Discount Yellow Submarine (1968)

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"Yellow Submarine" surfaces with a sharp, colorful presentation for Blu-ray. The 4K restoration for the film looks brilliant and is a huge upgrade when compared to the original 1999 DVD. I haven't seen the DVD remastered edition of this put out at the same time but I would imagine it uses the same high def source. The painstaking restoration for the film is evident in just about every frame which is brimming with more a sharper, more detailed image and colors that positively pop.

The Beatles (none of the band provided their own voices) are recruited to help overthrow the Blue Meanies when they take over Pepperland by Fred who is going to transport the Fab Four in his Yellow Submarine. Things go awry along the way as Ringo gets launched out of the sub, they meet Jeremy a Nowhere Man who finds helps them free Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band from being kept captive by the music hating Blue Meanies. A truly surreal adventure as Jon Lassiter points out in his introduction in the booklet, "Yellow Submarine" truly was revolutionary in its day and still looks dazzling.

Image quality is top notch with a painstakingly restored image filled with sharper images than previously seen. The film probably has never looked this good even when it was shown in 1968 as film development and projection techniques weren't quite as good back in 1968. In fact restoration efforts can often reveal flaws in a film as the resolution is so much better than before. The aspect ratio returns the film to its original 1.66:1 presentation (vs. 1.68:1 for the previous DVD and 1.33:1 for the VHS as I recall).

The lossless audio is marvelous sounding.

The special features include a 16 page booklet with behind-the-scenes photos and comments, mini-seri-cels (that resemble the animation cels although smaller and with each Beatle in one of the iconic moments from the film)of each of the four Beatles and stickers. Audio Commentary by John Coates and additional contribution by Heinz Edelmann

Vintage featurette: The Mod Odyssey (7:40), we also get three storyboarded sequences including two not used in the final film:* Sea of Monsters (4:21),Battle of the Monsters (Interactive), Pepperland (Interactive),Original pencil drawings (8:33), Behind-the-scenes photo gallery as well as interviews with crew and vocal talents: Paul Angelis (voice) (1:39), John Clive (voice) (2:04), David Livesey (key animation) 1:13, Millicent MacMillan (1:14), Jack Stokes (3:44), Eric Segal (1:38), Theatrical Trailer (3:45)

Plus:

16 page booklet, reproductions of animation cells of each of the four Beatles characters + stickers

Missing is the music only audio track that was on the previous DVD which is too bad but we do get the original mono soundtrack as well plus a stereo PCM mastered track.

This is a terrific reissue that is flawed only by missing the original music only track in 5.1 like the original DVD. It would also have been nice if the MTV Special (or was it VH1?) that was shown back in 1999 had been included or the BBC documentary but evidently Apple chose not to license either for this release. Even though it doesn't have everything it could have, this is highly recommended due to the stellar image and sound quality.

Highly recommended.

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This is an excellent transfer of the film. I've owned the VHS version, the DVD, and now the Blu-ray. Without question the Blu-ray with its remastered video is a revelation. Colors are better, the picture is the sharpest its ever been and the music is well, still the Beatles which means if you're a fan it's a no-brainer. This is the same version as the DVD which means it includes "Hey Bulldog" and a few other minor changes from the VHS release. The audio is available in both a new HD surround track or the original film version.

The movie itself is very simple but wonderfully weird as it involves freeing Pepperland from the clutches of the "Blue Meanies", with numerous Beatles songs along the way. If you like the Beatles, psychedelic animation, or cultural artifacts from the 1960's this is a great buy.

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This new 2012 DVD release of Yellow Submarine is advertised as having been lovingly restored frame by frame to ensure the best picture quality since it was first shown in theaters so many years ago. As for the movie itself, if you're a Beatles or animation fan (or hopefully both) and have never seen this film then you owe it to yourself to do so. The Peter Max-esque artwork is spectacular fantasy fun, the script is highly amusing, and the Beatles music chosen for the film sounds as good today as when it was new. Though the Beatles had little to do directly with the film and their voices are impersonated till the live footage of them singing recorded for the end of the film their sensibilities are all over this project and they did compose three new (at the time) songs for the film, all of them terrific. I can't recommend this movie enough and it's very "family friendly" if you are looking for something fantastic to enthrall your children and introduce them to the music of the Beatles. I saw it in the theater when I was a small child and jumped on buying it on VHS when it was first released. That VHS copy of Yellow Submarine was the most watched movie in our house when our son was very young and I never got tired of it no matter how many times he wanted to watch it. A good thing since he watched it countless times. Now I'm looking forward to this newly restored version on DVD.

