Can anyone confirm that the censorship was a hoax? Word was lawyers were involved to get an uncut version released.
cms382 said:
Hi, a few searches for this subject led me to this thread/forum.
I ordered a few pre-Lowry laserdiscs, I'll see how they compare.
The Jungle Book Blu-ray is the same restoration as the 2007 DVD (I'm sure there are a few minor tweaks but I no longer have the old disc for reference). The DNR'd line work doesn't hold up as well in 1080p compared to its non-Xerox based predecessors, soft shots are especially deteriorated. Color timing seems to be okay and doesn't have any glaring consequences because the film had flat lighting to begin with.
I'll post my thoughts on the 1992 laserdisc when it arrives.
Welcome. We'd be glad to hear your impressions. If you can post screenshots that would be great too.
It seems pretty clear that until Disney finds a new method, most of their films (and especially the Xerox era ones) are going to have lines that look like melting icicles.
To be clear, open matte doesn't mean 4x3. It also doesn't mean cropped (as the ebay picture might suggest).
It means that mattes have been removed to show more image. In the case of TGMD, it was theatrically 1.85:1. Opening the matte SHOULD give 1.66:1 if animated in those dimensions (it was shot on 35mm which is 1.66:1 but earlier animations were frequently drawn at 1.33:1).
But, as the 2010 release shows, 1.77:1 is actually open matte compared to the 2002 1.66:1 release. That doesn't make sense either. Based on that there should be more height to the image somewhere as well.
What Disney has actually done is pretty much a mystery. The OAR is just unknown.
_,,,^..^,,,_, you need BDSup2Sub, http://www.videohelp.com/tools/BDSup2Sub (try v5.1.2 first ++ is just a port).
You can import the sub/idx and output bd sup (PGS) format. It'll even let you resize if you need to.
Taolar said:
Nope. They're both based off of the the same Premiere render. The mpeg2 encoding must have introduced that.
Does the image, overall, look better to you?
Definitely.
Yeah, there are some artifacts in the border area, but what caught my eye was when Clark threw the green crystal.
Just at the first explosion, there is a white screen but then the border type weirdness happens but full screen. (About 39:02).
I don't see that in the XviD version. Nothing serious, it just made me wonder if one of the two was further along.
Just noticed that the DVD uses PCM audio. Did you do some remastering that made lossless a good choice?
Edit: For that matter are the DVD and AVI versions the same release? I've seen at least one flaw on the DVD not on the XviD.
In light of recent casting I don't have much hope for the next one either.
You wouldn't think a Superman movie would be that difficult.
I believe ADM was talking about working in HD, but I haven't heard much from him on the site lately.
The reason most of my HP edits are DVD5s are because the official DVD9 releases tend to be full of extras that can be stripped and are badly encoded to start with. All the ones I worked with could be re-encoded OPV with Q values less than 10. Yeah, the sources are that soft. It's also why they look like crap on bigger HD screens. I think it was done on purpose to push people into Blu-ray.
Will I do any HD HP edits? Maybe eventually. I'm just starting to transition to HD in general but haven't done any real editing in the format yet. A computer upgrade would be required too. So, not for a while.
There are new Superman movies? (Not as far as I'm concerned.)
I was just doing some research on "The Emperor's New Groove" today and for the first time heard about the original version of the film under the name "Kingdom of the Sun". (Linky-poo)
While I was pleased to find out that Trudie Styler's documentary "The Sweatbox" has leaked, I was wondering if anyone has heard/seen/etc. if the "Kingdom of the Sun" Work-In-Progress has ever appeared in the wild? It was apparently 50% complete and far enough along to show test audiences. I'd assume it's probably something like the BatB WiP and with songs by Sting sounds 10x better than the final tENG film.
Anyone?
Hey, thanks for your work. It really was a good idea that you an unbelievable amount of work into.
So you're saying your going to start again in HD, right? ;)
Taolar said:
Crap. I got copies and now I cant find them. I'll make a concerted effort to round them up asap and I'll post here when I've uploaded them.
Sorry!
That sounds like me. At least they exist.
JayArgonaut said:
The KLF said:
well to be fair its off camera, the scene is shot from the robert vaughs sister characters bedroom (from memory) so all you hear is severe thumping, bunoing and groaning.
so the cameras on the evil sister and her expressions to all the noise
still, not really family entertainment
IIRC, in the UK, that sequence was shown during the afternoon slots when ITV broadcast the extended version throughout the mid to late 80s. It's quite tame.
See for yourselves.
Here I was expecting the unrated Hancock scene.
Still checking TPB daily... is there an ETA, Taolar?
I just noticed that the old Pocahontas has a pinkness to it like the Beauty and the Beast laserdisc.
Disney first started toying with digital ink and paint in The Little Mermaid, and the Rescuers Down Under was the first fully digital film (which is ironic because the only HD release appears to be struck from film).
At first the data on the CAPS had to be transferred to film and then home video formats. Later, it became possible for Disney to use an all digital pipeline from the CAPS computer to DVD.
