Blu-ray Review HTF BLU-RAY REVIEW: The Sound of Music (Combo Pack) (1 Viewer)

[BenCam91]

Thanks, Adam, now it all makes sense.


And now, unfortunately, I'll have to abandon my wrong-headed notion that older films can't possibly look great on BD, and start buyin' em all up as I'm a fan of everything from the 60's on. But you're still saying that it depends on the skill and attention of the restoration team? Are there, then, any pre-release clues (other than just knowing the reputations of the people involved) one can look for to get an advance indication of whether or not it'll be worth it to go BD on any given upcoming title? I guess that's where visiting here comes in, huh?!

 

[RobertSiegel]

Originally Posted by BenCam91

What I do is watch 4 or 5 web sites for user reviews. I don't always go by the web site reviewers but do take their opinion into consideration. What I find helpful is what other people who purchased the disc feel about it, and that witrh the formal website review, along with threads and forums like this are the best way to find out what is quality and what was done poorly.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Originally Posted by BenCam91


There's a few factors that can lead a transfer of an older movie astray. One, as previously mentioned, is that the surviving elements for the film just might not be very good. If the original camera negative is carefully maintained, it's going to result in a significantly better picture than any other source material. But many times the original negative was not carefully maintained, if it was indeed kept at all. At that point, the home video people have to decide what surviving film element is in the best shape, or -- in severe cases -- cobble together and try to match the best pieces of a few different surviving prints. Between traditional film restoration tools and today's cutting edge digital tools, it's amazing what they can accomplish to bring films back from the dead. But if the film elements they have to work with are flawed, the final presentation is going to be flawed.


Another issue is the recycling of old masters. When DVD was taking off, studios made digital masters of the vast majority of their catalog titles, for use in HD TV broadcasts and for down converting to 480i DVDs. The technology used to make these masters is now a decade or so old, and many of them were never intended to be used for 1080P presentations. For big titles, like The Sound of Music, the studios will take on the time and expense to make a brand new, ultra-high definition master to source the Blu-Ray from. But for less prominent titles and for many early BD releases, they just used the old master. Any flaws in the old master will obviously show up in the products sourced from it. These titles will still look better than the DVD, since there is more resolution, but they won't look as good as they would have looked with a brand new master in 4k resolution.


And finally, there's just plain poorly made masters; this can affect brand new movies as well as old movies. Sometimes the pros at the studio just screw up. Sometimes they cater to market forces to the detriment of picture quality, like the push to remove all evidence of grain which also removes a significant amount of detail.


But that's the great thing about the internet. As Robert said in the post before this one, if there's a serious issue you'll hear about it, either through the reviews on BD review websites, or from the comments and posters on the message board. Even when there's not a consensus about some aspect of a release, such as the color timing and sound mixing for this title, you'll find plenty of debate and can make your own call as to whether the issue in question is something that's going to bother you, or something that's not. Usually the reviews will start popping up a day or two before the release date, and many users seemed to find titles before their release date as well. The reviewers here at HTF do a generally thorough and excellent job, and sites like DVDBeaver.com provide screenshots (along with comparisons with prior DVD releases) from the BD discs to let you make your own judgment calls.

 

[Charles Smith]

Got a question or two.


If one has the BD, the 40th anniversary DVD set, and the 30th anniversary LD box set... is there any noteworthy special feature (documentary, commentary, whatever) worth having, that isn't included in one of these three editions? I'm not aiming to be a "completist" beyond this, but if there's something else of quality, in someone's opinion, then I might like knowing about it.


How about other info on the making of the film? I found "The Making of America's Favorite Movie" by Julia Antopol Hirsch on my shelf -- apparently nabbed secondhand at some point and promptly forgotten about. What books or articles, etc., do people value for any particular reason?

 

[Charles Smith]

Answering my own question, it certainly looks like "The Sound of Music Companion" by Maslon and Lloyd Webber is one to have. Also perhaps "Forever Liesl" by Charmian Carr.

 

[Rob_Ray]

Other essential books related to the Trapps' story in general include Maria von Trapp's 1949 autobiography "The Story of the Trapp Family Singers" the first third of which covers the real story of the period of The Sound of Music, with Maria von Trapp's leaving Nonnberg Abbey to marry George von Trapp and become a new mother to his children and how it all came about. The book is filled with rich detail on life in Austria before the war and takes a sometimes blackly humorous look at the dark days after the Anschloss. Some of the most operetta-like aspects of the story were largely true. For instance, the Captain wasn't engaged to just a Baroness. In real life, she was a princess!


Her much later book, from the 1970s, entitled "Maria" covers the same ground from the perspective of an older woman looking back over the whole of her life, including one chapter on The Sound of Music and the impact it had on their lives.


A very recent book by the recently departed eldest daughter, Agathe von Trapp, entitled "Memories Before and After The Sound of Music" tries to point the spotlight on the long-forgotten first Baroness von Trapp, Agathe Whitehead von Trapp, the mother of the seven oldest children, as well as depict the Captain as the warm and loving father he always was from the outset, even before Maria's arrival. One gets the sense that the some of the children sometimes resented the real Maria for her insistence that they put aside their personal lives for the sake of their group singing career. The real Maria was a force of nature, as Christopher Plummer notes in several interviews.

 

[RobertSiegel]

There are also several (3) books about Julie Andrews that have quite a bit of information on this title (and fun info on Poppins, Millie, ect). I find these are really good books.

 

[Joe Caps]

Folks, a die question here.


Two friends of mine told me they saw on the net that Charmian Carr who played liesl in the film has passes away.
I looked everywhere on the net and found nothing. Does anyone know abut this?

 

[Steve Christou]

Joe, it was the real "Liesl" that died.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-12093316

 

[Charles Smith]

Some of the headlines were way too easy to misread. And Joe's post just caught me off guard again.