telzall
Stunt Coordinator
- Joined
- Apr 1, 2013
- Messages
- 226
- Real Name
- joe
The more I consider an "archival" transfer to DVD/blu ray the more enthusiastic I am!! I would be genuinely proud to have many of the Disney classics in that form.
Thousands of people buy the Disney Blurays.
If we had the original grainy films released I suspect Disney would receive thousands of emails from angry consumers that the classic animation film doesn't look like a brand new Pixar film.
Wah-h-h! Damn, I'm tired of this dumbing-down of everything because a faction of this country moans and cries when they can't have something just the way they want it. What about the rest of us? Disney now caters exclusively the former while ignoring the latter, although it has been largely we who made them into the megabillion-dollar company it now is.
I wonder when Disney will take heed with the handling of their own heritage.
Such alterations are not a sign of advancement.
For my money, these Disney decisions are a reflection of the Peter Pan philosophy that states:
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up".
Maybe 2025 will be better. Until then, No Sale..."Not me".
"It's a small modicum, after all".The alterations are unique versions of the films from which they are bastardized. The original, grain-intact, unfucked-with materials are still safely in their vaults, I'm sure, and so aren't technically lost, except to fans who collect these ageless films on video. I suppose there is a modicum of comfort in that. A very small modicum...
I
"It's a small modicum, after all".
Well usually the earlier the transfer is the less changed it is. Many have gotten all of the original Gold Collection DVDs to have less altered versions on DVD but those were largely reissues of the last Laserdisc master.Aside from the Laserdisc release of Peter Pan which DVD and/or blu ray would you, or anybody, recommend, based on faithfulness to original, intended, color palette?
Thanks a lot. Now you've inspired me to buy an external upconverter so I can actually watch laserdiscs on my 1080p Epson projector without having everything squashed to 16x9. At least it's better than the cropping we were subjected to in the 1980s theatrical reissues.
Those stately, extra-laden, "restored and remastered" CAV laserdisc box sets of Snow White, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, and the double feature of Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros were about $99.99 new. And for the most coveted titles, the lack of copy protection meant a year's lag between VHS and laserdisc.
The extra-less CLV equivalents were about $39.99 new, while a a two-disc CLV release was $49.99. And their prices were still less than Fox's. That is, if you were lucky enough to live where they sold and rented them.
Will the inevitable 4k releases be plagued with the same smear-storation and oversaturation mentality? I hope not. Hopefully they will get right what the current wave of releases got wrong, and hopefully it won't be limited only to the most popular titles, the 1% of the Disney catalog.
If you want to talk about a wide variance of colors on the same film, compare the opening of the 1980s Bambi video to the THX-approved 1990s one. By that time it's painfully obvious that they've started freeze-framing the titles, and why the RKO logo has never been restored to this particular film, nor even a Buena Vista from the 1950s/1960s, is beyond me.
I broke down and bought the original CAV laserdisc from eBay and did an A/B comparison, which is not easy to do on my receiver (Sony STR-DH820) because of the lag time of switching between sources. I watched the first few minutes of the film. Even in Squeeze-O-Vision, the laserdisc wins on color even though the Blu-ray is sharper, and I'm projecting these onto a 136" constant image height screen, so every flaw, digital or analog, will show up. The LD doesn't have the same "airless" feeling, for lack of a better word, as the Blu-ray, since it hasn't been de-grained like almost every little piece of animation coming out of the studio since around 1994/1995 or so.
As I recall them, the very first wave of Disney home video transfers (1978-1982, which includes the MCA Discovision deal) were way too yellow and full of motion blur artifacts (film-to-video transfer machines with 3:2 pulldown to eliminate ghosting frames didn't come out until around 1982 or thereabout, IIRC). The overall transfer quality improved dramatically in the later part of the decade. The original c. 1980 film-to-video transfer of Bedknobs and Broomsticks was all that was on laserdisc before the 25th anniversary restoration/reconstruction of the original cut, and the transfer was so bad (and time-compressed from 117 to 112 minutes, and though the VHS of that same initial transfer had the Buena Vista logo, the laserdisc didn't) that I honestly preferred to watch it on later VHS releases or The Disney Channel cablecasts which used later, clearer, more colorful remasters. Prior to 1984's release of 1973's Robin Hood (even that deserved a better Blu-ray than it got), the only animated features from "The Canon" that got released during this period stateside were Alice in Wonderland, Dumbo, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, and a VHS-only Fun and Fancy Free that still made a lie to the Eisner-sans-Katzenberg-and-Wells-era claim that the 50th anniversary reissue was "for the first time ever." Even though both the whole and the sum parts had been made available on tape, and the two components were separately on laserdisc before that*. Actual short cartoons, as opposed to the sum parts of 1940s package features, were another matter. Those got plenty of laserdisc exposure in the 1980s, yet after that Mickey Mouse box set in the 1990s, not much until Walt Disney Treasures filled in the gap on DVD while Warner Bros. and MGM cartoons got plenty of pre-DVD LD releases. The less said about The Spirit of Mickey, the better.
After having gotten to see the "unrestored" 2001: A Space Odyssey in 70mm at the Castro in San Francisco, I think it's time the Disney classics got that kind of treatment. I would love to see a comprehensive 4k UHD series of the entire animated canon, even the flops, released the way Trancas suggested. Uncut, unmolested, with only the artifacts of age removed, and with non-fluff extras; i.e., what the Blu-rays should have been all along. Younger fans who grew up with the artificially sweetened over-digitized versions will likely be in for a shock, but they'll come around. Older ones who know the difference won't be disappointed. Whenever I watch that Cinderella comparison, my eyes always snap back to the Technicolor print scan where the colors seem more naturalistic, nuanced, and lifelike and less Crayola-ish. Even the darkness of the scene makes sense since it's night time and it shouldn't be anywhere near as bright as the Blu-ray makes it look; where's the light coming from? Hopefully the cinematic rescue aid society that keeps these films from being lost to time will listen and finally come through.
And they need to stop using the alleged ignorance of children (more like ignorant or careless adults projecting those qualities onto a straw figure of their own creation) as an excuse to cut every corner.
*The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad was another matter; there, they already broke them up from the get-go into two separate releases paired from other cartoons, the full version with Bing Crosby and Basil Rathbone's wraparounds remaining unreleased until an early 1990s laserdisc release.
Even some of the LD misfires from that era have good things about them, including the two you mentioned. The 55th anniversary Bambi looks awful but, as you said, is the only source of the RKO logo and has a music-and-effects track. .
Then that would be a change from the older Diamond Edition Blu-ray, the one I own, which didn't.
As for whether the actual transfer different in any other way, the only screenshots I could find didn't suggest much of a radical change. Except one of the features that didn't make the jump was the one talking about the restoration of the film.
Sadly, there's nothing we can do.
Yes there is. Cut them off financially, like I did. Stop subsidizing shoddy work.
The complete episode is available for purchase (in HD too!) from iTunes or Vudu, but at the ridiculous price of $14.99. I can’t imagine why Disney thinks a single episode of their classic tv show is worth the same amount as a feature film.Meanwhile, the exclusive archive 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is the only source for Operation: Undersea, the Disneyland TV episode. The DVD is a superior representation of the film, and it is chock full of extras, but that's not one of them. .