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The Thief and the Cobbler: Recobbled Director's Cut (Released) — Page 42

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Again, those who don't do the download thing can get it direct from me.


New artwork!

http://orangecow.org/thief/cobblerposterv3small.jpg

http://orangecow.org/thief/cobbleramarayv3small.jpg

I went and revised the DVD cover for the film, as I didn't like my old, off-model Thief, and didn't really like any of the old Zigzags. The Thief is new, so is Zigzag, there's a new Yumyum on the back ... and the Witch has been promoted to the front cover for some reason. The new characters (particularly the Thief) stand out a bit, since I decided to use only one line width this time to get it looking more "Williams" like and not impose my own rougher style on it.

Full size DL: http://orangecow.org/thief/cobbleramarayv3.jpg

Here's the disc art for the film:

http://orangecow.org/thief/thiefdiscartv4small.jpg

Full size DL: http://orangecow.org/thief/thiefdiscartv4.jpg

http://orangecow.org/thief/thiefnewsm.jpg

The Thief is a difficult character to draw, as he's simple and depends a lot on personality. This is my take on him ...


http://orangecow.org/thief/nodscancolorsoftsm.jpg

A new take on King Nod. The face and right hand are the same as the old one, but I redrew the rest so I could remove Princess Yumyum from his lap. Used this on the disc art.


I also drew the four henchmen, but I didn't use them anywhere, so I never even colored them in ...
http://orangecow.org/thief/lackeysscan.jpg
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ocpmovie, watched most of your cut on YouTube, currently downloading the disc, thanks!

Just a note on you cover, you are unlikely to care, but you are actually using the old version of the DVD Video logo on your cover, it was changed a few years ago, but no one seemed to notice. That said, you legally aren't meant to be using the DVD Video logo anyway as the disc isn't pressed to the spec, but I seriously doubt you'll want to make multiple versions for every format of disc people might burn it onto!

I know I'll be the only one that cares here, but is it possible to get a version without the DVD logo on the front? I just aren't a fan of its placement and cheap glow. No need to worry about the other two, not distracting and easily user removable. Love the cover otherwise!

Is it also possible to get the disc label set for full face printing (and again minus the DVD logo)? I only every print DVDs full face, in fact I'm fairly sure that is the only way I can buy them, never seen printable DVDs in another form. Better yet, could you remove the white template? Serves no purpose other than giving discs white rims if you don't have it set completely correct. [edit]I knew I should have checked the full file first! You did exactly what I always do, don't know why I thought it may be otherwise! [/edit]

Sorry for all the requests, I just really like your work and want to present it as best I can! Thanks again.

http://www.kineticpast.com/starwars/thecheatlaserdisc.gif
Ooh, a laserdisc. The Cheat's playin' something on a laserdisc.
Everything is better on a laserdisc. Whatever happened to the laserdisc? Laserdisc!

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Thanks, but sorry. It would be easy to do, but it's not of interest to me or worth it to do a version without the little DVD logo. I don't do "pet peeve" requests.
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Originally posted by: DaveHolmes
How big is the file



yes, how big the file is. does it have all the extra fan stuff in it or that will be in another file?
thanks ocp!


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Originally posted by: ocpmovie Again, those who don't do the download thing can get it direct from me.


i've just tried to download the torrent at demonoid but i need to be registered to do it and to register i need an invitation. if anyone could inviteme i'll apreciate. if not, how can i get it directly from you ocp?
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pirate_Bay

Says Piratebay should be back up in a day or two. I'm one of the 99.9-ers. Ugh.
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julianhoek, I reiterate that the torrent is tracked at Demonoid but also posted to Mininova.org so that people who don't have a Demonoid account can still get access to the swarm. No account is needed to access the copy posted to Mininova, just do a search for 'cobbler' and it's right there.
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thanks joe! i'm now dowloading the torrent from mininova
i can't wait to see it!!
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Ugh. Is it possible to take the files partially loaded from the piratebay and continue the torrent from Demonoid where it left off, or will I have to start the entire download again?
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Yes, it is possible to continue the download from Mininova. This has all been discussed before if you read.





