DVD Review HTF REVIEW: Brother Bear (1 Viewer)

[Rob Tomlin]

Once again, I think your review is spot on Dave!

Oh, and a late congrats on finally taking the plunge into front PJ bliss!



Ok, I will third that!

On my 123" screen, the color banding was very distracting and downright obnoxious in some scenes. Add to that the "softness" of the image as indicated in Dave's review, and you are left with a very disappointing transfer.

As for the movies itself, pretty forgettable except for a few funny scenes with the Moose (Mooses?).

 

[AaronMK]

I have put some screen caputures on this page. Most are P&S and OAR comparisons since composition has been brought up in this thread. Unlike most Disney movies that are animated at 1.66:1 and use different subsets of the frame for theaters and P&S, Brother Bear looks like it was animated at its intended ratio and was just chopped for the P&S version.

The last two captures are places where the banding is pretty bad.

As far as the animation, I think this is a gorgeous movie.

 

[Lars Vermundsberget]

Quote: "Being a Canuck, the mooses stole the show."

According to Donald Duck and his nephews in the words of Carl Barks the plural form of "moose" has to be "meese".

 

[Rob Tomlin]

Aaron-

Those last two captures do an excellent job of showing the banding that bothered me throughout most of the movie. Well done.

 

[Roger J]

While I don't find the DVD quality to be what I would call "terrible", it is obviously not what it should be. This is not at all surprising when one looks at the allocation of the various video files on the disc. The video on the 2.35:1 disc is given a mere 2.8 GB of space.

This seems to be common for Disney releases of late. Finding Nemo, a much higher profile film, was also over-compressed resulting in what i consider unacceptible macroblocking in some scenes.

Of course, this is Disney, so one should not expect any better. Mega-corporations have little concern for such trivialities as "art" (unless the CEO loots the company to buy it for his penthouse). This is commerce.

 

[Rob Gardiner]

Thanks David, for another enthusiastic and thorough review.

Considering the comments I've read from you and others, I was not expecting much from this film. I had heard it referred to as "Lion King-lite" which is not good news, as I thought Lion King was shallow to begin with. I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed this film!

I have no idea where the indifference / hostility to this movie comes from. Maybe because it is so different from the typical Disney film? If I may coin a term, Brother Bear has the most "Miyazaki-esque" plot of any Disney film. I mean that as the highest possible compliment. Apart from some images (and the design of the old woman) borrowed from Princess Mononoke, look at the plot structure:

Note the complex relationship between man and animals depicted in the film. It is much more complex than the simple black/white, good vs. evil relationship between the heroes and villains of The Lion King or any other Disney film, for that matter.

Who is the villian in Brother Bear? The bear in act 1? In retrospect (once we know she was simply a mother defending her cub) I'd say NO. How about the middle brother, who hunts the bear in acts 2 and 3? He is doing what he thinks his brothers would want him to do. The only evil act in the film is committed by the protagonist and even then, he thinks that he is doing what is right. Is this the reason Disney fans turned their backs on this film? I was particularly surprised to see David use the words "typical" and "predictable", since this is so unlike anything Disney has ever done.

I hope that in ten or twenty years, Brother Bear will be recognized as the masterpiece it is. The Lion King, in particular, seems hollow by comparison.

 

[Dan Hitchman]

Why is there color banding on a brand new DVD??? Disney should know better!

I've noticed this with Windows Media HD files too... HD (especially HD!!) video should not have these artifacts present!!

Dan

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Rob,

Thanks for sharing your insightful thoughts about the complexity of the story line that had previously gone undiscussed. The nice thing about these review threads is that they'll be archived so in the future HTF searchers will have the benefit of reading your valuable comments.

 

[Ron Etaylor]

David Thanks for the review, and have some fun with that projector I am such a Disney freak, but from the moment I heard about BB and saw the previews, I realized this is one that I'll grab sometime when it's on sale. No hurry. I think Home On The Range looks like it might be a keeper.

 

[Rob Gardiner]

Does that mean if Brother Bear isn't recognized as a masterpiece in 20 years, these words will still be around to haunt me?

We have an image based culture. One of the ways kids are indoctrinated into this way of thinking is through their entertainment, where cute=good and ugly=evil. I am pleased that this particular cliche was avoided with this film. While I adore the Disney animated films for their animation & design & entertainment value, I am often slightly repelled by the worldview they portray.

A Disney princess is a girl born into a life of leisure, while a Miyazaki princess is a girl who carries a great responsibility. While Harry Potter (WB movies) can wave his wand and cast spells in order to overcome obstacles, Kiki (the girl with the delivery service), other than her ability to fly, is no different from any other young girl who has to deal with shyness and loneliness and the occasional lack of confidence. Miyazaki films are sometimes more thoughtful than their American counterparts, and I was absolutely THRILLED to see Disney pay tribute to this fine filmmaker, and simultaneously increase the quality of their own films, by presenting a more thoughtful worldview.

Notice that the only scenes of violence occur when humans and bears are in the same scene, AND incapable of communicating with each other. And in the scenes where they do act aggresively towards one another, it is only BECAUSE they can't communicate. Because of this, I was willing to overlook the hackneyed Shrek/Ice Age "buddy" subplot. I definitely consider Kenai's spiritual growth and his changing point of view to be the MAIN plot.

Most Disney protagonists (including Simba) are the innocent victim of the villain's cruelty and it was refreshing to see this formula departed from. In your Lion King review, you compared the plot to Hamlet. But Hamlet is a tragedy, and an essential ingredient for tragedy is that the hero is at least partly responsible for his predicament. I thought this was much more true for BB than for TLK, where the hero started out innocent and carefree in act 1, overcame the guilt of his father's death to become innocent and carefree in act 2, then suddenly learned responsibility just in time for act 3.

