kingtopher

I don't know why people feel the need to be so hostile about things like this. To my eyes it's a gorgeous transfer, and I had a blast watching it. Pretty sure my eyes work just fine.

baracine

DVD Savant wrote (about the latest 007 transfers):
I think the same holds true for DTS Digital Images. They simply don't give a hoot for what the film originally looked like. They're just following fashion trends and pushing bright, shiny buttons on their console. This is sad because it means there is nobody left in power, or even as a consultant, at Disney who remembers the good old days and cares for what a film should look like and used to look like.

My personal memory of seeing this film in a theatre in 1958 and subsequent times since is that the colours were so saturated they jumped at you and that the whole film was so dark and indigo blue, the words "grimy" and "greasy" actually came to mind. And, of course, the Red Men were red and Peter was wearing green all through to the end of the film, and Mermaid Lagoon didn't look like a sex education prop about female reproductive organs...

mzupeman2

I was pretty much going to say the same thing. I voiced, as well as others who don't carry the popular opinion, that this transfer looked pretty good. I mean, I still think the old color scheme was much more brilliant. It was a tad over-saturated on prior releases in my opinion, but the original color scheme in general was better. With that being said, watching this film on my HDTV on my Oppo... the picture didn't look bad. In comparison to the old release the picture looks sharper but it looks pretty damn good while viewing.

It's an opinion I know is against the grain, and I also can empathize with how the restoration process just went horribly wrong. When people start to say more than 'let's make it look as clean and sharp and magnificent as we can' and start saying 'how can we change it to make it look better otherwise', there's a problem. I don't agree with this. But... what can you do? Keep your old discs, or don't. I didn't own the old one, so this one is good enough for me.

baracine

The problem is not with the restoration (photochemical restoration of the film elements), which is optimal, as can be seen on the 2002 tansfer. The problem is with the digital transfer of the 2007 edition. And you are not in the minority. The MAJORITY of the online critics LIKE the new transfer and didn't notice anything wrong with the colours. That's what's sad, IMHO. We now have a generation of critics - and digital restorers, and consumers, and copyright owners - who can't tell the difference and don't care what the original film looked like.

Anyway, keep watching this space. Gary Tooze of DVD Beaver has written:

P.S.: I was just watching the excellent transfer of Oscar-winning Happy Feet, which is a mostly-blue film, trying to imagine how some dickhead might want to make an all-yellow transfer of it 40 years from now when the icecaps have melted and they don't have a point of reference... Yellow snow, anyone?

flyboy

Sorry but there is NO WAY..that you remember the colors in the theater in 1958. NONE, ZERO....and that goes for anyone who tries to make that claim. That might be what you remember on the VHS, LD etc...but not the theater in 1958. So who is to say what colors are correct. Who is to say that they had it wrong the whole time for home viewing? If anyone can prove what it looked like in the theater in the 1950's then I will change my tune.......I watched both DVD's last night on my awesome system and the plat was hands down better.

baracine

Well, since you don't remember it, I don't think that's any reference in itself, do you? You can always go back to (1) the two preceding transfers - which got the colours right according to the carefully-preserved Technicolor dye-transfer sample timing prints, (2) the original artwork, ample examples of which appear in these pages, and (3) the untold hundreds of pieces of merchandising of the original film, from Kodachrome 3-D View-Master reels to plush dolls (for Peter's costume). If that's not enough, the Museum of Fine Arts in Montreal (Quebec) has a huge Disney exhibition on until June 2007, where some of Peter Pan's original hand-painted cels and backgrounds are on display: http://www.radio-canada.ca/arts-spec...WaltDisney.asp .

Also please remember that almost all of the film excerpts used in the Platinum Edition making-of documentaries and even the trailers on the Disney website are based on the previous transfers and the previous (real) colours. If they had put real excerpts of the washed-out Platinum Edition on the trailers, they wouldn't have sold a single copy.

Except for its remastered sound - which is really astonishing - the Platinum Edition is the kind of DVD transfer you could expect from the science-fiction society depicted in the film Idiocracy...

