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Thursday, June 28, 2012
BD impressions: The Secret of NIMH
5:28 PM / BD Impressions / 
8 Comments
It's been a while, hasn't it? Six months, to be precise. This BD impressions piece, the first of 2012, was one I intended to do as a request from a reader back in March, but I've been finding myself spectacularly short of time recently, so I've only just had the opportunity to watch the disc in question and hit the PrintScreen button a few times. So Emil, sorry about the inordinately long wait, but we got there in the end!
The film: I know this film is beloved by many animation aficionados, but I'm afraid I can't really get behind it. As most people will know, it was the first feature-length film to be directed by Don Bluth, who along with several fellow artists walked out of Disney in 1979, severely depleting the studio's ranks and forcing the delay of its next film, THE FOX AND THE HOUND. Bluth felt that Disney had lost its magic and was annoyed at the cost-cutting being forced on the artists by management... and it's certainly true that THE SECRET OF NIMH is visually many times more ambitious than anything Disney had produced since the 1950s. The film was a labour of love for Bluth and his crew, and what they were able to pull off on a shoestring budget is quite remarkable.
But this doesn't change the fact that, as with most of Bluth's films, it's simply not a very well-told story. Despite the short running time of 83 minutes, it drags like nobody's business and only really comes alive during the climax. The really interesting stuff - the genetically modified rats and their escape from a research lab - is glossed over in favour of devoting oodles of screen time to some mildly funny but ultimately pointless comic relief involving a dopey crow voiced by Dom DeLuise. While the colour palette and effects animation are impressive, the character animation has all the hallmarks of a Bluth production: open-mouthed, buck-toothed, goofy-looking characters flailing about wildly accompanied by strangely anaemic vocal performances. The insertion of magical elements completely absent from the source novel also doesn't quite gel with the scientific origins of the rats' transformation, and leads to a thoroughly convenient deus ex machina solution to protagonist Mrs. Brisby's problems.
Jerry Goldsmith's score is among the great man's best work and gives the film a sense of grandeur I suspect it wouldn't otherwise has possessed, and I do have to admire any "children's" animated feature that includes multiple deaths by stabbing. Overall, though, it's a rather ineffective film and about on par with Disney's THE FOX AND THE HOUND, released a year earlier. 6/10
Image quality: Animated film in looking like film shocker! This release appears to be derived from the same scan used for the 2007 "Family Fun Edition" (sigh) DVD release. Back when that version came out, I remember reading an interview with producer/directing animator Gary Goldman where he lamented only having a very short period to do the transfer and being unable to do a more intensive restoration. To be honest, I'm kind of glad. The image is far from pristine, but I'd imagine it's a far more faithful reproduction of how the film originally looked than one of Disney's completely grain scrubbed efforts.
Sharpness and grain levels vary from shot to shot, with the grain tending to lean towards pronounced but natural-looking, except in a handful of optical shots, where some cack-handed grain reduction has been applied, rendering it blurry and blotchy (see Example 21). Damage, both positive and negative, is visible throughout, although a lot of the most prominent white flecks appear to actually be dust on the original animation cels. (Incidentally, Warner have a policy of leaving this in on their Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies restorations, arguing that it's an authentic part of the original film. I very much doubt Disney would see it that way.) Overall it's a pleasing presentation, and one of those cases where I'll happily put up with the imperfections when I consider what a rushed clean-up effort could have looked like. This is THE SECRET OF NIMH warts and all, and I don't know about you, but I'd rather see the warts than yet another of Disney's dodgy botox jobs. 7/10
PS. Unlike the DVD release, the BD only includes the 1.85:1 version of the film, leaving out the open matte 1.33:1 version. I must confess to having a slight preference for the latter: the film was shot to be presented in either ratio, but a number of the compositions always struck me as being more natural in the 1.33:1 version.
The Secret of NIMH
label: 20th Century Fox/MGM; disc country: USA; region code: A;
codec: AVC; aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Note: Full size captures are hosted on ImageShack and may take a while to load.
8 Comments
Foxymulder:
Apparently Hayao Miyazaki has expressed disdain for how Disney handles their titles on BD. We know he's a fan of the film look, going so far as to add artificial grain and gate weave to his entirely digital films (e.g. PONYO and ARRIETTY). Perhaps he could be persuaded to knock some sense into them. :D
Seriously, though, I really hope this practice of complete grain removal goes away before too long. I still hold out some hope that it IS just a fad and that at some point in the future they'll decide that in actual fact leaving the grain alone is more faithful to the artists' original intentions.
Emil:
No worries. I'm just sorry it took so long. I was actually just going to email to let you know I'd finally got round to the review, but you beat me to it! Hope you enjoy it - I know you're a fan of the film, so you'll hopefully appreciate the job done on it.
And yeah, I'll update the HD Image Quality Rankings page with links to this and any other BD impressions pieces I do going forward. (I stop work for two weeks this Saturday, so hopefully I'll manage to do at least a couple more before I go back.)
(Posted on Friday, June 29, 2012 at 2:09 PM)
I'd say you're right about THE LION KING. It's an all digital transfer, so there wouldn't be any "natural" grain. I think the theory that it was added to minimise banding holds weight, as quite a few of the affected shots show heavy banding (but no grain) in the bonus features.
(Posted on Friday, June 29, 2012 at 7:32 PM)
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1. FoxyMulder said:
I love it, film grain in an animated title, how i wish Disney would do it this way although as you mention they did want to "improve" the Blu ray.
(Posted on Thursday, June 28, 2012 at 9:48 PM)