AlexBC

Please, can anyone confirm whether international DVD versions of Fantasia are zoomed in or cleansed? (I have the anthology set, but I'd buy an international version too if it's unaltered)

Patrick McCart

Fantasia is a region 1-only title. However, it's been uncut on some European TV networks. So, there ARE video masters without censorship.

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Jay Pennington

I made the same mistake when I used that reference for an article I wrote for Animato! many years ago. Later, when I re-read that press kit, I found that it doesn't expressly state that the phone line transfer was a single mono mixdown. The wording of the press kit (which is NOT right in front of me at the moment) could be interpreted to mean that EACH Fantasound track was so dubbed individually. The point of that sentence was to identify the source of a hum that was present in the audio of every subsequent reissue (until 1990), so if they weren't too precise about the number of phone line transfers I can forgive them.

Granted, it STILL could be interpreted as a mono mixdown, but given the above, the 1990 press kit can't be relied upon to definitively nix the potential survival of discrete Fantasound tracks in some form.

-Jay

Damin J Toell

That must come as a surprise to all of the British citizens who have bought the R2 UK disc over the last 3 years (which, incidentally, is the same version as the US disc).

DJ

Patrick McCart

Whoops...

DVD Aficionado didn't list an R2 DVD, so I assumed there wasn't one.

Tell The Weinstein Company to release Richard Williams' animated masterpiece The Thief and the Cobbler on DVD in Panavision widescreen and uncut! See and hear what you're missing from their Bitsy Award winner of Worst Standard Edition DVD of 2006 on YouTube!

Charlie O.

So the region 2 DVD is cersored just like the region 1 DVD correct?

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Damin J Toell

Yes. From all reports, the R2/R4 releases are all the same version as the R1 release.

DJ

Ernest Rister

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No, you're absolutely right. I was a 20 year old college student when Fantasia was re-released in 1990, and I was not the most informed person on the face of the Earth on the subject of film audio. But for the last 13 years, my understanding of what happened to the original FantaSound tracks was shaped by what I understood from that information in that press kit. So the fault is most likely a combination of bad wording and a 20 year old not really understanding the full dimensions of what he was reading. So, I'm taking some of the blame. Besides, John Culhane's Fantasia explicity states in one sentence that the original tracks were mastered to stereo (not mono) in 1956, and I've had that book since I was 16.

Paul Penna

Not to be argumentative, but I do have to wonder about how carefully you guys who were misled by that press release ever listened to the soundtrack, either on the laserdisc or any of the audio-only releases? As I said before, being familiar with it for over 40 years, I've always know it to be true stereo, albeit highly unconventional in its movement of instruments and orchestral sections from channel to channel. That's why the first claims to the contrary that I saw (I think it was in a Usenet newsgroup message from Mr. Pennington, as a matter of fact) came as such a surprise, and prompted me to do that comparison I mentioned and to post my initial response at that time.

Ernest Rister

I own the first pressing of the Fantasia soundtrack on LP, as well as the 1970's re-issue on LP, as well as the 1982 digital score, on CD and LP. The extreme stereo pans on the old versions of the Stokowski soundtracks sounded like someone playing with a balance knob during the mastering process. I'm quite familiar with it.