grander still. As the members of the most powerful team ever assembled head into space to join an intergalactic alliance against the ancient Builders, an old enemy deems their home unprotected. Thanos, the Mad Titan, unleashes his forces on Earth in the latest chapter of his endless quest for death. But even a world without Avengers has its defenders. Among them, the secret cabal of history-shapers known as the Illuminati - a group riven with internal conflict already confronting yet another planet-ending crisis. One of their number has plans of his own. As Earth's Mightiest Heroes wage war on multiple fronts, their battle for Infinity threatens descent into Inhumanity.

Artwork: Each of the three main series in this book uses more then two different artists just to complete the entire anthology. But it does not take away from the overall look. Every page flows well after the next and the transition between each individual issue and segment (more on that later) is flawless. I have read dozens of Marvel's big yearly events, and Infinity by far goes over the top with its art. It is hard to tell where one artists work stops and the next begins. 

The Infinite issues were shown off in a different art style, using a much more realistically detailed approach. 

I was very impressed with the artwork as a whole. It's bright. It's pretty. And most importantly its consistent from cover to cover.

Extras: Hardcovers usually have a bit of extra content. With Infinity we get a Variant Cover Library showing off all the exclusive covers that marvel released for this event. We also get the usual AR App content and a free Digital Copy offer of the event. The only thing I wish they would have put into this was some character designs for some of these fairly new characters for the event. We are introduced to Thane, Thanos's son, and pretty much a group of generals that Thanos sends out to conquer planets for him. Most of the newer Marvel NOW hardcovers has these kinds of features which I absolutely love. Maybe they were saved for the individual Hardcovers of New Avengers V.02 and Avengers V.03-04.

Story: After the big event Avengers vs X-Men, Marvel decided to relaunch their entire company with a new branding, Marvel NOW. Most of its series under the Marvel NOW slogan was leading up to this huge event, Infinity, with the return of one of Marvel Comics biggest threats, Thanos. I was pleased with the build-up, but the overall end-result left a stale taste in my mouth. So here's a bit of history to back up where this is all coming from.

In Avenger's we learned that there are these beings who created the universe called the Builders. They came to earth to try and fix it, but in the long run the Avengers stopped them and added a few new members to their team of worldwide heroes.

In New Avengers, we now have a team which is basically the Illuminati, minus Professor X since he died in AvX, but with the addition of Beast who now holds the dead professor's Infinity Gem and T'challa. T'challa stumbles upon a couple world threatening events that are now being called Incursions. With the help of the Illuminati it is up to them to get to the spot where an Incursion is going to happen and stop them from happening (they happen quite frequently). During one of these Incursions, the Illuminati use their Infinity Gems to stop it, but the incursion is so huge, it breaks all of them but one. They also manage to capture Black Swan and Terrax...

So now we have Infinity. The Builders still aren't done with Earth, so Captain America takes an Avengers Team into space to meet them head on and try to stop them before a bigger conflict escalates, leaving a few Illuminati members (Doctor Strange, Black Panther, Namor, Blackbolt, and Iron Man) behind to defend the planet. Little does our team of heroes knows but Thanos is heading back to Earth to get a hold of the only remaining Infinity gem... or is it to kill his only surviving family member, Thane. So now its a race against time as our heroes in space try to stop these beings from destroying our world and try to make it back to Earth to stop the evil threat of Thanos.

While all this is going on, Blackbolt has a plan of his own by dropping a Terrigen Mist bomb onto earth and changing people with inhuman genes into fully evolved Inhumans. So as Thanos finds his son, the bomb has been dropped and an even bigger threat emerges into the Marvel Universe with tons of new questions that need to be answered but are not.

So that's as far as I will go without ruining the ending to this epic 600+ page book. Infinity uses three main series, Avenger, New Avengers, and the main Infinity title to tell this overall epic story. And not like other big events, we have one writer telling the entire story to us over the three series. 

Going back to me mentioning segments in the artwork, we aren't getting each individual issue after another. For some parts we are, but if something happens during one issue and it connects with another series, we are getting that portion of the other series dropped between  the pages. It's like reading a huge Harry Potter book, you don't have to go back and look up where something happened in previous issues as every event flows into the next. This is how I think most big comic events should be done rather then separating the stories and lumping them together by series. Let's hope future releases will do this for other.

My only complaint is that I know their are side-stories to this series, but seeing the cast page and having marvel teams and characters shown and not actually being in the story is a bit of a letdown. I would loved to have seen (or have seen a mentioned) some of the X-Men, Rocket Raccoon, and the Thunderbolts, all who are shown to be in Infinity, but not seen in the actual content.

Overall: The stories leading up to Infinity were amazing. I loved every second reading them all. As for the event itself, we had many questions getting to this point of our journey and by the end of the story we have probably twice as many. I loved seeing a lot of new faces as well as old characters who don't have their own main titles, but it doesn't really save the Marvel NOW brand with all the confusion still swirling around in my head. As a bookend to Marvel NOW and leading into the re-rebranded All-New Marvel NOW, I was hoping for an explosive finish, but it didn't really leave me with much more then a spark on what is to come in future issues of the Marvel brand.

Rating: 6/10

 

So It Begins...

Welcome to my blog! I am a very big fan of pop culture. I am here to share my views from all sorts of categories ranging from Anime, Comic Books, Gaming, Movies, Television Shows, and whatever else I can think of! Check back periodically for updates!