Product Description

Awaken your senses to the majesty of SLEEPING BEAUTY Walt Disney's ultimate fairy tale. See more than you've ever seen before through the magic of state of the art technology and experience this groundbreaking film restored beyond its original brilliance in the way Walt envisioned it pristine beautiful utterly breathtaking. From the grand celebration of Princess Aurora's birth to the fateful day when she pricks her finger on a spinning wheel and falls under Malificent's evil curse to Prince Philip's courageous battle against a fire-breathing dragon the stunning artistry and spine-tingling sounds will transform your home into a fantastic world. The adventures continue as you are immersed into a wonderful world of bonus features.

BONUS FEATURES
In the original story, Princess Aurora sleeps for 100 years before being awakened by a prince's kiss. In the Disney version, Prince Philip comes to her rescue much sooner.
George Brun's orchestral score, which was nominated for an Academy Award, expertly blended famous themes from Tchaikovsky's ballet.
With a budget that exceeded $6 million in 1959, this was Walt Disney's most lavish and expensive animated feature to date.
Determined to make the characters as realistic as possible, Disney had a live action film shot with actors posing as Sleeping Beauty, the Prince, and Maleficent, for the animators to use.
New York Times critic Bosley Crowther called the fight between Prince Philip and Maleficent the noisiest and scariest go-round he (Disney) has ever put into one of his films.
Live Menus Featuring A Real Time Castle Environment
All-New Making Of SLEEPING BEAUTY Featurette
Deleted Songs
And More!
DISNEY BD LIVE innovative features premiering on Sleeping Beauty include Chat and Create Custom Video Messages With yoru Friends As You Watch The Film, Shop For Add-Ons and Downloads, Maleficent's Challenge Game, Living Menus Real Time Castle Environment Changes Based on Your Location System Requirements:Running Time: 75 minutes Format: BLU-RAY DISC Genre: CHILDREN/FAMILY Rating: G UPC: 786936746228 Manufacturer No: 05560800

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9 in DVD
• Brand: Buena Vista Home Video
• Released on: 2008-10-07
• Rating: G (General Audience)
• Aspect ratio: 2.55:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, Subtitled
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English
• Dubbed in: French, Spanish
• Number of discs: 3
• Dimensions: 1.00 pounds
• Running time: 75 minutes

Amazon.com
Disney's 1959 animated effort was the studio's most ambitious to date, a widescreen spectacle boasting a gorgeous waltz-filled score adapting Tchaikovsky. In the 14th century, the malevolent Maleficent (not dissimilar to the wicked Queen in Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs taunts a king that his infant Aurora will fatally prick her finger on a spinning wheel before sundown on her 16th birthday. This, of course, would deny her a happily-ever-after with her true love. Things almost but not quite turn out that way, thanks to the assistance of some bubbly, bumbling fairies named Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather. It's not really all that much about the title character--how interesting can someone in the middle of a long nap be, anyway? Instead, those fairies carry the day, as well as, of course, good Prince Phillip, whose battle with the malevolent Maleficent in the guise of a dragon has been co-opted by any number of animated films since. See it in its original glory here. And Malificent's castle, filled with warthogs and demonic imps in a macabre dance celebrating their evil ways, manages a certain creepy grandeur. --David Kronke




Stills from Sleeping Beauty (Click for larger image)

Customer Reviews

Very Beautiful Movie
This movie is a classic. To upgrade it to blu-ray was a brilliant idea by Disney. The graphics and colors are vibrant and stunning. But what put me over the top to buy it was the addition of the standard DVD with it. This made it a must buy since most people with young children have a grandma and grandpa or DVD system in the car that doesn't exactly have a blu-ray player in it. More companies need to think about adding in the standard version with the blu-ray version, especially with older movies so they can be watched anywhere.

dark and magical
For a fifty year old animated movie, Sleeping Beauty holds up exceptionally well for the modern viewer. While a bit light on story (evil queen threatens new born princess with curse of death, fairies cause the curse to be limited to slumber, fairies raise princess as a peasant to protect her from curse, curse strikes, etc), Sleeping Beauty tells that story quite well without relying too heavily on over-the-top musical numbers. Visually, Sleeping Beauty is one of the stronger works of from Disney with a striking Maleficent, contrasts between light and darkness, and one incredibly creepy castle for the evil queen. Outside of the fairies, the good side is a bit boring, but the three fairies carry the story and breath life into Sleeping Beauty. Of course, the movie relies on a bit of stupidity on the part of the fairies to actually have a story, but beyond that, the movie works. This one truly is a classic.

