I received my set and film strips on Monday. I do not yet have a way to play the Blu-ray (I hope to purchase an external USB Blu-ray drive in the near future), but I have glanced a bit at the feature and shorts on the DVD.
Gulliver looks great. Excellent job on the cleanup, Steve. That is not just an opinion. That is a fact. A nicely-faithful film restoration. This is on a level so far above what Disney does with their animated features (revising out the grain, etc., to make it look like a digital picture). There is one problem, though, that I've noticed in what I've seen on the DVD. At the end of the film, just as the scene with the Lilliputians singing goodbye to Gulliver is finishing dissolving to the scene of Gulliver, there's a skip in the picture (i.e. missing frames). There's a change in the contrast at the same time. This is clearly an editing mistake (it's not a film splice, as those frames are present in the raw transfer), but is this error also present on the Blu-ray?
Bonus points for leaving in the original changeover cues at the reel change near the 58 minute mark (as well as the one in the end titles). That should happen more often in film restoration, let the naysayers say what they would. Since these marks were apparently added to the O.C.N. of many Golden Age films before their original releases, and therefore the exact same marks have practically always been there, I believe they should be preserved, rather than revised out to obscurity just because we can. I don't look positively upon any kind of film revisionism, usually done to cater to those who have become accustomed to the advances in technology (i.e. digital video) since these films were made and are lacking in respect for older technology, or who care about what the filmmakers would have wanted instead of preserving history.
The audio sounds very nice and clear. So what if it is from a 35mm print instead of the original track negative? The quality is as good as theater audiences would have heard back in the day, and that is good enough.
The shorts also look great. That spliceless (or at least I didn't notice any splices) 35mm nitrate print of
In My Merry Oldsmobile is amazing, and the print of
Modeling is also very nice. It's too bad that you weren't able to reinstate the "Adolph Zukor presents..." card in the titles to
Ding Dong Doggie, but your reconstruction is still very presentable (and having the real original title card and credits is, of course, fantastic). As an aside, has anyone ever noticed the "TECHNICOLOR PROCESS" tag at the bottom of
Little Dutch Mill's credits card before? It's faint, but you can just make it out.
I have only viewed some (not all) of the special features, but all of them are most definitely excellent to have on the set. That's a splendid original 35mm Technicolor print of the original theatrical trailer. Great treat. I remember you said you had an alternate version of it that didn't have the superimposed titles. Was that too poor in condition to include?
Overall, a fantastic set, 100% deserving of the 11 5-star ratings it's received so far on Amazon.com. One to be proud of, Steve. I look forward to being able to view the Blu-ray version.
The film strips are amazing. This is my first time seeing and handling 35mm motion picture film in person (let alone such high quality film as a Technicolor print), and they have only added to my already great respect for the medium of *actual*, physical film. One strip is the night shot of Gulliver at the dinner table in the "Bluebirds in the Moonlight" scene, and the other is of Gabby about to run after Gulliver in the "Ahoy Ahoy!" scene. Looking at the film under a light source, I can actually see how the image is apparently "embossed" into the film (due to Technicolor prints being mechanically printed), the light reflecting off the edges of the outlines of the drawings and also the frame lines. You can't see stuff like this in a video transfer. Thanks for doing this bonus offer, Steve. If I had the money and space, I would be so into film collecting by now.
