Pre-Order Celebrating Mickey (Blu-ray) Available for Preorder (1 Viewer)

[MatthewA]

As for Runaway Brain, I remember being disappointed when it wasn't on the laserdisc of the so-so A Kid In King Arthur's Court as it had been on the theatrical release. At least when it lost the Oscar for Best Animated Short Subject (i.e. anything shorter than Saludos Amigos), it lost to a Wallace & Gromit short.

Maybe this is the first in a series and they're saving it for another release.

 

[Jake Lipson]

Maybe this is the first in a series and they're saving it for another release.

I think that idea would be welcome, but gives Disney too much credit for advance planning they're probably not doing. I suspect this is a one-off for Mickey's anniversary and they have no plans right now for the other shorts.

 

[Brian Kidd]

The Treasures collections were only released because they were Roy's project. He left the company partway through their run and the final two waves barely escaped. I'll be forever grateful to Roy and Leonard Maltin that we got what we did.

 

[ThadK]

This review over at High Def Disc News more or less confirms the worst fears. Even Steamboat Willie has been "worked over" to look bad.

https://highdefdiscnews.com/2018/10/26/celebrating-mickey-blu-ray-review/

 

[MatthewA]

And yet the reviewer still gave it a 5 out of 5 and defended it.

And yet Warner Bros. still manages to be less heavy-handed with Looney Tunes and Peanuts. They still manage to look like film without looking like they've been run over by a garbage truck.

 

[David Norman]

Did we just read the same review?

I may or may not agree with the ratings since I've not finished watching all the way through, but I'll be damned if I can infer from that review that he thought it looked bad. The reviewer appears to love what he's seeing. I'm also guessing you haven't seen the disc yet.

The one negative on the PQ and it's praising with faint displeasure
" Sadly, a lot of the original film grain has been “smoothed over” via DNR (digital noise reduction), but in the case of a older cartoons it actually works incredibly well. In fairness, there is a decent amount of film grain on some of the color classic shorts."

"Overall, the video quality here is downright excellent and I’m very happy to see these classics done pretty much justice"

"Video Quality Rating: 5 (out of 5)"

"Disney has done these classic shorts visual justice here in this Blu-ray Disc release, and it leaves me yearning for more old original Disney animated shorts to be restored and released in high definition. These look absolutely great, and are sure to leave consumers very happy with the HD visual presentation."


Use of some DNR doesn't always equate to destroying things -- not only do they not look bad, they look very good and in some parts they look excellent. It's about as far from BAD as I can go. Lack of Lossless audio is a spec issue, but honestly I'm not sure it would make any difference in the least to the actual audio quality of the majority of these,

I think the 5/5 is overly high but I'd give it a solid B or even B+ on some on them. These look very, very good overall to me. I;d certainly like to hear others opinions and esp some of the big Disney experts

the 2 or 3 other people who have watched some or all have also seemed to be quite pleased with the disc. They certainly doesn't seem to be anywhere in the vicinity or Xmas Carol or Sword in the Stone.

 

[ThadK]

The reviewer clearly doesn't realize these cartoons have looked more colorful and had more range in the past, and that the new release appears to aim to evoke the color schemes of the recent CA wildfires. Vintage Technicolor doesn't look like this, and film is supposed to have grain. The screenshots made the case. Just more of the same vandalism from Disney.

 

[Paul Penna]

Well, if the screenshot of Steamboat Willie in the review is accurate, it looks very smoothed over to me.

 

[David Norman]

And if you think so after watching the disc, then a different discussion can be started.
Seeing a few frames out of context and dismissing or misrepresenting the guys entire review as saying something it doesn't is a different issue. It seems making a pronouncement of worst fears based on at most a handful of screen shots seems a bit extreme.

 

[ThadK]

And has has been stated earlier, these transfers have been making the rounds on various streaming venues for ages, either through the Have a Laugh filler material or Netflix. Thru the Mirror was specifically cited as looking terrible on Netflix. The screen shots confirm these are the same transfers. As if that horribly drawn cover didn't make it obvious, this release is trash. They used to leave the shorts alone and do this kind of vandalism to the features. Such is no longer the case, sadly.

 

[Ken_Martinez]

This really feels like something hastily thrown together to meet an obligation. Eww.

I'm also not falling for the usual "Buy this substandard release or the studios won't put out more" legerdemain again. Shoddy work will only beget more shoddy work.

