We're Off to see the Wizard - For Free

[spartanstew]

“The Wizard of Oz” is 70 years old this year, and Warner Brothers is celebrating by performing a digital restoration of the original film. And you can watch it for free, thanks to Netflix. For 24 hours, starting at 9 AM Eastern on October 3. All you have to do is go to www.netflix.com/wizardofoz to view the streamed movie on demand.


More HERE (http://www.hdtvmagazine.com/columns/2009/09/hdtv_almanac_were_off_to_see_the_wizard.php)

[LarryFlowers]

“The Wizard of Oz” is 70 years old this year, and Warner Brothers is celebrating by performing a digital restoration of the original film. And you can watch it for free, thanks to Netflix. For 24 hours, starting at 9 AM Eastern on October 3. All you have to do is go to www.netflix.com/wizardofoz (http://www.netflix.com/wizardofoz) to view the streamed movie on demand.


More HERE (http://www.hdtvmagazine.com/columns/2009/09/hdtv_almanac_were_off_to_see_the_wizard.php)

Also note that you will also be able to use any Netflix capable streaming unit (XBox 360, Roku, Blu-Ray player, etc.) to watch this incredible film as well.

[mountainDBS]

just hope they show it in the right ratio. the blu-ray verison is a disappointment since you have to adjust your widescreen tv to fill the whole screen with movie. If i wanted to watch movies in 4:3 i would have kept my old tv. whats the sense of having a widescreen tv when the movie isnt in 16:9. I know the movie was made in the 1930's but really, they couldnt have made it work with todays tv's?

[LarryFlowers]

just hope they show it in the right ratio. the blu-ray verison is a disappointment since you have to adjust your widescreen tv to fill the whole screen with movie. If i wanted to watch movies in 4:3 i would have kept my old tv. whats the sense of having a widescreen tv when the movie isnt in 16:9. I know the movie was made in the 1930's but really, they couldnt have made it work with todays tv's?

Any attempt to make a film shot in 1.33:1 format into a 16x9 would result in distortion. There would be no way around it. Face the facts, if you love movies, many of them will have to be watched in the 4x3 format even on a 16x9 screen if you expect to see them without introducing some type of distortion.

I have a hard time grasping this mindset of "I don't car what you do to the picture, just make it fill my screen".

I expect the Wizard of Oz to have a digitally enhanced soundtrack, a completely cleaned up and rejuvenated color screen and for it to be shown without DISTORTING the picture.

[elaclair]

Any attempt to make a film shot in 1.33:1 format into a 16x9 would result in distortion. There would be no way around it. Face the facts, if you love movies, many of them will have to be watched in the 4x3 format even on a 16x9 screen if you expect to see them without introducing some type of distortion.

I have a hard time grasping this mindset of "I don't car what you do to the picture, just make it fill my screen".

I expect the Wizard of Oz to have a digitally enhanced soundtrack, a completely cleaned up and rejuvenated color screen and for it to be shown without DISTORTING the picture.

The restoration process they used on Oz is to say the very least spectacular. The took the original 3-element master and individually digitized each element at 8k with a combined master done at 4k. You have a choice of either the original mono soundtrack, or a new 5.1DTS-HD track. I'm picking mine up tonight and plan on watching it this weekend. I'll try and do a quick review next week on what I think of it.

[Chris Blount]

I watched the Blu-Ray the other night. It looks and sounds fantastic!

Movies like this were composed for a 4X3 screen. There would be quite an uproar from movie purists if they tried to crop or distort it to fit to 16X9.

The people that restored The Wizard of Oz did what was necessary to make the movie look brand new and nothing more. They removed the camera negatives from storage (Technicolor used 3 strips of film at the time), scanned them into a 8K scanning system, took out the scratches, cleaned up the audio and added a few stereo and surround effects. They did not digitally enhance anything as far as the picture is concerned.

The Wizard of Oz is now back to it's most pure condition. Actually it's better since digitally combining the 3 strip technicolor film rendered it "perfect". Back in the 30's, combining the 3 elements was not an exact science so there were picture quality issues like color ghosting and such.

There is a really good documentary on the Blu-Ray and DVD that explain the restoration process.

In any case, I'm glad they didn't mess with the aspect ratio on the Blu-Ray. It would have changed the composition thus you would not be seeing what was intended.

[armophob]

Movies like this were composed for a 4X3 screen. There would be quite an uproar from movie purists if they tried to crop or distort it to fit to 16X9.
In any case, I'm glad they didn't mess with the aspect ratio on the Blu-Ray. It would have changed the composition thus you would not be seeing what was intended.

I can see some ad revenue opportunity here with the unused space on each side. Maybe the Geico lizard or that dancing character from banner ads to the left or right of the movie?

[spartanstew]

just hope they show it in the right ratio. the blu-ray verison is a disappointment since you have to adjust your widescreen tv to fill the whole screen with movie. If i wanted to watch movies in 4:3 i would have kept my old tv. whats the sense of having a widescreen tv when the movie isnt in 16:9. I know the movie was made in the 1930's but really, they couldnt have made it work with todays tv's?

Wow.

