Million Dollar Arm
Mitchell Stein- Disney has returned to the world of sport docudramas with their latest film Million Dollar Arm. This true story stars Jon Hamm (Mad Men) plays a sports agent named J.B. Bernstein who decides to travel to India to host a reality show competition named “Million Dollar Arm” in which the best pitchers in the Indian market will win the chance to travel to America and play in the final round for one million dollars as the title suggests.
The films benefits from a few merits, including it’s cast of characters and it’s great story-telling. Director Craig Gillespie does a wonderful job of steering this film in all the right directions, especially one worthy of Disney’s previous sport biopic films and writer Tom McCarthy succeeds at making the audience care about these characters as the film goes on, even if the audience knows what direction the real-life story went in. The story does get a bit shaky at times, bringing in characters that have no effect on the story, and then focusing too much on unnecessary plot-point. The climax of the film was a rather interesting point of the story to cut to the credits, and it will leave you wanting some more of the future for the characters, but that will be redeemed by the Alternate Ending available on the Blu-Ray combo pack.
The rest of the features include Deleted Scenes, Outtakes, and a few really interesting features including Training Camp, in which actors Suraj Sharma and Madhur Mittal spent their time before the film learning how to pitch a baseball for the movie. The real JB Bernstein appears along with real life Rinku and Dinseh to talk about the real Million Dollar Arm contest and the effect it had on the two players. The final feature is an inside look at the making of the score by A.R Rahman, which continously swaps back and forth between India and the United States, blending two different styles of music. All in all, Million Dollar Arm makes for a very entertaining home release.
While there’s nothing that really stands out as spectacular in this production, it does earn a memorable spot in the Disney sports canon. It doesn’t quite match up with Remember the Titans or Miracle, but it still earns itself a memorable recognition and is definitely worth your time.
Sleeping Beauty
Alongside Million Dollar Arm being released on Blu-Ray combo pack today, Disney is also re-releasing Sleeping Beauty in time for Maleficent which hits home release in a month from today. This is another one of the several home releases for this film recently, and it’s wonderful to see that Disney put effort into filling this release with new bonus features that were not available on previous releases which they failed to do with the lazy re-releases of Tarazan and Hercules two months ago.
First up, there’s three brand-new, never before released deleted scenes that were recovered from the archives, including one brand-new clip which features a Vulture character that never made it to the final cut of the movie. There’s also Artists in Motion: Extended Edition which is a longer version of the feature we’ve seen previously, but with all-new incredible footage. There’s a short little feature named “Once Upon a Parade” which is pretty much just an advertisement for the new Festival of Fantasy parade at the Magic Kingdom starring Sarah Hyland from Modern Family. My favorite feature of them all is Art of Evil: Generations of Disney Villians which give a really amazing look at the creation behind Maleficent and many other villains from created by Marc Davis with some really amazing interview footage. Along with these features, there’s also the classic DVD features that were included on the last release. In the end, it’s a pretty jam-packed Blu-Ray release and one Disney fans should be particularly excited about. It’s about time too.
While not nearly one of my favorite films, Sleeping Beauty earns it’s place in the Disney Animation canon, and with this fantastic new Blu-Ray release, it should earn it’s place on your Blu-Ray shelf as well.
The Mickey Mindset 