Song Of The South - many projects, much info & discussion thread (Released) — Page 39

Darth Lucas said:

timemeddler said:

has anyone heard anything new about the rumor that disney was selling the rights to criterion for a bluray release of this movie?

I haven’t heard anything of the sort but that sounds unlike something Disney would ever do. They don’t want the movie out there because they feel it will hurt their image (I know, it’s dumb, but that’s how they think). They have a beautiful scan of the film digitally archived and could do a quick restoration and limited release if they wanted to, but the fact is they don’t want it out there in any capacity. They wouldn’t sell it to another company to put it out. If they were ok with it being available to people, they would release it themselves.

But I think a big part of that is not wanting it out under the Disney banner. Regardless of how limited the release is, it would be sitting on someone’s shelf with their logo on it. Doing it through Criterion gives the message that ‘look, we don’t endorse what’s on this disc, but we’re also not censoring history or denying our mistakes [as some will see it] if someone wants to sell it and someone wants to buy it’.

And Criterion doesn’t need to be political. They just need to sell high quality film releases.

Agreed, if you put colorful cartoon animals and “Disney” on the front you are signaling that it’s safe for the kids of 2016, and risk the same “won’t someone please think of the children” outcry Disney fears if they release it themselves.

At the same time, Criterion has been suggested for years (and Anchor Bay, when that deal was still in effect) and they still haven’t budged.

I wish the Criterion rumour was real, but I doubt it. I strongly think there’s just this one person who hates Song of the South and finds it very racist and the movie won’t ever be released until that person either leaves Disney or dies. Same with the WB censored shorts…

There’s really nothing racist with this movie and Disney not wanting to release it in 2016, knowing how big of a movie it is regardless of the controversia… it’s really, really stupid and sad. Disney could even release it big and it shouldn’t have a high impact. Then people are stupid, and I can see black people group complaining about the release. It’s 2016. Everything offends people these days.

Darth Lucas said:

Back when D23 was going on in August I attended a small panel about the restoration of disney films during which they showed a couple clips of a BEAUTIFUL scan of Song of the South intermingled in the presentation.  Of course very quickly everyone gasped at seeing it and got excited, at which point the guy explained that they aren’t restoring it or releasing it, but that the studio wanted an archival scan.  This frustrated me to all hell because the couple clips they showed had very minimal damage and would be a very fast, easy cleanup and the colors were gorgeous.  The insistence of Disney to not release this film is baffling.  It would take maybe a couple of months to get it to a presentable point and would be easy profit for Disney and they STILL have no interest in a release because (to quote the presenter): “We don’t make the decisions of what gets restored and released.  Corporate makes those decisions based on what they think people will buy.  Sad, and there are many things I would love to restore, but it is a business after all.”

Does that mean, Disney has digitally archival scans of their movies… all of them, without any of the alterations they did? You mean they could easily release proper remasters of their movies, with grain and film quality if they wanted, easily? Does this mean they have kept archival digital raw scans of almost every movie they do? Does this mean there’s a slight possibility that the clean, raw film like quality of these films are all not lost, and preserved?

PonyoBellanote said:

Darth Lucas said:

Back when D23 was going on in August I attended a small panel about the restoration of disney films during which they showed a couple clips of a BEAUTIFUL scan of Song of the South intermingled in the presentation.  Of course very quickly everyone gasped at seeing it and got excited, at which point the guy explained that they aren’t restoring it or releasing it, but that the studio wanted an archival scan.  This frustrated me to all hell because the couple clips they showed had very minimal damage and would be a very fast, easy cleanup and the colors were gorgeous.  The insistence of Disney to not release this film is baffling.  It would take maybe a couple of months to get it to a presentable point and would be easy profit for Disney and they STILL have no interest in a release because (to quote the presenter): “We don’t make the decisions of what gets restored and released.  Corporate makes those decisions based on what they think people will buy.  Sad, and there are many things I would love to restore, but it is a business after all.”

Does that mean, Disney has digitally archival scans of their movies… all of them, without any of the alterations they did? You mean they could easily release proper remasters of their movies, with grain and film quality if they wanted, easily? Does this mean they have kept archival digital raw scans of almost every movie they do? Does this mean there’s a slight possibility that the clean, raw film like quality of these films are all not lost, and preserved?

I don’t know about ALL of them, but they’re at least starting that process. We don’t know exactly how many films they have scanned in high quality and resolution, but we know of at least the recent blu ray releases, song of the south, and a new scan of Bambi, as clips from both SOTS and Bambi were shown at that presentation.

