DVD Review HTF REVIEW: The Lion King (TOTALLY RECOMMENDED!!!) (1 Viewer)

[Dan Rudolph]

Disney releases seperate spanish editions a lot of the time. There were already 3 5.1 tracks and somethign would have had to give to add another.

 

[Jeffrey_K]

Yeah, but French? How many French speakers are there in the US vs Spanish? I'd be willing to be 3 or 4 to 1.

 

[Ken_McAlinden]

Jeffrey,
DVD Region 1 is the US and Canada. There are quite a few French speakers in Canada.

Regards,

 

[Simon Massey]

Is everyone else who experiences the "audio glitch"/"layer change" at the end of the new song having a line of dialogue from Mufasa cut out? I noticed it when I watched the beginning of the "special edition" but I didn't notice it when I watched the "theatrical edition." Any insight?

This seems to be getting lost in all the debate over the changes to the animation. I have also had the same problems with both versions of the film (Pioneer DVD717 player), resulting in a line of dialogue from Mufasa being cut. I assume the lack of reports on this means that this is not affecting many DVD players.

 

[Rob Tomlin]

I have also had the same problems with both versions of the film (Pioneer DVD717 player), resulting in a line of dialogue from Mufasa being cut. I assume the lack of reports on this means that this is not affecting many DVD players.

I have the same problem.

I am using a Bravo D1 DVD player.

 

[Chris Farmer]

Another one who loses Mufasa's dialogue after the "seamless' branch back together. The missing line is laughter followed by "That's very good.". It skips on my roomie's PS2, although the Mac OS X DVD Player in 10.2.8 plays it without a hitch. If there's a screw up, I'm not surprised to see the PS2 catch it, it's terrible with anything involving shift, it always has a big gap during layer shifts.

 

[Lyle_JP]

Complaint: Why not a Spanish language track? French and English only? Wha?

A lot of studios do this. They figure that a Spanish language track on the Region 4 DVDs (Central & South America) is good enough.

-Lyle J.P.

 

[Bill Burns]

I wanted to offer an observation or two about the non sequitur "is this important/isn't this important" argument as regards changes to this and other animated films (if the quality/fidelity of a film release on DVD isn't important, I'm not sure what we'd have left to discuss in a software forum , so I think of it as a non sequitur):

A while ago, a great deal of attention was paid to a new release of Lawrence of Arabia, a film many here love. Unless I've overlooked something, the enthusiasm over this new release centered around two things: color timing correction and the repair of an audio glitch.

Now, when members complain that Beauty and the Beast and/or The Lion King have been retimed, in small sections reanimated, and may have minor audio glitches/changes, folks feel "sorry for them"? Guys, come on -- what's good for the goose is good for the gander. If timing changes and audio problems made the first Lawrence a disc worthy of criticism, such matters must remain similarly significant for this Disney product. Filmmaker approval/involvement in these changes is somewhat up in the air -- I don't think we've established that they ever approved the idea of replacing their original theatrical offerings with the IMAX versions (sans new number), yet it seems this has been done by Disney. If the filmmakers are fine with it, I'm not as upset, but it's still revisionism, and artistic revisionism should always be a valid point of contention for those who value art.

I'm very pleased with both DVDs (Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King), but I'd be happier if they offered an unrevised representation of the theatrical experience in addition to the much-ballyhooed improvements. Beauty and the Beast offers an absolutely gorgeous use of color on DVD (so much so that tears spring to my eyes during Belle's opening number), and I love having that version at hand to wow the senses ... but to be pleased with something new is not to discount the value of something old, particularly something original. Anyone looking to see a film as original audiences saw it (or in a version as close to this as possible, given the technology with which they are recreating that experience) should be upset by layers of insulation removing them farther than need be from that experience. And color timing/audio changes, just as they did with Lawrence, can so remove them here.

"Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds," and all that, sure, but ... let's not discount or dismiss those who fight for artistic fidelity, even in small ways. They're doing us all a service, whether we realize it or not -- we'd probably be watching everything in 1.33:1 today if Criterion hadn't led the charge for widescreen fidelity in the 80's, amidst a great deal of indifference from both studios and the public. Down the road, getting people excited about and insistent about fidelity is always a very good thing.

Such passion will be bringing us a restored edition of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) in January -- I've forgotten their names, but reps for the release have said that two men, fans of the film, are alone reponsible for convincing Warner Bros. to use a combination of surviving elements to properly restore the original theatrical version of this film. The plan was apparently to use a surviving element that was in good shape, until the attention of these two men made Warner Bros. aware of another element (or elements?) containing a few pieces of film (including the original Paramount logo and a longer bit of Miriam Hopkins in a bedroom scene) not found in the element they were intending to use. Some of the alternate elements' material was also in better shape, and with a little strictly last minute effort, from what I've read, the film was restored to a superior representation of its original release. It wouldn't have happened if not for fan attention.