..



This is completely off topic, but people who've been reading this thread for a while might remember that I was trying to create two animated series, Dance With Grandpa and The Chosen Ones.

Here's a new reel for Dance With Grandpa, animated by myself.
http://orangecow.org/chosengrandpa/grandpamayreel.mov
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Damn. I had about 10 more rar files left to download but being that alt.binaries.dvd is probably the most unwieldy group I've ever encountered, the rest of the posts have already been deleted from my server.
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Originally posted by: ocpmovie
Yes, it is possible to continue the download from Mininova. This has all been discussed before if you read.


Yes, of course I read. Nothing has said how to actually do it, though. It's a completely different torrent and tracker so starting it downloads it completely from scratch. I copied the existing files from the piratebay download and it has still started the download over from scratch. The files that were allllllllmost completed were the VOB files, so even if they were 4 MB from finishing, now I'm looking at 3GB again. I was asking if there's a trick to get it to recognize an unfinished torrent from Piratebay to Demonoid/Mininova.
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I have barely posted in this thread as it is, but I have been following it from the beginning. It's great to see that the final version of teh film is done and out there via torrent. I can't spare the bandwidth or cash to get it at the moment but I will hopefully manage to acquire it in a trade.

One question I have is: is all the content stored in the "thief" directory on your website available as DVD-ROM content on one of the many extra DVDs? I know you said something about an archive of this thread and all the hi-res stuff being on one of the discs, but you have posted images since then. Just curious.

Also, I wanted to make an odd not about the cover. I've always liked the cover art as it's progressed with small changes from one version to the next, however, I thought I'd point something out. Looking at the vectors of the characters' eyes on the front reveals the following:
* Princess YumYum looks as if she's scared of One Eye (looking in his direction)
* King Nod could be looking in fright at The Thief or ZigZag (not entirely sure)
* ZigZag looks schemingly in King Nod's direction
* The Old Witch stares at the pins in Tack's mouth
and the final one is the odd one:
* Tack seems fixated on The Witch's saggy chest

I'm not complaining or anything. Just making a quirky observation. Though I wanted to ask if you intended any of the above or was it merely coincidence?

Anyway, congratulations on getting this thing done after however many months of work. Have you sent discs out to the people of the original production that helped you out? Heard any comments back from them yet?

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

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Yes, of course I read. Nothing has said how to actually do it, though.


It depends on what client you're using to download the torrent. Most have an option somewhere to tell it to re-check what data is already present. In my own client of choice, uTorrent, you right-click on a stopped torrent and select "Force Re-Check" from the context menu. The location of the option to force a rehash of data differs with each client, although I imagine most would be in a similar part of the program as uTorrent.
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Caligula - if your torrent thing isn't recognizing the Demonoid torrent as being the same as the Pirate Bay torrent, keep the files and wait until either the Pirate Bay is back up, or the Myspleen torrent comes up. Those will definitely be the same stuff.

>>One question I have is: is all the content stored in the "thief" directory on your website available as DVD-ROM content on one of the many extra DVDs?

I have an entire 4GB DVD stuffed full of an incredible amount of Thief artwork and files, including what's in the thief directory but with a lot more.

* Princess YumYum looks as if she's scared of One Eye (looking in his direction)
Yeah, I wanted both of them to be scared of One Eye or Zigzag.

* ZigZag looks schemingly in King Nod's direction
Or, Tack's.

* The Old Witch stares at the pins in Tack's mouth
* Tack seems fixated on The Witch's saggy chest
No.


>>Anyway, congratulations on getting this thing done after however many months of work. Have you sent discs out to the people of the original production that helped you out? Heard any comments back from them yet?

Yep. They all got theirs and enjoyed 'em.


