Sleeping Beauty: Platinum Edition

[Once Upon A Dream]

Sleeping Beauty is coming on a Platinum Edition in October 2008.
I"ll buy it .

[Daniel]

And also on Blu-ray!

Nah, if I don't have Blu by than, (I seriously doubt it!) I won't be double dipping. I LOVE Sleeping Beauty, but I'm happy with my current SE DVD.

Side note, yay, this isn't a duplicate thread!

[Ben]

I'm wondering what they'll be able to add.

I'm still great with my LD box set, from which the previous DVD took all its features. Was there a commentary on the DVD? If so, that would have been new to DVD and not on the LD box.

I have a number of titles I'm waiting for in HD before I jump from my LDs. Silly to go LD>DVD>HD instead of making the ultimate jump, so I've held off on a lot of reissues just so I can go straight to HD.

I have all the Disney films on LD or DVD, and the plan is to get them all again in definitive HD versions.

I'm wondering if Sleeping Beauty will just be the current SE upgraded with new packaging. It was pretty well covered before. If they start double dipping within the Platinum line, there's no hope for the way this series has been (so very badly) treated.

[Once Upon A Dream]

I"ll get it (and besides-i don't have the 2003 SE).
Speaking about Sleeping Beauty-am i the only one that it's annyoing him that Disney calls Aurora "Sleeping Beauty" in the marchandise? dolls,album,everything,they don't call her Aurora,they call Sleeping Beauty .
And Aurora is not the only-they also started to call Ariel The Little Mermaid in marchandise insted of Ariel,just don't tell me that they'll start calling Belle "Beauty".

[Dacey]

Was there a commentary on the DVD?

Yup.

[eddievalient]

Quite an interesting commentary it was too. When I got the previous SE in 2003 I thought to myself, "Gee, this is a Platinum without the name." I guess they wanted to rebrand it to make it seem more "special". Meh. What I'm wondering is why they choose to dig up the good bonus material for a select few of their movies but not for all of them. I mean, come on, Leonard Maltin is a big enough Disney fan that they could probably get him to do a decent commentary for "Sword in the Stone" or "The Great Mouse Detective" or even "Oliver and Company" (the bonuses on all of which are, frankly, a joke. Even if they are "lesser product", surely they could come up with something). Let's get serious people!

[Randall]

Son of a gun. I didn't realize or had forgotten SB had an audio commentary. Sure enough, and it has 8 participants, including Ollie Johnson. Oddly, there's no mention of it on the packaging, but I checked the disc, and there it was!

I love the LD set, and had no use for the DVD's added games and activities, but I do like the colors on the DVD and the fact I don't have to switch or flip discs!

[EricJ]

And also on Blu-ray!

Nah, if I don't have Blu by than, (I seriously doubt it!) I won't be double dipping. I LOVE Sleeping Beauty, but I'm happy with my current SE DVD.

I splurged over the last year (two lucky bargains), and got both the new set AND the Playstation 3 to go with it--
I'm ready for Blu, and just wish they could've picked a more interesting 2D movie to start off with.
(As, frankly, Aurora doesn't seem to have enough personality to stay in her own movie for very long...)

And looking back over the list from their old Blu-ray ad, think they're just as worried as other studios about how to handle old vintage square-screen movies, until somebody figures it out--Which means they're probably going to stick to widescreen 90's movies and Cinemascope Lady/Tramp, long before they ever get around to old-fashioned Snow White or Fantasia.

Quite an interesting commentary it was too. When I got the previous SE in 2003 I thought to myself, "Gee, this is a Platinum without the name." I guess they wanted to rebrand it to make it seem more "special". Meh. What I'm wondering is why they choose to dig up the good bonus material for a select few of their movies but not for all of them. I mean, come on, Leonard Maltin is a big enough Disney fan that they could probably get him to do a decent commentary for "Sword in the Stone" or "The Great Mouse Detective" or even "Oliver and Company" (the bonuses on all of which are, frankly, a joke. Even if they are "lesser product", surely they could come up with something). Let's get serious people!

SB was the first attempt at releasing a spring Platinum title for two a year, since they worried that that "new format" somebody-'r-other was talking about might arrive before they were half-finished with the list...Har har, we thought, as IF!

Up till that point, though, anything that wasn't Platinum (and there were only a select ten of those) would be Gold Edition, and would be available all year round, since they didn't have to worry about extras.
Frankly, we were lucky that SitS even got the few extras it did, and the fact that it had moving menus alone was a thunderbolt at the time.

(But now that they're used to Gold editions with extras, to the point that they retired the name and made everything 2-disk so it could sell, think we could finally get an upgraded "Hercules"?)

