The funs almost over.......sorta (1 Viewer)

[Ernest Rister]

Bambi: Platinum Edition

 

[Rob Gardiner]

Ernest,

Thank you!

When all the Looney Toons are out, and Walt Disney has no more Treasures for us, when Hitchcock's entire catalog is available (although the WB box bring us pretty close, doesn't it?), when all of Altman's great films including Short Cuts are available, maybe then the fun will end.

EDIT: some Fleischer animation wouldn't hurt either.

 

[DanRevill]

No...it just ushers in a new era of collecting - the post Star Wars era!

Hehe...On with La Dolce Vita!

 

[MatthewA]

TV shows are the most exciting for me now because it's not just one release for a show, but several releases.

Until Song of the South comes out the fun will not even be close to over.

 

[Ricardo C]

What's the alternative? Making SW a launch title back in 1997-98 and then having us on pins and needles waiting for a re-release, the way Titanic fans are? The guy wanted to wait until DVD hit critical mass, and even though it was a very long wait, we're getting top-notch transfers on a mature medium, and that makes it all worhtwhile to me.

 

[Ernest Rister]

Walt Disney Treasures: Song of the South
Walt Disney Treasures: The True Life Adventures - restored
Walt Disney Treasures: People and Places
Bambi: PE
Cinderella: PE
Lady in the Tramp: PE w/16x9 enhancement
The Jungle Book: PE
101 Dalmatians: PE
The Little Mermaid: PE

Rescuers Down Under: SE struck from original digital negative
Hunchback: SE struck from original digital negative

Fantasia: 1982 Irwin Kostal digital re-recording
The Black Cauldron: Uncut
Saludos Amigos:SE -- Uncut and Restored
The Three Caballeros: SE
Melody Time: SE -- Uncut and Restored

So Dear to My Heart
The Story of Robin Hood
The Sword and the Rose
Third Man on the Mountain
A Light in the Forest
Kidnapped
A Tiger Walks

The Happiest Millionaire: 16x9 enhancement
Journey of Natty Gann: Original Scope Version w/16x9 enhancement

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Oskar Fischinger: Complete Works

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Fleischer: Out of the Inkwell
Fleischer: Hunky and Spunky
Fleischer: Gulliver's Travels
Fleischer: The Complete Superman

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Iwerks: Complete Works 1930-1936

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The Complete Merrie Melodies
The Complete Looney Tunes

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The Complete Tom and Jerry

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The Complete TerryToons

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Rocky and Bullwinkle: Season 2 (and so on and so forth)

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The Pink Panther: The Freleng Years

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Jack and the Beanstalk

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Nosferatu: Original Uncut German Release Print
The Lost World: Original Uncut Release Print
Metropolis: Original Uncut Release Print
Greed: Original Director's Cut
King Kong: Original Director's Cut
Lost Horizon: Original Director's Cut
The Magnificent Ambersons: Original Director's Cut
Tales of the Gold Monkey
Automan
Manimal

(j/k on the last three -- seeing if anyone was paying attention)

 

[Steve...O]

No offense to Star Wars fans, but there are several items that are much more important to me:

Fox needs to release the restored Charlie Chan & Mr. Moto films

Paramount needs to release season sets of Perry Mason and Get Smart

There are several items from Warners I really want, but given their track record, I have no doubt Warners will come through in time.

Steve

 

[James Lambert]

I can see what Jeremy is saying in the original post. Once Star Wars has come out, the cult of DVD collecting is no longer a cult anymore. It has spread around the world and now everyone's grandparents have a little home theater set up. Now I know that this has been the case for quite some time now, but Star Wars is the last of the REALLY Big complaints about DVD. I can't see there being another catalog title that is as eagerly awaited by so many consumers. One remembers on Amazon when they had the list of most wanted titles to come to DVD, with Back to the Future, Godfather and Indiana Jones all losing to Star Wars. but what's the point of Amazon doing that now?

I do not mean to belittle any other film, King Kong, Magnificent Ambersons (though uncut! it's a bit unrealistic to want something that doesn't exist in any format) etc. are of course still wanted. For me a 4 disc Dawn of the Dead beats Star Wars any day of the week. But this is all a matter of taste. If they released the LOTR trilogy in cinemas, but refused to bring them to DVD for 6 years, there might be some comparison, but it didn't happen and won't happen to any film in the future! It is indeed the end of a DVD era! (bring on the originals)

 

[BarryR]

Wanted:

The definitive Betty Boop Collection in b & w!!!!!!

 

[SteveGon]

Hey, I liked Tales of the Gold Monkey!


I'll be picking up the SW trilogy of course, but I'm more anxiously awaiting:

Voyager
The Reflecting Skin
Iceman
Before the Rain
White Heat

Thankfully my must-have-on-DVD list has been pared down since I got an all-region player.

 

[Paul_Scott]

you won't find me agreeing with Ricardo very often- but there is something to what he is saying here- and it applies to more than just SW.
there are quite a few discs in my collection that make me glad they took a while to come out.
because when i look back at some of the early James Bond discs, or some of the early non-anamorphic criterions, or the Fox Rogers & Hammersteins, or Outland, or any number of other discs put out in the first few years- some of these are borderline unwatchable on a large display now...in other words, they may as well not be in my collection at all for all the good they do me- and since they are already out, its going to be quite a while before the studio finds a need to remaster them.
if they ever do.

as much as the wait sucks sometimes, i can't help but feel that it has only benefited some of my faovrite titles-
better compression, better mastering, better authoring/encoding, better price points...

