The Sound of Music 60th Anniversary 4K Blu-ray

barrese and BlueCotton I’m not even sure Disney remembers Mary Poppins exists. I’m shocked they even did The Sound Of Music. As far as I know, this is the first new anything from the Fox catalog, aside from letting George Lucas and James Cameron play in their respective sandboxes for Star Wars, Aliens, The Abyss, and True Lies.

Last year was Mary Poppins’ 60th anniversary. I was shocked they let the anniversary pass, but I wasn’t the least bit surprised.

jiblanco31 wants 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, The Black Hole, Flight Of The Navigator, and The Rocketeer. AlexJones wants Romancing The Stone.

Sadly, I still don’t think Disney truly cares about physical media. Their releases are far and few between, the catalog ones are rarely stunners (Speed was solid four years ago; the Camerons had great sound and features, but the picture sucked; Heat blew; everything else was done by Fox before the buyout; Snow White and Cinderella don’t have mono sound for reasons unknown), and it seems like every time they release something older than a few years old, it’s mainly a token to the collectors, and not an actual effort to give us the quality films and quality releases we want.

emgesp Perhaps they didn’t have the color depth on the old restoration to do Dolby Vision (ain’t nobody getting Dolby Vision in this bitch) or HDR. Also, perhaps the raw scans no longer exist, which could mean perhaps Disney is going to finally fix the bad color timing on the previous disc (a L’Immagine Ritrovata joint), which I think is the only thing that stops that disc from being truly perfect.

Dak017 Part of me’s laughing because this is hysterical. The other part of me’s shaking because it’s literally true.AliasCane For some reason, stories like this just warm my heart. I never lived in that time, nor did I ever have those memories of my own, and it makes my day to hear those memories from other people.

BarrioMan, Disney should be the king of DV. They have more money than the other five studios and all boutiques combined, and yet they still refuse to use DV. They should do it, but they likely won’t.

And then there’s HDTV1080P…oy.

The “Two-disc set (One BD-100)” is very early specs, either a default setting or a spec listed by someone who knows just as little as we do. As someone who likes to look things up, all I can confirm is that right now Disney plans on releasing TSOM on 4K this year, and it supposedly has a new transfer. Knowing the mouse, even those few confirmed facts could get thrown up in the air at any point.

With the exception of their Disney+ SBs (and I hate hate hate hate hate when the Big Six and the boutiques do this), which were UHD only, all Disney and Fox releases have been 4K+Blu-ray. I have no reason to believe that this will be any different.

While there’s a chance, honestly a likelihood, that special features lag will occur, again we don’t have any hard info yet.

And there were 250,000 copies of the Limited Edition Collector’s Set made in 2010. There were likely hundreds of thousands if not millions of Blu-ray discs of TSOM made before Disney effectively vaulted the film in 2019.

If they do this right, it will be…

4K (BD-100): Movie (if possible, include the roadshow cut we all know and love, the general release cut (which removes the music portions and cuts from the end of Part One to the beginning of Part Two), and the rough cut (which is five minutes longer than the roadshow cut, and may not even survive), all via seamless branching)
Proper color timing
Dolby Vision
DTS-HDMA 7.1 (Six-track, 70mm)
DTS-HDMA 7.1 (Four-track, 35mm)
DTS-HDMA or PCM 2.0 (Mono, 35mm)
(If possible)
Your Favorite Things – An Interactive Celebration
Like most of Fox’s tent pole Blu-ray productions, The Sound of Music comes with an all-new interactive bonus features interface that can be accessed while watching the film. When you select “Your Favorite Things” from the extras tab, a brief video tutorial plays and you’re taken to a menu where you can customize the experience. There are four options here, and you can select as many or as few of them as you’d like. Making Music: A Journey in Images is a picture-in-picture mode that displays many never-before-seen storyboards and photographs of the film’s production in the upper right corner of the screen, The Sing-Along Experience provides karaoke-style lyrics across the bottom of the screen, Many a Thing to Know is a trivia track about the making of the film and the real Maria, and Where Was it Filmed? is an ongoing multiple-choice quiz. With all four options turned on, I find that the interface obscures too much of the film, but I can see many fans taking advantage of the karaoke mode.

