http://www.aceshowbiz.com/news/view/00044209.html Awesome! I went to The Lion King rerelease recently and it was a great experience. I'm definitely checking out Beauty and the Beast and also Little Mermaid. I loved the Disney Renaissance. TLM, BATB, Aladdin and TLK will always be my favorites. It's a shame that Disney won't rerelease Aladdin. I guess they don't think it is popular enough.
That just seems odd. I don't know anybody who doesn't like Aladdin. I didn't see The Lion King in theaters because I knew I would be buying the Blu-Ray. Did the 3-D actually look good? I find myself generally underwhelmed with most 3-D experiences. Even Avatar looks better in 2-D.
I think that if a film was made for 2D, it's artistically inappropriate to convert it to 3D -- just as it's inappropriate to colorize a film that was made to be black-and-white, or to pan-and-scan a film that was framed for widescreen. Different kind of 2D/3D. Pixar films are animated using 3-dimensional computer models (i.e. models that the computer calculates in three virtual dimensions to create its images), but the images are rendered and projected 2-dimensionally. What 3D means in this context is stereoscopic projection, a system that sends a different image to each eye in order to create the perception of depth.
What's weird is they're making a big deal about issuing the 3-D Beauty and the Beast in January, but the 3D-Blu-ray was in the stores yesterday. Sort of shooting themselves in the foot with that one. By the time it hits theatres everyone who cares will have seen it on the Blu-ray, and if the 3-D conversion sucks it'll be bad news for the theatrical release. (I personally think it's going to look like a dog's breakfast, especially when it transitions from cel animation to the CGI segment during the key ballroom dance sequence). But, hey, I've been meaning to pick up the 2-D Blu-ray of that one for a while, so maybe they'll drop the price of the earlier version. Alex
All the current systems are stereoscopic, aren't they? I still don't want the "pseudo-3D" version. If I want to give myself a head-splitting migraine, I'll use an axe.
I would agree, but (using the color analogy), that would only apply to films like Schindler's List that were purposefully made in the older format. A movie made in 2D wasn't necessarily made for 3D. Colorization efforts have dramatically improved, btw. The colorized versions of Holiday Inn and My Man Godfrey are particularly good. (The Youtube uploads don't do either movie justice.) I wouldn't be surprised if colorizations were indistinguishable from native color films in another decade or so. 3D conversion, likewise, will surely improve with time - and computer power.
No, what I'm saying is that when people talk about "3D animation" like Pixar uses, that's got nothing to do with stereoscopic projection. The final images are still flat, 2-dimensional pictures, and you don't need special glasses to look at them. What's "3D" is the computer models of the characters -- instead of animators drawing flat images and photographing them, they use computers to model digital characters in a virtual 3-dimensional space; that is, the computer calculates the shapes and positions of the characters using three axes of spatial information. But the images that are then generated are still 2D images, in the same way that a photograph of a live, 3-dimensional actor gives you a 2-dimensional image. So Finding Nemo already is a 2D film. But it was created using "3D animation," i.e. using computer models with three axes of virtual movement rather than flat drawings on cels (or the modern digital equivalent), which is called "2D animation." It can be confusing because of the two unrelated ways that "2D" and "3D" are used.
While I often compare 3D to color, I disagree here. It's just a new technical presentation. It's like going from 35mm film to TV/DVD, from 7.1 surround sound in a big theater to stereo at home.
Lion King was the most popular Disney animated film in the 90s. Plus the concept of converting old animated movies to 3D is pretty novel. But I can only see this happening for Beauty, Mermaid, and - maybe - Aladdin before viewers say "ENOUGH!"
While it seems unnecessary, I'm not really surprised that they'd be doing 3-D rereleases of computer animated films like Finding Nemo or Monsters Inc. But it seems really weird to me to be doing 3-D up-conversions of 2-D cell animated movies like Beauty & the Beast, The Lion King, or The Little Mermaid. I wonder how these releases would be doing without the 3-D gimmick. I mean, rereleasing their classics for short theatrical runs used to be standard practice for Disney anyway. In fact, up until the mid-1990s, that was the only way you could see Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs. I definately have clear memories of going to a rerelease of The Jungle Book when I was a kid. And I'm trying to remember if they did a similar thing for 101 Dalmatians or Pinocchio or Bambi or The Aristocats. The colorized version of It's a Wonderful Life on Paramount's 2-disc Collector's Set from 2007 was pretty good too. Although I suspect noir-ish Bogey classics like The Big Sleep, Casablanca, & The Maltese Falcon would all look like ass in color. But colorization techniques are looking better. But then, lots of color films from that era look kinda unconvincing anyway. If I didn't know better, I'd swear that The African Queen had been colorized & badly. As for 3-D, I'm generally not crazy about it. The glasses just aren't very comfortable for someone who isn't accustomed to wearing glasses. On occasion, it does help to create a more immersive experience when the film is all about transporting me to another world, like Avatar or Tron Legacy. Michael Bay also used it to excellent effect getting right up into the action of Transformers: Dark of the Moon. But other films have left me singularly unimpressed, like Conan the Barbarian, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, & Resident Evil: Afterlife. (Although, I'm still kinda tempted to see The Three Musketeers in 3-D.)
So, once again Disney disavows its redheaded stepchild The Hunchback of Notre Dame. It's really a shame, since it's the best movie Disney has ever produced.