NEW Disney Movie Club Exclusives 4/20/2021 -- The Black Cauldron 30th Anniversary Edition (1 Viewer)

[Jay*W]

Good news. Hopefully that means some never released Fox titles will be released also.

Titan AE would be welcome.

 

[MatthewA]

EDIT: I had not read Jerry Beck's clarifying statement yet on fake WB news.

It's disappointing to see the extras get jettisoned because the deleted storyboard sequence (not an actual cut scene) gave a clue to what might have been if Katzenberg had just minded his own business. The Fairfolk's motivation is unclear in the film proper, this clarifies it.

 

[Chewbabka]

Warner is not exiting physical media. They entered a joint venture with Universal for physical media distribution.

this is really old news, and I’m not sure why it resurfaced now and in a so grossly mischaracterized fashion.

 

[Jake Lipson]

It looks like Disney won if they're not moving out of the physical media business and Warner is.

I don't understand this comment. Support for physical media is not a competition. As Joe said, WB and Universal are combining operations to reduce cost. You're still going to be able to find new films from both studios on disc for the foreseeable future.

But it's disappointing to see the extras get jettisoned

This is the case with every single DMC exclusive as far as I know. Even films that got wide release Blu-rays in stores don't usually carry over all the extras from previous versions. That's why I'm planning to hang onto my DVD copy even after the Blu-ray comes in the mail. That way I get the film in HD without losing anything. Yes, we shouldn't have to, but it's a simple solve for people who are upgrading. Those who don't have the DVD have to choose between extras or HD, which isn't ideal, but at least it is very clear what the choice is so they can make an informed one.

 

[ToEhrIsHuman]

Perhaps Zack Snyder can use his extraordinarily vast influence on Disney to release 'Lady and the Tramp' on 4K UHD BD in Academy ratio

 

[MatthewA]

In theory, there should be plenty of room for both versions on a disc since each one would have black bars on either the top and bottom (the CinemaScope version) or the sides (the Academy ratio version, which I actually managed to track down the late 1990s laserdisc of). All that empty black space frees up room to compress other things since there is no motion.

 

[Dick]

This is exactly how I expected The Black Cauldron (The ugly redheaded stepchild of the Disney feature-length animated canon) to end up.

I actually consider 2004'S HOME ON THE RANGE to be the most disappointing Disney animated feature. It simply seemed like a 9-minute short that any animation studio could have produced, stretched beyond its ability to maintain my interest (thankfully, John Lassiter saved this from being the swansong of the cell animation department by giving us the quite superior PRINCESS AND THE FROG). I think one has to view THE BLACK CAULDRON while keeping in mind that it was rather eviscerated by the time it was released, in order to to keep it from scaring the kiddies out of theaters. The animation, on a technical level, is quite smooth and detailed, the backgrounds colorful and and mood atmospheric.

Had the characters been allowed to further develop, and had the cut sequences involving the cauldron-born been kept, sure, a few kids would have had nightmares (but, hey, didn't they after seeing SNOW WHITE and PINOCCHIO and a few others?), but the substance of the story would have remained intact. I think of BC as the surviving sickly brother of what could have been an impressive epic feature. I have had a 1080p copy of this for years, and if that is any indication, this Movie Club release will be quite wonderful, if they haven't wipe the grain clean.

 

[Dick]

In theory, there should be plenty of room for both versions on a disc since each one would have black bars on either the top and bottom (the CinemaScope version) or the sides (the Academy ratio version, which I actually managed to track down the late 1990s laserdisc of). All that empty black space frees up room to compress other things since there is no motion.

Was the laser disc you bought a pan-and-scan edition, or one that was truly recomposed shot-by-shot, as was the alternate 1.37 laser edition of LADY AND THE TRAMP?

 

[MatthewA]

I think this was a true Academy ratio transfer. It was the CLV laserdisc from the 1990s whereas the concurrent CAV disc release was the CinemaScope version letterboxed.

The 1980s laserdiscs were both the same pan and scan transfer of the CinemaScope version that got released on tape then.

 

[David Norman]

A bit of a departure, but there are a couple small extras included with this release

Donald Duck short "Trick or Treat"
Deleted Scene -- extended version of Fairfolk

From rdodolak -- bluray.com (yes, it's finally back up)

 

[Lord Dalek]

So they kept the only special feature of note on that disc. Great. No complaints about anything missing then.

 

[Arthur Powell]

Since Trick or Treat is my favorite Donald Duck cartoon, if it's in HD, I might be tempted to buy.

