Beauty and the Beast
25th Anniversary Edition
Blu-ray Combo Pack
Directed by Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise
Music by Alan Menken
Cast: Paige O’Hara, Robby Benson, Richard White, Jerry Orbach, David Ogden Stiers, Angela Lansbury, Bradley Michael Pierce, Rex Everhart, Jesse Corti, Hal Smith, Jo Anne Worley
Distributor: Walt Disney Studios
Release Date: September 20, 2016

Disney’s 1991 animated feature Beauty and the Beast, which is based on the classic French fairy tale of the same name, sees an intelligent young woman named Belle who’s grown tired of her predictable small-town life. She wants to read and learn, and yearns for adventure, which makes her an oddity amongst her fellow villagers, who think a beautiful girl like her should just settle down and have a family. But she’s not interested in that. She repeatedly rejects the proposals from the town’s hunk Gaston, a vain and musclebound airhead who swears he won’t relent until Belle agrees to marry him.

Belle eventually ends up at the castle of a prince who’s been magically transformed into a beast. In an effort to save her father, the young girl abandons her dreams of adventure and agrees to remain indefinitely at the Beast’s home, which is staffed by enchanted inanimate objects. (These were his servants who were also cursed.) Unbeknownst to Belle, there’s something that can reverse the spell placed on the Beast, but if it doesn’t happen in time, the irritable prince will remain forever in his monstrous form. In the meantime, Belle’s persistent suitor Gaston will do anything to have her, even if it means harming those she cares about.

The Many Adventures of Winnie The Pooh
Blu-ray/DVD/Digital
Directed by John Lounsbery and Wolfgang Reitherman
Starring Sterling Holloway, Paul Winchell, John Fiedler, Junius Matthews, Ralph Wright, Hal Smith, Barbara Luddy and Sebastian Cabot
Walt Disney Home Entertainment
Release Date: August 27, 2013

Pooh, Tigger, Piglet and friends stroll through the Hundred Acre Wood to a high-definition world, as The Many Adventures of Winnie The Pooh debuts on Blu-ray for nostalgic viewers and eager young ones, too.

The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh features a compilation of three featurettes strewn together by live-action scenes set in a live-action version of Christopher Robin’s bedroom.

Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree, first released in 1966, follows Pooh’s never-ending quest for his favorite food that he seeks to put down into his “tumbly.” The search for something sweet leads him down a most dangerous path up a honey tree. The infectious, quaint humor found in Pooh’s obsession with the sticky substance still resonates all these decades later. Funny is funny, and though Honey Tree need not rely on over-the-top gags or sharp pop culture references, it is as delightful as anything ever created in a Disney animated film.