I bought the Blu-Ray of "The Secret of the Wings" after having seen badly ripped tidbits of it. The tiny bits that I saw (in a rather crappy quality) made me wonder about the rest of the movie, and I decided to just buy the movie.
Now, I have to admit that Disney's fairies are kind of a guilty pleasure for this grown-up geek. I know they are, basically, meant for kids, however, there are enough little jokes and visual gags that go over the heads of little ones, to entertain grown-ups too.
Aside from the gags and little in-jokes, the high quality blu-ray visuals are absolutely stunning, even in 2d. The color palette is gorgeous, atmospheric and translates very well to a smaller screen. The animation is very good. Some mo capping seems to have been used, but not consistently. Frankly that's a bit of a shame. Kids won't notice, but this art-school drop-out noticed that the upper-torso movements, the little twitches that every human has, were captured in sheer perfection, and show the craft of the Disney animators. However, walking animations, and animal animations were not very convincing and pulled me a bit out of the "immersion" The snow-owls were adequate, but the lynx was absolutely not.. Nit-picking, I know.
And while I am at it, the "songs" were an uninspired atrocity, belted-out by some talentless, soulless...person.. Brrrr. The rest of the music was good, with nice little touches of classical pieces. Listen f.i. careful to the theme played when Tinkerbell and her sister, Periwinkle "dance" around each other for the first time.
The story on its own was a nice adventure bit, with some really funny characters that were brought to joyful life by an excellent combo of very talented voice-actors (and some big names at that..) and the Disney animators that, as already stated, absolutely know their craft.
All in all movies like this show that CGI doesn't have to be lifeless shiny stuff, and prove that in the hands of people that know what they are doing, can be just as charming (and tugging at your heart-strings) as drawn animation.
On a side-note: What struck me, was an underlying message that girls can do technical stuff too. Tinkerbell designs, and builds a snow-maker with the help of the other girls. The boys just deliver the parts. Tinkerbell..well.. She "tinkers" and is still, undoubtedly a girl. That's an on-going theme in the Disney-fairy movies and shorts. I think it is a really good, empowering thing for girls to be told:"yes, you can/may build technical gizmo's. It's not just a boy-thing, or a weird geek-thing".
Now, I have to admit that Disney's fairies are kind of a guilty pleasure for this grown-up geek. I know they are, basically, meant for kids, however, there are enough little jokes and visual gags that go over the heads of little ones, to entertain grown-ups too.
Aside from the gags and little in-jokes, the high quality blu-ray visuals are absolutely stunning, even in 2d. The color palette is gorgeous, atmospheric and translates very well to a smaller screen. The animation is very good. Some mo capping seems to have been used, but not consistently. Frankly that's a bit of a shame. Kids won't notice, but this art-school drop-out noticed that the upper-torso movements, the little twitches that every human has, were captured in sheer perfection, and show the craft of the Disney animators. However, walking animations, and animal animations were not very convincing and pulled me a bit out of the "immersion" The snow-owls were adequate, but the lynx was absolutely not.. Nit-picking, I know.
And while I am at it, the "songs" were an uninspired atrocity, belted-out by some talentless, soulless...person.. Brrrr. The rest of the music was good, with nice little touches of classical pieces. Listen f.i. careful to the theme played when Tinkerbell and her sister, Periwinkle "dance" around each other for the first time.
The story on its own was a nice adventure bit, with some really funny characters that were brought to joyful life by an excellent combo of very talented voice-actors (and some big names at that..) and the Disney animators that, as already stated, absolutely know their craft.
All in all movies like this show that CGI doesn't have to be lifeless shiny stuff, and prove that in the hands of people that know what they are doing, can be just as charming (and tugging at your heart-strings) as drawn animation.
On a side-note: What struck me, was an underlying message that girls can do technical stuff too. Tinkerbell designs, and builds a snow-maker with the help of the other girls. The boys just deliver the parts. Tinkerbell..well.. She "tinkers" and is still, undoubtedly a girl. That's an on-going theme in the Disney-fairy movies and shorts. I think it is a really good, empowering thing for girls to be told:"yes, you can/may build technical gizmo's. It's not just a boy-thing, or a weird geek-thing".