We’ve a quick update today, but with lots of new stuff for you! As promised earlier this week, I’ve posted my take on Disney’s latest release of their 1970 comedy thriller The AristoCats: Special Edition, the animated feature that gets little attention but deserves much more. I’ve loved this movie since I saw Edgar the butler’s battle with alley cat Thomas O’Malley in a silent 8mm home movie print only a few years after the movie originally came out, and I still think it holds up well today. For those of you who might dismiss The AristoCats as being one of the bottom of the barrel Disney movies, I urge you to look again…it’s no cat-astrophe, with some wonderfully comic, subtle and very clever things going on in the film, and while this new DVD isn’t the out and out Special Edition that title might suggest, there’s still a great deal of value to be found. Get your itty bitty kitty-cat claws on one!

Also new today, we’ve a couple of Charlie Brown reappraisals from Randall, who has written about the first of Warner Brothers’ new deluxe Peanuts releases, Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown. Our Rand is a bit of a Schulz-head (as he asks in the review, “who isn’t?”) and it seems he couldn’t be happier that the boy Chuck is finally getting some respect on DVD after a slate of so-so offerings from previous distributor Paramount. Peanuts really does hold the interest for all ages: I used to love watching the misadventures of Snoopy as a kid and, as I grew older, found much more involvement in Charlie’s always charmingly written attempts to cope with life, love and everything else. Rand’s certainly pleased with WB’s new disc, though for comparison he’s also provided a look at an earlier Paramount release of a trio of other similarly-themed specials, A Charlie Brown Valentine.

It’s Contest Corner time, where you’ll find the three lucky names in our AristoCats Giveaway, as well as the five winners in the Ten Commandments Giveaway. Congratulations to all, and if you’d like to be in the running to grab a DVD or two, don’t forget our currently running Aqua Teen Hunger Force 5 and Academy Awards 2008 Contest, where we’ve put up a Disney bundle worth over $100!

As always, there’s still more to come, so stay tooned! – Ben.