Those who accurately note and persist in criticizing needless changes to film art always get a from me, whether or not I'm satisfied with the product they criticize.

At any rate, I thought I'd throw that out there. I've just watched The Lion King, and while I'm unsatisfied with the changes, it's a lovely, heart-warming film experience, just as it was in theatres, and one I value on DVD (the image is, indeed, beautiful ... but unlike most 1.66:1 material, such as Rear Window, this fills the 1.78:1 frame created by my television's "compression chip"; overscan's about 3% or so, according to Avia -- reducing it any more yields only black on the Avia test pattern, thanks to what I assume is pixel clipping on my DVD player -- but that still leaves a visible black bar to the right on Rear Window; are we sure this presentation is 1.66:1, and not 1.78:1?). I'll be keeping my laserdisc, though, and I doubt I'll ever again sit through "Morning Report." What a pace-killer.

An interesting note: I paused the "SEX" scene (in which dust or pollen flying into the air spelled the word on theatrical prints and the original laserdisc releases), and the "E" is still there. The "S" is now backwards, though, and the X has been smudged so that it's no longer an X. Note that the "E" is a backwards 3, which makes it fairly clear it is not an F, at least to my eye -- so I do believe the word was originally "SEX", and not "SFX". Parents who don't like that (it was only discernable for a couple of frames, and therefore couldn't be read without pausing the sequence) needn't worry, though -- as explained, the word is no longer there on the DVD, only the middle letter and a reverse of the first.

 

[LukeB]

Great post, Bill. To address your question, it's actually 1.71:1.

 

[WillG]

An interesting note: I paused the "SEX" scene (in which dust or pollen flying into the air spelled the word on theatrical prints and the original laserdisc releases), and the "E" is still there. The "S" is now backwards, though, and the X has been smudged so that it's no longer an X. Note that the "E" is a backwards 3, which makes it fairly clear it is not an F, at least to my eye -- so I do believe the word was originally "SEX", and not "SFX". Parents who don't like that (it was only discernable for a couple of frames, and therefore couldn't be read without pausing the sequence) needn't worry, though -- as explained, the word is no longer there on the DVD, only the middle letter and a reverse of the first.

I just finished watching this and I was about to ask about that, as I was trying to show it to my girlfriend but couldn't see it. I remember it being pretty apparent in earlier versions

 

[steve jaros]

David - phenomenal review! Thanks for the hard work.

 

[Michael St. Clair]

I finally got to spend some quality time with this title.

I'm going to quote Bjoern Roy when he reviewed 'Hunchback'.

"I think most people will be happy with the PQ on this disc. Yet, i have a few complains.

Non-videophiles should probably stop reading here."

The disc is not quite reference or Superbit quality. There is enough mosquito noise to disqualify it from that level of quality. The bitrate is somewhat low for an animated title, this is likely due to including two versions of the film and having three 5.1 tracks.

The typical viewer isn't going to notice this unless they have a 70-100" screen (or greater). Viewers that are very discerning of digital artifacts may notice the noise on smaller sets.

That said...

The mosquito noise problem is much less than on 'Beauty and the Beast', is largely limited to action shots, and the disc seems to be completely lacking in the macroblocking artifacts that pop up in BatB. The slight overcompression is largely offset by the stunning digital transfer of the film. As a whole, the disc looks pretty damned good.

Despite these issues and the tinkering with the film, any fan of the film should buy this disc. Even the anal and the videophiles.

 

[Chris_Morris]

The bitrate is somewhat low for an animated title, this is likely due to including two versions of the film

There aren't two versions on the disc, the new song is just added in by branching, so there is only one full version on there unlike BatB.


Chris

 

[Bill Williams]

Are there any scans posted of the infamous "SEX" thing in the clouds in the film?

 

[Todd Phillips]

Try this:
http://www.snopes.com/disney/films/lionking.htm

 

[Michael St. Clair]

There aren't two versions on the disc, the new song is just added in by branching, so there is only one full version on there unlike BatB.

There's more to it than that; there is a ton of duplicate footage.

In fact, the entire theatrical cut (title 36) can be extracted to only take up 3.8GB including all four soundtracks.

 

[Ken_McAlinden]

My understanding is that everything prior to the layer change is encoded twice. This is the reverse of what was done with BatB, where everything after the layer change was encoded twice for the two different versions. BatB was more brutal in terms of bitrate compromises because the amount of separately encoded material was much larger and the theatrical cut was also carrying along an alternate angle of the Work in Progress version for its entire duration.

