Bedknobs And Broomsticks 50th Anniversary? (1 Viewer)

[richardburton84]

More likely the other hybrid film he’s referring to is Song of the South, especially as Pete’s Dragon was released six years after Bedknobs and Broomsticks. Then again, I’ve only seen bits and pieces of that film so I don’t know exactly how much animation is in that film.

 

[darkrock17]

More likely the other hybrid film he’s referring to is Song of the South, especially as Pete’s Dragon was released six years after Bedknobs and Broomsticks. Then again, I’ve only seen bits and pieces of that film so I don’t know exactly how much animation is in that film.

Elliot the dragon is the only animation in Pete's Dragon.

 

[richardburton84]

Elliot the dragon is the only animation in Pete's Dragon.

I was referring to Song of the South in regards to only seeing bits and pieces, which I probably should have made clearer in my initial post.

 

[darkrock17]

I was referring to Song of the South in regards to only seeing bits and pieces, which I probably should have made clearer in my initial post.

Gotcha, All I know from Song of the South is Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah and Splash Mountain.

 

[Nick*Z]

I was fortunate enough to see a re-issue of Song of the South in 1984. Frankly, it's a tragedy this movie has been denied public viewing for so long. James Baskett's performance is extraordinary and the animation here is first rate, sticking incredibly close to Joel Chandler Harris' original tales, culled from an oral black history that today, somehow gets mis-represented as racist, when in reality, Harris was a staunch supporter of 'the new South' and endeavored, only, to preserve this part of the ancient south's black cultural heritage for posterity.

Zip-a-dee-do-dah will likely always remain the cultural touchstone for which the picture is best remembered, which is rather a shame, as Baskett's subtle turn as Uncle Remus is one of those rare instances where the actor cast, and the role seamlessly become one in the same, like Edmund Gwenn as Kris Kringle in Miracle on 34th Street. And the film also features Hattie McDaniel - another titan of her generation, and the first black actress to win an Oscar. Baskett actually received an 'honorary' Oscar for his performance in this movie. All in all, a lot of history for which blacks and whites can both take pride has been mercilessly pasted over with the scarlet brand of racism. A genuine pity.

But back to Bedknobs...and Broomsticks, both of which I would like to take to whoever is responsible for the Blu-ray release of the truncated version that has never entirely held up under close scrutiny. WE NEED the complete version restored and remastered to Blu - even if it only finds its way as a Disney Club exclusive. By the way, speaking of the Disney Club...are they a done deal or what?

There haven't been new announcements there for some time, leaving many a Disney live-action classic in limbo: The Happiest Millionaire, Darby O'Gill and the Little People, That Darn Cat, The Moonspinners, Summer Magic, The North Ave. Irregulars, The Shaggy Dog/Shaggy D.A., The Sword and the Rose, So Dear to My Heart. And we're still waiting for Disney's compendium animated classics - Make Mine Music, and, Melody Time to find their way to home video. Dumb executive decisions like this are a reason why I've officially sworn off supporting the Mouse House. Until they begin to honor Walt's legacy as Walt would - and should - I really don't see the point.

 

[darkrock17]

I was fortunate enough to see a re-issue of Song of the South in 1984. Frankly, it's a tragedy this movie has been denied public viewing for so long. James Baskett's performance is extraordinary and the animation here is first rate, sticking incredibly close to Joel Chandler Harris' original tales, culled from an oral black history that today, somehow gets mis-represented as racist, when in reality, Harris was a staunch supporter of 'the new South' and endeavored, only, to preserve this part of the ancient south's black cultural heritage for posterity.

Zip-a-dee-do-dah will likely always remain the cultural touchstone for which the picture is best remembered, which is rather a shame, as Baskett's subtle turn as Uncle Remus is one of those rare instances where the actor cast, and the role seamlessly become one in the same, like Edmund Gwenn as Kris Kringle in Miracle on 34th Street. And the film also features Hattie McDaniel - another titan of her generation, and the first black actress to win an Oscar. Baskett actually received an 'honorary' Oscar for his performance in this movie. All in all, a lot of history for which blacks and whites can both take pride has been mercilessly pasted over with the scarlet brand of racism. A genuine pity.

