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How The Grinch Stole Christmas/Horton Hears A Who (Digitally Enhanced Edition)
Warner Bros. // Unrated
List Price: $19.98 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
I think Warner's recent re-release of the double feature "How The Grinch Stole Christmas/Horton Hears A Who" is (yikes!) the Grinch's fifth appearance on DVD. A record, maybe?
I'm sure everyone's seen these at least once, but just for the sake of completeness -- "How The Grinch Stole Christmas" features the heartless Grinch, fed up with the happiness of his fellow Whos, and he decides to see how joyful they'll be without the usual Christmas trappings. "Horton Hears A Who", Dr. Seuss' other collaboration with Chuck Jones, is about an elephant named Horton whose large ears allow him to hear voices coming from a dust speck, but the other jungle creatures think he's gone insane for talking to a piece of dust on a flower...
Video: I haven't seen MGM or Warner's previous "How The Grinch Stole Christmas" release, so I can't compare/contrast the quality of the rehashed Laserdisc transfer from the previous discs to the new transfer on this digitally enhanced release...but it didn't seem to suffer from the complaints I've read elsewhere about the colors appearing washed-out. "How The Grinch Stole Christmas" looks about as good as a 34-year-old made-for-TV animated feature reasonably can. The color of the Grinch occassionally changes within a single shot (look at the Grinch yelling at Max around 07:05-07:10, for instance), although that may be a problem with the source material. Also, sometimes there's a bit of 'pulsing' around some characters -- look at the way the background flickers around the Grinch when he first encounters Cindy-Lou Who. The primarily solid-color backgrounds often look slightly-overcompressed, and there's quite a bit of grain near the end, particularly right before the Whos come out and sing... Since this is a brand new transfer, I'm guessing this is the best it's going to look for at least another five or ten years. "Horton Hears A Who" is similarly colorful and looks better in most respects than "How The Grinch Stole Christmas". Both films look great considering their age and the likely condition of the source materials.
Audio: Both "How The Grinch Stole Christmas" and "Horton Hears A Who" have English, French, and Spanish audio tracks. "How The Grinch Stole Christmas" is in Dolby Digital mono and sounds rather nice, aside from much of Karloff's voice work as the Grinch, which sounds like it's being played over AM radio. I dunno...maybe that's intentional, since the effects, music, and narration (to a lesser extent) sound so rich. "Horton Hears A Who" was also originally in mono, but it got a much more impressive stereo remix here. The music is much more enveloping, and the voices and effects sound marginally better than "How The Grinch Stole Christmas".
Supplements: "How The Grinch Stole Christmas" has a slew of extras, my favorite being the Phil Hartman-hosted TNT 'special edition', featuring interviews with director Chuck Jones, Dr. Seuss' wife Eleanor Geisel, composer Albert Hague, vocalist Thurl Ravenscroft (who gets my vote for 'coolest name ever'), along with some Grinch-inspired folks, Tim Burton and Danny Elfman. The special focuses on every aspect of production, from the development of the screenplay to pencil tests to music to voices to sound effects...extremely comprehensive and very entertaining. Hague and Ravenscroft also have a segment of their own, "Songs in the Key of Grinch", going more in depth in the musical process than the TNT special. These two segments together run a couple minutes longer than the feature itself! Animator Phil Roman and the voice of Cindy Lou Who, June Foray, also contribute a commentary track. It's not a terribly informative commentary, mostly reminiscing and pointing out who animated which scenes, but it's worth listening to at least once. There are also a couple of pencil sketches, a brief trivia game, cast/crew bios, and song selections. On "Horton Hears A Who" (which I guess itself could be considered a supplement), there are also song selections and a handful of pencil tests.
Conclusion: These are probably the best presentations of "Horton Hears A Who" and "How The Grinch Stole Christmas" that we're likely to see... The number of features and the likelihood that this is the highest quality release of these two animated classics to date make this $19.99 MSRP pretty hard to pass up. Collector series, fer sure...
I'm sure everyone's seen these at least once, but just for the sake of completeness -- "How The Grinch Stole Christmas" features the heartless Grinch, fed up with the happiness of his fellow Whos, and he decides to see how joyful they'll be without the usual Christmas trappings. "Horton Hears A Who", Dr. Seuss' other collaboration with Chuck Jones, is about an elephant named Horton whose large ears allow him to hear voices coming from a dust speck, but the other jungle creatures think he's gone insane for talking to a piece of dust on a flower...
Video: I haven't seen MGM or Warner's previous "How The Grinch Stole Christmas" release, so I can't compare/contrast the quality of the rehashed Laserdisc transfer from the previous discs to the new transfer on this digitally enhanced release...but it didn't seem to suffer from the complaints I've read elsewhere about the colors appearing washed-out. "How The Grinch Stole Christmas" looks about as good as a 34-year-old made-for-TV animated feature reasonably can. The color of the Grinch occassionally changes within a single shot (look at the Grinch yelling at Max around 07:05-07:10, for instance), although that may be a problem with the source material. Also, sometimes there's a bit of 'pulsing' around some characters -- look at the way the background flickers around the Grinch when he first encounters Cindy-Lou Who. The primarily solid-color backgrounds often look slightly-overcompressed, and there's quite a bit of grain near the end, particularly right before the Whos come out and sing... Since this is a brand new transfer, I'm guessing this is the best it's going to look for at least another five or ten years. "Horton Hears A Who" is similarly colorful and looks better in most respects than "How The Grinch Stole Christmas". Both films look great considering their age and the likely condition of the source materials.
Audio: Both "How The Grinch Stole Christmas" and "Horton Hears A Who" have English, French, and Spanish audio tracks. "How The Grinch Stole Christmas" is in Dolby Digital mono and sounds rather nice, aside from much of Karloff's voice work as the Grinch, which sounds like it's being played over AM radio. I dunno...maybe that's intentional, since the effects, music, and narration (to a lesser extent) sound so rich. "Horton Hears A Who" was also originally in mono, but it got a much more impressive stereo remix here. The music is much more enveloping, and the voices and effects sound marginally better than "How The Grinch Stole Christmas".
Supplements: "How The Grinch Stole Christmas" has a slew of extras, my favorite being the Phil Hartman-hosted TNT 'special edition', featuring interviews with director Chuck Jones, Dr. Seuss' wife Eleanor Geisel, composer Albert Hague, vocalist Thurl Ravenscroft (who gets my vote for 'coolest name ever'), along with some Grinch-inspired folks, Tim Burton and Danny Elfman. The special focuses on every aspect of production, from the development of the screenplay to pencil tests to music to voices to sound effects...extremely comprehensive and very entertaining. Hague and Ravenscroft also have a segment of their own, "Songs in the Key of Grinch", going more in depth in the musical process than the TNT special. These two segments together run a couple minutes longer than the feature itself! Animator Phil Roman and the voice of Cindy Lou Who, June Foray, also contribute a commentary track. It's not a terribly informative commentary, mostly reminiscing and pointing out who animated which scenes, but it's worth listening to at least once. There are also a couple of pencil sketches, a brief trivia game, cast/crew bios, and song selections. On "Horton Hears A Who" (which I guess itself could be considered a supplement), there are also song selections and a handful of pencil tests.
Conclusion: These are probably the best presentations of "Horton Hears A Who" and "How The Grinch Stole Christmas" that we're likely to see... The number of features and the likelihood that this is the highest quality release of these two animated classics to date make this $19.99 MSRP pretty hard to pass up. Collector series, fer sure...
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