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DUMBO
Big-Top Edition
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| | Studio: | Buena Vista | | Year: | 1941 | | Rating: | G | | Aspect Ratio: | 4x3 encoded 1.33:1 OAR | | Audio: | 5.1 DD English (French & Spanish) | | SpecialFeatures: | 2-cartoon shorts, Making-of featurette, Feature Commentary, still galleries (most of what's already on the current 60th Anniversary Edition) | | ReleaseDate: | June 6, 2006 |
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Note: Just got my new back-ordered Bulb on Friday! My projector is finally in action again after 2 weeks of no movies…
Dumbo is a charming Disney feature that falls somewhere between a full-blown “Classic Animated Feature” and “Cartoon Short” in look and feel. The animated style tends towards abstraction and the level of polish seems quite a bit lacking when compared to high-profile efforts like Bambi or Cinderella; Dumbo was animated on-the-cheap at a time when Disney Studios needed to produce a feature to have mass-market appeal without a great financial investment.
This recipe of necessity, however, does not mean that Dumbo is a product of compromise. Like all good art, limits are the source of creative expression, and at a time when animation “wow factor” was pushing the limits of the technology of the day, Dumbo came on the scene and won over the hearts of movie-goers with it’s understated visuals and down-to-earth feel. The story unfolds at a fast pace yet manages to yoke in the emotions of even the most hard-hearted of viewers. Capitalizing on themes of the mother-child bond and compassion for the outcast/underdog, Dumbo’s story marches forward with bold confidence while retaining a sense of innocence all the while. In addition to some of the most memorable musical moments of animation melody with “Casey Junior” and “When Elephants Fly”, Dumbo is sure to draw a tear during animation history’s most poignant moment: “Baby Mine”.
Many of you are wondering if this new release offers an appreciable improvement over the 60th Anniversary Edition disc that’s come before. Short Answer: YES. Image quality is better for the feature film and if your viewing system is wide-angle, I would suspect that, like me, once you see the improved image of the new edition you'd be satisfied with the new purchase (unless you can hold out for HD). Without a doubt, anyone who doesn’t already own a copy of Dumbo has no reason to avoid purchasing this release.
Without a doubt the new disc offers an improvement over the 60th Anniversary Edition DVD that’s come before. The improvement isn’t night-and-day as with Pocahontas, but it’s unquestionably better… and this improvement is more apparent the more revealing the display (and the wider-angle your viewing distance).
The improvement is most obvious in terms of:
- Color saturation and contrast.
- Reduced “noise” from EE exaggerated grain structure.
- Reduced MPEG compression artifacting.
The first thing I noticed in comparison to the previous DVD was the color saturation is much richer on this new disc. Colors are vivid, vibrant, and bold. The old disc had colors that very often look washed out. Also, I noticed that contrast looked a little “blown out” on the old disc with a gray-scale that looked ramped-up and tended to crush whites. The new disc presents a more natural contrast range that sweeps from dark to light without washing out detail or presenting an overly-dark image either. I think that regardless of display type, most users will appreciate the improvements in color saturation and contrast.
The next issue is one that is sure to generate more discussion. There is still quite a bit of film-grain structure and print-damage/cell dust visible in the image. Personally, this does not bother me. The image looks more like a “real movie print” than the LDI-scrubbed trophies like Cinderella and Bambi. However, some viewers may object to the analog artifacts and I encourage them to reconsider. And none can argue that regardless of which side of the “digital clean up” fence you fall on, it’s better to leave minor historical flaws endemic to the image alone if the studio can’t afford a full-scale LDI clean-up than to muddle the fidelity with off-the-shelf DVR tools that plague far too many DVD titles to name.
Now, having just mentioned that there is still visible grain structure, allow me to clarify that the severity of grain is MUCH LESS than what you see in the image from the 60th Anniversary Edition disc. My guess is that one or two things may be the cause:
- This new DVD utilizes a better-condition (earlier generation) print which contains less grain to begin with.
- This new DVD has much less EE which would produce a cleaner, less “noisy” image where moderate-grain structure is concerned.
At first I thought that the new DVD looked less “sharp” to my eyes than the 60th Anniversary Edition and I worried that too much HF filtering had taken place. But once I did some careful back-forth A/B comparisons between the two titles, it appears that the level of actual detail/resolution from the film print is about the same, but the 60th Anniversary Edition DVD has some excessive edge-ringing/EE that causes it to look “sharper” at first glance. Don’t be fooled! The new DVD produces a *better* image in *every* regard. I should note that some very low-level edge-ringing can be seen in a few scenes but it’s not distracting from my 1.5 screen-widths viewing distance and I don’t consider it a problem (unlike the old version which was ringy enough to distract from time to time at 1.5 screen widths).
In fact, now that I’ve enjoyed the new DVD on my projector, I can’t go back to the old edition…it looks “harsh” and noisy by comparison and pulls me out of the film.
Summary:
It’s lovely. Not an reference-work like the LDI (DTS digital images these days) scrubbed Cinderella… but a beautifully mastered and compressed image that preserves much of the historical film-grain and cell-dust in just the right balance: you’ve got the signature of the mechanics of the film medium while at the same time enjoying a beautifully sumptuous image.