Music Machine (1080p, 58:02)
From here you can skip directly to your favorite songs from the film or watch them all consecutively.

Sing-Along (1080p, 54:22)
For all intents and purposes, this mode is exactly the same as “Music Machine.” In fact, I’m not quite sure what’s different about the two, except that “Sing-Along” seems to trim off some of the music before the singing starts.

Audio Commentaries
The disc includes two commentaries tracks. The first, with Julie Andrews, Christopher Plummer, Charmian Carr, Choreographer Dee Dee Wood, and Johannes von Trapp, is one of those tracks where all the participants are recorded separately and patched in to comment on certain scenes. Andrews is the most vocal figure, but there are many long stretches of silence throughout. The second track, with director Robert Wise, is where you’ll find more concentrated making-of information, although fans will eventually want to give both commentaries a go.

Blu-ray 1 (BD-50): Exact same thing as the 4K, in SDR, plus

BD-Live Exclusive: Laura Benanti on The Sound of Music (720p, 3:33)

Blu-ray 2 (BD-50): 2010 Bonus Disc

Blu-ray 3 (BD-50): New Bonus Disc
The Sound of a City: Julie Andrews Returns to Salzburg (the only new special feature in the 2015 release)
Everything from the previous DVD, laserdisc, and VHS releases of the film
The various retrospectives, interviews, and documentaries created over the years that never made it to video. Just in my lifetime, I know Oprah did several episodes on the film, 20/20 did one episode on the film, and ABC News did a non-20/20 special on the film too.

CDs: complete film soundtrack

So…that would cover all the bases.

They set out to make the world a more inclusive place…by spiking their catalog, putting out new content that’s irrelevant on arrival, and doing literally nothing else.

Honestly, if it weren’t for the self-congratulatory reach-around Good Morning America gave Disney+ on launch day, where thousands of titles were revealed and several walk-throughs were performed, I wouldn’t have even known TSOM was on the service. I can name maybe about ten Fox films that are out of the vault, and even that might be a stretch.

According to the published, it almost looks like they started from scratch, making a new scan, and haven’t reused the existing 8K scan from 2010 which was made from at this time brand new inter-positive.

Of course, probably no doubt there has been some technological improvement in scanning since then and more details possibly can be retrieved from the negative today.

A bit curious whether they still have been able to use the original camera negative which already in 2010 was in poor condition, or if the IP from 2010 is the basis for this new restoration.

Besides of course, expecting the sharpness to be at least as good as the former bluray, the color is one of the key areas, that I’m personally excited to see how they have been able to handle, really hope the terrible earthy colors are gone and replaced with much more alive, natural and vibrant color, how I remember from the 35 mm and 70mm screening I have experienced several years ago.

In my opinion, the technology was perhaps not quite in place in 2010 to restore colors that barely exist in the film elements available, I’m sure it is possible to do a lot more today, recreating almost completely faded or non-existent colors and therefore have to be recreated from – hopefully – known materials or surviving people as close as possible to the original production. Technical AI could possibly be useful in this case, but first of all a decision needs to be taken on how the final should look.

Sound-wise, there is also a need for improvement, but I think this part already was in place with the new album set released one year ago. I haven’t heard this release myself, but it seems highly reviewed and recommended.

In fact, I was pretty sure when this new sound set was released that there NOW (sooner or later) would be a new restoration of “The Sound of Music”

So can only hope Disney makes things right – this time.

The 2005 DVD, in terms of color timing, is beautiful. If you work your way through all the old copies, old broadcasts, and even film prints (I’ve seen some 35mm bits and 70mm bits online), you can clearly see how the 2005 DVD and the film prints are remarkably similar, and the fading and desaturation in the various 1977-2003 home video releases was merely a result of bad prints. As the years go on, you can see the sources and technology improving as the film gets closer and closer to the original intent.

I made a joke about how the 2010 Blu-ray looked like it came from L’Immagine Ritrovata, a studio notorious for botching the color timing of movies. It’s a 70/30 split between the movies with yellow washes and the movies with teal washes. Some movies have both.

