Fantasia / Fantasia 2000 (1940-1999) (Special Edition)

[Ernest Rister]

Originally Posted by BNex99

I just meant I would prefer having the soundtrack that was used for the DVD, preferably taken from the master and re-encoded with a lossless codec.

I understood you, BNex99. All this discussion has made me realize I haven't heard my Fantasia LD on my newer home theater, will have to take it out for a test drive. Cool story about the DVD, though. My wife didn't grow up with much, her parents were very poor, so they had, basically, a TV and a VCR. So I come into her life with all my home theater gadgets, and she doesn't tell me at first, but surround sound in the home kinda freaked her out. So she buys me the Fantasia blu-ray for a Christmas present, because she knows it's my favorite movie, and I watch it. Didn't think the minivan mix was bad, per se, but I was missing the hard left right pans. So I'm griping about the mix recently, as sometimes things in life bother you more years down the road than they do in the moment, and I play the Fantasia 2001 DVD to show her what I was on about. It suddenly dawns on her, she turns to me and says, "Oh...THAT'S why you love surround sound."

Good ol' Fantasia.

[Egbert Souse]

One idea would be to make the disc "interactive" so you can watch nearly any of the various cuts via seamless branching.

(Also, I wonder why they didn't just re-draw "Sunflower" instead of sticking to the garbage quality zooms and matting)

[Ernest Rister]

Originally Posted by Egbert Souse

One idea would be to make the disc "interactive" so you can watch nearly any of the various cuts via seamless branching.

(Also, I wonder why they didn't just re-draw "Sunflower" instead of sticking to the garbage quality zooms and matting)

I think that's what Walt would have done, had he lived, but today, the home video division is completely separate from WDAS, with their own annual operating budget, same as the animation department, so you'd need some leadership to make that happen, sort of like the "expanded" Pocahontas.

[shinobipopcorn]

Originally Posted by Ernest Rister

I think that's what Walt would have done, had he lived, but today, the home video division is completely separate from WDAS, with their own annual operating budget, same as the animation department, so you'd need some leadership to make that happen, sort of like the "expanded" Pocahontas.

Don't talk about that movie, it was my favorite and I think the best of the "expanded DVDs" of the 00s and I'm seriously hurt that they didn't put the expanded version on blu-ray.

[Ernest Rister]

Originally Posted by Egbert Souse

One idea would be to make the disc "interactive" so you can watch nearly any of the various cuts via seamless branching.

(Also, I wonder why they didn't just re-draw "Sunflower" instead of sticking to the garbage quality zooms and matting)

It's not that simple...there are many various cuts, even various soundtracks. Its not that easy. Fantasia is to my knowledge, the most constantly altered film in history. I don't know how in the world Disney could bring all the various editions to home video in a reasonable way.

[shinobipopcorn]

Originally Posted by Egbert Souse

(Also, I wonder why they didn't just re-draw "Sunflower" instead of sticking to the garbage quality zooms and matting)

You'd be surprised at the amount of Sunflower fanart out there. There's a cute one of Tiana hugging her on DA, and all the comments are positive. The zebra girls have their fans too, Mr. Benchley included with his sticky fingers.

[Bandit Tajomaru]

I hope they have the decency to not put uncensored on the package this time if they really intend to release another censored version. All that did was piss me off more.

[Ernest Rister]

Originally Posted by Bandit Tajomaru

I hope they have the decency to not put uncensored on the package this time if they really intend to release another censored version. All that did was piss me off more.

I've never seen "uncensored" on the cover art. Ever. I've seen "uncut", and in the case of the music, that's been true since 1990.

[Class316]

Originally Posted by Ernest Rister

I've never seen "uncensored" on the cover art. Ever. I've seen "uncut", and in the case of the music, that's been true since 1990.

If I recall the 2000 DVD said "original and uncut"

Obviously not original. False advertising no matter how you spin it

[PeterTHX]

Originally Posted by Class316

If I recall the 2000 DVD said "original and uncut"

Obviously not original. False advertising no matter how you spin it

Sunflower is zoomed out so it is uncut.

[shinobipopcorn]

Originally Posted by PeterTHX

Sunflower is zoomed out so it is uncut.

I understand his point, thought. In 1940, that carpet didn't unroll itself.

[Class316]

Originally Posted by PeterTHX

Sunflower is zoomed out so it is uncut.

But not original because originally it was not zoomed hence false advertising no matter how you spin it

[moviebuff75]

It may not have all the things I want: Deems Taylor's voice, uncensored, Fantasound.....but when I project it on my giant outdoor screen, I get the same magical feeling I got when I first saw it on the big screen in 1990. So, I guess it isn't all bad.

[BNex99]

Originally Posted by shinobipopcorn

I don't see why they couldn't release a version of the international DVD, which is the 2 hour cut down version like the VHS, just with the LD audio. I had ordered a JP disc to see what it was, and though it turned out to be a cheap bootleg, the video was VHS length with the 2000 redub (with the Taylor portions replaced with orchestra shots from Toccata, probably a regional thing).

There was an official DVD that contained the 1990 cut? Which country (or countries) was that released in?

[shinobipopcorn]

Originally Posted by BNex99

There was an official DVD that contained the 1990 cut? Which country (or countries) was that released in?