But back to Bedknobs...and Broomsticks, both of which I would like to take to whoever is responsible for the Blu-ray release of the truncated version that has never entirely held up under close scrutiny. WE NEED the complete version restored and remastered to Blu - even if it only finds its way as a Disney Club exclusive. By the way, speaking of the Disney Club...are they a done deal or what?

There haven't been new announcements there for some time, leaving many a Disney live-action classic in limbo: The Happiest Millionaire, Darby O'Gill and the Little People, That Darn Cat, The Moonspinners, Summer Magic, The North Ave. Irregulars, The Shaggy Dog/Shaggy D.A., The Sword and the Rose, So Dear to My Heart. And we're still waiting for Disney's compendium animated classics - Make Mine Music, and, Melody Time to find their way to home video. Dumb executive decisions like this are a reason why I've officially sworn off supporting the Mouse House. Until they begin to honor Walt's legacy as Walt would - and should - I really don't see the point.

Everything that I've seen about Song of the South looks completely harmless for anyone to watch, but because so many have labeled it racist, it will not likely see the light of day during our lifetimes. Zip-A-Dee-Do-Dah will probably be going away soon as Disney wants any all traces of it wiped from existence.

Disney's Home Entertainment Department is responsible for the 2013 blu release for Bedknobs. I can't even phantom what was going through their minds when they decided to go with the theatrical cut over the 25th anniversary edition. Oh wait, yes I do; MONEY. They love money so much that they find ways to spend less of it all time.

In 2014 I read Disney the riot act in a video I made about how badly the botched up The Sword In The Stone and how offended I was with Bedknobs's on both of their blu debuts, and on top of all that how badly they treated Mary Poppins for it's 50th anniversary as well.



As for Disney Movie Club, again I've stated I don't want to see my favorite Disney live action film being released under that title. If I had take a guess I would say that Disney Movie Club is most likely dead because Disney is all about Disney+ now.

 

[Nick*Z]

And shrinking their market share in home video during a pandemic that has all but shuddered their theme park empires, benefits the company's bottom line how?!? It would appear to me that if Disney 'loves money' they would reap much of the greenback by opening their floodgates at precisely this moment and release all of their live-action movies to disc for people on lockdown to collect and recall, with a fond, faint, sad-eyed glint in their eyes, the simpler, happier times of childhood when such crises were not a part of our lexicon. But hey, that's just me. I have no false illusions these ideals are shared by anyone in the corporate offices at Disney Inc.

 

[darkrock17]

And shrinking their market share in home video during a pandemic that has all but shuddered their theme park empires, benefits the company's bottom line how?!? It would appear to me that if Disney 'loves money' they would reap much of the greenback by opening their floodgates at precisely this moment and release all of their live-action movies to disc for people on lockdown to collect and recall, with a fond, faint, sad-eyed glint in their eyes, the simpler, happier times of childhood when such crises were not a part of our lexicon. But hey, that's just me. I have no false illusions these ideals are shared by anyone in the corporate offices at Disney Inc.

Unfortunately that's the sad reality of things. Like I said in my video, If Walt himself were still alive today he would be appalled of what his company has become.

 

[Matt Hough]

The animation in Song of the South is among the most intricate, vivid, and colorful in the whole of the Disney canon. For me, that is among the worst offenses in the movie being withheld so cruelly from viewing.

 

[darkrock17]

The animation in Song of the South is among the most intricate, vivid, and colorful in the whole of the Disney canon. For me, that is among the worst offenses in the movie being withheld so cruelly from viewing.

The animation does look very good, too bad this all most of us have ever seen from it though.

 

[MatthewA]

We wouldn't even be having this conversation without it, and they know it. They knew it when they hired Angela Lansbury to sing "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" in Toontown for this 1993 CBS-TV special.*



And it's obvious that when Disney started asking "What would Walt do," they focused on what he did during WWII and the immediate years after that until Cinderella brought in enough money to ensure their long-term survival. During the 1940s, they made several movies mixing live-action and animation in some form, but only two of them are in "the canon” unless you count the live-action parts of Fun and Fancy Free and Melody Time. In the 1950s, they did episodes of Disneyland that put Mickey, Donald, Goofy, et al in live-action scenes with Walt and/or at the studio; there should be one or two on Disney+ by now.

The difference is that they didn't also have two theme parks to maintain. B&B's opening coincided with the opening of Walt Disney World, so most of the company's focus seemed to be on that at the time.