This is the two disc "Platinum Edition", however, and there is an abundance of special features. This set has a commentary track and a trivia track that are each, unfortunately, buried in the bonus features menu on Disc 1. Rather than having those two features which are designed to play along with the feature be on the main menu, they are each tucked away and easily missed. The only other features on disc one are a music video from Emily Osment singing the signature song "Once Upon a Dream",

The second disc has the bulk of the special features and this is broken into "Cottage" and "Castle". "Cottage" is designed for the younger viewers with a poorly designed dancing game and a language game so horribly narrated that it is best avoided. The good stuff (for adults) is in "Castle" with a making of, alternate scenes, a 30 minute video with visuals of the Grand Canyon set to music, the original broadcast of a Disney documentary, and all told, if you're looking for bonus footage, this is the disc to get.

On the strength of the art, the fairies, and Maleficent, Sleeping Beauty is a Disney masterpiece. The Platinum Edition is the DVD to own.

Disney's 50th Anniversary of Sleeping Beauty in Stunning Blu-ray!
Walt Disney released his greatest artistic masterpiece "Sleeping Beauty" in February of 1959. After spending 6 million dollars and 8 years in the making of this masterpiece, Sleeping Beauty managed to gross 5.3 million at the box office, certainly not enough for Disney to break even on his greatest artistic achievement in animation. Disney spared no expense on Sleeping Beauty, as he used Technicolor and Technirama 70. Technirama 70 was a special system of film running through the camera horizontally, exposing two 35mm frames simultaneously. This unusual film is then printed normally on standard 35mm film and shown with an anamorphic lens for the widescreen, extra dimension effect. Unlike Disney's earlier box office successful films of "Snow White" and "Cinderella", "Sleeping Beauty" lacked the music and characters that younger children love. There are no fun songs like "Heigh Ho" or "Cinderelly" and no adorable little mice like Jacques and Gus. This movie is definitely for a little older audience that appreciates the greatest art ever created for a full length animated movie. To say it is Disney's artistic masterpiece is an understatement! I saw Sleeping Beauty when it premiered in the winter of 1959, and even though I was a small child, it was then and is still now my absolute favorite Disney movie of all time!
This new blu-ray version of "Sleeping Beauty" made me feel as though I was seeing it again in 1959! This is the widest version I have ever seen and when you add hi-def 1080p and the all new digital restoration to it, it's like seeing it for the first time ever! Everything is so colorful, super wide, sharper, brighter than you can imagine! You can see every crack in every brick and stone! I am keeping my fingers crossed, that they treat more of the other great old Disney films with this same blu-ray restoration, as it's like seeing the film like you've never seen it before!
"Sleeping Beauty" may not be known for it's songs, like in "Snow White" or it's cute characters in "Cinderella", but it is known for the most fantastic hand drawn art that will never be surpassed by anyone ever again. Every scene is pure art in it's highest form due to the fantastic work of the best Disney artists of the time. This blu-ray dvd has a Bonus Feature disc that features many of the artists that contributed to this masterpiece. Seeing Eyvind Earle, who was given complete control of every artistic aspect of the film, along with other artists Marc Davis, Mary Blair, Ken Anderson and others is a real treat!
This bonus disc also features the beautiful Mary Costa, whose looks and gorgeous voice made Princess Aurora come to life. We also get to see Bill Shirley, the voice of Prince Phillip, Eleanor Audley, the voice of Maleficent as well as the wicked stepmother in Cinderella (She is the best villainess voice of any in animation!) and of course the three good fairies Verna Felton the voice of Flora, Barbara Jo Allen the voice of Fauna and Barbara Luddy the voice of Merryweather. This is so great as Disney shows how the people whose voices played the characters look so much like the characters! Of course they show how the film looks like Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty music seems to have been written for this Disney masterpiece, instead of the other way around!
More Bonus features include a Maleficent game, learning to waltz, an all new dragon encounter and a never before seen alternate opening. The best bonus feature for me is the Sleeping Beauty Castle Walkthrough. This is unbelievable, to be able to take a digitally re-created 3-D tour of Sleeping Beauty's Castle, just as it was in 1957 and 1958 (two years before the movie premiered)in Disneyland in California! What a treat! If you don't have a blu-ray player, now is the time to get one to enjoy the most breathtaking Disney masterpiece ever created! Sleeping Beauty is pure art in every way one can imagine from it's Tchaikovsky music to it's fairy tale of how good always conquers evil, but mainly for the opulent, gorgeous art dominated by the talents of Eyvind Earle's scenery and Marc Davis' characters- it's a rare treat for the senses and one you don't want to miss!