From the research I've done, supposedly "the UK and other countries" according to the wikipedia article on the film. That's why I was willing to buy the Japanese release and see for myself, but the seller sent me this POS clipart monstrosity instead of the legitimate Disney release that was pictured in the listing.

I watched it before sending it back. It was a very strange collection of edits. Visually, the disc was based on the 1990 LD/VHS version and actually had DVD quality picture with the opening title card and ending credits (some of the worst interlacing I've seen, though). Sunflower edits were the cleaner DVD version on the first part, though the Otika/carpet edit was the VHS version where you can still see her leg.

Strangest of all though was that Deems Taylor was completely edited out of the movie. Normally it opens with "How do you do? My name is Deems Taylor, and it is my very pleasant duty to welcome you here..." Well this one cuts his name and goes straight into the welcoming. All interstitials are the same loop of the musicians from the beginning of Toccata and Fugue, jerking their bows back and forth right before they light up. The narration is very clearly the Corey Burton overdub, and sounds like the washed out score of the DVD. (To me, the Nutcracker Suite after the fish sounds terrible compared to the 90s version.)

If Song of the South is in the public domain in Japan, Fantasia might be thus explaining this disaster, though I would have thought Disney would have fought to renew the copyright since they sell a lot of Fantasia merchandise in Tokyo Disneyland.

[Dubstar]

Originally Posted by PeterTHX

Sunflower is zoomed out so it is uncut.

Actually for the bluray some of the cropped sequence are pulled back revealing the original full framing - Sunshine' was erased out - in a version I saw online where someone had amazingly had all the censored shots - it took a bit of cropping and digital erasing to remove all shots of her - the laserdisc is the last time you actually see a smidgen of her in one shot

[Riddler95]

Originally Posted by TonyWDA

Pro Logic is basically Dolby Stereo/Surround; both use the same technology to decode extra channels from a matrix-encoded stereo source, "unfolding" the left, center, right, and mono rear channels. So go with Pro Logic, as Pro Logic II would try unfolding a "rear left" and "rear right" where there is none to extract in the first place.

In regards to the LaserDisc mix, I think it's a very faithful representation of the original Fantasound design. When Terry Porter started mixing the film for the 50th Anniversary release, he went snooping through the Disney archives for anything that could help him recreate the original (or at least, originally intended) sound mix as accurately as possible. He came across notes from Stokowski himself that pretty much told mixers when and where to steer the sound throughout the auditorium. So the notes would say things like, "Kill the fronts", "Rear left", "Center", and so forth. Whether he obeyed those notes instead of doing what he felt was best is honestly anybody's guess, but having studied the unfolded Dolby mix rather extensively, I felt it was a very spacious, balanced, and even playful mix, that sounds a lot like what a flashy, almost gimmicky "Oooooohhhh, I'm in stereo" mix from 1940 would sound like.

(Check out page 89 from The Cartoon Music Book for the source of this story.)

And again, whether it's faithful to the original mix or not, it still makes a helluva lot more sense than whatever happened to the Blu-ray mix, where any semblance of stereo imaging that's supposed to correlate to the action on screen is extremely narrow and relegated to the rear of the sound field, with a mono downmix blaring from the fronts. It may sound okay on occasion when the sound bounces from front to rear and back again, but boy is the stereo imaging watered down.

Thank you so much for all of that information. I really appreciate it.

[OneWayFilms]

In regards to the whole SunFlower racial controversy, I have an easy solution.

Disney could easily take the cue from Warner Brothers that also released Looney Tunes and Tom & Jerry cartoons that contained racial content, but at the beginning of their collection, they addressed and acknowledged it and explained WHY they chose to keep it intact for our entertainment.

Here is Whoopi Goldberg addressing the racial content at the beginning of the Tom & Jerry collection.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_oEOdIBOpU

And here she is again addressing it for Looney Tunes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCT1clqci3I

Disney already places an ANTI-SMOKING ad at the beginning of every Disney feature that contains a smoking character. They should also do a pre-video acknowledging how wrong the racial content was back then and how wrong it is today, but removing the content would be pretending that it never happened.

If Disney DID this, they could replace SunFlower in Fantasia and even release the MAJOR DISNEY FORBIDDEN FILM: SONG OF THE SOUTH!

If America can accept the Looney Tunes and Tom & Jerry cartoons without any complaints, I think Disney could do it too.

[Martoto]

The Looney Tunes stuff is arguably much worse than Sunflower. Although I wouldn't presume that Whoopi's intros stopped all potential complaints from "America".

Song Of The South on the other hand..... Disney was given plenty of opportunity to make something that future generations would not be seeking justification or apology for.

Rather than just say it was wrong then, they ought to point out specifically how and why SoS was wrong and how it wound up on the screen against the advice that Walt was given.

[ditcin]

Please, Disney has no balls. When I was with Anchor Bay they had rights to many of the live action films produced by the Disney Studio. The studio rescinded the contract by pull the film with Peter Ustinov simply because he portrayed an Asian.
They way they have treated Fantasia is ridiculous. It's been edited for years. We're talking about mythological figures. On top of that they make excuses that the original sound elements are gone. That's nothing more than a lie. They lied to me for 20 years about the elements for a film until I found someone to go into the vault and fax me an inventory to which I found out everything I had been told was a lie.
I expect another half-ass release from of this film from a studio that behind most studios doing BD releases - even DVD releases.