Then again, I have no idea what the formula is for a successful Disney film. Sleeping Beauty has a very thin plot with some very large plot holes, and a main character who motivates very little of the main action, yet that doesn't stop it from being a magnificent masterpiece. The climax is one of the most exciting sequences in all of cinema. And I watched SB just before I saw Lion King for the first time, so maybe I'm unfairly holding it to too high a standard.

In any case, I realize I'm in the minority. I just thought that ranking Brother Bear along side Atlantis and Treasure Island was kind of a low blow, and wanted to give an alternative view.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

 

[Rick Salt]

I just saw this movie for the first time last night and really enjoyed it. Yes the pq is lacking and the ending felt anti-climatic and rushed. But i liked it better than their other recent traditional animation [ treasure planet, lilo and stitch, and atlantis... ]
No it may not be great but it was good and with a better ending and better lines for the moose [ they were ok just not timon and pumpa funny ] it would have been very good.

 

[Philip Hamm]

I agree Rob, BB has much more substance than the shallow "Lion King". IMO it's a better movie all around. I just don't buy some of the key character choices in "Lion King".

Though the banding drove me nuts. I think Brother Bear was just made in a very DVD-Spec unfriendly color pallete.

I saw Brother Bear and Treasure Planet both this weekend and found them both to be excellent. TP particularly was a very nice adaptation of a classic IMO.

 

[Michael St. Clair]

Here are some quick grabs that I enlarged to show some striped bears:

http://s94662391.onlinehome.us/images/bear1.png
http://s94662391.onlinehome.us/images/bear2.png
http://s94662391.onlinehome.us/images/bear3.png

I didn't scan extensively for the worst examples, I just grabbed a couple.

I enlarged them 200% and saved as PNG (lossless) to avoid any JPEG artifacts. I did boost the contrast and brightness a small amount to add emphasis.

Here is a non-resized, non tweaked bear:

http://s94662391.onlinehome.us/images/bear4.png

If anybody has a preferred example, give me the scene and time and I'll do a grab.

EDIT: Apparently, my ISP does some additional processing of graphics files. For example, bear4.png on my hard drive has 5963 colors. But bear4.png after I upload it to the web site has 5880 colors, and is darker. This is reducing the banding substantially. Either that, or IE is up to something.

 

[Christopher_Ham]

I liked Brother Bear. It seemed to me though that as stated in here before, the transfer seems to be a little off par for a Disney release of late.

 

[TonyD]

put me on the list of not noticing till someone told me.

but if you go right to the 4 min 3 sec mark and watch the next 4 secs in slow mo you can see the brown top part of the older brothers outfit change several dif shades of brown but it looks like it is waves of color not a gradual naturaL change.

almost as if his top was a glass of brown water and it had a hole in the bottom and you can watch the brown color level go down from the top.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Just wanted to let those subscribed to this thread know that there's another thread dedicated to the "color banding" on this disc with info about contacting Disney if you'd like to let them know you've encountered this problem. Apparently, no one has called them to discuss it prior to the poster of this thread:

http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htfo...79#post2159752

 

[RobertSiegel]

Funny how today, a movie that brings in over 120 million worldwide, and probably the same on dvd release worldwide, plus pay-per-view and VHS sales, is considered a bomb, or as one previous person here put it, "tanked at the boxoffice." Personally, I don't call that tanking, THE ALAMO at 22 million is a tanker, or Treasure Planet at 28 million, or even "Home on the Range" at 40-some million seems to me to fit that description better.

I have now seen the film 6 times, and the last showing had the same effects on me as the very first in the theatre. Everyone I have shown it too absolutely loves it (10 people so far of all ages) and was surprised, because I don't think Disney bothered to promote it right, or more to the point, Michael Eisner and his "gang". For me, this is right up there with Disney's best, and I always get the feeling I could be watching something from the classic Disney days when good old Walt was around. Everyone who has seen it with me has cried in several places, laughed throughout, and I must disagree with the review in that I think the story is fantastic and engrossing. I give this an 8 or 9. And I'm not usually very easy with those ratings. I also usually disagree with pop music in scores, I prefer traditional music like "Beauty and the Beast." In this case, it worked perfectly, I think the songs were even better than Phil Collins did for Tarzan, sadly he didn't even get an Academy Award nomination this time.

The only thing I thought of negatively while watching this was the similarity of the transfer of the bear to the transfer in Beauty and the Beast, but my feeling is, if it works and fits the story well, no problem with me. Case in point: the opening of West Side Story, duplicated in style for Sound of Music...it's appropriate even if used before.
Good things can be repeated in different forms when tastefully done. I think it was done well in this case.

As for the quality of this dvd, I have a Sony VPL-11HT front projector and 2 Klipschorns (9 speaker setup, all surrounds Klipsch professional) and I thought the quality was very good, though I do agree with some other members on the picture, could have been a tad better, but I think it's still very good and have no major complaints, my only being some of the banding. The soundtrack on disc 2, the DTS theatrical version, is fantastic. I havn't heard the Dolby Digital tracks, or seen the transfers on disc 1, I always show the original theatrical and use the DTS when available.

To sum it up, a movie that makes me laugh so many times during the film, and cry several times, even upon the 6th showing, and whose story engrosses me 6 times in a row does its job and does it well. My hats off to many of the animators, who sadly, are probably out of a job due to Eisner and gang's decision to stop traditional animation. It's sad, and having followed the "savedisney.com" site for months now, seems to be their control over the animators and their lack of freedom that has shut this down, not the death of this type of drawing.

I have 2 questions, does anyone know of a source to see how much money a dvd release pulls in? Second, does anyone know the cost of Brother Bear? The IMDB doesn't list it on this one.

 

[thomasDi]

I like Koda. I have Koda pluch & Kendi too. I got the DVD.