[Ben]

I do like the fact I don't have to switch or flip discs!

For the amount of times I watch SB (maybe once every two/three years), I can handle swapping a couple of discs!

As I say, the plan is to upgrade to hi-def anyhoo, eventually, on all the Disney titles.

Handling Academy ratio should be simple. HD is native 1920 wide, so any picture information within that width needs to fit in it with black borders. 2.35:1 Panavision/CinemaScope frames feature letterboxed borders along the top, and Academy sizes - and we <I>SHOULD</I> finally be rewarded with the fullwidth 1.37:1 (and not 1.33 that <I>does</I> shave a bit from the sides) ratio "printed" within the wider frame, with black borders along the sides.

Just as 1.33 material is presented in 16x9 enhanced programming, actually. There should be NO cropping of pre-1954 material to make it "fit" to 1.78:1, but we have sadly been seeing this more and more, especially in documentaries.

[EricJ]

The new VCI attempt to make the '51 "Christmas Carol" widescreen seems to have invented the new term "Tilt-and-pan".

Not sure how WB handled their releases of "Robin Hood" and "Casablanca" (as it was HD-DVD, so nobody was really caring much either way at the time)--
But the main issue seems to be having to look out for pillarbox burn-in on all those plasma sets out there--Our own Fox HD station airs all its 4:3 shows with an glaring white-gray border (to avoid the dangers of black ones), while the NBC widescreen network news uses artsy moving-background borders for its square-screen footage.

Wouldn't mind seeing studios get into the habit of using some non-distracting "border" footage, or some Ambilight-style color...
I've got an LCD, so I'm fine with black borders with the lights off, but if we have to have borders, love to see what Disney could do with them.

[Ben]

At least the VCI disc offers the original restored Academy version too! Not like *cough, cough* a certain Jungle Book movie that just came out.

Robin and Casablanca were, I believe 1.37:1 within the 1.78 frame. There shouldn't be an issue with pillarboxing. There isn't a problem with 2.35 movies that blank the top and bottom.

Broadcasters usually add in pretty pictures on the sides of their 1.33 content in wider frames just so people don't think there's a problem with their sets. True story.

[Randall]

Robin and Casablanca were, I believe 1.37:1 within the 1.78 frame. There shouldn't be an issue with pillarboxing. There isn't a problem with 2.35 movies that blank the top and bottom.

This is correct. I watch lots of stuff in 4:3 on my widescreen projection set with no problems.

[EricJ]

Robin and Casablanca were, I believe 1.37:1 within the 1.78 frame. There shouldn't be an issue with pillarboxing. There isn't a problem with 2.35 movies that blank the top and bottom.

Question was, did Warner just stick the 1.33 movies in a black screen, or was there any attempt to fill the void?
(They haven't done any other 4:3 movies since, and passed it off to "low sales" for Errol and Bogey.)

Broadcasters usually add in pretty pictures on the sides of their 1.33 content in wider frames just so people don't think there's a problem with their sets. True story.

Always thought the gray borders on the Fox channel was to "fuzz" out the border contrast on the Plasma sets, which were more prone to burn-in on black pillarbox edges than the LCD sets, after two or three hours of watching 4:3 programming.
(Reportedly, some plasma sets "burn out" any burn-in by blasting a 16:9 of uniform color for a period of time, which supposedly clears the image.)

Now the CW channel has started "gray-boxing" its reruns, so I'm guessing it's an industry standard--But it still looks glaring and awful, and we're hoping somebody come up with a more NBC idea pretty soon, so studios can all get over their fears of old movies.

[Ben]

Basically, black is the way to go, at least with home video.

"Low sales" could be attributed to those titles, yes, but they were released right at the start of the HD kick, when about 3 people had HD players and 2 people had Blu-Ray. Naturally, Robin and Casablanca were only issued on HD, not BR.

So, how can anyone lay claim to "low sales" (not you, but WB). Everything at that point were low sales!

Black is the way to go. When these films played in a theater, they didn't have fancy borders put up around the screen, right? And in all the years we've watched 1.85 on our 4x3s, there's never been a fuss (from intelligent people!) about the black, right? Only now that the screen dimensions have been reversed is that people seem to think we need to start coloring in the dead screen space.

Plasma screens, at the end of the day, suck pretty bad. LCD is the way to go, but widescreen viewers shouldn't be forced to have gray, blue or tinted colored backings to watch their Academy movies!

[Randall]

Question was, did Warner just stick the 1.33 movies in a black screen, or was there any attempt to fill the void?

To confirm, the sides were left black, just as the tops and bottoms are left black for 2.35:1 movies.