1. It is the right ratio
2. You shouldn't adjust your TV
3. How would they make it work?
4. It's not a "widescreen TV", it's an HDTV (which just happens to be 16:9)

[mountainDBS]

seems tho the DVD verison of this film works on a widescreen tv, just odd to me. im sure it's still gonna tick some people off that it wont fit the screen. I adjusted my tv to fill the screen it's personal taste i guess. The film does look great, looks like it was shot yesterday, but it still bugs me. it's like when the whiney people started when movie showed up with the black bars top and bottom. some thought they were getting cheated on picture, guess its the same here. :confused:

[spartanstew]

im sure it's still gonna tick some people off that it wont fit the screen.

I doubt it. Most people understand aspect ratios and the fact that you can't fit a square peg into a round hole.

[mountainDBS]

im sure your right! i seem to run into or overhear people in the video stores or wal mart etc. whine about widescreen movies and the like. there's more out there than you might think

[spartanstew]

Perhaps you're right, I'm not that familiar with Wal-Mart electronics shoppers.

[mountainDBS]

just saying most will complain and other will understand.

oh btw - Snow white will be formatted the same way. no surprise now

[spartanstew]

just saying most will complain and other will understand.


Except you have that backwards.

[mountainDBS]

Sorry..... :grin:

[armophob]

I have moved on to only watching the film with Dark side of the moon as audio. So displaying the movie to 16:9 is not much of a "stretch".

[mountainDBS]

iVe heard of doing that. at what point to u start Dark side of the moon when running Wizard of Oz. always wanted to try that

[seanb61]

As soon as the shrooms or LSD kick in! :D

[spartanstew]

iVe heard of doing that. at what point to u start Dark side of the moon when running Wizard of Oz. always wanted to try that

The Dark Side of Oz (http://www.angelfire.com/oh3/darkside/darksideofoz.html)

[mountainDBS]

thanks :D

[elaclair]

Finally got a chance to view the 70th Anniversary edition last night, and all I can say is...WOW.
During the opening sepia-tone sequences, you could actually see the brush strokes on the fake clouds and sky in the background. All the images were crisp and clear with only a hint of grain and no apparent edge-enhancement. The re-mixed soundtrack extracts about as much as you can from the 30's era recording. The voices are centered and clear, the music portions are fairly wide as far as the apparent sound field goes. The back channels are there, but you only notice it if you turn them off.....

Where the restoration really shines though is in the technicolor portion of the film. I have never seen this look so good. After reading what was done during the restoration process, you can tell they put their heart and soul in to it. Haven't had time to go through all the SWAG that came in the UCE packaging, but one item that stood out is the cost tally sheet. Now granted this was 1939, but the total cost of the movie...and it ran overbudget.....was 2.8 Million. They spend that much on catering these days....

Let's hope they give this type of restoration treatment to any classic movie to be re-released either in the theatre or on blu-ray. To me, the visual experience was worth it.

[Chris Blount]

Thanks for the writeup. Totally agree. The movie has never looked and sounded better.

Finally got a chance to view the 70th Anniversary edition last night, and all I can say is...WOW.
During the opening sepia-tone sequences, you could actually see the brush strokes on the fake clouds and sky in the background. All the images were crisp and clear with only a hint of grain and no apparent edge-enhancement. The re-mixed soundtrack extracts about as much as you can from the 30's era recording. The voices are centered and clear, the music portions are fairly wide as far as the apparent sound field goes. The back channels are there, but you only notice it if you turn them off.....

Where the restoration really shines though is in the technicolor portion of the film. I have never seen this look so good. After reading what was done during the restoration process, you can tell they put their heart and soul in to it. Haven't had time to go through all the SWAG that came in the UCE packaging, but one item that stood out is the cost tally sheet. Now granted this was 1939, but the total cost of the movie...and it ran overbudget.....was 2.8 Million. They spend that much on catering these days....

Let's hope they give this type of restoration treatment to any classic movie to be re-released either in the theatre or on blu-ray. To me, the visual experience was worth it.

[Stuart Sweet]

I started the Blu-ray on my BD player and the previous DVD restoration and was able to see a marked improvement. There is far more saturation and purity to the color, less color bleed, and considerably finer detail.

I will say that the DVD did excel in one way; because the format is lower resolution, there was less evident film grain. I'm not one who believes that you should run excess grain reduction filters, but in the case of these older films it's hard to argue that the graininess was intentional.

One interesting little bit to note: The documentaries on disc one are the same ones from the DVD restoration. So the mini-doc about the film's restoration is completely inaccurate. It's ironic that they're crowing about what a great job they did, and ten years later they discarded it completely and started from scratch.

To avoid that happening again, as Chris said, they scanned at 8k resolution (4x Blu-ray resolution) and the resulting scans are something like 27TB.

I don't exactly believe them when they said they didn't monkey with the color, though. The yellow brick road is so consistent in color from scene to scene, and the grain within it is all yellow, not slightly multicolored as it should be. Also the sepia-toned beginning has uniformly colored grain as well. I don't know how this film was produced in 1939, if the first reel was sepia and the rest were technicolor. If that's the case then it would make sense for all the grain to be the same color.