Here's a few comments from various people I know:


Eddie Bowers, Thief website:
I just finished watching it. Great stuff! Very nice menu as well. I
think I even like it just as it is. Some better copies of the source
material in a few spots would be nice, but I kinda' like the mix of
pencil tests and fully finished animation. It allows it to be a
complete film, but at the same time reminds you that it was something that was
never fully completed. I don't know if that makes sense, but it's very
enjoyable in this form.
I also enjoyed the Star Wars DVD (Thanks!).


"Richard Kish"
A Marvelous Job!!!
I just finished viewing the entire "Thief" DVD with ALL of the bonus
material, including the commentary on which the both of you
participated. I hadn't realized how MUCH work and effort you poured
into
this Garrett. What a wonderful and extensive piece of work. And the
commentary was a very nice and essential addition, as it not only gives
us the breadth of your work, but helps to explain the history and
"modifications" that this "project" took on over the 26 years of it's
"life".
I wanted to thank you for all of your work and for sharing this
with me and "the rest of the world". My wife was equally blown away by
the intense detail of work on the Williams footage and my 6 year old
really enjoyed the storyline.
I may not be a
filmmaker...but I'm an avid animation enthusiast and have nothing but
the greatest of respects not only for Richard Williams efforts on the
Thief, but for your work as well ... I'm one of your biggest fans and hope that
others will get bitten by the bug, as I have.

Take care and thank you once again for your efforts and
enthusiam for this project. I will do my best to share it with the
world, in the hope that one fine day, Disney will contact Richard
Williams (before he leaves this world) to help resurrect this wonderful
piece of animation.
All The Best!



A W
I do appreciate your hard work and
of course the dvd's.
I like the recobbled cut - it is an amazing
reconstruction. Tons of hard work.
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I really need to leave my two cents on this as well, I've watched your DVD a few days ago, mostly the commentary track you've done, and was just impressed at the outcome of it all (too often when I buy a DVD, I find myself going right to the commentary track since I've already seen the film over and over to the point that it's not always important that I watch it again, but watching it with a second opinion works so much better to me!

Again, great job as expected on this project! Much of what you've done such as the new additions were quite seamless and not as noticable on a normal TV. I'd probably keep watching this more than the workprint itself!
Yours truly,
Chris Sobieniak

For more mindless entertainment....
My LiveJournal Page
The Online Video Depository - For all your daily video needs!
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Wow, I got the DVD a few days ago - amazing job! I loved the commentary, Nasruddin feature, everything! A hearty congratulations! I really hope we'll be able to the real thing in theaters. It could happen!

P.S: I had no idea you were sending it - I was gonna pay, but thank you very much!

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I finally got it and have watched it 3 times. How great is this? I had read the same article in Comic Scene years ago and was just as intrigued. So glad to have finally seen it and it holds up to the hype. The War Machine finale is ungodly. How could human beings DO that?! I'm going to have to break out Roger Rabbit just to savor the animation. It's too bad we don't have much output from this man. He is incredible in his personal animation and what he got out of his team.

Great work, Garrett.

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Just finished watching it, awesome work. Just as a curiosity, is the 4:3 footage such as the Mighty One Eye death Calvert animation? Apart from the pink servants, those shots felt like they had some kind of different colors.
What I can't understand anyway is why they cut the War Machine sequence. Putting myself in the mind of a producer wanting to make money without risking with an "artsy" film (they didn't anyway) I can see how some scenes could be cut to fasten the pace or make everything less redundant; but I don't really see any reason to delete some of the best animation since the 40s Disney features which only last, what, two minutes?
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>> the 4:3 footage such as the Mighty One Eye death Calvert animation?

