Some short musings about the recently released Blu-ray:

- Watching this (or anything LBT-related) for the first time in ages, it struck me how effective and moody the color styling is for the film. I must have my memories clouded by the brighter, cheerier sequels.

- People who take issue with the varying focus/sharpness, particularly shots with pans, close-ups and optical effects, should forward their complaints to the original cinematographer/camera operator rather than Universal's remastering team.

- Similarly, any complaints I hear of a "lack of clean-up" seem contradictory to what I'm actually seeing: a grain structure that looks as natural as any other 80s film faithfully rendered on Blu-ray from "master materials", as well as infrequent white specks that are clearly photographed-in defects.

- End credits look digitally recreated but seem to be faithful-looking recreations nevertheless (anyone with the old DVD care to cross-check?). This and the complete, utter lack of extras are the only reasonable complaints I can levy against this release.

I can only imagine what the Lantz cartoons would look like with this type of faithful treatment (The two DVD sets Jerry and others helped get out were great in their selections but pretty hit-and-miss restoration-wise). It seems for now the only thing remotely animation-related coming out from this "new Universal" (to quote film restoration guru Robert Harris) is a 4k restoration of "The King of Jazz", at least going by this leaked report .