The Sound Of Music has a yellow wash.

Even recently, when I watched it on TV, I thought it looked like someone seriously messed with the color timing. I thought it was a newer remaster, since I never remember the film looking like that. Imagine my shock when I found out it was indeed the 2010 Blu-ray transfer that was being used.

The Blu-ray is great in every other way, natural sharpness, clarity, sound, compression, everything. The color timing, as off as it is, is the only problem with it, and I hope Disney fixes it.

Big_Bass_Man Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Fiddler On The Roof are with MGM. CCBB has a stunning Blu-ray, made from the 70mm negative. It’s worth every penny, and even though it’s likely OOP by now, there’s enough of them out there that you can get it cheap. If a 4K happens, it’ll be from a boutique, but it could easily be any of the five major boutiques.

Fiddler On The Roof has a Blu-ray, everyone else knocks it, but I love it. Also worth it. Apparently MGM has plans to do a 4K, and the first step involves repairing the very badly damaged OCN, but I have no clue when or even if this will occur.

Both Yankee Doodle Dandy and The Music Man are with WB. WHV doing them on 4K is unlikely. WAC doing a 4K is possible, and so is WB farming them out to Criterion.

RBBrittain I truly believe that if Disney started actually releasing Fox titles, properly restored, on Blu-ray and 4K, they would sell. There are people who would buy them just to make it known that we want Fox stuff.

Patton, for instance, if Disney does it right it will definitely sell.

This year also marks the 50th anniversary of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the only Fox film Disney agreed to keep out of the vault, solely because they feared an angry mob coming for them. That would be a great 4K, but knowing Disney it either won’t happen, or it’ll be really screwed up if it does happen.

With the exception of at most ten titles (three of which were knocked way out of contention by James Cameron last year), 4Ks and Blu-rays aren’t going to be million-copy-sellers. We know that and so do they. But they’re still a case of “if you build it, we will come.” If they produce a quality release, we will buy it. If they phone it in, we’re not passing on it because we don’t want it, we’re passing on it because we don’t want what they did to it.

Just do movies right, and we’ll buy them. It’s easy.

Thank you! I called up Ma after I saw this announcement and she asked if I already had it. I said I’d get it pre-ordered as soon as it was available. She’s so thrilled. She doesn’t know 4K from Adam, but she’s pleased every time we watch it, in any format. You know, Julie Andrews has that quality, no matter what the film’s theme is (she’s done her fair share of other things besides family musicals) she always delivers and somehow she became part of the household along with some other figures (Hitchcock, DeNiro, Ellen Burstyn, Julie Christie, Natalie Wood, Pacino, Redford) while I was growing up. So this release, in whatever form it takes, is a cause of celebration for ma, and for the rest of the family.

Two, Disney’s MOD line, the DMC, had iffy quality but the worst part was how they chose to operate. They had more hoops than the hula hoop factory and more hurdles than the Olympics, and naturally I just turned to Fleabay to get the DMC films I needed to own. When one arm plus one leg to a scalper is a step up, that’s a problem.

If Disney relaunched DMC again, using the same formula that didn’t work last time, I’d tune right out again.

Some statement (How may I put it)

>Roadshow, GRV and Rough Cut
A: I expect the Main viewing feature to be Roadshow
B: General Release Version is imitated on the Korean LaserDisc [SLC-601F]
C: I’d refer this as the “Preview Version” for ease, since there was a screening at selected cities on Oklahoma and Minnesota on January 15-16, 1965. Its not something I would call a main viewing feature. I would have a better time to watch the scenes (from that version) separately via bonus features, rather than re-inserted to the main feature.

>Mono, 35mm (DTS-HDMA or PCM 2.0) I couldn’t find any traces of a Mono mix, just 6-Track and 4-Track mixes (historically speaking):
Here is my audio mix ranking sorted from the worst to best sounding mix (from what my ears can read):

4: 2010 “45th” AE/2015 “50th AE” BDs [Third Mix]: 7.1/5.1
Note: The 4.0 is a Downmix of the 7.1/5.1 mix, with the Apron Slap (just before Main Titles) having been a tad reduced in volume.

