Video review: "Precious"

Lately it seems major films are being pushed onto video in a slipshod manner. Extras are skimpy and unenlightening, as if the studio couldn't be bothered to take the time or spend the money.

(Yeah, I'm talking to you, "Where the Wild Things Are.")

So it's refreshing to see Best Picture Oscar nominee "Precious" given a top-notch release. It's got a solid commentary track and host of probing featurettes totaling nearly an hour. About the only knock is the lack of a digital copy.

Extras are identical for DVD and Blu-ray versions. In the commentary, director Lee Daniels talks openly about his own troubled youth and how it inspired him during the shooting.

Author Sapphire speaks about her experiences as an inner-city teacher, and how she was reluctant to let Hollywood film her book. She relented after seeing Daniels' "Monsters Ball."

The casting of novice Gabourey Sidibe is covered in detail, including footage from her audition. Sidibe is nothing like her character -- she's smart, outgoing and "talks like a white girl," Daniels says.

Daniels talks about de-glamorizing his cast, making nearly everyone work without makeup -- he even reveals he caught Mariah Carey trying to sneak in some blush between takes.

Oprah and Tyler Perry talk about their roles in "presenting" the film. Artistically, they had nothing to do with it. But after seeing it, they felt compelled to lend their names to get the Sundance favorite a major release.

Set in Harlem 1987, it's the first-person story of Claireece "Precious" Jones, an obese, illiterate 16-year-old who's pregnant with her second child. She's the victim of her mother, a serial abuser, played with terrifying rage by Mo'Nique, and was raped repeatedly by her father.

She's like a thousand others girls that people pass on the streets every day without seeing. Her entire life has taught her to feel worthless, like "ugly black grease."

But Precious is given a second chance when she's sent to an alternative school, where she finds a teacher and fellow female students who help her, for the first time in her life, to feel empowered. The vibrant fantasies that ping around her head start to translate into the journals she keeps for class.

"Precious" is a hard movie to watch. The brutality it depicts, of both a physical and psychological nature, are vile. The only thing worse would be failing to see it.

Movie: 3.5 stars
Extras: 3.5 stars

Review: "The Princess and the Frog"

"The Princess and the Frog" is a delightful throwback to old-school Disney animation, when hand-drawn art took precedence over computerized images, when animals always talked, when characters couldn't help bursting into song, and trained vocal actors were preferred over gimmicky celebrity casting.

OK, that last part isn't entirely true -- Oprah, Terrence Howard and John Goodman provide voices for some minor characters. But the heavy lifting is left to actors you may have never heard of, whose vocal work -- especially their singing of the jazz-inspired tunes by Randy Newman -- is top-notch.

"Princess" is a break from the past in one way: It's the first Disney animated film to feature an African-American princess.

True, Tiana (Anika Noni Rose) starts out closer to scullery maid territory, and spends most of the movie voodooed into a slimy green frog. But our black heroine gets her tiara -- and her prince -- in the end.

The story is set in 1920s New Orleans, depicted in bold colors as a delightful gumbo of races and classes freely mixing. Young Tiana and her parents dream of opening their own restaurant, but dad is killed in the war and Tiana spends her youth working two waitress jobs.

The town's abuzz about the arrival of Prince Naveen of Meldonia (Bruno Campos), a charming rake who's looking to marry the daughter of the local titan of business because he's been cut off from the family fortune. Unfortunately, the snaky voodoo "shadow man," Dr. Facilier (Keith David), turns him into a frog in a bid to get the riches for himself.

Naveen convinces Tiana to kiss him in order to change him back to human, but the spell backfires and turns her into a frog, too. They spend the rest of the movie having adventures in the swamp and the streets of New Orleans while striving to get changed back to normal -- falling for each other in the process, of course.

There's the usual Disney assort of colorful supporting characters, human and otherwise.

Louis (Michael Leon-Wooley) is a tubby alligator who yearns to play trumpet in a jazz band, while Raymond (Jim Cummings) is a snaggle-toothed Cajun firefly who pitches woo to the North Star, whom he calls Evangeline and imagines is another insect.

Then there's Mama Odie (Jenifer Lewis), a swamp-dwelling blind old lady whose white magic counters Dr. Facilier's dark arts.

Newman's songs are a rainbow of styles, with several standout tunes audiences will be humming on the way home. There's "Almost There," Tiana's jouncy affirmation of aspiring dreams, and Mama Odie's "Dig a Little Deeper," a gospel-inspired call to concentrate on the important things in life.

I also enjoyed Raymond's waltz-like love song, "Ma Belle Evangeline." And Dr. Facilier boasts about his alliance with the voodoo spirits in "Friends on the Other Side," which is combined with imaginative, eye-popping visuals for a real show-stopper.

"The Princess and the Frog" comes from the writing/directing team of Ron Clements and John Musker (with a writing assist from Rob Edwards and several others), who previously helmed "The Little Mermaid" and "Aladdin."

They've been sidelined for the last seven years -- the under-appreciated "Treasure Planet" was their last project -- as animation ambitions shifted almost exclusively to computers. Hopefully, Disney's first-class return to its roots will signal that there's room enough in the future for some of the past.

3.5 stars