Region 4 Winners and Losers

    Since 1928, the name Walt Disney has been synonymous with quality family entertainment. From the first Mickey Mouse cartoon, the groundbreaking Steamboat Willie to modern classics such as The Lion King and Finding Nemo, Disney has been at the fore in terms of storytelling through the medium of film. Never one to shirk a challenge, many of the films to come from the House of the Mouse have represented major leaps in technical achievement, such as the first colour feature length animated motion picture in 1937 with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to the 1982 sleeper Tron which heralded a new era of computer animation. Whilst not every film to come from Disney is a classic, the good for the most part outweighs the bad and I for one have very fond memories of watching many of Disney's offerings pre home video on the Sunday night favourite The Wonderful World of Disney, with The Parent Trap being one of my all time favourites.

    When DVD first became a viable consumer video delivery medium in 1997, Buena Vista, along with Paramount Pictures and Twentieth Century Fox were not eager to offer their product on the new format. Piracy was a concern and this saw these three influential film houses back the now defunct DIVX format as a counter offer to the modern video buying public. When 'the demon' DIVX did finally hit the post and backer Circuit City withdrew the product from the market, we finally saw Buena Vista, Paramount and Fox begin to release some of their films on the new and very popular DVD format. While early offerings from Buena Vista on DVD were far from reference quality, over time they improved in quality and now some of the best every audio and video transfers come from Disney - A Bug's Life , Finding Nemo and The Lion King instantly come to mind. And not only have the transfers to disc been increasingly first rate, the packages themselves have been quite impressive with standouts being the 2 disc Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs release, the 2 disc Special Edition of The Lion King, the 20th Anniversary Collector's Edition of Tron and the Pixar classics A Bug's Life, Monsters Inc. and Finding Nemo. All of these represent benchmarks of film presentation that should be the envy of any home video distributor and are required ownership for any serious fan of classic family and animation films.

    But whilst Buena Vista has done an amazing job with some of its titles released here in Region 4, others strangely have been given some very poor treatment. Classics such as Swiss Family Robinson , Pollyanna , 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea , Fantasia , Fantasia 2000 , Lady and the Tramp, Sleeping Beauty , Toy Story and Toy Story 2 all have been robbed of extras before being forced onto the Australian buying public. A separate collection called Vault Disney has been created in the United States to release to DVD some of the classic Disney live action back catalogue, but I am disgusted to see that Buena Vista hasn't seen fit to offer the Vault Disney collection here in Region 4. Films such as Pollyanna, 20,000 Leagues and Swiss Family Robinson have been released in Region 1 under the Vault Disney label in 2 disc sets that almost burst at the seams in terms of extras. The same for Region 4? Hardly. It seems that because we all live in the Southern Hemisphere on the world's largest island we couldn't possibly be interested in a comparable package offered to our cousins in the United States. Because I'm an Australian does this mean that I'll automatically settle for less? Is an Australian's attention span so short that we couldn't possibly bring ourselves to wade through a host of extras on a second disc? In short:  Do we deserve less?

    Buena Vista Australia Pty. Ltd., I challenge you to tell the Region 4 DVD buying public (a huge market by any standard) why we should be given less because of who we are. I challenge you to explain why we shouldn't bypass the local offering and go straight for the far, far superior Region 1 product. Tell us why once again we have to settle for less. Long time Michael D's site reviewer Ian M has brought the deficiency of many Disney titles to the attention of the buying public, and if you thought that because I've taken on the review of this title that I'd give you a softer touch, then you have another thing coming. This Package Offered To Us In Region 4 Of This Classic Film Is NOT GOOD ENOUGH!!!  See this list below? Read it and tell my why I and the rest of the Australian film buying public aren't interested in any of them.

    Region 4, Buena Vista Australia doesn't think you want any of the following:

• Correct Aspect Ratio of 1.75:1 (ours is a cropped 1.70:1)
• "Donald's Double Trouble" Donald Duck animated short that preceded The Parent Trap in its theatrical run and runs for 7:00
• "The Sherman Brothers": a featurette on Richard and Robert Sherman which runs for 15:00
• "Let's Get Together" montage running at 1:35
• "Who's The Twin?" featurette on Hayley Mills' double Susan Henning (now Henning-Schutte) running for 6:00
• 6 Cast and Director Biographies
• Screenplay Excerpt with corresponding clip
• Montage of black and white images from the film set to music running at 1.30
• Trailers and TV Spots for the film running at 5:00
• "Disney Legend: Hayley Mills" featurette on her Disney films running at 22:30
• "The Titlemakers" featurette on the making of the title sequence hosted by Walt Disney. Runs for 17:17
• "Kimball & Swift: The Disney Years" featurette on the Disney animators made shortly before their deaths. Runs for 17:30
• 11 radio spots (audio only)
• Songs "For Now, For Always" and "The Parent Trap" (audio only)
• 2 Sound Studio scenes: "The Girlfriend" and "Twin's Revenge" (dialogue only, sound effects only, music only or final composite as it appears in the film)
• THX certification and THX optimizer

• French and Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 audio
• numerous subtitle options