Yes.
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i burned it down to a dvd today and just finished watching it about an hour ago.
congratulations ocp for sucha an incredible enford!!! and beside this proves how tiny was the fraction of the movie unfinishied. was it soooo terrible let williams finishied in a little bit more time instead of fire the man who created and destroy the work of his life?? i can't imagine the kind of depretion williams must got in with that. i wonder what is richard doing right now, if he is envolved in some new proyect, if he keeps animating for himself or doing comercials becouse his last finished movie was rogger rabbit. i have no idea what happend with him after they screwed his master work with arabian knight. ocp you have been in touch with his son, did he tell you something about him?
btw some post ago you put a new version of the dvd cover but without the link to the high res file, the link was only for the cd i think. if you could post it i'll be more than thankfull so i'll have such an amazing dvd in a preety box!
something weird happened to me today as i was watching the movie. my mon steped into the room and started to watch it too. i say she would be a tipical viewer, an average mom with no knolage of what's good animation and she said "what ugly drawings" and stop watching it and left. that leave me thinking about the producers don't wanting to take a risk with such a boudbraking movie. the visuals are very weird and styled for a regular joe to watch it and also the plot with silent characters shouldn't like to the executives pretty much who just wants to win money for the movie they invested in. i think the thief and the cobbler is one of the best animated movies i've seen but i'm an animator and i'm watching also lots of technical stuff that's amazing and the all the background cool designs. it's a master piece for me but i think for an average guy wouldn't be so interested in animation and watching an inovative movie i think definetly not. what a shame...
anyway, thanks again ocp and perhaps thins inspire williams to finish it!

julian from argentina
ps: sorry for the crappy english
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Where do you download it for use on a DVD?

:: Read the fucking thread.

- M
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ocp

thanks so much for the incredible job on this! I watched it yesterday and thoroughly enjoyed it.

I also enjoyed the 'about this film' featurette that you included, although I truly yearned for your audio to be cut over photographs of the people involved, with film posters, etc (a la Ken Burns docs or the handling of photos in the Bob Evans doc 'The Kid Stays In The Picture'). In an ideal, unlimited-budget dreamworld it'd be great even to see a photo of the Arabian Knight dvd release bundled with that cereal box, but oh well.

While I know that sort of documentary-level support to your audio would be complete gravy on top of everything you've already assembled, if you ever plan to go back into the whole dvd and re-build your menus, etc., my only suggestion would be to add in your 'About This Film' intro to the main page, perhaps the way Pixar handles their dvds sometimes - the first and foremost option could be 'PLAY FILM', with an option below it being 'PLAY FILM WITH INTRODUCTION' or something about that.

I only think of this, because I'm looking forward to lending this dvd to friends, but in each instance I'll be telling them to go dig up and watch your featurette before watching the film.

Thanks again for your great work on this!
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Heh, well, I was trying to save disc space. I had planned on doing a more extensive feature on the film and still might.


The high-res amaray art is available as posted earlier.



Praise from Twitchfilm.net:
June 04, 2006

Richard Williams' Lost Life's Work Restored By One Obsessive Fan ...
(Posted In Animation Film News Trailer Alert USA and Canada )

Big thanks to regular Twitch reader Rhythm-X for sending in the following on the fan-driven restoration project of The Thief And The Cobbler, a film multiple Oscar winner and Roger Rabbit animater Richard Williams spent twenty five years working on only to lose control of it when nearing the end, see it used as "inspiriation" for Aladdin, cut to bits in Australia, and then further cut and altered by Miramax. This story is both incredibly depressing in terms of what was done to the film and incredibly inspirational in terms of the extreme lengths a dedicated fan went to restore the film as closely as possible to Williams' original vision. You can find an official forum for the restoration project here and a trailer plus the complete restoration on YouTube. Everything that follows came this way from Rhythm-X ...

