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The Thief and the Cobbler (1 Viewer)

battlebeast

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Did you think Criterion would ever consider "The Theif and the Cobbler" by Richard Williams?

They could release "The Recobbled Cut", by filmmaker, artist, and fan of Williams's work Garrett Gilchrist, which is as close to his original vision as possible...

The film has an amazing 50 years of history, and is a masterpiece among animation. The director is still alive to aprove and do a commentary and or intervirews.

There are a treasure trove of bonus features, including "Persistence of Vision", a 2012 documentary by Kevin Schreck, about Richard Williams and the doomed production of The Thief and the Cobbler, which the film calls "the greatest animated film never made."

They could also do a feature on the controversy about it's comparrisons to Disney's Aladdin (or vice versa).

It would be amazing if Criterion could give this film the treatment it so richly deserves... having watched it on you tube, I can only hope this film gets a true release, and not the crap miramax released in 1995.
 

Mark-W

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This film has always intrigued me. I would buy if released in a director approved cut with the best available elements and any supplements that might make it the animated equivalent of the Brazil Blu-ray.
 

dana martin

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this would be an instant purchase
battlebeast said:
Did you think Criterion would ever consider "The Theif and the Cobbler" by Richard Williams?

They could release "The Recobbled Cut", by filmmaker, artist, and fan of Williams's work Garrett Gilchrist, which is as close to his original vision as possible...

The film has an amazing 50 years of history, and is a masterpiece among animation. The director is still alive to aprove and do a commentary and or intervirews.

There are a treasure trove of bonus features, including "Persistence of Vision", a 2012 documentary by Kevin Schreck, about Richard Williams and the doomed production of The Thief and the Cobbler, which the film calls "the greatest animated film never made."

They could also do a feature on the controversy about it's comparrisons to Disney's Aladdin (or vice versa).

It would be amazing if Criterion could give this film the treatment it so richly deserves... having watched it on you tube, I can only hope this film gets a true release, and not the crap miramax released in 1995.
 

JoHud

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It could work, but a necessary licensing agreement with Lionsgate or the Weinstein Company make this extremely unlikely. That is unless they can do something similar to the Brazil situation and leave out the theatrical cut.

Though one major difference there is that the director's cut of Brazil is a fully finished feature (or very near it) while the Thief and the Cobbler is very much an unfinished workprint stitched together to make some cohesive sense. That an the current "recobbled cut" is a fan-made creation derived from various home video DVD transfers. Criterion would literally have to create their own HD "recobbled cut" of the film from scratch and would likely require elements owned by Lionsgate and/or The Weinstein Company to fill in the gaps not included or in a more unfinished form in the work print
 

Powell&Pressburger

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I've always wanted to see this film in its original widescreen presentation and it would be cool to get the different cuts of the film released. It seems like a hard sell to try to get a wonderful release done but of all ... I hate to say obscure films, this one could deserve a kickstarter program if a good company got behind the film and got the best materials possible To me it would be worthwhile. I would just like my confidence in a company like Synapse or Vinegar Syndrome. They do great work otherwise Criteiron would be a great option.
 

Alan Tully

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Back in 1993 I was working in a facility house in Soho (London), just around the corner from the Richard Williams studios, & the work print of this came in for transfer to NTSC tape (maybe to try & sell it). I didn't run it myself, but could see a lot of it, as we had it up on all the monitors & had the sound blasting through some big speakers. It looked amazing, & people were talking about it for days after.

Richard Williams work was always fantastic, esp. his main titles, like, What's New Pussycat, Casino Royale & the amazing animation in The Charge Of The Light brigade.
 

battlebeast

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They say "Aladdin" ripped off a lot from this film... But having watched the first 30 min, I see nothing that makes me right away think "Aladdin" except for the term "royal vizeer".Criterion could release "The Recobbled Cut version 4" because that is as far from the theatrical version as you can get.
 

ThadK

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battlebeast said:
They say "Aladdin" ripped off a lot from this film... But having watched the first 30 min, I see nothing that makes me right away think "Aladdin" except for the term "royal vizeer".Criterion could release "The Recobbled Cut version 4" because that is as far from the theatrical version as you can get.
Some of the design work resurfaced in the Disney movie, as did some of the Williams crew. But then, most of the people in animation from 1974-1993 worked on that movie at some time or another, it seems...
 

Ejanss

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battlebeast said:
Did you think Criterion would ever consider "The Theif and the Cobbler" by Richard Williams?

