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If the artifacts didn't bother moviegoers at the time, they shouldn't really bother us in the present. Her looks and voice in "Pick a little" really steal the show, as she does in other scenes she's in.It's hard not to enjoy such a high-spirited musical as this, end even harder not to like it in Blu-Ray. I don't mean just a little ghost line to the right, but also to the left. A couple of hours well spent. The previous DVD releases of The Music Man were basically OK in terms of sound, color, brightness, and contrast.
And for me, a new appreciation of Hermione Gingold as Ms. My guess is that it was transferred using a 19" monitor from a distance of a couple of feet, where the enhancement wouldn't be as noticeable.Fortunately all this video gunk is corrected in teh Blu-Ray addition. Eulalie Shinn. A real gem. Little glitches like this are just part of the technology available at the time, and shouldn't be used to rate the movie.and I'm really not, just pointing out that seeing more can mean seeing more of the bad, as well as more than the good.Aside from little things like this which caught my eye - and don't really bother me - I hope you'll consider picking up the best release of an old favorite. I doubt it'll look better unless George Lucas gets involved in cleaning up the blue-screen artifacts.
But MY. The colors are bright, the sound noticeable better, and the movie just comes more alive in blu-ray.But - there always seems to be a flip side. And who knows what he'd feel like adding.Fun. Did they ever mess up the picture with edge enhancement. Improved sound, improved picture - what more could you want. But, what you see is what people saw in the theaters when it was released.
At times, the "enhancement" made it difficult to make out facial details on a large-screen TV. In this case it's noticeable in the opening train scene, where blue edges to people and slightly off masking at the windows clearly shows that it was shot against a blue screen.
Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/RG8KPXTO2KQZB I ramble and even cough a little, but I'll tell you all about some of the wonderful points to this movie, which I only just got for Christmas, after it was on my lists for a year or so.
We'd just seen a production of "Music Man Jr." and it brought back to mind our pleasure in the wonderful work. This is a classic.a favorite of a 50ish son and a gift for him. So, I got a copy for myself too.
His chief opposition is town librarian Marian Paroo (Shirley Jones), who thinks he's a "masher" or worse, so of course he has to try to romance and distract her. It's possible I'm operating from a subconscious prejudice with regard to this movie (my parents went to see the original Broadway version and walked out before the end of the first act), but I really couldn't bring myself to enjoy it as much as I probably should have. In the year 1912, a man (Robert Preston) who calls himself Prof. Maybe it just seems to be trying too hard (having been made well after either of them, in a day when, as Jones points out in her introduction, the studios just "weren't making the big flashy musicals any more" and perhaps had forgotten how to do it right).
And yet somehow I just don't seem to like this movie as much as I do Seven Brides for Seven Brothers or Meet Me In St. Louis (Two-Disc Special Edition). The costumes are wonderful and the library set particularly is charming. Jones's soaring soprano is another plus, and it's intriguing to see how, even with Queen Victoria 11 years in her grave, the small towns of America still lived heavily by Victorian codes, with an almost paranoid concentration on appearances and respectability.
His solution. He even does his bit to improve the place: by persuading the members of the School Board (the Buffalo Bills), who've been feuding for 20 years, to sing together in barbershop-quartet fashion, he defuses their rivalries; he engineers what may be the reformation of the local "wild kid," Tommy Djilas (Timmy Everett), and furthers his courtship of Zaneeta Shinn (Susan Luckey), daughter of the mayor (Paul Ford), who happens to own the pool table and so distrusts Hill, and his wife (Hermione Gingold), whom Hill recruits to the band's "dance committee."Of course the high point of the film is Preston recreating his original stage role; at 44 he still had a lot of zip, and his flamboyant style perfectly suits the con-artist character he plays. Playwright/composer Meredith Willson (who grew up in Mason City, IA, in the first two decades of the 20th Century, and played with John Philip Sousa's band) was clearly writing what he knew, and with more than 40 songs--twice or more what most musicals boast--plus several lively dance numbers, it may be the finest of the late MGM examples. But as he waits for the band equipment to arrive, he finds himself growing genuinely attached to her, her little brother Winthrop (Ronny Howard), and the town itself.
What the audience knows and the Iowans don't is that Hill (not his real name) is a con artist who can't read a note (although, to be fair, the instruments and uniforms do arrive as advertised). Harold Hill ("bandleaders are always called 'Professor'") comes to River City, IA, and soon persuades the citizens that the presence of a new pool table in their town (quite different, he insists, from a billiard table) is the first step on a slippery slope that will ruin their "innocent" sons and daughters, leading to "horse race gambling" and dancing to "shameless" ragtime music. "River City needs a boys' band"--for which he is conveniently prepared to order instruments, uniforms, and manuals.
The "76 Trombones" number is lots of fun. Thoroughly enjoyable DVD, with excellent color and excellent quality. Great musical. And it's fun to see Ron Howard as a little boy. I love the music in this musical. Robert Preston does an incredible job as the con man who comes to town to start a boy's band.
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