3: 2005 “40th AE” Fox DVD [Second Mix]: 5.0 Surround
2: 2000 “5-Star” Fox DVD [Original Mix (probably the same as the 1994 30th AE/1996 AC-3 5.1 Fox Video LD, I haven’t found out yet.)]: 4.1 Surround
1: 1989 CBS/Fox Video LD (loses the Todd-AO) [Original Mix (not sure if it’s taken from the 4-Track Mix, since the Todd-AO titles are absent from this edition)]: 2.0 Stereo

Note: All editions retain the Apron Slap but the best sounding slap of the lot, so far is the 1989 CBS/Fox Video LD.

Extras:

>The various retrospectives, interviews, and documentaries created over the years that never made it to video.
I’m pretty confident BVHE should port the 2010 extras and the 2015 “Return to Salzburg documentary” however, I’d keep my 45th AE BD to retain the “BD-Live Exclusive: Laura Benanti on The Sound of Music” in case if the new UHD dosen’t port over this extra, as well as the 2005 Fox DVD for Restoration Comparison and A&E Biography Episode of Von Trapp
Note: The 1990 CBS/Fox Video “Silver Anniversary Edition” VHS contains an Exclusive “Interview with Director Robert Wise” not found on other Home Video releases (AFAIK)

>20/20 did one episode on the film, and ABC News did a non-20/20 special on the film too.: The One with Diane Sawyer?
To further add a goodie up its sleeve “The Saga of a Screenplay” to the stills gallery category (or a pdf) [previously came with the 30th AE LD]

>CDs: complete film soundtrack
If successful, just grab the “My Favorite Things (Reprise) – [Instrumental]” (not found on the 4-Disc Deluxe Edition Concord CD) from the Robert Wise Commentary/Music & Effects for completeness sake and you should be good.

I rest my case.
– David 🙂

I see no evidence whatsoever of physical media dying.

I see mountains of evidence of Disney especially, and the other five to a lesser extent, trying with all their might to kill physical media.

The Willow, Moana 2 and Mufasa Steels at $66 each are exhibits 14,853,674, 14,853,675, and 14,853,676 on how Disney is still giving the shaft to the millions of customers – physical media customers and customers overall – who literally saved their ass time and time again from the time Walt died onwards.

Many people don’t know the reason the Jungle Book 67-Little Mermaid 89 years was called the Dark Age (some have taken to calling it the First Dark Age) is because not only had their namesake passed away followed by many of his family, trusted associates, and of course most of the Nine Old Men, but also their leadership was terrible (on his first day, Michael Eisner announced how proud he was to work for the studio who created Mighty Mouse); they were endlessly cranking out bombs (more frequently and more numerous than today, surprisingly); none of their films, OAC or not, were classics on arrival (though many attained classic status decades after the fact); bad decisions were being made wholesale (the ideas of the new people who didn’t know their ass from second base took precedence over the ideas of the old people who knew what the hell they were doing); the films that made a profit weren’t making bank, they were keeping the lights on (basically what MGM is today); their bombs were insane (The Black Cauldron was, at the time, the second biggest bomb in American history, behind only Heaven’s Gate); they fended off several hostile takeover attempts (many wanted the catalog: while we’d have the films we love, we also WOULDN’T have many other films we love); a buyout by MCA was within inches of happening (that guy had more hubris than the Disney brass, if you can believe it); every time they turned around, they were in danger of bankruptcy; and when they went all-in on TLM 89, if that film would’ve failed, Disney as a whole would no longer exist.

Hence why that “Dark Age” gets referred to as the “First Dark Age”. Because we’re now dealing with another one. Bombs, bad management, people who have no clue what they’re doing, no quality people left around, people who don’t know the Disney legacy, none of the Disney family in leadership roles, and I have a feeling that one day they’re going to create that one big bomb that does the company in. A title like Heaven’s Gate or Cutthroat Island or Cleopatra where just by saying it, you already know you’re talking about a bomb of such magnitude that it shakes the industry.

