Write a Review of the Original Broadway Production of Into the Woods
1.33:1 Full Screen (Original Aspect Ratio) / DTS-HD Master Sound ii.0 Stereo (English)
Subtitles: None; Not Closed Captioned
Blu-ray Release Date: December two, 2014 / Suggested Retail Price: $24.98
Also available on DVD ($24.98 SRP; October 7, 2014) and Amazon Instant Video
Previously released on DVD (Baronial 27, 1997)
Epitome Entertainment could not have picked a better time to bring Into the Forest to Blu-ray than now, mere weeks before Disney's major new motion moving-picture show adaptation opens in theaters. Might some customers exist confused? Information technology's possible. It's also possible that those who see the film will and so appreciate seeing the stage musical on which information technology is based with the original cast.
As the comprehend art should make clear (but maybe not in passing), the Into the Woods I'1000 reviewing here is the Original Broadway Production. Featuring music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book and direction by James Lapine, the show premiered in San Diego at the end of 1986. It opened in New York in November 1987 and proceeded to win three Tonys and five Drama Desk awards. On Labor Solar day weekend 1989, the musical closed on Broadway while still making the rounds in a national tour. Earlier that yr, in May, the unabridged original Broadway cast (relieve for i player in an extremely minor role) reunited for a single performance. It was filmed and two years after, it was circulate on PBS' "American Playhouse" anthology serial.
That televised production came to DVD in the infancy of that format: August 1997, on the eve of a tenth anniversary benefit operation. Final calendar month, Prototype Amusement gave it a new DVD release with more hitting (and frankly, motion picture-like) artwork. Side by side week, it reaches Blu-ray, hit that high definition format 3 or 4 months before the big budget, honour-aspiring film featuring Emily Edgeless, Meryl Streep, Johnny Depp, James Corden, Chris Pine, and Anna Kendrick makes information technology to stores.
Into the Forest spins a unmarried narrative out of a number of familiar fairy tales. An onstage narrator (Tom Aldredge) makes sense out of how these stories connect everything from Little Carmine Riding Hood to Jack and the Beanstalk to Cinderella. Our chief focus is on a bakery (Fleck Zien) and his wife (Joanna Gleason), who have had no success in conceiving a child. The reason for that is the couple has been cursed by a witch (Bernadette Peters) over an old family grudge. She is willing to lift the curse and restore fertility if the couple can give her four items she needs for a potion: a moo-cow as white equally milk, a cape as red as blood, hair every bit xanthous every bit corn, and a slipper pure as gold.
Acquiring and holding on to those iv ingredients is no easy task for the baker and his married woman. They exercise manage to merchandise "magic" beans to farm male child Jack (Ben Wright) in commutation for his dearest milk-white cow. A gilt slipper comes from Cinderella (Kim Crosby) whose tardily mother'south spirit transforms her from overworked servant to beautiful princess who will attend multiple balls and attract a prince (Robert Westenberg). The story also involves the impossibly long-haired Rapunzel (Pamela Winslow), who has been raised every bit a belfry recluse by the Witch posing equally her female parent, and the oft-snacky Little Red Riding Hood (Danielle Ferland), whose visit to her grandmother leads, of grade, to a deceptive large bad wolf (also Westenberg).
In Human action II, these assorted townspeople come together to hatch a defense plan against a widowed lady behemothic intent on getting revenge on the boy who killed her husband by chopping down a beanstalk.
Into the Wood is mostly dear by those who know information technology and more so than Sondheim'southward other musicals, which include Sweeney Todd, Company, and Gypsy. It is a very theatrical show, one full of songs which not only advance the story but show off the aplenty vocal talents of the cast. It is start and foremost a one-act, although its humour is very narrowly tailored to theatergoer tastes. The jokes can be quite broad, but they practise not have the broad appeal of, say, a Shrek movie or Tangled. The prove's funniest moments involve irony and in the shattering of theatre conventions, as in the evolving role of our omniscient host who isn't as removed from the stories he tells as we presume.