*That's almost like singing "Candle on the Water" in Splash Mountain.

 

[darkrock17]

Today is 6 months to Bedkonbs 50th and nothing mentioned at all from Disney. It's truly sad that this film and so many others are going to be treated this way. I guess the now long out of print 30th Anniversary Edition was a good as it gets for this film.

 

[MatthewA]

Maybe they're saving it for the end of the year. Or maybe it'll come next year. The 25th anniversary laserdisc, the home video debut of the longest cut, missed the actual 25th anniversary and didn't come out until April 2, 1997. I still have the copy I got for my birthday that year from Suncoast. And now that a 99 44/100th% uncut Happiest Millionaire is streaming on Disney+, the last of the studio's dominoes of excuses to leave Bedknobs and Broomsticks in an incomplete state has collapsed.

They scaled back the 50th anniversary of Walt Disney World, too. And they're only now re-starting catalog titles through DMC.

 

[darkrock17]

Maybe they're saving it for the end of the year. Or maybe it'll come next year. The 25th anniversary laserdisc, the home video debut of the longest cut, missed the actual 25th anniversary and didn't come out until April 2, 1997. I still have the copy I got for my birthday that year from Suncoast. And now that a 99 44/100th% uncut Happiest Millionaire is streaming on Disney+, the last of the studio's dominoes of excuses to leave Bedknobs and Broomsticks in an incomplete state has collapsed.

They scaled back the 50th anniversary of Walt Disney World, too. And they're only now re-starting catalog titles through DMC.

It is possible that they could be saving it for a Nov/Dec release in time for Christmas, but let's be real though we both know that isn't likely going to happen. If it does then like you said it will be through DMC and 99% be the theatrical cut again and even less likely to included any features as I think recent The Black Cauldron release with the two extras was just a one time fluke.

 

[MatthewA]

They still have yet to actually find and replace the missing footage to The Black Cauldron, though, so nothing longer than what Jeffrey Katzenberg reduced it to in 1985 has ever been released. Not so with Bedknobs. They put it back together on film and re-registered it for copyright, which I'm not sure they did for many of the Touchstone/Hollywood extended laserdisc cuts they also did around the same time.

And one point regarding the ADR redubs of missing lines: the first line they redubbed actually was not "missing," it was one that had always been in the film:

Mrs. Hobday: Oh, you're for Miss Price. I'm expecting her in.

(She and the children react to something they heard outside.)

Mrs. Hobday: I won't be a moment, please don't touch anything.

The thing they all react to is different in every cut of the film, but I am sure that line was still in the 97-minute version that eliminated "The Old Home Guard" entirely. There, they just reacted to the soldiers actually arriving in front of the museum. That's what aired on network TV back in the 1980s, and if I recall correctly, that line still had Tessie O'Shea's actual voice without the singers behind her. When they restored the original cause of conflict (Mr. Widdenfield refusing to believe Captain Greer is who he says he is), they found clean audio of the singers' voices (which are different than on the soundtrack album) but not Tessie's! They also found music-free original audio of this line when they restored the entrance to Miss Price's workroom:

Paul: I like you better as a rabbit, Charlie.

Charlie: Shut up, you.

Paul: Well, I never had a rabbit.

 

[darkrock17]

They still have yet to actually find and replace the missing footage to The Black Cauldron, though, so nothing longer than what Jeffrey Katzenberg reduced it to in 1985 has ever been released. Not so with Bedknobs. They put it back together on film and re-registered it for copyright, which I'm not sure they did for many of the Touchstone/Hollywood extended laserdisc cuts they also did around the same time.

I had no idea that the restored version was copyrighted. All that work, effort, and time that went into restoring it as best as they could and the restored version is now being disrespected by cutting it up into deleted scenes.

 

[MatthewA]

And to this day, nobody can pinpoint exactly who made that call.

 

[darkrock17]

And to this day, nobody can pinpoint exactly who made that call.

Bob Iger maybe.

 

[MatthewA]

Well, ironically, it's one time you can't blame Michael Eisner!

 

[darkrock17]

Well, ironically, it's one time you can't blame Michael Eisner!

Would have been very odd if had been Michael seeing as he originally approved and signed off Bedknobs restoration in the first place.