sets. I was in a local store yesterday to see (and grab) the Original
complete Josie and the Pussycats series on DVD.
Now, I know there were more than just 16 episodes, and a search turned
up a mention of the JATP in Outer Space, which is the series I probably
remember. Sadly, there doesn't seem to be any plans to bring this to DVD
just yet. I hope it does happen, however...
This original series set is on 2 DVDs. One is Dual Layered, while the
other is Double Sided. This was to make sure they could include an extra
about Dan DeCarlo, the artist who drew Josie and related characters.
I don't exactly think much of double sided DVDs. I'd rather have an
extra single sided disk so we get nice silkscreen printed artwork on the
back. They could have done 3 disks, 6+5+5, and put extras on all the
disks!
As far as the mastering goes, I feel this was a rush job. When you load
the main menu, the music you hear that begins playing sounds like they
forgot to speed correct the content. In fact, you hear this problem
throughout the episodes, like someone had a really bad copy or the
playback equipment wasn't working right. It's a shame they didn't work
from restored film prints (must have been broadcast masters), because
there were bits of dirt and scratches as well. They must not have wanted
to spend the time and money to digitally remove these defects. A shame,
really.
And from what I read, there was an actual band they came up with for
JATP, and some records were released. So in addition to restoring the
video, the parts where the band's music was featured could have been
restored or remixed to include a stereo soundtrack. The whole thing is
in mono, which is a shame if they didn't keep all the original studio
voice recording.
The extra about Dan DeCarlo was very good, though the volume was lower
than the rest of the content.
$3 was a very fair price for this 2-disk set. Now if only the JATP in
Outer Space would get a nice restoration and release, I'd be happy.
Trailers on the 2nd disk included those for Popeye Vol.1 which does look
like they did some cleanup restoration. As a kid, I remember these
animated shorts being on local TV stations on cable, and after being run
so many times really showed their age. And another promo that caught my
eye was Tom and Jerry Vol.3. An exciting note is that while the promo
was not widescreen, they say the cartoons are presented in their
original letterboxed widescreen Cinemascope aspect. This is very
exciting to me because I've wondered for years what we were missing.
When they were on Cartoon Network, Tom & Jerry got a widescreen
letterboxed presentation for credits, but then they "descoped" it for
the actual cartoon. Seeing them letterboxed as they were first shown in
theaters would be a real treat. That promo really should have shown us
the difference to really appeal to fans.
Though I wonder if the Droopy animated shorts got a letterboxed
release...
As for criticisms on the Josie stories, I'll leave that up to others.
Yeah, I know they pale in comparison to the comic books or perhaps
anything you see in anime. It's the "retro" idea that shows like this
are being put on DVD at all! There are some we may never see again
unless they are run on TV for various legal reasons (artist compensation
and the full gamut of that stuff). ALF, for example, was released on DVD
but only by using a lot of the edited syndicated tapes. For some reason,
something happened to the original NBC broadcast masters. I'm glad I
have tapes of that. ^_^
No comments:
Post a Comment