T's one of the tough ones, I tell'ya! The Japanese disc is excessively bright, washing out the details (notice e.g. the cross-hatching lines), on the other hand, Track Media's transfer, while showing more picture all around, is way too dark, obscuring the details for a change. It's like choosing between two evils... :-P

Whereas the first title in the "Karel Zeman Film Club" - "Journey to Prehistory" - was only a so-so improvement on the previous editions, "The Fabulous World of Jules Verne" easily beats the Japanese (overly bright) and the Spanish (too dark) releases hands down; also in terms of detail, they're not a patch on the Museum's DVD. So far so good...

But... Why does there always have to be a "but"? ;-( Firstly, the encode of this 1.37:1 film is anamorphically enhanced (I won't go into detail - see my note here). Next, although Museum's source elements were clearly in a much better shape than what Broadway and Track Media got, short snippets of footage are inexplicably missing here and there:

More importantly, there's one whole scene (11 seconds exactly) missing @ 38:14 - it shows the professor looking at a clock with a Nazi insignia-like bird "perching" on top of it (perhaps that's why it was removed; note: on the right, a JavaScript animation).

Edit: I double-checked the Japanese DVD - it also starts with the altered title card (see below), and the scene is missing there too.

As a side note, this "cut"... element (OCN? The box blurb "Scanned for the first time from original film elements" seems to imply that the OCN was used) could have been "made" after the film had been screened and won the Grand Prix at Expo 58 in Brussels - a fact supported by the updated opening title card (followed by a hard cut to the film's title as opposed to the dissolve on the Spanish DVD):

   

Well, there you go - it's not perfect, but it's still miles ahead of the competition (the fact that it's completely English-friendly being a not insignificant part of it). So, I can't but recommend this DVD to all Karel Zeman fans out there!

Oh, and a little titbit for the end - I really appreciate the Museum's copyright warning screen:



For some strange reason, it doesn't piss me off at all, unlike the usual crap:

Nothing untoward to report here - similarly to "Journey to Prehistory," we see a tad more picture at the top and the bottom of the frame, the DVD and the BD this time match in terms of contrast / brightness, and the upped resolution helps preserve some extra detail in the more finely drawn areas. That's it - nothing more, nothing less...

"The Fabulous World of Jules Verne" has recently undergone a full-blown 4K restoration as part of a joint project of The Czech Film Foundation, Karel Zeman Museum & Czech Television. World première of the new resto was held at this year's Karlovy Vary International Film Festival - at the same time, the film aired on the Czech TV channel 2.

Note that due to the broadcast's poor bitrate, the screenshots in our gallery are not to be taken as representative of the restored film's actual picture quality.