Richard Williams magnum opus THE THIEF AND THE COBBLER is perhaps the most notorious animated film never completed. In production independently for decades, designed as an example of the finest traditional animation had to offer, it was fast-tracked when Warner Bros. decided they wanted a piece of the Oscar-winning animator behind WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT?. As the production continued on, Warners became nervous about Williams being able to finish the film on time to beat Disney's ALADDIN (which stole a lot from the long in production THIEF AND THE COBBLER) into theaters. What's more, they were nervous about the film itself - no songs, very light on story, a lot of animation for animation's sake - never mind that it was technically some of the most advanced cel animation ever attempted, with three-dimensional renderings thought to be beyond the reach of the inherently 2-dimensional art form. They didn't think it would sell, and they didn't think it would be done on time anyway, so they bailed out. The Completion Bond Company took over the production and immediately fired Richard Williams from the film that had literally been his life's work.

To replace him, The Completion Bond Company hired Saturday morning cartoon veteran Fred Calvert, who promptly began re-shaping Williams' film into a musical. Vastly inferior animation was used to complete the project, loads of Williams animation hit the cutting room floor, previously silent characters found themselves yapping away, and the film ultimately resembled nothing so much as an Aladdin ripoff. It was now called THE PRINCESS AND THE COBBLER, and this version was released in Australia and South Africa.

Then things really got ugly. Something was missing here. Things were not yet as awful as possible, and when you need things to go from bad to worse, there's only one company who can deliver the goods. Enter Miramax Family Films, who clearly smelled the blood in the water surrounding this project. They picked up the US rights to THE PRINCESS AND THE COBBLER, and went about "improving" (as they are prone to do) Calvert's violation of Richard William's life work; call it necrophiliac rape. Still more Williams footage was removed from the film, the characters (including the ones that weren't supposed to talk in the first place) found themselves with DIFFERENT voices, replacing the Calvert replacements, and the character of The Thief found himself saddled with a agonizing running monologue by Jonathan Winters. The Miramax version, called ARABIAN KNIGHT and now explicitly an ALADDIN rip-off, was dumped into a handful of theaters, flopped, and finally turned up on video, bearing the final insult - another title change, this time back to Richard Williams' original title THE THIEF AND THE COBBLER - which this film was clearly not. But workprints of Williams' original version were circulating, mostly in the animation community. Williams, heartbroken, quit animation and wrote a book called THE ANIMATOR'S SURVIVAL GUIDE. He refuses to talk about this film to anyone, to this day.

Now, in the 21st century, where editing a movie is within the reach of anyone with a computer on their desk, a STAR WARS fan named Garrett Gilchrist has combed the world for every bit of footage that he could find (some of which came from veterans of the original Williams crew), and produced what he calls "THE THIEF AND THE COBBLER: RECOBBLED CUT". It's taken from the Miramax version, the Calvert version, the Williams workprint, and other sources that he discovered. The quality, as you would expect, is highly variable. There are scenes taken from a pan & scan DVD, painstakingly overlayed and synchronized with the lesser-quality but CinemaScope ratio workprint. There are scenes that are only storyboards. There are scenes where a character's mouth has been re-animated by hand to synchronize with the original dialog, or lack thereof. It is a tremendous piece of work, the restoration of one man's labor of love, that became another man's labor of love. Though it is imperfect in that some of Calvert's footage is carried over here by necessity, and the workprint Williams footage is low-quality indeed, it is by far the closest we may ever get to seeing Williams' original vision of the film - closer than merely watching the blurry, overcompressed, incomplete workprint that has been making the rounds. The "Recobbled Cut" is circulating in the world of BitTorrent, and for anyone who loves animation it is a must-see of the very highest order. Special features include an informative restoration commentary track, deleted characters section, trailers for the "Recobbled Cut" and the Miramax version, gorgeous "pencil test"-themed menus, and more. The film itself is presented in its original CinemaScope ratio for 99 percent of the running time, with only a handful of shots represented in pan & scan, windowboxed in the scope frame. 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. Seek it out and witness for yourself the pinnacle of traditional animation. Feel the mystic fumes.

