Oh, Lion King see what you have done? The stunning success of Disney’s 3D version of The Lion King has awaken the mouse house. In the last three weeks they have given the 3D treatment to a bunch of Animated Fare – over 9 titles in the last 2 weeks (everything from Cars 2 to Bolt to Chicken Little are now in 3D). Normally, I’d scream double dip – but I love Disney Blu-rays and they seem to have this post conversion 3D thing down pact. Last week they updated Pixar’s Toy Story Collection – Toy Story 1, 2, and 3 are now in 3D and it looks pretty awesome!
Toy Story 3D
The quality of the 3D conversion on all three Toy Story sets are excellent. I’m not sure what Disney’s secret sauce is. Normally post conversion looks like garbage, but their recent releases have all looked fantastic. It may be due to the nature of the computer animation being in “3D” anyway helps. Again it looks better with my Panasonic Active 3D than it does on my Vizio Passive 3D set, but I find passive glasses to be more comfortable and worth the sacrifice of a some pixels. The picture is so sharp and clean that it became almost “too perfect” and “glossy.” This, at times, made the world look really “artificial,” which I know is a weird thing to say about an animated movie. If you own the original set, it’s not worth upgrading to 3D as the 2D version already offers a really rich, immersive experience.
All three movies also hold similar extras – a full set of featurettes, commentary tracks, beautiful audio and picture quality. The review below is from my review of the non-3D’fied Toy Story 3 Blu-ray release. Everything I said last year about this Blu-ray still holds, the new collection is exactly the same as last year’s release only with the addition of the 3D version of the movie and it is still a must own collection for folks with 3D TVs.
Toy Story 3 Original Blu-ray Review
What happened? August and September were really quiet months for Blu-ray releases, now it’s the beginning of November and in the last three weeks I’ve been swamped with incredible Blu-ray releases that I have to wade through. Yeah, I know it sucks to be me. Disney Pixar’sToy Story 3 is probably the best Blu-ray release of 2010 (that is until I get a chance to look at the rest of this large stack on my desk), so I’ll hedge my bets by saying it’s one of the best of 2010.
What gives it the edge is that not only is it a brilliant Blu-ray, with reference quality picture and sound but it happens to be one of the top 4 movies of the year – I still say How to Train a Dragon is the best animated film of 2010 but Toy Story 3 is right up there. I’ll admit to never being a huge fan of the first one and don’t remember much about the 2nd, but the third installment was a perfect way to close this trilogy – and I sincerely hope they don’t make a fourth film because it’ll “dilute” the emotional punch the ending of Toy Story 3 has. But who am I kidding it’s Disney, of course there will be another one, or straight to video adventures.
Picture and Sound
I use a Sony Sound Bar (I know, I’ll get a 7.1 Surround this Christmas) and I can’t complain. The audio is clear, clean. Usually Disney includes a ton of different language choices on their Blu-rays but here it’s only English, French and Spanish. The Audio format is DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 and DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 ES.
There is a new mode called Descriptive English that Disney has been experimenting with on recent Blu-ray releases where they actually describe what’s going on the screen – I’m assuming this mode is meant for the blind. It’s extremely well done and makes you feel like you are listening to an audio book. I wish there was a legal way rip that track and put it on my iPod. There’s not much to say about the picture other than it is gorgeous and probably about as sharp and clear as a picture can possibly get.
The Disc comes with a Home Theater Calibration Mode! There are very few Blu-rays that come with this feature and a Home Theater Calibration Disc can set you back $20 alone (I paid $40 a few years ago), so Toy Story 3 is worth the price of admission just to get this feature!
Presentation
This disc comes in Disney’s combo packaging, which means it comes in every format you would want including Blu-ray, DVD, and DisneyFile Copy. You will never hear me complain about getting a movie in package like this. I purchase this thing once and I can use it on just about any of my devices, you just can’t beat that. Other than that, there’s nothing remarkable about the packaging itself or the box art. The Menu Navigation is about what you would expect from a Disney Pixar movie, “busy” and “cluttered,” but not as most other Disney Blu-rays.
It’s odd because Disc One contains the full movie and Disc Two contains the full movie with the Cine Explore mode, not sure why they didn’t just put Cine Explore on Disc one.
Extras
The Blu-ray release includes the Short Day and Night, I know a lot of people absolutely love and adore the Pixar Shorts; I’m not one of them. I find them to usually be kind of pointless exercises in experimentation. When I’m in the theater, I’m a “let’s get to the movie already,” person. There are numerous featurettes including Toys a 7 minute look at all the toys in the film, full length commentary tracks and Disney’s Picture n Picture experience called Cine-Explore, and several commercials. All of the Featurettes are in full HD. As a personal thing, it would have been kind of cool if they included footage from our WonderCon pressor.
There’s a mode on Disc Two called Fast Play that lets you customize your playback settings – everything from whether or not the logo displays, to chapters, audio; almost everything. I love this feature.
Previews
- Disney Blu-ray 3D Trailer
- Tangled
- Bambi
- Cars – Mater’s Tall Tale
Conclusion
Yes, I’m a Disney Blu-ray fan girl. They rarely disappoint and it is only fitting that one of the best films of 2010 gets the Blu-ray treatment that it deserves. Toy Story 3 is easily one of the best Blu-rays of 2010.
Final Grade
- Movie Grade – A
- Picture and Sound – A+
- Presentation – A
- Extras – A
Final Grade – A+
EM Review by
Michelle Alexandria
Originally posted 11.07.2010