Picture Quality: 4 / 5
Rating Rationale...
Rating Key:
| SCORE | Description |
| 1-2 | An absolute abomination. Hurts to watch even on a 32” 4x3 480I TV. Think Outland or Jean De Flourette (scan-line aliasing, chroma noise, dotcrawl, PAL-NTSC conversion artifacts etc.)-- truly horrid. |
| 2-3 | Has some serious problems, but one can at least watch it without getting a headache despite all the problems though you might try to talk your guests into picking a different movie to watch if you have a large projection screen. Think Kill Bill Vol 1. |
| 3-4 | Good or at least "acceptable" on a big-screen, but not winning any awards and definitely room for improvement if you view the image wide-angle (though smaller-screen viewers may be quite content). Think the first extended cut of Fellowship of the Ring...decent picture but still some HF filtering and some edge-halos. |
| 4-5 | A reference picture that really makes the most of the DVD medium and shows extraordinary transparency to the film-source elements limited only by DVD’s 720 x 480 resolution. Non-videophile observers can't help but remark "WOW" and ask you if they are watching HD. Think The Empire Strikes Back, the Fifth Element Superbit or the new Toy Story 10th Anniversary Edition. |
Viewing Equipment:
Currently running DVDs on my OPPO DVD player (Faroudja deinterlacing) which scales to 720P, feeding my BenQ 8700+ PJ via DVI, projecting onto a 106” 16x9 Dalite HiPower screen, viewed from approximately 1.6 screen-widths distance. Well mastered DVDs produce a stunningly film-like image in this scenario, and lesser-mastered material quickly shows its flaws.
The English audio comes to you in what sounds to my ears as exactly the same 5.1 DD configuration of the previous 60th Anniversary Edition’s DD audio. Dumbo was originally mono, so the purist in my would like to have seen the original mono presentation as an option here. However, the 5.1 mix is nicely balanced and tastefully done (no re-recorded firecracker Follies exploding in the surround channel like on Mary Poppins 5.1) and basically sounds like the mono recording has just been warmly spread to fill the soundstage. Dialogue is fine (and centered) and the fidelity of the musical numbers is satisfyingly full. Honestly it sounds better than I expected for a cartoon of this vintage.
Sound Quality: 4 / 5
Listening Equipment:
B&K AVR 212 processor/receiver driving my Onix-Rocket Loudspeaker system.
Sure, a 2-disc SE would have been even nicer. But for a single disc set there is a nice collection of bonus material here to please most fans. Most of the bonus features seem to be recycled from the 60th anniversary edition so the bonus features are not in themselves a reason to upgrade… but if you haven’t already acquired the 60th anniversary set it’s nice to know you can get this set without losing anything important since the bonus material is, for the most part, duplicated between the two editions.
Feature Commentary: Disney’s head animator takes you on a wonderful historical journey through the making of this feature. The screen-specific commentary isn’t riveting, but it’s very informative and any fan of animation history, Disney studios, or Dumbo will find something worth listening to here.
- Making-of Documentary: In the Back-stage Disney area there is an enjoyable featurette that totals about 15 minutes in length. The background to the making of this film gets covered nicely though I would have preferred a more in-depth historical account with less glitz from “guest stars” telling me how much they like the movie.
- Bonus Shorts: You’ve got two Classic Disney shorts here: Elmer Elephant (8:30) and The Flying Mouse (9:20). Both have been released via the Disney Treasures collections but it’s nice to have them here and they fit nicely into the theme of the feature film. Image quality is gorgeous… watching them on the projection screen really feels like being at the movies when I was a kid (and they used to show cartoon shorts before the feature film).
- Music Video: Baby Mine. Sung by some guy and some girl all hip, cool and modern (gag me).
- Sing Along Songs: I shudder, but fun for kids. Rather than use the video from the feature film with subtitles, this is a separate video track with it’s own burned-in “bouncing ball” lyrics.
- Walt Disney Intro: This feature is really the first couple of minutes from Walt Disney’s television series (B&W) when he introduced the film Dumbo in his television series. Would have been much neater if they had included this to play right before the feature film.
- Still-frame galleries: The usual.
- Cardboard fold-out Casey Junior Train: You heard me. I think it’s cool!
- MISSING: re-release trailers, Casey-Jr. sound feature, music-video from the first edition. (see Mike Cameron's excellent comments in the first post following this review for more details).
It’s a classic. It’s a tear-jerker! And it’s got noticeably improved picture quality on this new Big-Top edition.
If you don’t already have Dumbo in your DVD library, this is an easy recommendation. If you *do* already have it, I’d recommend this buy if have a wide-angle viewing distance… after having watched the improved picture quality of the feature film on this disc, I can’t go back and satisfy myself with the 60th Anniversary Edition. Special features are fine for a single-disc presentation and more-or-less what you get on the previous DVD… nothing serious gained or lost.
Recommended for first-time purchase or for wide-angle viewers
p.s. Please check out the OUTSTANDING review at UltimateDisney which includes in-depth comparisons between the new and old DVDs along with screen caps.
http://www.ultimatedisney.com/dumbo-bigtopedition.html
