The Holiday Season is upon us and so are the related Blu-ray Disc releases, including the classic animated How The Grinch Stole Christmas!, released by Warner Home Video on October 6th, 2009.

Many of my generation grew up reading Dr Seuss stories, and this was one of the few chosen to be animated for television.

The Grinch lived North of the village of Whoville and considered Christmas a noise pollution problem, possibly due to having a heart two sizes too small.

In any case, his solution is to dress up as Santa Claus and raid the village, taking all of the presents and food - a move sure to ruin Christmas and keep the Whos quiet.

The animated version of the story essentially the book narrated by Boris Karloff, though since this would only fill roughly 15 minutes, the story is extended with a number of songs and action sequences that were not in the original.

The voice cast also includes Thurl Ravenscroft singing the main Grinch song and June Foray voicing the part of Cindy Lou Who.

Certainly How The Grinch Stole Christmas! is a wonderful story and this version stands as one of the Holiday Season classics.

How The Grinch Stole Christmas! was directed by Chuck Jones, the man behind many a Bugs Bunny cartoon as well as  Horton Hears A Who!.

With a Rotten Tomatoes score of 100% and an IMDb score of 8.4/10, it is a favourite with the critics too.

The video on the disc is a VC-1 1080p encode at 22 Mbps, and is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.33:1.

While the original elements are over 40 years old, I was actually pleasantly surprised at the vivid colours in this presentation.

Full resolution PNG screen captures taken directly from the disc can be seen at the details page for How The Grinch Stole Christmas!.

The main audio is definitely showing its age though, and is presented here in Dolby Digital with 2.0 channels, encoded at 192 kHz.

The disc is a single layer BD25, with only 6.9 GB used and is coded for All Regions.

How The Grinch Stole Christmas! features an audio commentary titled Making Animation And Bringing It To Life, though there are also a couple of behind the scenes featurettes that delve into the making of the animated Christmas special.

Personally I found TNT’s How The Grinch Stole Christmas Special Edition, which was presented by Phil Hartman, to be a little more entertaining than the more recent Dr. Seuss And The Grinch: From Whoville To Hollywood.

A few still panels from the animation development are presented in the Grinch Pencil Test.

The famous songs from the TV special are covered in the Songs In The Key Of Grinch featurette, incorporating interviews with the song composer and main vocalist.

You can also access the songs directly with the Grinch Song Selections feature.

The Who’s Who In Whoville Biography Gallery has a set of static pages with biography information on the writer, director and voice talent for the TV special.

The Blu-ray release additionally comes with a Windows Media Digital Copy.

How The Grinch Stole Christmas! is certainly a classic and the Blu-ray release from Warner Home Video comes with a number of entertaining supplements and is without doubt the best presentation to date.

The retail price is $29.99, or order it right now at Amazon for $17.99, saving 40%!

Extras:

• Making Animation And Bringing It To Life Audio Commentary
• Dr. Seuss And The Grinch: From Whoville To Hollywood
• Grinch Pencil Test
• Songs In The Key Of Grinch Interviews With Composer And Vocalist
• Grinch Song Selections
• Who’s Who In Whoville Biography Gallery
• TNT’s How The Grinch Stole Christmas Special Edition Featurette

Synopsis:

“Every Who down in Whoville liked Christmas a lot.” And every family likes How The Grinch Stole Christmas! a lot! This joyous, heart-tickling holiday event based on Dr. Seuss’ beloved book and featuring the voice of Boris Karloff has delighted viewers of all ages since its 1966 debut. The fun begins when the grumpy, grouchy, Yule-hating Grinch plots to ruin the Who’s Christmas. Can he steal their holiday spirit by stealing their holiday treats? Or does Christmas… perhaps… mean a little bit more? Bring home this glorious Re-mastered Deluxe Edition that includes Horton Hears a Who! plus a sleigh load of more bonus goodies - and let the green meanie Grinch take his rightful place alongside Ebenezer Scrooge and George Bailey (It’s a Wonderful Life) as a timeless symbol of the season to be jolly. Merry Grinchmas!

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 21st, 2009 at 9:01 am and is filed under Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.