The Jungle Book: Platinum Edition

[Daniel]

At first glance, I thought it meant 'Christmas'.

The Jungle Book is on sale for $12.99 @ Toys R Us this week. Now that is a GREAT deal, so I'll be picking it up this week. Good thing I waited.

[Ben]

Crimbo = Christmas!

[Daniel]

Oh, I see. I thought you were saying it meant 'lovely' earlier. My mistake!

[Ben]

Crimbo <I>is</I> lovely! As in "aaahhh, Christimas!" - that's what I meant.

[Daniel]

Oooh, now I get it!

[Farerb]

Isn't it weird that there still hasn't been any news about the Signature Collection of this and Fantasia? Do you think they're still happening?

[Ben]

We were also supposed to get a Mulan reissue, but who knows what is up with DHV at the moment!?

On one hand, you might expect that Mulan '98 and Mulan '20 might come to disc together in early 2021 after the D+ "premiere" run, but then they may hold them back just for D+ longer. Jungle Book did, I think, get a fairly recent reissue to tie in with the remake, and they might think that would suffice for now, or just wait for the next anniversary in 2022, which will probably be too late for a physical release then.

And Fantasia hasn’t really had any real love since the amazing-sounding Fantasia World release was drastically scaled back and all but cancelled once Roy Disney passed, and I sadly don’t think the audience is there for that film anymore especially since it doesn’t have the marketable characters, aside from Mickey, natch, and even he doesn’t fit the current design model anymore.

There's always the fourth quarter, but those announcements are being made now and nothing so far. I wouldn’t hold my breath for an 80th anniversary edition, sadly.

[Farerb]

That's disappointing. I do have the Diamond Edition of The Jungle Book and a UK Blu-ray of Fantasia, but I really wanted them to fit nicely with the others in the Signature Collection.
From what I heard Mulan is ready for release but they're waiting for the remake.

[Ben]

Yeah...Mulan was ready to go, and in 4K too, which would have been interesting to see, but we can only hope they will issue both Mulans in the new year...

[Farerb]

I'm really interested to see it in 4K. I know there are many who don't think that 4K and HDR benefit hand drawn animated films, but I think the HDR managed to give Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King a more natural look over their oversaturated Blu-rays, and I liked The Little Mermaid's new restoration as well. I'm hoping to see more hand drawn films in 4K, especially Cinderella cause that one needs a new and improved restoration.

[EricJ]

I thought Beauty&Beast, Lion King and Aladdin were only 4K-ready because they'd been remastered for IMAX in the 00's?

[Farerb]

All the CAPS films were made at a 2K resolution. They upscaled them and applied HDR. Mulan should be the same.

[Ben]

Pretty much every Disney film not completed on film (so anything up to The Rescuers Down Under) has only ever been rendered to 2K (so everything from Beauty And The Beast onwards). Yes, this includes all the CGI stuff, including all the Pixars.

There *has* been a recent switch to native 4K (I believe Coco and Frozen II were among the first), but for a long while it was felt that the added resolution wasn’t a significant benefit worth the added rendering time.

Knowing that some collectors won’t purchase upscaled titles, and wanting to be able to market the "true 4K" nature of a source on D+ (ironic, given that streaming bandwidth can’t really quite handle the resolution and metadata without a higher element of compression), there has been a move to master in native 4K recently, presumably akso while rendering times are reduced as well.

Of course, all digital live action films of the 90s and 00s were all 2K as well (essentially HD), and even films shot after that In formats such as 3.5, 4 and 6.5K have usually been finished to a 2K digital interpositive. It’s only really been in the last five years that films have largely moved to 3.5 and 6.5K production and been mastered in native 4K, and those would mostly be the very big budget movies. I believe The Last Jedi was Disney's first completely native 4K release, shot and finished at the higher resolution.

But it’s still largely the norm to finish at 2K (!) and then upscale for a 4K presentation, adding HDR to boot color and luma depth as the main "selling point", but even here — after an initial getting "excited" with the tools — there has been a recent scaling back in the amount of HDR applied to images, and a regular comment you hear in post houses or, indeed, reviews of titles is to give it a "light HDR pass" (which is also kind of an oxymoron that belies an understanding of what HDR is and how it works).

[Farerb]

The Rescuers Down Under was made with CAPS as well. It's considered to be the first digital film.

From what I heard Toy Story 4 and Onward are native 4K, but the rest - including Frozen II are 2K.

I think to me the selling point with HDR is that it gives the colors a natural look and the saturation is toned down, also it's darker in brightness. But I know the majority likes their animated films oversaturated, I know most reviews will say that 4K and HDR are pointless in animated films but I liked seeing them with HDR more than the Blu-rays, which honestly they look awful in my opinion, especially Beauty and the Beast.

[Ben]

Yep, Rescuers was CAPS too, I wasn’t clear there, but it was a film output and has never, to my knowledge, had a native 2K digital file revisited, sadly.

Now you mention it, I knew Coco was borderline. I think that was the one on which Pixar was asked why they don’t output at 4K and they gave the answer that it wasn’t worth it. It was TS4 onwards that were definitely 4K, though I understood FII was as well? Or maybe they did some 4K renders for certain sequences but still reverted to a 2K master. I know I read somewhere that some of the effects required a 4K render, for some reason, so assumed the movie was finished that way, but they obviously must have done that so as to manipulate the frame afterwards and then "print down" to 2K. Huh.

I totally agree on B&TB's Blu-ray vs HDR! I wasn’t blown away by Mermaid's 4K disc, and felt the colours were pushed a little too much, if anything, but when I compared B&TB I was amazed at how bright the BD was. It looked like a "cartoon"! The 4K HDR disc isn’t actually too much reduced in colour, but the grade just sucks some of that brightness out and gives it a darker, more film-like appearance, though it’s far from a night and day difference. And being an upscale I did struggle to see any specific extra detail. I generally, for animated Blu-ray, tone down the colour and brightness anyway, to get away from the over-saturation, so HDR achieves this without needling to fiddle with settings (or, as I have it set up, presets), but I don’t see the need to go nuts and rebuy my whole Disney library on 4K again, when they are all upscales to begin with. Sure, I’ve gone for the hand-drawn films, but there’s minimal uptick on the CG films, which are less saturated anyway, and can be in danger of crushing detail out in the darker areas.