Beauty and the Beast Blu-ray

[Dusterian]

Uh, I'm pretty sure from what they said, Belle, Beast, and the others will be fully round, and the scenes won't be just flat layer on flat layer. I mean, they said they would be round.

Neal, thinking about how Glen Keane changed Ariel's face, hair, golden posses or whatever and other things, I bet Glen Keane making the CGI look better could be why it is liked. And also...it's just a show at a theme park, it is in fact less of a worry than a whole TV show or DTV movie.

[Sullivan]

"nd also...it's just a show at a theme park"

I'm offended!

We jumped through hoops for that "just a show at a theme park."

Have you seen Philharmagic?

IMO, the reason it's liked is because we did a great job on it, Glen included as part of that team. It's successful because it's a crowd-pleaser, but also because the characters are not strange or unfamiliar cg-versions of the characters.

It's good because we didn't treat it like "just a show at a theme park."

[EricJ]

Uh, I'm pretty sure from what they said, Belle, Beast, and the others will be fully round, and the scenes won't be just flat layer on flat layer. I mean, they said they would be round.

Uh, in the article above, I don't see one word that suggests they're not doing a simple computer-assisted depth-converted View-Mastering of the original 90's movie a la NBX, like they said they'd been planning to do for two years....NOT ONE.

(Yes, life is better with Wishful Thinking, but one of the unlisted reasons for "Why B&B?" could also be "Well, it worked for IMAX...")

[Ben]

Gotta say I think the theme park stuff is among the best of the recent feature animation projects that I've seen. I've loved what I've seen of the special projects that the teams and crews have contributed to.

"Just a theme park thing" indeed!

[Neal]

I wish PhillarMagic would be put on DVD being as I won't get to the theme parks for many years to come (if ever). I want to see this piece really badly.

[Foualier]

I first got alerted on this in 2001 when Snow White was released on dvd. Some people complained about the colors which had supposedly been altered. Some scenes were lit to be less scary. For instance, the flames in the magic mirror were brought from redish to yellow, also to be less scary. The same thing was said about the reissues of Peter Pan and Sleeping Beauty. From what I understand, the people who do the restaurations take liberties with colors and temperature. This is annoying.

the following review is from the Pinocchio dvd page of amazon.com.

BEWARE PURISTS--this Digitally Restored version TAMPERED WITH ORIGINAL ARTWORK'S COLOR PALETTE!!!, January 23, 2009
By Jon Olivan (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)
I just saw a special engagement of this latest 70th Anniversary version of Pinnochio at Disney's El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood in advance of the DVD re-release. Though I am happy to see the movie be given public exposure on a big theatrical screen, over the years I have seen many theatrical screenings of the movie on at least 12 different occasions including an original nitrate 3-strip Technicolor studio vault print in the early 1980's (before the studio dismantled its last nitrate screening room) and non-digital film restorations and was shocked to see that this latest restored version has digitally tampered with the film's original color palette for no justifiable reason.

Some of the chosen character hues are modern day, popular color hues, but look out of place in this early animated classic including certain pinks, reds and blues which are reused so often in identical shades that to classic animation buffs it becomes distractingly noticeable. For those animation buffs who know about Pinnochio, Walt intentionally muted colors in some of the scarier or sadder scenes. In the restored version, for example, when Pinnochio gets locked in Geppetto's "birdcage" the nighttime scene is bright and garish where it should intentionally be darker and muted.

The original movie had hand inked character outlines in colors that matched the interior ink colors, none of that is apparent in this restoration. The characters, though admittedly sharper and clearer, look color-wise like they were electronically tampered with, then reinserted in front of the original backgrounds.

At this point, the damage is done and obviously this restoration was "stylistic." But in any case, it might be compared with someone redoing the Mona Lisa with more modern color hues for the purpose of improving the artwork or making it more modern day acceptable. Either two things, perhaps no one at Disney was knowledgeable enough to notice what the outside restoration company was planning to do with the film in early test segments or maybe they figured that modern day DVD audiences would not know the difference or care, but this is the first "DIGITALLY RESTORED" classic Disney film that I have ever taken issue with. What a let down since it is my very favorite Disney film of all!!!

P.S. I was the founder of the former, long time Disney employees' Animated Film Club (later referred to as the Disney Film Club) which included Disneyland and Walt Disney Studio employees. It was founded in 1976 and continued on and off for many years afterward with visits from surviving original Disney animators, screenings of rare Disney footage and more.

[Ben]

It is a very sad fact that these latest digital restorations (I've gone ahead and corrected your spelling in the title of this thread) seem to adhere to the more recent digital coloring systems found in the later animated features and direct to video sequels.

Peter Pan was a film I took most issue with lately, but our words and complaints are moot, it seems: Disney and Lowry/DTS Images seem to continue to do what they want with these films and simply suggest that we "haven't seen the original artwork and don't know what was intended".

The biggest shame is that these are the archival versions for the future...the versions that will be used for hi-def screening, theatrical blow-ups and future restoration efforts. Such a shame that the <I>original</I> intentions have been lost.


BTW, welcome to our boards!

[Randall]

Annoying, but not surprising, unfortunately.

Although... with prints fading over the decades, sometimes it's hard to say for certain just what the original intention was.

[Ben]

For various reasons I would wager that the results we saw in the 1990s on LaserDisc is as probably as close to intended as has yet been released. Those editions were mastered from three-strip interpositives for the most part, and not given much video paintbox work apart from cleaning up debris and paint pops; the actual coloring was left as is was on the combined coloring, which in theory shouldn't have faded much, if any, over the years. If there was a little color boosting, it would only have approximated what little fading might have occurred anyway.

Nowadays, we're used to brighter levels of color in our animated movies, and the clinical "digital" look. The original grain seems to be washed out, still backgrounds are recomposited to eliminate crawl and dust, and instead of trying to preserve the original feel of the films, the idea seems to be "well what would this look like if we photographed it (digitally) today?", which is a very different thing.

Even with historians and artists like Deja and company on the watch, they're only advising on scenes, while the work is then shipped off to Lowry/DTS, who seem to take it upon themselves to alter color to their brief, be it what the film originally had or not. Think about the messes they've made to all the classic James Bond films simply because their brief was to "make them all look like the new films". Since the new films are all cool blues and muted silver in color temperature, the classic Bonds' original coloring is all screwed up.

What they should be doing is not saying "hey what would Goldfinger or Pinocchio look like if we shot them now?" but "how good can we make what was shot back then look given today's technology?"

It's a fine line, sure, but one that is obviously being crossed because of those in the know who are noticing these appalling artifacts of digital clean-ups.

[Rodney]

That's sad to hear, but I have never been a purist. I agree with Ben though about the difference between preserving the film and making it look like it was just photographed today. That's a hard balancing act for these studios.

[Macaluso]

I like the more clean and crisp look of the restored movies.

What I don't like, however, is when they do things like on the Beauty & the Beast DVD. Where if you watch it with the "Human again" song in it, they CHANGE the backgrounds in the castle to be all fixed and cleaned up. I thought that was a dumb idea.

[Daniel]

Wouldn't make much sense having the place all dirty and messed up if they just cleaned it up.

[Macaluso]

that scene never happened okay

[Daniel]

But the sequence was always intended to be in the film.

[eddievalient]

True, and if Mac had watched the bonus material he'd know that. The song got cut late in the game and they were just restoring it (similar to how they finished the song If I Never Knew You to restore to Pocahontas). Personally, I think it's a great addition. However, I didn't like the Morning Report segment of the Lion King. If they wanted to add something from the broadway show, they should have gone with Shadowlands or Endless Night to emphasize the drama. But that's just my opinion.