Review: Mary Poppins & Saving Mr Banks

The Lesedi Centre are celebrating their fourteenth birthday and handed out blankets to old aged clients at the center at Alders Gate Church Hall, recently, who receive meals from the soup kitchen. Seen with the clients are the Lesedi staff, standing, from left: Susan Englebrecht, Claudette Bartlett, Gilda Bartlett and Janine Kenny. Picture: Dave Alexander

The Lesedi Centre are celebrating their fourteenth birthday and handed out blankets to old aged clients at the center at Alders Gate Church Hall, recently, who receive meals from the soup kitchen. Seen with the clients are the Lesedi staff, standing, from left: Susan Englebrecht, Claudette Bartlett, Gilda Bartlett and Janine Kenny. Picture: Dave Alexander

Published Jun 27, 2014

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Mary Poppins & Saving Mr Banks

Blu-ray

****

Releasing these two films in one cover is such a marketing ploy, but a good ploy since they work together.

These are both aimed at adults– kids who saw Nanny McPhee first think of Mary Poppins as old timey, so it’s actually all about the nostalgia of rewatching it.

Yet, the film is a classic in that it typifies Disney magic in its totality.

In Saving Mr Banks, author PJ Travers (Emma Thompson) points out to Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) that the Mary Poppins books weren’t written for children; they were written for the promise breakers, inferring adults.

Everything Disney was working on at that time went into making Mary Poppins – the technology, the people and the fun they had at work, the ideas around artwork and marketing – and Saving Mr Banks is as much an homage to him as to the author of the books.

SPECIAL FEATURES: The Mary Poppins extra features are those from the 50th anniversary blu-ray disc, so everything from karaoke with Mary Poppins to all the behind the scenes interviews and even the bonus short of The Cat that Looked at a King, as well as the audio commentary.

On Saving Mr Banks, there are deleted scenes and a feature on The Walt Disney Studios, plus a sweet little video of the original Richard Sherman leading the cast and crew of the film in singing Let’s Go Fly a Kite, with him on the piano.

These extras alone make getting this blu-ray a worthwhile proposition, especially if you’re a fan of the Disney school of animation. – Theresa Smith

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