They could release "The Recobbled Cut", by filmmaker, artist, and fan of Williams's work Garrett Gilchrist, which is as close to his original vision as possible...
Unless Disney owned it. :(

(And let's be honest: I've seen the version we DID get, imagined what it was covering up, and it was an improvement.
Oh, look, the Thief doesn't say anything!...Oh, look, the Cobbler doesn't say anything!....Does ANYBODY say anything in this movie???

I actually feel old that I remember the 70's, when animation was either Big, Outdated Monolothic Disney, or Abstract, Out-There, Indie Art-Film Animators, and Richard Williams, director of "Raggedy Ann & Andy", you belong to those 70's....You're not even the early 80's of Don Bluth and "Secret of NIMH".
I wonder how we even survived those creepy weird-@$$ years as kids, when that was all we had for our parents to take us to. :wacko: )
 

battlebeast

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Fortunately, Disney DOESNT own it!And the fact that two main characters don't talk makes it that much better!Go watch "the Recobbled cut" on YouTube. It's awesome! IMHO.
 

Patrick McCart

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It's part of the Echo Bridge assortment licensed from TWC, but it's the same garbage pan & scan transfer from the 1990s that's been recycled for the last decade. Although, there are 4x3 letterbox transfers in existence for both the shorter Miramax cut and longer "international" version. Garrett Gilchrist's Recobbled Cut is magnificent and should be available in a legitimate edition. The latest version has some 35mm footage scanned in 6K and I think he finished the cut in 1080p. It makes a lot of difference considering this is one of the few cel animated features shot in Panavision.

Here's one of the 6K frames that Gilchrist put up to get an idea of the quality. And this is just from a 35mm trailer, rather than 35mm negative!
http://orangecow.org/thief/BMD4K_1_2014-04-05_1630_C0000_1439548.jpg

Richard Williams really needs a reevaluation on video since most of his work has been out of print for ages or in compromised editions. CBS doesn't seem to know they own Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure (though uneven, has some incredible animation and was also shot in Panavision). Criterion would be a great studio for this, but it would need a fairly comprehensive edition that would likely require no less than four cuts (Recobbled/reconstruction, Williams' workprint, and the two studio cuts) and there's hours upon hours documentaries, trims, camera tests, etc. I'd personally like to see a selection of Williams' ad work and title sequences provided as a supplement, too. And he was apparently working on a compilation of his short films since he has the rights to his version of A Christmas Carol.

(As for rights, it looks like the Weinsteins only own their own cut and Disney reportedly owns the rest. This would certainly explain why the ratty P&S master has been recycled so much if the Weinsteins can't access any 35mm)
 

JoHud

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Patrick McCart said:
Richard Williams really needs a reevaluation on video since most of his work has been out of print for ages or in compromised editions. CBS doesn't seem to know they own Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure (though uneven, has some incredible animation and was also shot in Panavision
Is there much of Richard Williams' work available at all on quality home video outside of Roger Rabbit?

RA&A certainly needs some sort of definitive release. Though if it's tied up with Viacom, there's no chance in hell we're seeing it barring a miracle. Hopefully CBS actually does own it outright. At least then there's a chance...
Patrick McCart said:
(As for rights, it looks like the Weinsteins only own their own cut and Disney reportedly owns the rest. This would certainly explain why the ratty P&S master has been recycled so much if the Weinsteins can't access any 35mm)
Okay, thanks for that. I was just going by IMDB in regards to the rights which have gotten kinda sketchy since the original Miramax ownership and the existence of multiple cuts (under different titles) owned by separate companies.

Those rights entanglements are a serious roadblock. The differing Brazil cuts are far less troublesome in comparison. It seems the workprint is the only source that (maybe) wouldn't require sublicensing.
 

SilverWook

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Ejanss said:
Unless Disney owned it. :(

(And let's be honest: I've seen the version we DID get, imagined what it was covering up, and it was an improvement.
Oh, look, the Thief doesn't say anything!...Oh, look, the Cobbler doesn't say anything!....Does ANYBODY say anything in this movie???