In response to Bill's LoA comments, I don't think that the LoA release is a good analogy. The specific issues with Lawrence on DVD were color timing and audio editing. Presumably, this version of The Lion King offered the directors flexibility in color timing decisions that they never had with photochemical limitations and is the closest to their vision of any video release.

Re-animating certain scenes to add detail is another matter entirely, and is much more troubling than issues with color timing.

Also, the 1989 LoA restoration has elements of revisionism, too (re-recorded audio, alternate takes where originals were lost, editorial "tightening"). Even though the motivation in that case was much more due to necessity than whimsy, it is still not the same LoA that premiered in the early 60s.

My point is simply that the Superbit Lawrence of Arabia cannot be held up as a benchmark of strictly adhering to a film's original theatrical presentation, and it would be physically impossible to create such a version of LoA. It is a fantastic presentation of the 1989 restoration, though, which is not only as close as we will ever get, but closer than anyone could have imagined when the film restoration project was initially conceived.

From an audio standpoint, I am not as aware of the problems with the "original" TLK audio mix as presented on DVD (maybe I glossed over them in the thread, sorry), so I can't comment. I was annoyed by alterations to BatB's soundtrack, though.

Regards,

 

[Bill Burns]

I may not have been entirely clear earlier; the analogy is meant to point out an inconsistency in some of the arguments here, Ken, and I do think it accomplishes that. One cannot complain about unapproved changes to the timing, edit, and audio mix of LoA (these were complaints levied against the Limited Edition release) and then claim that these very issues cease to matter with animated films ... simply because they're animated. Well, one can say that, but it isn't consistent.

I don't know that we've established director/original animator approval for the changes (aside from the bits of reanimation and the new musical number, of course) in either Beauty and the Beast or The Lion King, nor their willingness to have the new bits of animation replace the old, yet Disney is treating the new version of TLK (that with reanimated segments* and, reportedly, altered timing) as the "only" version; their release suggests the only difference between the theatrical and "special edition" versions is "Morning Report." That isn't the case.

I'm also unsure why timing changes, even if approved, are less troublesome to you than animation changes? If the directors and animators approve of both, how is one more valid than the other? One must eventually draw a line, though, granted; if a director wants his film burned, I don't think anyone here is going to argue that this is a director's perogative (once it's been released). At a certain point, historical fidelity, and the value of a piece of cinematic art to the community, becomes more important than the desires of the filmmakers, and where that point lies is debatable.

David Lean approved the 1989 version of LoA (now best represented on DVD in the Superbit version, though EE remains troublesome in the screenshots I've seen; from comments here, it seems Columbia only applies excessive EE to their 'Scope and large format transfers, so such should be possible to remedy for future Columbia DVD product, and therefore remains an important point of contention when offering feedback for future releases and critiques of existing releases; when HD-DVD rolls around and LoA is revisited again, I trust this burden is a distant memory ). If we can establish that the directors/animators of TLK approved the changes, the objections aren't as strenuous. But just as LoA's 1989 form is billed as the "restored" form of LoA, it might be best, even if TLK's new animation and timing have been approved to entirely replace the old (I'm taking the word of others on the timing issue; I haven't A/Bd the release with my laser copy), to bill it as a "new" or perhaps even "definitive" version of the film, and avoid calling it a representation of the theatrical release. That's just an opinion, of course, but I think it falls into line with the LoA arguments.

* I'm not sure if the title card has been changed; I seem to recall a dedication on the "Theatrical" Version that I didn't notice on the Special Edition, or vica versa, but I'll leave it to others to determine what, exactly, has been altered throughout the film (the title card may have been mentioned earlier in the thread, I'm unsure). If I'm right, though, it would support your comments that the section of the film leading up to "Morning Report" has been independently recorded to the disc for the Theatrical and Special Edition versions, Ken; the layer change at "Morning Report" further supports this. Is there any animation prior to "Morning Report" that we know to differ between the two versions (other than the title card, if that, in fact, differs)? This may help to establish whether MR is the only alteration to the film proper between the two versions as presented on the disc.

 

[Chazz_S]

I have checked through the bonus disc menu, but haven't seen everything, still, if this is on there it's pretty hard to find:

no featurette on the voice talent on Lion King?

Sheesh come on disney, you can't at least include something on the marvelous voicework in that film?

 

[LukeB]

Chazz, there's some talk of certain actors in the brief "Character Design" featurettes ported from the laserdisc, but no interviews with the cast or anything like that. That stuff was in "The Making Of The Lion King" that was not included.