 

[dbear]

The STEAMBOAT WILLIE restoration made its debut on the Oswald Treasures DVD set, and its HD debut in the bonus features of the Snow White Diamond Edition Blu-ray. There is actually an interview somewhere online where the "restoration" team outline their "methodology". They subjected it to the full "degraining/debusting" treatment as the features, thought it looked "too pristine", then opted to add back flicker and neg scratches. The result, at least on the Snow White blu, is that it looks more like some funky fake throwback recreation of a B&W cartoon than the real McCoy.

The rest were "restored" for the Have A Laugh programme years ago. Disney certainly have been building up a backlog of shorts they could slap onto a Blu-ray with minimal effort. Never mind that they're in varying degrees of vandalism (the Silly Symphonies and Ye Olden Days on the UK DisneyLife streaming service look atrocious) I still find it very curious they left it till Mickey's 95th to do anything with them on physical media (aside from a Christmas Blu-ray collection released in Europe).

If the digital release of Olaf's Frozen Adventure is any indication, we will get an inexplicably left-alone HD transfer of WINTER on the upcoming Blu-ray. It actually looks more on par with the Oswalds on the King of Jazz Blu-ray than the smeary greyed out flickery mess STEAMBOAT WILLIE was subject to.

 

[MatthewA]

Unfortunately, I don't think we'll see a change in this toxic over-restoration philosophy for at least a few years' time. Even the restorers seem to know when to quit, unfortunately they still have to answer to their supervisors and are often under edicts to make it look as shiny-fake as possible.

 

[Brian Kidd]

These aren't restorations. They're revisions. Period.

 

[ThadK]

Because I hate myself, I picked this up while shopping the other night. I knew they'd be the usual trainwrecks we're accustomed to from Disney, and this didn't disappoint: flat colors, grain removal, all to make them look "fresh and modern." But what crackhead redid the titles for these? Most of them are completely random. To cite the worst of many examples, the last Mickey cartoon from 1953, "The Simple Things", has a copyright date of 1940. Until they get their act together, let's hope this is just a one-off misfortune.

 

[MatthewA]

Because I hate myself, I picked this up while shopping the other night. I knew they'd be the usual trainwrecks we're accustomed to from Disney, and this didn't disappoint: flat colors, grain removal, all to make them look "fresh and modern." But what crackhead redid the titles for these? Most of them are completely random. To cite the worst of many examples, the last Mickey cartoon from 1953, "The Simple Things", has a copyright date of 1940. Until they get their act together, let's hope this is just a one-off misfortune.

Just as I suspected. Hold tight to those Walt Disney Treasures DVDs, folks. Those are still the gold standard for home media presentation of these films. Even the 1980s and 1990s tape/laserdisc versions are less irritating to watch; at least you know what the restoration team had to work with the first time they started restoring them. Maybe someday there will be something more comprehensive and not made to look so garish and unnaturally shiny-smooth, but it'll be awhile.

 

[Dick]

This doesn't look to bad in my opinion, it looks like it's the original animation cel.

Really? Do you see even a semblance of "Technicolor" here? I find this disc to be a travesty. Way back when I owned a Super 8mm print of THE BAND CONCERT that had wonderful, vivid colors. This looks like deliberate desaturation. I watched these films one after another with my color settings where I almost always have them, and they look dull and lifeless. Mickey's pants should be bright red. What do you see in this screen cap (and, I can assure you, this is pretty much how it looks on my 65" OLED). If I crank the color up to just about max, I begin to see what might be construed as sort-of Technicolor. but we should not have to make such adjustments in our displays in order to attain this.

Add to that the usual 100% DNR and, in my book, you get a fail.

 

[Dick]

This really feels like something hastily thrown together to meet an obligation. Eww.

I'm also not falling for the usual "Buy this substandard release or the studios won't put out more" legerdemain again. Shoddy work will only beget more shoddy work.

I'd love to see the Silly Symphonies and Donald Duck cartoons released on Blu, but not if they look like these. Disney is not "celebrating" Mickey here...they are debasing him. The pity is, lots of people who have kids will pick this up and the kids won't give a shit about the color or the DNR.

 

[WaltWiz1901]

While I do agree that Steamboat Willie and Thru the Mirror don't look very good, why hasn't anyone noticed how good (or at least passable) this looks? (One of the biggest gripes about the way these shorts were restored is that the film grain has been removed; I couldn't detect any signs of that in Mickey's Trailer)

Frustrating to notice that this has slipped through the cracks...

 

[MatthewA]

The lack of consistency is the most frustrating aspect of it all.