» Posted by Todd at June 4, 2006 09:51 PM

Reader Comments

If you want to get a hold of this DVD you can download a copy via the bit torrent site demonoid.com. I just watched my copy a few days ago and was impressed by the amount of work Garrett put into this edit. Very fitting for a film like this which is quite possibly THE most ambitious feature length film ever attempted in any medium. One thing that's important to note when watching this movie is that aside from Garrett's digital editing, the movie is 100% analog. Certain scenes which might be easily reproduced in today's world of 3D animation become all the more impressive when you consider the massive efforts required to produce them with drawings. I imagine Dick Williams' relentless perfectionism was quite frustrating to many of his animators.
» Posted by tubesoda at June 4, 2006 10:55 PM


It would be great if someone could post the
Torrent for this, or reseed it.


Or you can see it here, in full low-res glory:-

http://www.youtube.com/results?search=The%20Thief%20and%20the%20Cobbler%20Recobbled%20Cut%20&sort=title_sort

» Posted by louis at June 5, 2006 03:47 AM

Just DL'd the DVD this past weekend. It's the most impressive fan effort I've ever seen. I've been a fan of the film for years and this is the icing on the cake for me. For any fan of animation, this is a must-see!

» Posted by Mark at June 5, 2006 08:56 AM







"Saint John the Conqueror" writes this review on his blog, which has now been shut down for some reason so I'll list it here:
Our next selection comes from the “incredible crying shame” department. Whether we know his name or not, we all know the work of animation maestro Richard Williams, the brains behind the moving drawings in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Williams’ masterpiece, however, was a little personal project called The Thief and the Cobbler, an Arabian Night-esqe tale which he started work on the 1960s using his own money. Featuring epic, lush, and incredibly beautiful animation heavily influenced by Islamic decorative art, the lovingly-made but slow-to-finish TTatC was pretty much doomed the minute Disney announced Aladdin, which was staffed by numerous veterans from the TTatC team and ripped off pretty much everything in Williams’ unfinished movie. It's unbelievable how many sequences in Aladdin were lifted wholesale from this movie. Finally in 1995 a bastardized version of Williams’ baby was released, with some terrible, TERRIBLE voiceovers (including ones for characters who were intended to be silent), shitty song-and-dance numbers and a totally kiddified version of what was intended to be a mature movie. What a sucky finish.

But thank God, it was not the finish. This past month, YouTube has been touched by the work of a benevolent soul who goes by the name of tygerbug, who has succeeded in piecing together, from released animation as well as rough sketches and workprints, what he believes to be a film closer to Williams’ original vision. Cleverly entitled The Thief and the Cobbler: The Recobbled Cut tygerbug brings justice to a piece of art which dearly deserves it. I mean, look at this thing. It’s the most fucking beautiful animated film I’ve seen in my life. The titular characters are, mercifully, silent as intended, and the film drops the hand-holding introduction and absurd narration. The cut refuses to insult its viewers’ intelligence and allows them to freely follow what is mostly a silent film, save for the slippery coolness of Vincent Price-voiced villain Zigzag, who weaves his plot in rhyme. The art is INCREDIBLE, a lavish hallucinogenic effort, capturing the distinctive Islamic style and featuring some really well-designed characters. It’s just so much fun to watch.

If you want to see this movie, and really, it’s worth it, you should not rent the DVD version unless you want to be disappointed. At first I thought about suggesting to watch it with the sound off, but then you’d miss out on the decent score and Vincent Price’s pipes. Go to YouTube and watch the Recobbled edition, or any one of its seventeen bite-sized pieces. You’ll see what I mean. Plus, it’s sort of cool to see the rough sketches spliced in with the recovered animation. It gives it a real underground feel and allows you to see glimpses of Williams’ vision still on paper.

Hopefully, someone at Warner Bros. will realize what they have done and attempt to right the wrong. Somehow, someday, I hope something like the Recobble Cut will be released on DVD or Blu-Ray or Alien Eyeball Scan or whatever. This movie needs to be saved, saved, SAVED!!
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(Correction: not moving. Staying at same address.)