In the “we should all/I should only ever have-such-problems” department, I’m now trying to make time to really dig into three incredibly important Blu-ray releases: the 70th Anniversary Edition, as it were, of The WIzard of Oz, the Diamond Edition of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves Dwarfs,and perhaps most staggering and significant of all, the Eureka!/Masters of Cinema presentation of Murnau’s Sunrise. Those of us who feared, and still fear, that high-def formats would be used almost exclusively in the service of the glossy and the contemporary find this item an extremely heartening development. But I don’t want to write too much more about any of them until I can really dig. So I’m hoping for a bit of a blank-slate Sunday…
You poor thing. That sounds dreadful.
“Dwarves”? Glenn, Glenn, Glenn.
Out of curiosity, does the image ever go flat out of register to the point of looking severely unfocused on your Blu-ray copy of SNOW WHITE? My copy does, for a few seconds during the Queen’s transformation sequence. (I stupidly didn’t mark the timecode but will on a second viewing.) Since this same thing happens at numerous points during “The Grasshopper and the Ant” on the BUG’S LIFE Blu-ray (to the point where it’s almost unwatchable), I can’t tell if it’s a mastering defect, a period issue, or a player problem.
Now that films like this are coming out on Blu-Ray I am finally going to break down and buy a Blu-Ray player. I of course want to get a region-free one. Is Sunrise all-region? Anyway, have fun with them.
Bill C, could that be what Robert Harris mentions at Home Theater Forum?
http://www.hometheaterforum.com/forum/thread/293339/a‑few-words-about-snow-white-and-the-seven-dwarfs-in-blu-ray
Quote: “Those with “eagle eyes” will note that certain frames, now exposed for all to see, go out of focus.
This is not an error of the crack Disney team led by archivist Theo Gluck.
What we’re seeing for the very first time via these extremely high resolution scans, are either damaged or mis-placed cells within the multi-plane camera, that for a single frame are out of focus, or otherwise affected. I’ve never noted this before, and it shows up the care with which the original elements were scanned and processed.
You’re seeing everything.”
I don’t know how that would apply to A Bug’s Life though…
Yep, that’s exactly it, Kirk. Allow me to clarify that this problem doesn’t occur during A BUG’S LIFE proper, but on that disc’s bonus Silly Symphony, “The Grasshopper and the Ant,” the first vintage Disney short to be restored in HiDef.