[78-L] Fleischer's Gullivers Travels coming in March

[Michael Shoshani]

On Mon, 2008-11-24 at 19:58 -0500, Steve Ramm wrote:

>  
> Presented in Widescreen on DVD and Blu Ray for the first time ever, with both the original mono and newly enhanced stereo and 5.1 soundtracks, both the DVD and Blu Ray have been magnificently restored and re-mastered. 

Koch needs to look at the Warner releases of the Popeye DVDs and take a
cue. Remaster from whatever negative elements survive. Present it in its
original 4:3 ratio in mono for crying out loud.  Fleischer's did not
record separate music/voice/effects tracks; they recorded everything
live and mixed live to a Western Electric variable density master
negative.  

My unasked (and perhaps unwarranted) opinion is that trying to
"widescreen" a 4:3 picture (by masking? by distortion-stretching??), and
trying to make a 5.1 or stereo soundtrack out of something that was
recorded and mixed live to mono is a serious error in judgment. Think of
what MGM had to UNDO to Gone With The Wind, which suffered from
widescreen masking in the 1960s along with a stereo-ish soundtrack
engineered from the separate music/voice/effects elements.

MS
The Old Curmudgeon