A bit of news...
Da Nao Tian Gong/Uproar In Heaven:
I recently learned that there is a French DVD of Da Nao Tian Gong (Le Roi Des Singes). I just received a copy today. It appears to be an almost-complete transfer of the French theatrical version. Almost, because although no major chunks appear to be missing like in the 40th ed., little chunks (like a half a second to a second) seems to be missing in many places.
It looks to be the best transfer of the theatrical version so far though, somewhat better than the Chinese bootleg source, but due to the chunks of frames missing it is still incomplete, and not a true representation of the theatrical version (and the DVD is French only)... sigh... This movie seem to be cursed or something.
I think this French DVD was released in the last quarter of 2008. It's really too bad I didn't have this version or even knew about it back when I was working on the restoration. :( I guess no French Monkey King fans visits the forum..
So it would be nice to do a v2 with the new material, but to be honest I'm not really itching to do much of that work again. In all likelyhood I'll get around to it but I can't really say when. Also the frames missing could make it even more time-consuming, since this is/was a frame-accurate restoration, as far as that is even possible.
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Also...
I have been gathering materials for the Nezha cartoon, and I have lots of rare stuff for that. If someone has a nice setup for capping PAL and/or SECAM VHS, and wish to help out, feel free to contact me.
I was in contact with a couple of translators a while ago (which are needed for the remaining episodes), but they've all backed out for one reason or another. Hey, that's what happens... But help is still needed, particularly someone who can translate spoken Mandarin into English, and create the subs. An English proofreader might be useful down the line as well since English is not my native language.
Any help will be greatly appreciated, and might help move things along a bit.
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And also...
I have secured copies of the Monkey King SAFS releases I didn't have before.
In addition to
1941 Tie Shan Gong Zhu (Princess Iron Fan)
1981 Sun Wu Kong Tou Chi Ren Shen Guo (Ginseng Fruit)
1985 Jin Hou Xiang Yao (The Monkey King Conquers the Bone Demon)
they are:
1958 Zhu Bajie eats a watermelon (cut-out animation; slightly better copy)
1958 Huo Yan Shan (puppet movie)
1980 Ding Ding Zhan Hou Wang (cut-out animation)
1989 Sun Wu Kong Yu San Jian Bao Bei (I don't think this is from SAFS?)
Screenies (prelim. filtering):
1958 Zhu Bajie eats a watermelon
Notes: I know for a fact that this was aired on Danish TV, and likely in other European countries, in what appears to be superior quality to what I've been able to dig up. So a better VHS recording might be out there somewhere.
1958 Huo Yan Shan (puppet movie)
1980 Ding Ding Zhan Hou Wang (cut-out animation)
1989 Sun Wu Kong Yu San Jian Bao Bei
Notes: Not a SAFS production?? Any info on this cartoon is appreciated.
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That's all for now, I'll post again when there's something substantial happening. It might be a while, but Nezha and Ginseng Fruit SHOULD happen...