Tuesday, April 13, 2010

BD impressions: Dumbo

9:24 PM / BD Impressions / Comments2 Comments

BD Impressions
Blu-ray

I like all the Walt Disney classics (by which I mean the ones produced while Walt himself was still around) to one degree or another, but I can't help wishing he'd made more like DUMBO. Whereas the likes of FANTASIA and BAMBI threaten to buckle under their own pretensions, DUMBO, sandwiched between those two more ambitious projects, succeeds precisely because of its lack of pomp. To paraphrase Disney animator Eric Goldberg, they didn't set out to make great art, but in the process succeeded in doing precisely that. At a brisk 64 minutes, DUMBO doesn't outstay its welcome for even a second, and there is not a single frame of this simple but deeply satisfying movie that is not a joy to behold on every level. Whether it's the straightforward clown slapstick, the hilarious dialogue of the crows, the tugging at the heartstrings of Dumbo's separation from his mother or the "Oh my god, what the hell IS this?" of the Pink Elephants sequence, DUMBO is absolutely captivating and one of THE most enduring films of all time.

Image quality: A mixed bag, as with every single one of these overzealous Disney restorations. In their attempt to completely scrub the image of grain, the technicians have created an image that superficially looks very clean but completely lacks the texture it should have. I can only imagine what the outcry would be if a live action film of this vintage was processed to this extent. The look is inconsistent, with some grain creeping through, usually in isolated quantities in certain parts of the frame. Example 17, for instance, shows some grain creeping through, albeit in a rather bastardised form, in the sky between the crow's beak and body. Likewise, Example 6, taken during a flash of lightning, mangles the image something rotten, with the grain that sneaks through becoming thick and clumpy while the rest of the image turns to processed much. This is admittedly a very extreme example and is by far the worst instance of NR gone wrong that I came across in the film, but it's a solid demonstration of the dangers of letting this sort of automated "enhancement" tool go unchecked. I award DUMBO a slightly tepid 7/10.

Dumbo
studio: Buena Vista; country: UK; region code: BC; codec: AVC;
file size: 17.2 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 38.61 Mbit/sec

Dumbo Dumbo Dumbo Dumbo Dumbo Dumbo Dumbo Dumbo Dumbo Dumbo Dumbo Dumbo Dumbo Dumbo Dumbo Dumbo Dumbo Dumbo Dumbo Dumbo Dumbo

By the way, on the subject of noise reduction, the 7.1 remix on this BD suffers from an excessive amount of the sonic variety, creating what my brother refers to as "musical noise", resulting in a low "tweeting" (or "space monkey", as iZotope RX's help file describes it) sound in the background. Because Disney neglected to provide the original mono mix with this European release, I have no idea whether or not it would also have been affected. We'll have to wait for the US release (currently unscheduled) to find out.

 
2 Comments

1. FoxyMulder said:

I have read somewhere that the USA release should come out next Feb/March and i guess it will be this transfer with the addition of the mono track.

I'm waiting for the USA release before buying as i want the original mono track included.

I have mixed feelings with regards cleaning up animation. I liked what they did with Pinocchio but i felt Sleeping Beauty went a little in the wrong direction despite high praise from some quarters.

I cannot understand why Europe never gets the original soundtrack on Disney releases, sure they have to cram in many language tracks but a single english mono track would not take up much space at all.

(Posted on Wednesday, April 14, 2010 at 9:10 AM)

2. Christopher D. Jacobson said:

I don't understand any of this cleaning up animation craze. They were shot on film for a reason; the filmmakers created them and did the coloring with film in mind, and used camera effects and so on. I've heard a lot of people say, "If the Disney studio had been able to animate digitally back in the day, they would have." For one, who are they to say they would have? We don't know (and I doubt that they would go digital). But more important is the simple fact that they DIDN'T have such capabilities, and that the features ARE on film. We should be preserving art, not revisioning it. It pisses me off that a lot of people don't apply the same "no filtering/grain reduction" attitude to animation. The grain and details are just as vital to animation as live action, if not more so.

Some of these screenshots look like a softened mess. Yet it looks good in other ways. So...I'll probably get it when it's released here. I'd like to say I'll refrain from supporting Disney in bastardizing their classic films like this, but I doubt my refusal to purchase will prevent or change anything. Here's hoping they don't apply any of this nonsense to older/non-digital Miyazaki films and just port the masters directly from Japan.

By the way, I think I read here that the European BD of Pinocchio reinserts a missing line of dialog, one not present in the US release? Even though I own the US BD, I may have to import just for completionist's sake. Does the European BD play on a Region A player?

(Posted on Thursday, April 15, 2010 at 12:24 AM)

 
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