Darth Lucas said:

PonyoBellanote said:

Darth Lucas said:

Back when D23 was going on in August I attended a small panel about the restoration of disney films during which they showed a couple clips of a BEAUTIFUL scan of Song of the South intermingled in the presentation.  Of course very quickly everyone gasped at seeing it and got excited, at which point the guy explained that they aren’t restoring it or releasing it, but that the studio wanted an archival scan.  This frustrated me to all hell because the couple clips they showed had very minimal damage and would be a very fast, easy cleanup and the colors were gorgeous.  The insistence of Disney to not release this film is baffling.  It would take maybe a couple of months to get it to a presentable point and would be easy profit for Disney and they STILL have no interest in a release because (to quote the presenter): “We don’t make the decisions of what gets restored and released.  Corporate makes those decisions based on what they think people will buy.  Sad, and there are many things I would love to restore, but it is a business after all.”

Does that mean, Disney has digitally archival scans of their movies… all of them, without any of the alterations they did? You mean they could easily release proper remasters of their movies, with grain and film quality if they wanted, easily? Does this mean they have kept archival digital raw scans of almost every movie they do? Does this mean there’s a slight possibility that the clean, raw film like quality of these films are all not lost, and preserved?

I don’t know about ALL of them, but they’re at least starting that process. We don’t know exactly how many films they have scanned in high quality and resolution, but we know of at least the recent blu ray releases, song of the south, and a new scan of Bambi, as clips from both SOTS and Bambi were shown at that presentation.

What I originally meant with my comment is that, judging by what you said there’s a slight chance that Disney keeps raw scans of their films in their digital archive, which means maybe if one day Disney lightens up and wants to do a Criterion, for example, with their animated classics, the hope of having one correct film restoration isn’t too far away if they have all the scans still, to be used whenever.

…Whatever happened to Poita and his scan of SOTS? I don’t have a spleen account so no way to check if it could have been thrown up there…

I’ve had to contend with my 2 copies I found on the net that look very very nice. One is a 2.49 gig mkv at 1280/720 with a 64kbps stereo audio. The other is a 4.25 gig mkv at 720/480 with a 255kbps stereo audio. The picture quality on both look identical, with very sharp picture and what appears to be some major cleanup (altho some artifacts and dust/dirt are still observable) …dunno if any of you people here are responsible for these copies…

Edit: checked on IPT…nothing.

Finnius said:

…Whatever happened to Poita and his scan of SOTS? I don’t have a spleen account so no way to check if it could have been thrown up there…

I’ve had to contend with my 2 copies I found on the net that look very very nice. One is a 2.49 gig mkv at 1280/720 with a 64kbps stereo audio. The other is a 4.25 gig mkv at 720/480 with a 255kbps stereo audio. The picture quality on both look identical, with very sharp picture and what appears to be some major cleanup (altho some artifacts and dust/dirt are still observable) …dunno if any of you people here are responsible for these copies…

Edit: checked on IPT…nothing.

He may have lost it. He also doesn’t distribute himself, he provides his scans to others to work on. Sometimes.

No spleen account, as I said above. I am willing to trade an invite to ipt for a spleen invite tho…

edit: TY, I have received a couple invites.

Wazzles said:

Finnius said:

…Whatever happened to Poita and his scan of SOTS? I don’t have a spleen account so no way to check if it could have been thrown up there…

I’ve had to contend with my 2 copies I found on the net that look very very nice. One is a 2.49 gig mkv at 1280/720 with a 64kbps stereo audio. The other is a 4.25 gig mkv at 720/480 with a 255kbps stereo audio. The picture quality on both look identical, with very sharp picture and what appears to be some major cleanup (altho some artifacts and dust/dirt are still observable) …dunno if any of you people here are responsible for these copies…

Edit: checked on IPT…nothing.

He may have lost it. He also doesn’t distribute himself, he provides his scans to others to work on. Sometimes.

I probably downloaded it when it was up there.

i don’t have a Spleen account unfortunately, is there another site that has the 1080p scan from 16mm?

Song of the South 1946 35mm 1080p MPEG-2 AC3

I just don’t get the deal about this movie. The crows in Dumbo and especially the “What Makes the Red Man Red?” song in Peter Pan are at least as racist as anything in it, yet those movies are considered beloved classics that get all the works in uncensored re-releases and are still shown to children to this day as if there is nothing wrong with them. Yet Disney tries to act like this film never existed… while at the same time one of their most popular and beloved theme park attractions built decades afterward is a shrine to it? Talk about mixed signals!

Seriously, I get they’re afraid of the controversy and I get not wanting it to be shown to young children removed from context, but that doesn’t excuse not releasing it at all. Make it a limited release, stick a warning label on it, market it to adults, film a disclaimer intro with Leonard Maltin or better yet a prominent African-American, include a documentary examining the film’s historical context. If they can find a way to put out those WW2 propaganda shorts (which are WAY more racist) to collectors for the sake of historical preservation, which was an admirable thing to do, there is no excuse to not do the same thing with this film. If nothing else, it is insulting to the memory of James Baskett to bury the first ever Academy Award winning performance by a black man. It has enormous historical significance for that reason alone.