Well, I'm back from a week without internet. Did you miss me?
Someone at Youtube posted a bizarre vid of a rappin' Zigzag - I don't even know. It sounds like John DiMaggio, but not sure.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATSVr8bqkGI
I have a huge announcement to make.
THE THIEF AND THE COBBLER RECOBBLED CUT: MARK II
A newly revised and further restored version of the film.
That's right - the Recobbled Cut just got better. As a reminder, the previous cut got a lot of praise, like this:
"A tremendous piece of work, the restoration of one man's labor of love, that became another man's labor of love. ... This is the best and most important 'fan edit' ever made, and certainly the only one I'm aware of that is the most definitive possible version of an otherwise unavailable/severely compromised film." - Twitchfilm
You know I didn't want to double-dip you guys. I spent four months on the Recobbled Cut. It was as finished and perfect as I could possibly make it. I had no intention of making "another better version two months later."
But ...
As always happens with these things, the minute I was done, I got something amazing in the mail. In this case, a VHS tape from JP Cummings containing a timecoded widescreen version of what's known as the "Calvert Cut" of the film (AKA The Princess and the Cobbler). This is a longer version than what Miramax released, and I did not have it in widescreen. Most notably it contains the witch sequence in its entirety, and most of the March of the One Eye War Machine.
The quality was quite good for a VHS - 1st generation from the source, and I knew immediately I'd have to get to work on a new version of the film.
So, this past week, I did it. I took this widescreen VHS image and painstakingly combined it in every shot with the pan & scan DVD version of the Princess version of the film, and the AVI version of the workprint (used at the bottom of each shot to cover up the timecode present in the VHS version).
The results are amazing.
I mean it, really amazing.
Although the VHS image itself is not as clear as the Miramax DVD, it combines perfectly with the Princess pan & scan DVD which IS clearer than the Miramax DVD. The result is an overall image which is incredibly sharp and true.
You've never seen the war machine sequence like this. Or the witch sequence. The shots now look suitable for the big screen. The difference is remarkable.
Another benefit is that shots which the Calvert team animated, crap as they are, are now ALL available in widescreen, not pan & scan. There are no more pan & scan shots in the entire film. You'll be surprised to see more in these shots than you did before ... Nanny shows up in the corner of quite a lot of shots she didn't before, which is kind of amusing.
THIS is the version I'll be sending to Dick, and it's the version I'll be sending out from now on. Those asking me for the DVD now will be lucky -- you'll get a revised version which I'm even more proud of than before.
=)
I haven't burned it to DVD yet, though I will ... one thing I'm hoping to include in this new edition is a complete sequence from the Nasruddin film which has recently been discovered, in black & white. It's the bread sequence, which you saw in pencil test and in incomplete form on this DVD before .... well, we've found the actual sequence, as completed, and I'm hoping to have a copy of it in my hands in time for this new release. I'll also be including more artwork in the galleries.
Good times.
My email, again, is tygerbug at yahoo.com.