According to announcements on The Beatles' official website the film has been restored in 4K digital resolution by Paul Rutan Jr. and his team of specialists at Triage Motion Picture Services and Eque Inc. Since the hand-drawn original artwork is quite delicate they have used no automated software in the digital clean-up of the film's restored photochemical elements. All the work was all done by hand, frame by frame.

Bonus features for the Yellow Submarine DVD and Blu-ray include a short making-of documentary titled "Mod Odyssey" (TRT: 7:30), the original Yellow Submarine theatrical trailer, audio commentary with producer John Coates and art director Heinz Edelmann, some brief interview clips with other people associated with the film, storyboard sequences, 29 original pencil drawings plus 30 behind-the-scenes photos. Both Digipak sets will include reproductions of animation cels from the film, collectible stickers, and a 16-page booklet with a new essay by Yellow Submarine aficionado John Lasseter (Chief Creative Officer, Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios).

Honest reviews on Yellow Submarine (1968)

This is a review of the 2012 Blu-Ray release of Yellow Submarine, not a movie review (you can find those elsewhere all over the web). This is the complete movie, as was the 1999 release. Just to compare; this release was visually at least as much of an improvement over the 1999 release as that release was over all of it's predecessors, if not more. Not surprising since the entire film was cleaned and repaired manually cell by cell.

MOVIE VIDEO: The picture is so nice it is hard to believe. Having only seen the movie on the various home video releases over the last 25 or so years, I have never seen this movie look this good. I know how bright the colors in various stills and even the 1968 comic book were, but I had no idea that the movie colors actually matched or even surpassed that vividness. All of the animation looked perfect. The only flaws I could find (specifically looking for flaws, that is) were a very few occasional wobbles in some standing images and the only light pixilation on the entire disk was during the gradient fade up from black during sunrise in Liverpool leading into Eleanor Rigby. To me, that is absolutely acceptable. The actual Beatle footage at he end was still a bit grainy, but I consider that to be very acceptable as well. There is only so much that can be done with poor quality filmstock of live action, at least at this time, and this portion still looks just fantastic compared to any other release of Yellow Submarine.

MOVIE AUDIO: The 5.1 and mono mixes themselves sound exactly the same as the 1999 release, but both are now lossless audio. I don't know if they did any new tweaking or reworking for this release or not, but it sounds as grand as you would expect a Beatles product to sound, and both sound very clean and crisp. I have not listened to the running movie commentary at all yet.

BONUS FEATURES: All of the 1999 release features are here. The interview footage looks pretty poor, having been recorded on video in the pre-HD days. However; all of the bonus feature animation footage, including the entire original trailer and all the animation in the "Mod Odyssey" documentary, has been cleaned so the quality matches that of the movie. As for new features; as listed on the packaging there are three storyboard sequences, two of which are alternate scenes from very early pre-production. This is especially nice because we can finally see the story around The Beatles riding the birds dropped clip that was in the above mentioned Mod Odyssey documentary. Sadly, that the snippet in Mod Odyssey seems to be the only existing footage of this, as no more was included here. There are also some original pencil drawings and behind the scenes photos which are interesting to fanatics like me.

PACKAGING: Cardboard digipack style packaging. I am not a fan of this style because it is so hard to keep these in good shape over time with normal handling and shelf-ware, but overall it does look very nice. Glad to have almost the original poster design back as the cover, but in person it looks a bit dark (not as clean and bright looking as the picture here on Amazon). Not a big deal to me, only making an observation, but it is very noticeable. The booklet is very nice with additional photos and artwork and some international poster art shown. There are also some reproduction cells of each of The Beatles and a small page of stickers. Very nice little extras for a standard edition.

OVERALL: if you are a fan of this movie, this is an unquestionable must for your collection. Unlike most re-releases, this is worth every cent of re-purchase.

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"Yellow Submarine" is without question my favorite animated movie of all time, and as Robert Zemeckis' mo-cap retool was 86'd it was gratifying to know that Apple was re-releasing the one and only "Sub." The visuals and sound are as good as ever. But what keeps me from giving this five stars is that it's the 1999 edition all over again, with the Beatles and Sgt. Pepper's band rubbing elbows and the "Hey Bulldog" sequence. The original take, last released to home video on October 20, 1987, had the first verse of "Baby You're A Rich Man" and a thirty second or so sequence of the Meanies' failed attempt to quash the boys' counterattack. Some good business sense would have been to include the sequence among the DVD's special features or as an alternate edition of the movie. On the other hip, it's got even more special features than the 1999 release, including an interview with co-scripter Erich Segal (who had been believed to be the movie's main writer--Jack Mendelsohn did the first approved screenplay and Segal was brought in to punch it up). For the kids of today who hadn't seen it yet, though, "Submarine" is a must.