We’ve basically been saving them since 1966, going to their movies, watching their TV shows, buying their products, especially buying their movies on almost every home video format ever, and now this. If enough schmucks buy these at $66 (they won’t but I’m saying if), that means $66 for a movie is kosher, and they’ll do it again. If no one pays out the wazoo for these (ain’t nobody gonna pay $66), then they can say these don’t sell.

Either way, Disney wins and we get screwed.

Big difference.

One means it’s the end of the line. Format-wise, we know many of the titles: Mission: Impossible, A History Of Violence, Tokyo Raiders, Memories Of VideoDisc, Freedom: 6, even over in music we know Fleetwood Mac’s Greatest Hits. A title like that means the death of a format.

We have not seen that yet.

In all the formats that died though, we watched the people putting them out put less and less effort into them, almost like they were encouraging people to jump ship. When they were trying to kill vinyl and cassette (which worked for a while before they roared back), an album that was expected to be the biggest of the year, if not of all time, was released with one song missing on most copies, and that song present on the CD. The song was “Leave Me Alone”, and the album was “Bad”. It wasn’t an instant death blow, one release never is, but it delivered the message: “This is the future we’ve chosen, you’re gonna adapt, or you’re gonna get dragged through the mud for refusing to catch up with us.”

When Beta was dying, many new releases simply wouldn’t get a release, meaning you either got the VHS or did without. When the last Beta, Mission: Impossible, was made, it was made after several notable incidents at the third-party manufacturer. One, tapes were being ordered in single-digit or double-digit quantities, not the thousands, tens of thousands, or more that VHS tapes were being ordered in. Two, the manufacturer put out an order that they would only do tapes in batches of 20, because they were frequently selling less than that on their Beta movies, meaning that every Beta for years had lost money. Three, they went through several months with no orders whatsoever coming in. And four, when the order for Mission: Impossible came in, it was for one batch of 20 Beta tapes to one store. They pulled the plug right there.

From 1999 (The Matrix) onwards, VHS tapes had little effort put into them despite them being very high quality, had very poor film that easily jammed, kinked, or wore out, and over time they had less and less selection and less and less copies made. Slowly but surely, people stopped pressing tapes. When WB mass-produced A History Of Violence, and proceeded to sell very few of them (most sealed copies have stickers from various dollar stores and discount stores – how’d that happen?), they became the last to pull the plug on the format, and the rest of the tapes over the next 3-4 years were all made in small quantities or by niche/PD distributors.

I see a significant number of the titles with bad transfers, poor QC, and almost intentional levels of inferiority coming from Disney. Pirates Of The Caribbean, the Camerons, and several of their Marvel releases all give the impression that Disney has no desire to truly invest money, resources, or effort into their product. That or they want us to jump ship.

I see it at the other five too, but Disney outclasses them all.

Take Pirates for example. Disney could, if they wanted to and had to, spent millions to overhaul that movie and make it the best 4K it could be under the circumstances. It was an abject disaster. Compare it against something that Vinegar Syndrome or Severin or Blue Underground did, likely with 10% of the budget and manpower as Pirates had, and yet the end result was a reference disc.

Disney just stopping their discs won’t end us buying discs. It’ll end us buying discs of their movies. Disney pissing people off one customer at a time will stop people buying discs, because a significant portion of people take a look at Disney’s discs, erroneously conclude that they’re representative of the format as a whole, and jump ship and just go full streaming. The MCU movies, Heat, the JC discs, and Pirates are frequently referenced in the oft-repeated complaint, “4K is awful/terrible/weak/not worth it/pick whatever word you want, just look at that disc, the colors were bad, the HDR was terrible, it was so dark, the Atmos was weak, honestly since they’re all that bad I’ll just go with streaming.” It’s completely wrong, but that’s seriously what a lot of people believe.

Given the money Disney has, the people they have, and the level of quality I’ve seen in the past, there’s no way this massive dip in quality could be anything other than intentional, with the goal to make so many people go full streaming that the industry collapses as a whole. Disney is still under the delusion that if streaming were the only option, then Disney+ would magically start flourishing at the level that physical media has flourished for 50 years now.

