Just announced from Warner Home Video is an exciting new classic musicals promotion, a quintet of Oscar winners and beloved favorites debuting on February 3rd.

Leading the pack is a new two-disc special edition of the Audrey Hepburn classic My Fair Lady. This new reissue includes a remastered anamorphic widescreen transfer and Dolby Digital 5.1 surround track, plus plenty of extras: audio commentary by art director Gene Allen, singer Marni Nixon and the restoration team of Robert A. Harris and James C. Katz, the "More Loverly Than Ever: The Making of My Fair Lady - Then and Now" documentary, “The Fairest Fair Lady” featurette, "1963 Production kickoff dinner" footage, audio of George Cukor directing Baroness Bina Rothschil, Hepburn's alternate vocals for “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly” and “Show Me," a promo gallery including posters, lobby cards, a Rex Harrison radio interview and LA premiere footage, “Show Me” galleries, even more still galleries with production photos, documents, architectural drawings, costume designs and awards listings, Rex Harrison’s Golden Globe acceptance speech, additional comments from Martin Scorsese and Andrew Lloyd Webber and theatrical trailers. Whew! Retail for the set will be $26.95.

Four additional musical favorites include The Great Ziegfeld, Mutiny on the Bounty, Mrs. Miniver and The Gaslight. All are newly remastered in their original theatrical aspect ratios and include trailers and still galleries, plus, respectively: "Ziegfeld on Film" and "New York Hails The Great Ziegfeld" featurettes; "Mutiny on the Bounty Wins 1935 Awards" newsreel and "PItcaim Island Today" short; Greer Garson Academy Awards footage and two vintage MGM shorts ("Mr. Blabbermouth" and "For the Common Defense"; and the original full-length 1940 British version of Gaslight, new "Reflections on Gaslight" featurette and "Oscars for Movie Stars" vintage footage. Retail is $19.95 a pop.

Treasure Tales - 12:21am

Where's Walt? Last week, Buena Vista Home Entertainment announced a five-month delay for the latest four releases in the studio's highly popular Walt Disney Treasures collection, which has caused a small furor across the Internet about the true reasoning behind the postponement.

The Treasures collection, a series of limited edition tins that contain extensive collections of classic Disney animated shorts, television specials and vintage archival material, are usually released every December to commemorate Walt's birthday. The four titles - The Chronological Donald Volume 1, Mickey Mouse in Living Color 2, Walt Disney on the Front Lines and Tomorrowland - were originally scheduled for a December 2nd street date, and have now been pushed back to May 18th. But it is Walt Disney on the Front Lines that is causing all the controversy among enthusiasts, with many fans speculating that Disney has intentionally delayed the release to make alterations to the set in lieu of potentially controversial content.

To quell the mounting backlash, Disney has publicly denied the accusations of self-censorship, instead citing a simple problem of supply and demand. "We had the fortunate problem of having much higher demand than we had anticipated," says Disney executive Lori McPherson. "We thought orders would be a little bit higher because we knew there was going to be a lot of demand for the Disney on the Front Lines volume, but orders came in about fifty percent higher than even our most aggressive projection."

Unlike most DVD releases, which come in standard keepcase-like packaging, the Walt Disney Treasures series is also housed in a custom collectible tin, which must be imported from overseas and necessitated the delay. "There was no way (the studio) could get them in time," McPherson adds. "We were in a situation where we would have to allocate orders out to retailers, and that, combined with the fact that it is such a busy fourth quarter led us to decide that the best thing to do with these releases was to move them to May 18th."

And in what McPherson calls an "incorrect supposition," internet speculation has many fans worried that the Walt Disney on the Front Lines that will premiere in May will be different from what would have arrived in December. But "we are not changing anything," McPHerson assures. The discs "are already done and have been done for a number of months. I think some consumers were just surprised that we were releasing the war shorts, because we have never released them before."

Like all of the Walt Disney Treasures titles, Walt Disney on the Front Lines will be available only for a limited time, which McPherson believes is the main reason for the sudden surge in interest. "Retailers are realizing that we are only releasing them once. We are not repromoting them all year long. They really do go away."

Bloody 'Bill' - 12:21am

Rounding out this week's news, Buena Vista Home Entertainment has also announced a a February 3rd street date for Quentin Tarantino's latest ode to exploitation, Kill Bill Vol. 1. Specs have not yet been announced, but this two-disc set will retail for $29.95 and full details should be released soon. Watch this space!