OldRadiator

Baracine - we get it...we GET it... WE GET it...WE GET IT! You don't like the restoration, or whatever you want to call it. Some of us like it, some of us don't. I doubt Disney is going to re-un-restore it just for you. Dude, let it go. You beat the horse, and beat it, and beat it, and beat it, and beat it, and beat it. Just let it go. Enjoy the Special Edition and let the rest of us enjoy the Platinum Edition. And before you start, yes I will always watch it now and wonder if the colors are off. Thank you for repeatedly beating that into our heads. I am glad you have a photographic memory from 1953 and remember the colors exactly how they were suppose to be and how the vhs, laser and earlier dvd incarnations were more represented of the original color scheme and never taking into account that with video that the colors may or may not have been manipulated for earlier video releases and that prior film re-releases may have been manipuilated due to repeated showings on a filmstrip. And yes film cels and serigraphs may have different colors that look good on a living room wall and vary from the intended movie artwork that was shown through a projector whether in New York or San Francisco in 1953, 1964, 1973, 0r whenever. We get it. You don't like it. Let the rest of us enjoy it...be it the original release, special edition or platinum edition...in peace. WE GET IT! Let the horse die in peace.

Frenzal Rhomb

I agree with the last poster...make it stop already, if you don't like it, there's no need for you to buy it, just go ahead and say the same thing about most of the remastering done with movies in the 50s, 60s, 70s...guess we'll hear back from you on EVERY single one, because you know what, they all seem to have this Yellowish tint..have a great day

DVD Josh

The above two posts are just wrong, for several reasons:

1) We talk about DVDs at DVD Talk. Duh.
2) We are movies fans
3) ANY true movie fan should INSIST that movies are presented as INTENDED not as PREFERED
4) Just because YOU think you are right does not mean that you are.
5) Just because YOU don't care doesn't mean others do not
6) Every time you support a studio who bastardizes the original presentation of a movie, you give them the ammo to continue to do so
7) When every release, every cell, every picture, every description, every interpretation of a character shows one thing, and the PE shows another, at what point do you realize "hey, I'm probably wrong about this"?

Cameron

here here...give em hell baracine

baracine

DaViD (sic) Boulet, the reviewer who had me expelled from the Home Theater Forum, responded to a message I left for him telling him to check out www.dvdsavant.com. This is his private message [my corrections in brackets]:

Of course, it's rather hard to defend my point after having been expelled from the forum...

baracine

<object width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/CN-5-_2xJJI"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/CN-5-_2xJJI" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed></object>

I won't rest until I hear the horse's thoughts on the subject.

Frenzal Rhomb

hehe you just gotta love Ren & Stimpy, such a great show

naitram

Well I actually would have bought the new PE version if it wasn't for this thread and baracine's knowledge on the subject. While I also doubt there's any way to remember what a film looked like in 1953, there's no denying serious problems with the color scheme on the PE, especially compared to the SE version. It doesn't take much common sense to look at the screenshots in this thread and see that something is terribly wrong.

Besides, if you're tired of someone's posts, why the hell do you keep reading this thread? FACT!

Bill Needle

For those who complain it doesn't look like what they remember from seeing it in the 1950's, they only have to wait until they are nearly 70 years old for the next re-release. Maybe that one will be better.

Frenzal Rhomb

Didn't mean to sound rude or anything, sorry if that's what you guys intented it to be, but what about these?

http://www.cel-ebration.com/WDCC%20PETER%20PAN.htm

the site was last updated on January 2007..which was before the release and look at those statues they all seem to be the same color as the new platinum edition..maybe just a coincidence or something, maybe it has nothing to do with anything, but I'm just showing it..except for the first one where Hook has a red vest instead of a brownish one

DVD Josh

Tink is NAUGH-TY

Cameron

its not like peter pan is a buried film. Someone has an original print, and should be able to chime in if the uproar on the net stays loud enough. I am currently watching the PE and while it is appeasing to the eye, from the evidence i have seen with the film cels, I would hold the Collectors edition asthe one to have.