Off the top of my head the original Gold Edition of Pocahontas was struck from film and had heavy grain as a result. The 10th Anniversary disc was taken right from the CAPS computer and is a definite upgrade. It should also be noted that the colors are reportedly more accurate on the 10th Anniversary.
The conversion of these films for IMAX was a chore because they wanted to 'improve' the detail in the animation for the larger projection format. This involved touching things up and adding new detail. Animators were involved not just technicians making the transfer.
I only pretend to have a good understanding of this, but last I heard Disney only has one CAPS workstation still in service. I would hope that isn't their only way to get the data for new transfers, but it is apparent that they keeps some sort of digital master.
I dunno, that seems like a fine distinction.
Since CAPS films aren't animated with the slight differences in shading for cells on different layers, what exactly distinguishes a 'theatrically accurate' version of a CAPS film?
By the mid 90's film stock was pretty mature. Unlikely Technicolor in its infancy that required answer prints, the difference between what the CAPS computer generated and the final film print should not have been that different.
There may have been some compensation for the process, but I wouldn't expect it to be much. (Can anyone speak with authority on this?)
All that's left then is film grain, and frankly that's just an artifact when you consider that Disney can probably play those films right on a computer screen from a CAPS computer.
I'm a big fan of film grain and feel Disney's scrubbing has done a terrible disservice to their films, but once you're talking digital sources, the grain is an indication of degradation not fidelity.
I'm probably alone on this one.
I can find little info on 'Alice' for Brazil R4 (mostly just the Australian R4 which are apparently similar to the R1 releases). I don't know enough Spanish and zero Portuguese to go through sites that might have reviews.
Unfortunately, Disney seems to be fairly uniform in their releases. Blu-rays released in Europe are frequently the same as the U.S. releases that come several years later and Australian discs that frequently comes after that.
As far as Lion King, no LDrip appear to be floating around. And while Aladdin has been plus-ed with detail for IMAX, Lion King has actual character design changes.
I love Cinderella and many other in-need-of-preservation-classics much more than Lion King, but the extent of the alterations puts it up there with Beauty and the Beast as one the most in need of preservation.
Aladdin's changes are respectful by comparison (but still unwarranted).
Disney still has unaltered/unrestored film scans somewhere of their oldest films that may yet get a proper restoration. I fear the newer films that were modified for IMAX have had their digital data altered and might not be able to be restored to their theatrical version.
This was put up on FanEdit.info. Unfortunately they are now gone. I'll have to see if I can find the links elsewhere.
I wouldn't think a PAL VHS would be worthwhile. There are better alternatives and there is no telling if it has blended fields or PAL speedup.
It also appears to have burned in Japanese subtitles.
I didn't see mentioned that the Disney's Kiki dub was revised in 2010. If you were looking to collect all tracks, you'd need the '98 and '10 releases.
Now, the English presentation on this 2010 DVD differs from the original 1998 one that was found on the 2003 DVD. The new DVD retains the movie's previously dropped original Japanese title logo screen. Here, it replaces the opening English cast voice credits screen. The most noticeable difference in the soundtracks is that the English title and closing credits songs have been edited back to the Japanese song selections performed by Yumi Arai. Before this, the English cut had provided "Soaring" and "I'm Gonna Fly" as performed by Sydney Forest, the end credits singer for the short-lived WB high school drama "Popular."
Another change involves something of a spoiler (skip to the next paragraph, if you wish), for it deals with a short but significant moment from the film's final minutes. Previously in the English dub, following the climax, Jiji asks Kiki if she can hear him talk (since we can once again, our answer is an implied yes). This was added for the English cut, restoring order as Miyazaki apparently never intended (but must have approved). The line is now gone, sadly implying that Kiki has grown out of being able to hear her cat talk.
Upon doing a synched-up comparison, I noticed that the edits go far beyond that one line of dialogue. The 2010 DVD drops a considerable amount of character dubbing. Most affected is Jiji, for whom Hartman had provided a number of witty ad-libs. Here, unless a character is explicitly shown to be speaking, they're silent. The silence goes even further in few scenes that had score apparently added for the English dub; these now appear without music. Other noticeable losses include Kiki and Jiji's in-flight and in-rain banter (particularly the latter, upon arriving in their new town), some of Tombo's lines, and a radio report. Furthermore, some minor changes occur in the credited titles of certain filmmakers.
Have there been any updates on Fantasia preservation projects? I've seen no news in awhile.
woodsyallen said:
poppins is now on bluray. hows that hold up?
From what I can tell, not so bad. It's 1.66:1 again, which is still questionable.
There is grain fortunately. I've only seen one screenshot from an animated scene and I wasn't completely impressed, but it seems to be an improvement over the DVD.
http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Mary-Poppins-Blu-ray/7714/#Review
Laserschwert said:
There is a 1080p version of "The Black Cauldron" available at the VOD site vudu.com
A Blu-ray conversion of this is floating around Usenet, and image detail is VERY good. With a higher bitrate this would easily be good enough for an official Blu-ray release.
I suspect if Black Cauldron ever hit BD it would be treated similar to Rescuers Down Under.
That is to say they would assume a restoration would not recover its costs so they'd just strike it from the best version available without cleaning up.
Which of course means it would look better than their other top releases.