Popeye DVD early opinions

Well, the much-anticipated Popeye DVD doesn't officially come out until tomorrow, but it looks like a few people have already gotten their hands on a copy. At the Golden Age Cartoons forum, J. Lee posts some of his early observations:

I'm starting with Popeye, Vol. 1, Disc 1 and working through. Picture quality on "Popeye the Sailor" looks good, though they didn't go though the painstaking process of perfectly recreating the Paramount opening. The menu layout is similar to the ones for the LTGC -- no surprise there -- using still photos of the characters and the opening music bed to "I Eats Me Spinach" for the background.

Chris_1988 weighs in with a few of his opinions:

Packaging is good I like the popped out look of popeye on the front cover. Upon Opening I notice it is overlapping discs in the same packaging way as LTGC vol. 4. I like the screenshots along the middle of the interior of the set with descriptions of all that is on each of the 4 discs above and below the screenshot. I thought it was cute that they had an insert inside of a coupon for 25 cents off popeye spinach and 2 recipes for popeyes party pizzas, and popeyes party dip. ... As for the cartoons themselves I watched a few and the the picture and sound quality are great. I really like how you can see the details in the characters especially. the discs do open with a written disclaimer worded pretty much exactly like in LTGC vol 4.

At the Animation Show forum, Mrmcdermott shares some of his opinions on the DVD:

Sat up late Saturday, watching the first four of the cartoons with commentary. Everything looks totally spiffalicious. Highly doubtful one would see DVNR. I believe a frame in greyscale needs a lot less data than one in color. Everything I stillframed looked for all the world like it was shot from an original cel setup...

But wait! On "Blow Me Down!" On the scene where Olive is frantically dancing to dislodge two spittoons on her feet: One frame seems to show Olive with... NO EYEBROW! Oh, the humanity!

So there you go. Once tomorrow rolls around we should be seeing a lot more comments pop up on this DVD (I know I'll be picking up my copy).

John K talks Popeye

John K has posted some thoughts about Popeye on his blog, and why he thinks Popeye cartoons are so great:

I love Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Droopy and many other classic cartoon characters, but the series that is most consistently funny and inventive to me is the Fleischer Popeye cartoons. For a solid run of about 6 years, these cartoons are really fun, funny and inventive. And they glorify in their cartooniness.


He also talks about the upcoming DVD, and some of his qualms about the restoration of the colour cartoons:

I was doing a commentary on Sindbad and I kept screaming about the print, because it was neon pink, purple and turquoise and they kept swearing to me that that was not going to be the final print. They even showed me another one which looked totally different and had assorted colors in it. It seems that the My Little Pony version is the one on the dvd if these frame grabs are any indication.

Who knows, it's possible that those are the actual original colors, but it's very hard for me to believe that in 1936 there was a 12 year old girl who picked all the colors for such sophisticated cartoons.

Popeye DVD screengrabs -- wow

Jerry Beck has posted a couple of links to some screengrabs of the new Popeye DVD, both at his own Cartoon Research, and at Classic Cartoons. They are absolutely stunning.



Mark Mayerson comments:

If I didn’t know better, I’d think I was looking at the original art for cel and background set-ups. The clarity is really amazing.

Thad Komorowski agrees:

Wow. That’s really all I can think of to say seeing those framegrabs.

Of course, as with everything else, you can't please everyone. Bruce:

The black and white tunes look wonderful. However, I don’t like it how Popeye V.S. Sinbad The Sailor looks, but I can’t complain.

He doesn't elaborate, unfortunately, and I honestly have no idea what he's talking about. They look pretty darn spiffy to me, but then I'm not a Popeye expert or anything like that.

Popeye, DVNR. Yes or no?

ParamountCartoons93 asks if the new Popeye DVD will use DVNR. (Here's an explanation of what DVNR does to cartoons, for those who aren't sure). Jerry Beck quickly puts everyone at ease:

You are worried about nothing. They will be unedited. No DVNR. I promise. [The restorations] will blow you away.

He even posts an image from one of the cartoons to ease people's minds.



This backfires a bit. Dphirschler comments:

Based on the "action" frame posted, I see evidence of DVNR. You can see vague shadows of the previous frame in that one. That's the tell-tale sign.

Not everyone agrees, however. Thad Komorowski:

That frame doesn't have DVNR, that's the girl's sexy see-through outfit.

So it looks like the jury's still out on this one; we'll have to wait until the DVD actually comes out to know for sure.