I just bought the 3 disc set on Sunday after holding off for the right price (picked it up for $19.99 at Rasputin brand new! apparently mispriced) and i think it looks great regardless but it did seem a little off compared to the older one. Either way for the price and all the extras it has, glad i finally purchased it.

I like the new version

We all know that the film was shot in technicolor, a three strips of B&W film going to prism and color filters... Bláaa, bláaa, bláaaa, creating the amazing colors we all like.

But there are 9 Kodachrome stills shot from the set. Just 9 ????? Anyway it's interesting, since the film is from 1939, and thee-pack (color film itself) film appears in 50's for theater. Earliers color film negatives before 50's had no quality to go to duplication and prints, and the rare films that used it in theaters prior 50's had horrible results.

So why those kodachrome are so interesting fine looking?
Perhaps because it the negastive itself wit, no lost of tones of color desfiguration by the vintage duplicating color films of that era.




Very warm and deep colors, and hues very progressing look.
I ask myself if this was the original look of those Kodachromes of if the MGM did some enhancement to make it look such beautiful.

More about Kodachrome: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodachrome

The 2005 transfer matches the 35mm dye-transfer prints of the 1998 re-release. The problem with the 1999 DVD is that the contrast isn't that strong. The witch's cloak should be pitch black. White levels usually looked gold tinged, too.

I am also a fan of the newer transfer, but the one thing that was a problem was the transition from B&W to colour. It just didn't have the "oomph!" that it should have had.
But I am waiting for inevitable release of this film in HD. After seeing how absolutely incredible Robin Hood looks on HDDVD I am sure that the HD format will make Wizard of Oz look truly as great as it deserves. The colours will pop out more, the detail will be sharper, the contrast will be more accurate. It will be an all-round amazing sight to behold.
For now I'll stick with my beautiful 3-disc set. It has great picture and incredible bonuses, all in a very nice package.

There is not this kind of thing like say "reproduce original technicolor look".

FIST: VIDEO CAN'T REPRODUCE IT, SINCE TV CONTRAST RATIO, DYNAMIC RANGE, CAN'T GET IT.

SECOND: TE TECHNICOLOR LOOK, THE DYE TRANSFER PRINT FROM 30'S WAS DIFFERENT FROM 40'S AND FROM 50'S... TE 30'S PRINTS WASN'T REALLY GOOD. It was early stages of full color technicolor, and the dye transfer printing process had many difficult and often problems about balance colors and align the three strips.

If they had a original Wizard of Oz dye transfer print from 30's, very well made with the intented colors, perfectly preserved, with no scratches, spots, or splices, and would prepare a transfer for DVD, in the last technology in telecine or film scanner, most people would hate it.

A print from 30's have high contrast, softer image detail, more grain. It's pleassant even to watch, but in a theater, with film projector. For DVD would look ugly.
Video needs a sharp and low contrast film element to get a decent image. Many people often see some DVD transfer with softness and grain imagine , and thinks the film element have no more or much more resolution than the DVD. But it probably have much more image information.

Video transfer filtet (to avoid aliazing) use to kill image details, also the encoding mpeg-2. TV devices show us a limited variance of light, contrat ratio, and most telecines used to prepare transfers have limitated dymanic range, or in other worlds, can't get all tones from black to pure white in the film footage.

We see on good edition DVD for technicolor film a estimation, a remamberence about the look of the film, but not compared to a real technicolor experience on theater. I mean Technicolor printing technics from 40's or 50's, since the 30's wasn't really great in terms of image quality.

This new realise of The Wizard of OZ will make the fan buy the DVD. I bet they will realise a HD version (HD-DVD or Blue Ray) only later, to those same fans spent money again. That's why it's not realised together.

Here a interesting full color techniucolor feature, before any full length picture. "Good Morning Eve"

Fine resolution version: http://www.doctormacro.info/Movie%20...e%20Shorts.htm

Fast dowload version: Part 1:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGT6P8v3VOg
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmvLO...eature=related

New colorization but with weird skin color:

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film2/DVDRe...ng_saucers.htm

Legend tends to get weird skin color for B Films. I don't know why.

I did a modification in this capute to try get a bether skin color for the woman on the left.



The DVD authoring seens wrong since the image detail levels seens lower compared with the anterior version. But the authoring wasn't made by Legend Films. I presume the colorized master HD from Legend films have the bether image quality than any other.

And this has to do with Wizard of Oz.....how?

Legend Films originally financed the b/w version of the film back in 1939 to use it to practice their then "new" colorization process...making the WIZARD OF OZ the first AND best of all colorized films.

This is common knowledge.

Anyone have any idea when this will hit HD?

If Alfred Bergman watches a colorized movie in the forest, does anyone give a damn?

It was on a list of tentative Warner HD releases for 2008.

I stand corrected.

I, for one, eagerly await a Blu-Ray release in full anamorphic HD and DTS 20.1 surround sound.

Funny Stuff. Looks like some folks swallowed the hook.

How will this film be in anamorphic if it was filmed in full frame? Or are they doing what they did to the Kubrick films and cropping it?

Do you not understand sarcasm or do you really believe in DTS 20.1 surround sound as well?

Maybe people will not like the HD release. I saw most of one of the TNT HD broadcasts recently and it sure looked like they kept the colors that many people didn't like from the recent 2 and 3 disc releases.

Yes...to see those grand Monument Valley vistas again in beautiful colorized widescreen b/w as Ford had intended them to be...GLORIOUS.

A think a commentary by Deborah Kerr would be interesting. She was originally cast as Dorthy (Mabel in the original script) but dropped out at the last minute...

This is common knowledge.

hell why not just digital her ass into the movie while we're at it...paint her up and put her in widescreen

That would be a neat trick. Deborah Kerr died in October 2007.

Of course. Didn't you know that major multi-million dollar films were still being made in and for Academy Ratio through the 1980s and 1990s? It's not like 99% of films were made for widescreen after the 1950s.

Sarcasm is lost on this forum.


This is common knowledge.

man, can you image hooking up twenty speakers and a subwoofer - what a bitch

given the 4K transfers Warner's are doing nowadays - the Blu-ray edition should be jawdropping.

that release of 'Wizard of Oz' was awesome...

it looked so good it was astounding...

i got the 3 disc set...

man they did good work...

I bet I can ask ten people if they know who Deborah Kerr is and most, if not all, will have no idea who I'm talking about.