The uploader is Garrett Gilchrist, the guy who did the Recobbled Cut of The Thief and the Cobbler. I'm sure someone here could get in contact with him. He has a website, orangecow.org, and maintains a forum.
(This post was last modified: 2015-07-14, 06:45 PM by TServo2049.)
I've been on Garrett's forum for years. He is the first person I know to have ever tried non-commercial fan-funded preservation of 35mm - at least of an entire feature (Raggedy Ann & Andy). Welcome!
Garrett, isn't there an Australian film collector who has a 35mm of The Princess and the Cobbler (to those who don't know, that was the first butchering of The Thief and the Cobbler, which at least has more Richard Williams footage than the Miramax cut)? I don't want to tell the story wrong.
(This post was last modified: 2015-07-25, 06:34 PM by TServo2049.)
I forget the exact details now -- I know there were people who were trying to track down leads on one or more prints of Princess and the Cobbler, and nothing came of it.
We did the first SD 35mm transfers of Raggedy Ann & Andy, The Little Island and The Thief and the Cobbler back in 2007. If you've ever seen Raggedy Ann in widescreen it was from us. We now have maybe five 35mm prints of the film and would love to do it officially if we could work with CBS (who I think has the rights).
I was wondering:
Who has the rights of Christmas Carol and could release a Bluray ?
Far as I know, Disney owns it through ABC. They're not averse to licensing stuff out, but it seems like they've forgotten they even own it, so I wouldn't have much faith in it getting an HD remaster.
Though even if they just licensed the old video master out to someone like Echo Bridge or Mill Creek (who have both licensed Disney/ABC catalog titles before) for a DVD release, it would still be an improvement in picture quality over any past official release, because it was only ever issued in SLP mode, unless there is some stealth SP-mode version (it's not impossible, I've found SP versions of Video Treasures/early Anchor Bay titles that were normally in SLP, but there is often no way of knowing without checking the weight of the cassette/the amount of tape on the spool, and either way I've never heard of any SP copies of this ever surfacing.)
At least the VHS preservation that has been passed around online sounds to have hi-fi audio, presumably from a tape master or some other magnetic source - it actually has better sound fidelity than the optical audio on the 16mm print. Right now, the best preservation would probably be to take an HD copy of the 16mm transfer and sync it with the VHS-sourced audio.
(This post was last modified: 2015-12-07, 03:17 AM by TServo2049.)