I actually feel old that I remember the 70's, when animation was either Big, Outdated Monolothic Disney, or Abstract, Out-There, Indie Art-Film Animators, and Richard Williams, director of "Raggedy Ann & Andy", you belong to those 70's....You're not even the early 80's of Don Bluth and "Secret of NIMH".
I wonder how we even survived those creepy weird-@$$ years as kids, when that was all we had for our parents to take us to. :wacko: )
You do realize the money men pried this out of William's hands and bastardized the hell out of it, turning it into a third rate Aladdin knockoff, right?
 

laser

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Some kind of director approved release of The Thief would be wonderful, but a Richard Williams box set, containing all the shorts, movies, and documentaries he made/appeared in (Roger Rabbit could be left out if necessary as it's already widely available) would be the ultimate, aside from him getting to finally finish The Thief (which is more a problem of tracking down the original materials than expense).

BTW, although much better than any of the "professional" home video releases thus far, the Recobbled Cut is something of a mess. The video/audio is patched together from bootlegs of varying quality (Photoshop and even new art was utilized to correct some dodgy sections), some of it from post-Williams workprints/releases (to be more specific, bad animation and unintended additional audio).

Dick finally got to screen an old 35mm workprint of his to a public audience last year - it would make a better source than the R.C., but if a new release is in the cards, tracking down better elements and maybe finishing at least a few shots (the flight through the mountains is absolutely screaming out for a PROPER ink & paint) would be a WAY better use of time and money. :)
 

ThadK

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You guys are living in a fantasy land. There will be no director-approved restoration/reconstruction. With whatever time he has left, Williams isn't looking back to that film, guaranteed.

What would be really great is a compilation of Williams's early shorts and his legacy of commercials. Lots of underrated work there, and it still holds up under scrutiny, unlike a lot of his work, sadly (most definitely including RAGGEDY ANN).
 

Ejanss

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SilverWook said:
You do realize the money men pried this out of William's hands and bastardized the hell out of it, turning it into a third rate Aladdin knockoff, right?
Yes, I do--That's sort of why I made that point about what a nightmarishly self-indulgent kid-unfriendly forty-years-outdated fever-dream the original cut was, and why ONLY animation buffs want to see it for historical sake.
(Go ahead, just try and explain to a kid why they "should" see this: "This looks weird, why does he keep talking in rhyme?" "But it's a classic, and the studio cut it without the director's consent, after he worked on it for thirty years!!" And if that works, just try and sell them on "The Plague Dogs" and "When the Wind Blows".)

And most of all, why the nightmarishly self-indulgent age of Richard Williams, Jimmy Murakami and Ralph Bakshi will NEVER, EVER COME BACK. It's not 1974, Nixon is no longer president, and kids have other things to see in the theaters and on video. Very old animation fans are still fighting battles that were peace-treatied thirty years ago. As I'm sure (or hope) Williams himself is aware--working on Roger Rabbit should have been a clue--it is a different world now, with Ariel in it...Oh, yes, and Aladdin.

(I don't approve of the Wein-ers "prying" and "bastardizing" it--and yes, we laughed at the Aladdin-wannabe elements in the theaters, as I recall--but better the devil you know.)
 

Vic Pardo

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This thread reminds me that I have a VHS copy of THE THIEF AND THE COBBLER that I picked up in a used-video bin years ago and still haven't watched. How different is this version from whatever optimal version Williams would have preferred?
 

ThadK

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Anyone interested in this film needs to see Kevin Schreck's documentary PERSISTENCE OF VISION, if they can make it to a public screening. It will never be made available as Schreck could never get clearance for all of the footage he used, but it will give you a fairly true-to-reality idea of what happened with this production until someone writes a book about it.

https://www.facebook.com/PersistenceOfVisionOfficialDocumentaryPage
 

battlebeast

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ThadK said:
You guys are living in a fantasy land. There will be no director-approved restoration/reconstruction. With whatever time he has left, Williams isn't looking back to that film, guaranteed.What would be really great is a compilation of Williams's early shorts and his legacy of commercials. Lots of underrated work there, and it still holds up under scrutiny, unlike a lot of his work, sadly (most definitely including RAGGEDY ANN).
While a compilation of his earlier work would be great, it's not what we want.You can say we are "living in a fantasy land" all you want, but right now we are just talking and possiblyhoping.One day someone will take a look at this project. And, by posting on Criterion's face book page, maybe they'll see my post and take a look. Who knows?Maybe by me brining this up SOMEONE will take a look.I think I've seen worse rights issue than this. Hell, "Batman" is finally coming out!So never say never and don't be a negative nancy.And if someone took an interest in the project, he might just get on board. "The Recobbled Cut" May not be perfect, but it's the best we got. If there was enough interest and a few more people posted on criterions forums or face book page, who knows what could happen?I'm not going to be negative. Sorry for the rant. Let's get back to talking about this great film.
 

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