Not on 4K:
Metropolis
Gone With The Wind
Fantasia
For Whom The Bell Tolls
Samson And Delilah
Quo Vadis
The Robe
A Star Is Born
Oklahoma!
The King And I
War And Peace (1956)
Ben-Hur
The Alamo (the disc is region locked though)
West Side Story
King Of Kings (1961)
Mutiny On The Bounty
The Counterfeit Traitor
The Longest Day
Sodom And Gomorrah (anyone got caps and reviews of that?)
Cleopatra
It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
Doctor Zhivago
The Greatest Story Ever Told
Battle Of The Bulge
Hawaii
The Hallelujah Trail
The Bible: In The Beginning…
Khartoum
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
War And Peace (1968)
The Wild Bunch
The Damned
Woodstock
Fiddler On The Roof
Camelot
Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia
Barry Lyndon
Heaven’s Gate
The Bounty
A Passage To India
Baraka
Gettysburg
Gods And Generals
Samsara

Still not on Blu-ray:
Around The World In 80 Days
El Cid
The Fall Of The Roman Empire
The Happiest Millionaire (anyone know who owns that one?)
Ryan’s Daughter
The Devils
The Unbearable Lightness Of Being
At Play In The Fields Of The Lord

Not even on DVD:
Greed
Raintree County
The Godfather Saga/Epic (does that count?)

Ain’t nobody got any copies of it:
Porgy & Bess
Inchon

So there’s definitely a lot of gaps in the epics on 4K collection.

Not on 4K:
Fantasia
The Robe
Oklahoma!
The King And I
West Side Story (I heard years ago that Fox may have bought this outright, and those rights went to Disney…I’m pretty sure someone posted a response to me too saying that was wrong…anyone?)
The Longest Day
Sodom And Gomorrah (either US rights only or outright, and I’m still waiting on caps)
Cleopatra
The Bible: In The Beginning…

Not on 4K or Blu-ray:
The Happiest Millionaire (from what I heard, Disney was pretty pissed that Anchor Bay released the roadshow version, and initially swore on a stack of Bibles that only the theatrical cut existed)

Plus the likely several dozen if not over a hundred films other users have mentioned in this thread.

One day, if someone doesn’t beet me to it, I’ll have to count to see exactly how many Disney things have left the house of mouse since the Fox deal closed, and how many catalog titles have gotten out since then, since between the deal closing and Disney+ launching, that’s when Disney went full dickhead on all of us. I’d be shocked if I can put a combined 20 releases together.

Speaking of The Robe

Not on 4K UHD:

Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954) [recently restored by Cineric and Disney]
The Sand Pebbles (1966) [General Release Version] (as the Roadshow is difficult to restore from 35mm elements, since a 70mm Blow-up print was rediscovered, back then.)
Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970)

Not on BD:

Cheyenne Autumn (1964) [The Exit Music can be found on the Intrada Records 2-CD labeled as “Going Home [Exit]”. The 2006 Master on DVD covers the interstitial with a modern WB logo]
Star! (1968) [Intermission/Entr’acte and Extended Cast Credits (after end titles fade out) are omitted from the 2004 DVD. The as well as presenting the newsreel sections in sepia instead of white)
Darling Lili (1970) [147 min Roadshow Version (if one includes the Intermission/Entr’acte, found on Quartet Records CD not present on Home Videos)

Not on Home Video (Ain’t nobody got any copies of it):

Bernardine (1957)
A Certain Smile (1958)
John Goldfarb, Please Come Home! (1965)
HealtH (1980) [I believe Criterion could be feeling up to the job since they are qualified into releasing Robert Altman titles on BD]

Obviously the negative survives in 35mm, but what gauge does the print survive in?

Both 35mm and 70mm can be restored rather easily, unless there’s something seriously wrong with the elements.

Even a film like Raintree County, a film with horrendous elements split across two film formats, is still salvageable, and can be scanned and restored, despite a mountain of hoopla insisting that it’s neither salvageable, able to be scanned, nor able to be restored.

I have no reason to believe that the surviving elements of The Sand Pebbles couldn’t also be scanned, if Disney chose to scan them.