 

[Jake Lipson]

The inclusion of those bonus features means that the only things absent from the 25th Anniversary DVD are art galleries and a couple games. The art galleries are very nice, but the likelihood that I would put in the DVD just to look at them is pretty small. So I might give away the DVD. We'll see.

 

[Lord Dalek]

I suppose the gallery (I forgot that was on there, just shows how unmemorable the old 30th Anniversary Edition was) is useful since there will likely never be any coffee table books or behind the scenes material released on The Black Cauldron (because again, its "that movie we don't talk about"). But its not a huge loss.

 

[MatthewA]

The galleries showed a much different concept design for Gurgi that looked more like Phil from Hercules. Instead, he became the missing link between Goofy and Pluto!*

A bit of a departure, but there are a couple small extras included with this release

Donald Duck short "Trick or Treat"
Deleted Scene -- extended version of Fairfolk

From rdodolak -- bluray.com (yes, it's finally back up)

The squeaky wheel gets the grease. They listened to everyone who complained about missing extras.

*Can you find a better candidate?

 

[ahollis]

With adding extras, it sounds like a guy from Fox is now working for DMC.

 

[MatthewA]

Melting faces bothered Katzenberg but this didn't?

Spoiler: This is as close to NSFW as a Disney animated movie gets

 

[richardburton84]

Melting faces bothered Katzenberg but this didn't?

Spoiler: This is as close to NSFW as a Disney animated movie gets

I honestly never noticed that before (shudders). In all seriousness, I feel the same way about the gag involving a frog stuck in the cleavage of one of the witches of Morva (named Orwen in the books), I mean how did that not bother Katzenberg?

 

[MatthewA]

Violence was a more acute issue than sex when it comes to what actually scared children at that test screening.

I actually consider 2004'S HOME ON THE RANGE to be the most disappointing Disney animated feature. It simply seemed like a 9-minute short that any animation studio could have produced, stretched beyond its ability to maintain my interest (thankfully, John Lassiter saved this from being the swansong of the cell animation department by giving us the quite superior PRINCESS AND THE FROG). I think one has to view THE BLACK CAULDRON while keeping in mind that it was rather eviscerated by the time it was released, in order to to keep it from scaring the kiddies out of theaters. The animation, on a technical level, is quite smooth and detailed, the backgrounds colorful and and mood atmospheric.

Had the characters been allowed to further develop, and had the cut sequences involving the cauldron-born been kept, sure, a few kids would have had nightmares (but, hey, didn't they after seeing SNOW WHITE and PINOCCHIO and a few others?), but the substance of the story would have remained intact. I think of BC as the surviving sickly brother of what could have been an impressive epic feature. I have had a 1080p copy of this for years, and if that is any indication, this Movie Club release will be quite wonderful, if they haven't wipe the grain clean.

Well-said, although I would submit Chicken Little as the nadir of the canon thus far.

But as for what happened to TBC once The Katzenberg Cut stripped it of whatever narrative cohesion it may have had before Ron Miller's resignation, what he failed to realize is that the best Disney features of the past went to those dark places and didn't hold back except to the extent the Production Code made them. Those restrictions died with Walt everywhere but Walt Disney Productions, and they didn't relent until the company's livelihood depended on it. And once they went dark again, they went really dark. But there was still pushback from people who turned to Disney to get away from those kinds of things. I heard stories from former employees about protests over four-letter words in their movies.

Even when The Little Mermaid finally brought butts back to the seats that started to go astray (along with the ones that weren't born yet for the theatrical releases of the "what would Walt do" features), they trade the original dark ending of

Spoiler: how Disney deviated from Hans Christian Andersen

Ariel dying and turning to sea foam for Ursula being stabbed by the sail of a ship.

So they still went there even when going back to Princess-centric musicals. The Black Cauldron was a rebellion against all that "mushy stuff" and who knows how the future of Disney Animation would have played out if it had been a hit. Even assuming the long-lost Ron Miller cut actually got released with or without him still at Disney, Katzenberg would have been in less of a position to hang the Sword of Damocles over the animators' heads. Mermaid proved there was still a market for all the stuff they rebelled against as long as they did it right. Would that still have happened had the gutting of this film been prevented?

 

[Dick]

Violence was a more acute issue than sex when it comes to what actually scared children at that test screening.

Well-said, although I would submit Chicken Little as the nadir of the canon thus far.

I was referring strictly to hand-drawn animation. Their CG continues on and on and on...I've not even bothered to watch CHICKEN LITTLE, as the notices were uniformly awful. But they got better with FROZEN and and bunch of other non-Pixar digital creations.