Disney'south moving-picture show just held its first screening over the weekend to favorable reactions, though embargoes will keep total reviews under wraps for a while longer. The film is directed by Rob Marshall, who got his offset on Broadway, first as a performer and then as a choreographer and somewhen director. Marshall transitioned to telly in the late '90s, handling choreography and eventually direction on movie adaptations of shows like Victor/Victoria, Rodgers and Hammerstein'due south Cinderella, and Annie. Marshall couldn't take asked for a stronger debut in theatrical feature films: his 2002 Chicago was a box office hit and winner of six Academy Awards including Best Film. Since that, the filmmaker has alternated between musicals and not-musicals, striking out with the critically-derided/underrated flop 9 and not faring a whole lot meliorate on the songless Memoirs of a Geisha and Pirates of the Caribbean area: On Stranger Tides, both of which failed to recoup their meaning budgets domestically.
Marshall's spotty track tape has made Into the Forest one of the wild cards of the award season. The Christmas Day opening makes clear it has ambitions, but it remains to be seen whether it ends up being a commercial oversupply-pleaser, a major Oscar contender, both or neither. At the very least, the pic should score some recognition in the University'south technical categories and in the Golden Globes' Comedy or Musical fields.
Even if the results are every bit positive as they (undeservedly) were on Marshall's Chicago, true musical theatre lovers will almost certainly prefer the purity of the stage version to the presumably cinematic, visual effects-heavy motion-picture show. I'grand convinced in that location is room for both, as the Broadway product's songs fail to keep me fully invested in the convoluted story for the interminable ii�-hr runtime (which the motion picture will reportedly condense to just over two hours). Some of the seize with teeth of the play may be toned for a PG-rated Disney moving-picture show (I think information technology'south safe to say we won't be seeing the Wolf's genitals). While that wasn't the approach taken on Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd seven Christmases ago, that R-rated motion-picture show grossed just $fifty million domestically and $100 G overseas, numbers far below than the Mamma Mia! and Les Mis�rables-type numbers Disney is expecting.
VIDEO and AUDIO
Per the standards of the time, Into the Woods was shot on video and therefore lacks the item of picture show. Information technology'southward also shot i.33:one, and so virtually a quarter of Blu-ray'southward resolution goes to the black side bars of the 16:9 frame and the wide-staged compositions are rarely as strongly photographed equally they should exist. Image has done all they could and should practice to brand this look its best. But its best may still disappoint those accustomed to dazzling 1080p video. At that place's an innate fuzziness to the picture most noticeable on long shots that no restoration work can hide. Closer shots, which aren't all that common given the nature of theatre, look better, but it's always articulate yous're watching something that was shot for television long before the digital age. There'south also one pocket-sized only noticeable funky edit and a continuity error involving Cinderella'southward cheek cleanliness suggesting this taping didn't all come from i single performance.
Similarly, the soundtrack cannot uncover any power that wasn't in the original recording. The 2.0 stereo mix is presented in the lossless DTS-HD master sound format. Simply information technology certainly won't rival the mix that Rob Marshall's film volition probable provide. The audio is as crisp as it tin can be and fairly dynamic. No English or other subtitles are included.
BONUS FEATURES, MENUS, PACKAGING and DESIGN
As on its 2 DVD releases, Into the Woods is non joined by whatsoever bonus features, non fifty-fifty trailers for other titles. Image Entertainment is non a studio known for its bonus features and subsequently seventeen years of bringing this program to disc on its own, information technology seems safety to say they unfortunately don't take rights to whatsoever supplements of relevance to this production.
The bill of fare has the cover artwork give mode to a montage of video clips set to one of the endless iterations of the title song. This Region A Blu-ray does not support bookmarks, but does resume unfinished playback of the feature presentation.
The side-snapped keepcase is non joined past insert or slipcover. Its disc label fittingly adapts the new embrace art.
Endmost THOUGHTS
The odds are great that some people who love the stage musical Into the Forest will be disappointed by the new moving picture. This Blu-ray is the disc for them, preserving a operation by substantially the unabridged original Broadway cast in the highest quality home video allows. The presentation is limited by the production techniques; the gains in motion-picture show and sound over even the nearly 20-year-former DVD seem pretty balmy. That and the connected lack of any extras and even subtitles prevent this release from being as an exciting as it might have been.
Buy Into the Woods from Amazon.com: Blu-ray / DVD / Instant Video 
Source: https://www.dvdizzy.com/intothewoods-play.html
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