Walt Disney's Legacy Collection: True-Life Adventures—Lands of Exploration, Vol. 2

In the late 1940s and 1950s, Walt Disney produced fascinating nature films for family audiences. Walt Disney's Legacy Collection: True-Life Adventures pulls together a selection of those remarkable documentary shorts (once a television staple for baby boomers), which sent roving cinematographers and other technicians into the field with a well-researched script, after which ingenious editing, the creative use of music, and even touches of animation were added to create the marvelous pieces such as the three Academy Award winners collected here. "The Living Desert" (1953) is set in the American southwest, "The Vanishing Prairie" (1954) presents an overview of what were once endless grasslands between the mountainous west and the full forests east of the Mississippi, and “Seal Island" (1948) is shot on a remote Alaskan island. Nature programs are, of course, plentiful on TV today, but the Disney shows were unique at the time, applying high cinematic standards to the filming of lizards, road runners, sandstorms, and exotic flowers (the Technicolor images on the Galapagos-filmed "Islands of the Sea"—one of three bonus shorts in this set—are simply gorgeous). Harrowing sequences of predators stalking their lunch, or seal pups getting separated from their mothers aren't necessarily censored here, but these sequences are softened through judicious editing and anthropomorphic narration. Other DVD extras include an introduction by Roy Disney, a retrospective “Filmmakers' Journal,” vintage featurettes, and a look at Disney memorabilia. Highly recommended. Editor's Choice. (T. Keogh)