Apr 11th, 2010, 11:20 AM
How to f*ck up Alice In Wonderland
This is not about the Tim Burton version, which I haven't seen (and don't intend to), but rather about the new DVD re-release of the 1951 Disney animated film. They were showing the film today on the TVs at work, and while nothing has been cut and in fact deleted scenes were added (pretty cool actually), I must say I AM APPALLED at the transfer! In this day and age of HDTV with support for theatrical aspect ratio and Criterion-quality transfers and restorations, why the hell would you include freaking "PAN AND SCAN"!? That shit is EXTREMELY jarring, and this Laserdisc relic has no excuse for being around today with HDTV being the norm in households all around the country. I know that like 35% of DVD transfers ARE from Laserdisc (due to loss of the original print or other difficulties) so I can understand where the pan and scan comes in but really, YOU'RE FREAKING DISNEY, YOU HAVE ACCESS TO THE ORIGINAL THEATRICAL PRINT! YOU CAN DO AN ANAMORPHIC WIDESCREEN TRANSFER OF SAID PRINT NO PROBLEM!! WHY DISNEY, WHY!?
Also, several scenes look like they have been touched up with CG (not 3D CG, but digital inking and image restoration) and look like they've been victims of additional tweening (for those who don't know, tweening is when extra frames are inserted between the main keyframes), which is bullshit because it goes against the basic idea of a restoration/remaster (besides this was DISNEY'S ALICE IN WONDERLAND, THERE WAS NOTHING WRONG WITH THE ANIMATION AT ALL) and not only that, it seems they have sped the tweened footage up considerably so as not to break synchronization with the audio. Why even bother re-tweening if you're going to speed it up like that? Now instead of (subjectively) choppy animation, you have crazy hyperfluid animation that looks like Flash on crack. All this serves to do is hit the Uncanny Valley in an extremely awkward and uncomfortable manner for anyone who loves the original unbutchered version of the film.
Yeah, this might just be another case of "Kitsunexus is nitpicking about pointless shit that no one cares about again", but watch this DVD and YOU WILL NOTICE. I try not to take cartoons that seriously anymore but I will remain adamant to the fact that YOU DON'T FUCK WITH ALICE IN WONDERLAND. YOU JUST DON'T DO THAT.
Man, Disney screwed up their entire Ghibli re-releases (not liscensing Streamline's Totoro dub and redubbing it instead, BUTCHERING ALL OF PHIL HARTMAN'S LINES AND CUTTING THE SYDNEY FOREST SONGS IN KIKI'S DELIVERY SERVICE, GOING BACK TO THE ORIGINAL SCORE FOR CASTLE IN THE SKY INSTEAD OF THE AWESOME JOE HISAISHI RESCORE) and now this!? It's like they just don't give a shit anymore. I was crossing my fingers for a DVD of The Rescuers Down Under (one of their classics they never seemed to care about revisiting), but now I think that it may not be such a great idea.
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