No way disney will do anything about this, but if enough outcry is heard it may help future restorations from straying from the source material.

baracine

The artisans who did this "2007 Edition" were obviously inspired by a mixture of screen caps from both editions. Mermaid Lagoon is outrageously pink but the Chef's pants are dark green and his face is very red.

baracine

More dirty little secrets from the Disney vaults...

I've been listening very carefully to the Enhanced Home Theater Mix on the 2007 DVD. To say that it is good is an understatement. It is positively miraculous. Perhaps a little too miraculous?

Disney put out the original mono soundtrack on CD in 1997 and it had very interesting producer's notes in it.
The producer said that the biggest challenge about restoring the film's soundtrack was the fact that, unlike other Disney films, the original soundtrack recordings of the music-only tracks couldn't be used because of their horrible reverb, so that other sources had to be used, such as the commercial recording elements for the songs and mainly the music+ sound effects + dialog tracks.

This meant a very difficult patch-up job where sometimes just a fraction of a note had to be imported from other sources. It also meant that the music lost volume wherever dialog was supposed to appear over it. This represented so much work in fact that some music-only sequences were simply omitted from the CD, which sounded OK but nowhere near the level of quality of, say, the Pinocchio sound restoration which, despite its greater age, was composed of the best possible elements: different sources for the music, the isolated singing voices, the talking voices and the sound effects. And not whithin a thousand miles of the clarity and full spectrum of sound of every single instrument in the orchestra heard in the Enhanced Home Theater Mix...

Then I had a listen to the 5.1 French track on this DVD. Judging by the French singers and actors' names and their biography on IMDb, this French translation was done in the late 70's or ealy 80's. This is possibly the second French translation of Peter Pan. When it was done, the orchestra had to be re-recorded in order to blend with the newly recorded French singing voices (the songs are in French) since the music-only tracks were supposedly of such bad quality and couldn't be used for playback. This, of course, was done with late 70's-early 80's sound recording equipment (in stereo) and I must admit it was done so well that the music itself is only distinguinshable from the original by its recording quality, its clearer highs and lower lows, in other words: its higher fidelity.

So, IMHO, this is Disney's dirty little secret number 2 (Disney's dirty little secret number 1 being that they had no say in the digital restoration of the image):

In its Enhanced Home Theater Mix, Disney producers used the modern stereo recordings of the late 70's-early 80's which were done for the new French (and possibly Spanish) version(s), and mixed them with the English talking and singing voices and the original sound effects, and other elements of the refurbished original mono track. Needless to say the results are spectacular.

Things to look for in the Enhanced Theater Mix:

Since the dialog mostly comes from the central speaker, there is no need to lower the volume of the music, which comes out of the other speakers uninterrupted while the characters speak. The scene where Tinker Bell flies away from the music box and checks herself out over a mirror has such an ample orchestral flourish that it is clearly a modern recording. Same thing for Peter Pan's solo flute intro on the rooftop, which is noisy, shrill and vibrato-laden in the original mono recording but becomes magically smooth and pitch-perfect in the French version and the Enhanced Home Theater Mix.

As far as I'm concerned, there is nothing wrong with this method. It sounds better than it ever did. It is more enjoyable and it is extremely faithful to the spirit of the original recording. So much so that it is musically undistinguishable from it, which means a lot of work and care went into its production.

But, for obvious reasons, this will remain a secret...

baracine

The second French translation is even more recent than I thought. It was done after the first French VHS edition came out, in 1991. From the French Wikipedia site ( http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Pan_(Disney) ):

baracine

Reactions are starting to seep in from the animation world: http://www.cartoonbrew.com/disney/ne...pan-dvd-ruined

DVD Josh

Baracine, I'm glad I was finally able to convince you that there's something wrong with the colors on this PE.

baracine

Actually, I think the merit lies with the first poster in the ultimatedisney forum who posted screen caps.

The Valeyard

From Robert Harris (Motion Picture Archivist):