Some of the other Danny Kaye films I've seen were notable mainly for their intermittent gags. The extras here are nothing special either: just a brief retrospective from film critic Leonard Maltin and a trailer.īut the sparkling video here is only the icing on this absolutely classic film. Even in 1956, multichannel was widely used in premier productions. It's an adequate but unimpressive mono (2.0 but with the same audio on both tracks). The original film elements were also three-strip Technicolor—likely another factor in the Blu-ray's spectacular images. To produce this new Blu-ray release of The Court Jester the original film elements were scanned at 6K, then downconverted to 2K HD for the Blu-ray release. This reduced the primary benefit of VistaVision and, not incidentally, also saved money (running film horizontally through the camera used it up fast). ![]() Eventually the process was abandoned (apart from that ongoing use for special effects) when film with a finer grain structure became available. But practical issues kept it from being widely used in the full production chain from the set to the theater screen. The 35mm film was run through the gate horizontally, offering more real estate for each frame than the standard vertical orientation. The VistaVision process was originally designed to reduce the graininess of color film. It was used, for example, in the creation of the effects for some of the early Star Wars and Star Trek films when CGI wasn't yet a thing. It's long-since been dropped as a release format, but was sometimes employed for in-camera special effects created for non-VistaVision productions, particularly in the pre-CGI era. The movie was originally shot in VistaVision, a widescreen process used (mainly by Paramount) in the 1950s and 60s. A spanking new Blu-ray of the film has just been released in a video transfer nothing short of stunning. We passed on it that time around, but that old DVD has now taken its last spin. ![]() I had it on DVD, but I knew it looked good enough to satisfy non-critical viewers who likely also wouldn't be bothered by its 1950s mono sound. When fishing around for a film to show on a movie night with friends, before Covid-19 rudely interrupted, I recommended The Court Jester.
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