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In addition to Ratatouille, Pixar has another release hitting stores on Tuesday, November 6. Pixar Short Films Collection, Volume 1 collects the 13 shorts released by Pixar since the company’s inception (one short, The Adventures of André & Wally B, predates the creation of Pixar itself). While the disc itself boasts a few interesting features (read the review on Ultimate Disney), it’s way overpriced considering that only two of the shorts included have not been previously released on Pixar DVDs. Still, there’s some great work here and if you’ve never seen these shorts it’s worth checking out. Thankfully, the new management at Disney Feature Animation has seen fit to reinstate a shorts program there, so we’ll hopefully have many new releases like this in the future. The Pixar collection is available on DVD and Blu Ray.

In other news, Disney announced specifics for the next release in the rapidly diminishing Platinum Collection of DVDs. 101 Dalmatians is now available for preorder and hits stores on March 4, 2008, just in time for me to not ask for it for my birthday. The movie is great, of course, but the specs for the disc (listed here and here) show that Disney continues its slide when it comes to these ‘deluxe’ releases. The line of releases which began with Snow White and the Seven Dwarves in 2001 have slowly devolved from archive-quality troves of information for animation fans to kiddie-game and cheesy cover song laden panderfests. But hey, the movie is still a classic and hopefully they won’t skimp on the transfer (who knows – they may need all that bitrate for the no doubt seminal Selena Gomez performance of “Cruella de Vil”).

Also coming down the pipe: A Special Edition of The Aristocats on February 5, 2008.

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