 

[Rob Gardiner]

[OFFTOPIC]

Ernest,

I wasn't aware The Black Cauldron had been cut. Could you fill us in with some details?

I also wasn't aware there was a call for the re-recorded Fantasia.

Oh, and you forgot to add to your list a 16:9 SE of The Cat from Outer Space.

[/OFFTOPIC]

 

[Dean Kousoulas]

The fun will never end for me. Every week I seem to discover a film I either never knew existed or didn't think I would like.

I also got a ton of TV shows on DVD to collect. Other then Star Wars, my most anticipated releases are the final seasons of HBO's OZ (DVD is my first time viewing the show)

 

[Andy Anderson]

Hmm. At the top of my want list is Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet, and an Anamorphically enhanced Office Space.

Star Wars was very high on the list, but the SE's don't interest me much. We'll see, though. I'm sure they'll be added to my collection eventually, but I certainly won't be in line on release day.

 

[Sean A]

There's so much that I want that's not available yet (The Conformist, Reds, Ryan's Daughter, Mutiny on the Bounty 62, for starters) , and so many things that my limited budget did not allow me to pick up yet, that I don't think I'll ever be truly jaded or satisfied.

And that's not even counting music -related titles that are still not out (Sign o the times, Ladies and Gentlemen the Rolling Stones, The TAMI Show, Shindig, Later with Jools Holland, Night Music with David Sanborn )

 

[Rob Gardiner]

How about the Japanese VENTURES film Beloved Invaders.

 

[Mark Oates]

Some days, I think the fun never started with DVD. Other days I'm full of the joys of spring about them. There's always something interesting on the horizon, and there's always something coming along that makes me wonder why they're scraping the barrel at this point.

As for Star Wars, it's definitely a milestone in the DVD saga, but I'm looking forward to it with a kind of "about bl00dy time" air. GL's tarting the movies up does nothing for me, I could care less about the modifications or seeing the first film as seen in 1977. That doesn't mean I don't find GL's attitude to the people who maintain his lifestyle and enable him to fart around with his movies high-handed in the extreme.

So I'll get Star Wars on 20th Sept, and I'll do a bit of wallowing in nostalgia, but it isn't going to change my life. There are other things coming up between now and Xmas I'm looking forward to more.

 

[Ernest Rister]

"Ernest,

I wasn't aware The Black Cauldron had been cut. Could you fill us in with some details?

I also wasn't aware there was a call for the re-recorded Fantasia."

The short version of the story is that The Black Cauldron was nearly complete when then-new executive Jeffrey Katzenberg came on board the Disney ship. He saw the film and hated it, and took it upon himself to cut the movie in order to "relieve the darkness" of it. Roy Disney called him and asked him, "What are you doing?" "Trying to fix this mess." was the response. Katzenberg infamously then asked for the coverage on the film...as in the alternate takes of the scenes. This was animation, there were no alternate takes, there was no set, no actors being shot by a camera. Anyhoo, Katzenberg made (allegedly) anywhere from 2 to 4 minutes of cuts to the film, most notably during the climactic, violent attack of the Undead Cauldron-Born at the end. Katzenberg's cuts came so late in the game, there was no time to re-score the film, and so, to this day, when you watch the movie, you can "hear" the edits in the Cauldron-Born sequence. You can hear the tail end of a cymbal crash, for instance, after an editorial lift. For a good idea of how much got chopped out in these moments, get hold of Elmer Bernstein's Cauldron score and become familiar with it. His score for the rise of the Cauldron-Born is unedited and you can at least hear the full sequence. It should be noted, however, that people inside Disney have told me that we're really not missing too much. Few outside of Disney have ever seen the complete "pre-Katzenberg" version, and even though there is little hope that Cauldron would sudenly become a substantially-better film with the restoration of the Katzenberg edits, nevertheless, it would be a great thing to see the original intent of the filmmakers before their work was altered by a new studio exec.

As for Fantasia/1982 -- Fantasia is my favorite movie, and it was the 1982 Irwin Kostal/Tim Matheson version that served as my introduction to the film. I'm sure seeing it today would be like pouring lemon juice in my eyes, but it is part of the Fantasia history, and I'm a completionist, so, sure. I'd like to have it someday. The CD of the soundtrack was the 2nd CD I ever owned, and so I have some residual attatchment to it...even if it is the sonic equivalent of colorization.

 

[Chris Stainton]

Ernest,

It's funny that you say this because back in about 1987 or so I wanted to get my 1st classical cd. Not knowing much about classical music, this version was what I ordered from Columbia House. So when the film was re-issued in 1990 for it's 50th anniversary, the music just didn't seem right to me at first. After seeing the film now at least 30 times, I love the original score. When I am in the mood to listen to the cd though, I still grab the Kostal version much more often than the 1990 Stokowski one.

 

[Rob Gardiner]

Thanks for the info, Ernest.