Anniversaries can lead to some lazy reporting (”Forty years after Woodstock, baby boomers wonder if all you need is love”); but in the video marketplace, anniversary years inspire big releases. Last week, there was the 70th-anniversary edition of “The Wizard of Oz.” Next month there will be a 50th-anniversary edition of Alfred Hitchcock’s “North by Northwest.” And today we can re-appreciate “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” as Disney celebrates the movie’s 70th anniversary by releasing enhanced versions on DVD and the newer (bigger! brighter!) Blu-ray format.

The American Film Institute is among those who consider the hand-drawn “Snow White” the greatest animated film of all time. A documentary included in the three-disc “Diamond Collection” asserts that the 1939 Disney release “forever changed the world of movies.” It was the first-ever full-length animated movie, yet its character renderings still haven’t been topped by all the pricey computers at operations like Pixar. (To create Snow White, the Disney animators traced over live-action footage of actress and dancer Marge Bell– who was later better known by her married name, Marge Champion.)

“Snow White,” with its wicked fashionista stepmother, house-cleaning critters and poor, tormented Grumpy, is my personal favorite of Disney’s creations. I’d like to think that in the sequel which Uncle Walt considered, the oppressed miners would rise up against the Prince to reclaim their stolen diamonds–and free the pale princess whose love for the seven outcasts was forbidden.

Here’s Disney’s pitch for the newly restored edition:

(By the way, here’s some fun facts about the dwarfs’ names, from Disney biographer Neal Gabler, by way of Wikipedia:

The names of the Seven Dwarfs (Bashful, Doc, Dopey, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy and Sneezy) were created for this production, chosen from a pool of about fifty potentials. The one name Disney always had in mind from the start was Grumpy, or something similar. Blabby, Jumpy, Shifty, and Snoopy were among those that were rejected, along with Awful, Baldy, Biggo-Ego, Biggy, Biggy-Wiggy, Burpy, Busy, Chesty, Cranky, Daffy, Dippy, Dirty, Dizzy, Doleful, Flabby, Gabby, Gloomy, Goopy, Graceful, Helpful, Hoppy, Hotsy, Hungrey, Jaunty, Lazy, Neurtsy, Nifty, Puffy, Sappy, Sneezy-Wheezy, Sniffy, Scrappy, Silly, Soulful, Strutty, Stuffy, Sleazy, Tearful, Thrifty, Tipsy, Titsy, Tubby, Weepy, Wistful, and Woeful.)