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Info Wanted: Has anyone done any Unaltered Disney Classics preservations?

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 (Edited)

Have there been any projects to preserve the theatrical cuts of disney films? The new dvds contain a few changes Lion King for example

Anyone know if the laserdiscs have the orginal versions?

Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast and Fantasia are also changed, although making a theatrical cut of Fantasia would be very difficult.

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I think ADM has done a DVD of Aladdin restoring the 2 sound changes. However, the main problem with the Disney releases is that the LD sets are expensive and hard to come by (on ebay at least). I actually asked if anybody would want to help out with a Lion King set that ported the Making Of special from LD to DVD. Nothing ever came of that however (as the auction I was watching finished).

I think Aladdin is one of the cases where it's not so much things were "changed", but things were reanimated. It would be nice to have transfers from all the LDs that contain unaltered versions - but that falls into a dangerous area. Plus, you generally don't want to mess with The Mouse by distributing a bootleg DVD. Still, I'd love for some sort of discussion to occur here in regards to the Disney LD's and possible preservation attempts: "The Making of The Lion King" being at the top of my wishlist.

To contact me outside the forum, for trades and such my email address is my OT.com username @gmail.com

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I have these on laserdisc (Aladdin Lion King Beauty and the beast) who needs a dvdr
STanTon
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Stanton, many of us do not have Laserdisc players and it's important to preserve these since-unreproduced titles and special features so that we may all enjoy them.

To contact me outside the forum, for trades and such my email address is my OT.com username @gmail.com

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On a side note, how many workprints of Disney films are floating around? I once saw a timecoded version of The Great Mouse Detective with many unfinished scenes ala the "Work in Progress" version of Beauty and the Beast.
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Where were you in '77?

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i know that Treasure Planet is available as a workprint

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Originally posted by: Darth Balls

Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast and Fantasia are also changed, although making a theatrical cut of Fantasia would be very difficult.

At least some footage with the deleted character in the "Pastoral" exist somewhere: there's a PAL VHS recording around from an Italian tv-station that telecined an old Italian copy of the movie, and that scene is unaltered. I've seen it somewhere on the web, but the quality was awful (it was a low bitrate .rm I think).
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Making a theatrical cut of Fantasia is impossible, due to the loss of the extended Deems taylor tracks. If I had the means, I rould rather just edit the remastered segments from the DVD in with the 1990 Deems Taylor interstatials (with his actual voice) and the ending credits.

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There is an unaltered DVD of MELODY TIME in R2. Sadly, they R1 version has Pecos Bill's cigarette business edited out. There has never been an unaltered release of MAKE MINE MUSIC. It's missing an entire segment called "The Martins and the Coys". Presumably, Disney thought they would offend hillbillies. As a native West Virginian, I could give a rat's patootie. I just want the original film.
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I thought the platinum releases of Beauty and the Beast and Lion King had the original versions available along with the new version on the same disc. At least that's what the dvds claim.
As for Aladdin, I know the original line in the opening song: "Where they cut off your ear if they don't like your face" is on the soundtrack. It may have been changed in a later reissue but I have the original one.

Take back the trilogy. Execute Order '77

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Originally posted by: Knightmessenger
As for Aladdin, I know the original line in the opening song: "Where they cut off your ear if they don't like your face" is on the soundtrack. It may have been changed in a later reissue but I have the original one.


That's been fixed, thanks to a collaborative effort betwixt myself and ADM. Drop me a PM, and get the "later reissue" you speak of.
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Originally posted by: Knightmessenger
I thought the platinum releases of Beauty and the Beast and Lion King had the original versions available along with the new version on the same disc. At least that's what the dvds claim.


The DVDs are lying. Beauty and the Beast and Lion King "original versions" are just the IMAX version with the extra song cut out. There were alterations in the animation done for the bigger format.

Unfortunately, I don't have a page for Beauty's differences, but here's Lion King differences
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BATB also had it's aspect ratio changed. The current DVD is 1.85, it was 1.66 on Laserdisc and looked that way on the big screen back in '92. Unless my local theaters messed up multiple times as the movie enjoyed a long run of several months.
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Where were you in '77?

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That doesn't make any sense, the "special edition" of Lion King had the new song as well as new, never before seen animation. So why would they need to redo the "original" version as well.

And I don't know what you mean by getting the fixed version of Aladdin. I already have the revised part on the dvd. I'm glad I have the original line on the soundtrack.

Take back the trilogy. Execute Order '77

http://www.youtube.com/user/Knightmessenger

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They redid the animation for BEAST and LION KING because when you blew up the picture to IMAX proportions, obvious flaws and shortcuts in the original animation (mostly background characters and wide shots) were glaring. When it came time to issue the DVDs, they just used the IMAX versions of the films instead of the originals. Too bad. BEAUTY AND THE BEAST is terribly mastered as well. They just put too many versions of the film onto one disc leading to horrible compression artifacts.
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Hi, sorry to bother you people, but I just saw this page and I was wondering if there was a way to ger a revised (unaltered) version of Aladdin & The Lion King ? I''ll be interested to get them, if possible.

Thanks to answer.

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I have a substantial collection of Laserdiscs (haven't watched them in years), including 6-8 Special Editions and/or CAVs including The Lion King, T2, Toy Story, Ghostbusters, Evil Dead 2 (Red Disc), The Frighteners etc.

Unfortunately, my LD player is a lowly composite-only Pioneer CLD-D515 with RF Demodulator for AC3 decoding.

In the past, I haven't had much luck with video-capture in general, at least to a quality that I would always be pleased with.  Now I have a BeyonWiz DVB unit that apparently can capture analog video, so I may finally dig out my collection and record these missing gems of multimedia.

btw, someone was in the middle of assembling all the stuff for Ghostbusters and wanted the deleted scenes from the CAV edition?  I can get around to doing that as well.

so, does anyone know of a good post-filtering system/software to hopefully minimise the artifacts of my above capturing setup?  I've watched my LDs once on my 40" Samsung LCD and it's a crying shame how bad it looks blown-up :).