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This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2
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Author
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Topic: Song of the South - 2006 DVD release
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Mike Blakesley
Film God
Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 07-20-2005 01:54 AM
Link
"Song of the South" to go on sale in '06
[i/Jim Hill shares what he just heard from his sources deep inside Buena Vista Home Entertainment. That a DVD of this long supressed Disney classic will finally hit store shelves in the Fall of 2006. [/i]
by Jim Hill
I know that it's been a really rough winter so far. But who would have thought that Hell was gonna to freeze over?
"What do I mean by that?," you ask. Well, I just got word that Buena Vista Home Entertainment will be releasing "Song of the South" on DVD in the Fall of 2006.
That's right. "Song of the South." The Academy Award winning film that former Disney Feature Animation head Thomas Schumacher once told Roger Ebert was on "permanent moratorium" has reportedly been greenlit for release late next year. A special 60th anniversary edition that -- thanks to a plethora of extra features -- will try & put this somewhat controversial motion picture in historial context.
"Why -- after all these years -- did Disney finally give in?," you query. It's simple, really. "Song of the South" 's 60th anniversary was simply too good a promotional hook for the Mouse's marketing staff to pass up. More to the point, Buena Vista Home Entertainment could really use a hit right about now.
Don't believe me? Then go check out Disney's financial reports for the first quarter of 2005. Where you'll discover that the Mouse's accountants actually blame the 20% drop in revenue that the company's Studio Entertainment division recently experienced on lower DVD sales of current-year films.
Given that Disneyana fans have been clamoring for a "Song of the South" DVD for nearly a decade now, BVHE execs are hoping that all of this pent-up demand will eventually translate in really big sales for this disc. Disney is hoping to sell at least 10-12 million units of this particular motion picture.
"But aren't Disney Company execs concerned about how the African American community may response to 'Song of the South' 's release of DVD?," you continue. Yep. I won't lie to you folks. There's a lot of people in the Team Disney Burbank building who are very concerned that -- by releasing this much maligned motion picture on home video & DVD -- that the Mouse House is potentially opening itself up to a ton of bad publicity.
With the hope of avoiding that, BVHE reportedly plans to really pile on the extra features with "Song of the South." Among the ideas currently being knocked around is producing a special documentary that -- through use of clips from that TV movie version of Rodgers & Hammerstein's "Cinderella" that Disney produced back in 1997 as well as sequences from "The Proud Family" & "That's So Raven" -- would demonstrate that a person's color really doesn't matter at the modern Walt Disney Company. There's also talk of including Walt Disney Feature Animation's seldom-seen short, "John Henry," as one of the disc's special features.
Buena Vista Home Entertainment is also supoosedly toying with approaching a prominent African-American performer to serve as the MC on the DVD version of "Song of the South." You know, someone who could then introduce the film, explain its historical significance as well as re-enforcing the idea that "SOTS" was a product of a much less enlightened time in Hollywood's history. I'm told that -- up until recently -- Bill Cosby was actually at the top of Disney's wish list. But now that Dr. Cosby has been accused of inappropriate behavior with several ladies ... Well, let's just say that Bill is no longer Mickey's top choice for this position.
Anywho ... There's one other aspect of this "Song-of-the-South"-soon-on-on-DVD saga that I guess I should mention. Which is why Buena Vista Home Entertainment is low-balling its predictions of the number of units that "SOTS" might sell (I.E. 10-12 million versus "Finding Nemo" 's 39 million+ units). Why is that, do you suppose? Mind you, it's not because "Song of the South" is decidedly old fashioned (Well, what do you expect from a 60 year-old motion picture?), but rather .... Here, why don't I let my source inside BVHE explain:
"This movie isn't nearly as good as people seem to remember it being. Sure, the animated sequences are charming. But the pace of the rest of the picture is so damned pokey.
Which is why I seriously doubt that we'll get all that many letters about "Song of the South" 's racial content. The way I figure it, most kids & adults will be nodding off 30 minutes into the thing. And people who are sleeping can't write letters of complaint."
Well, I don't know about that. But what I can tell you folks is to stop bidding NOW on those black market "SOTS" DVDs that keep popping up on eBay. For -- if you can just wait another 17-18 months -- you can actually purchase a really-for-real authorized version of Disney's "Song of the South" of your very own.
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Andy Summers
Master Film Handler
Posts: 397
From: Bournemouth Dorset United kingdom
Registered: Jun 2005
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posted 07-20-2005 07:40 AM
Man I haven’t seen this in 33 years, it was at the Rocky cinema in Westbourne now a god dame bingo hall, err, also I not sure if Disney DVD’s are still THX certified….
As I haven’t seen any new releases lately with THX, it’s the buzz man no THX that’s not good and I don’t care, no THX is a negative vibe from the studio…..
So in the mean time….
Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay
My, oh my, what a wonderful day
Plenty of sunshine headin' my way
Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay
Mister Bluebird's on my shoulder
It's the truth, it's actual
Ev'rything is satisfactual
Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay
Wonderful feeling, wonderful day, yes sir!
Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay
My, oh my, what a wonderful day
Plenty of sunshine headin' my way
Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay
Mister Bluebird's on my shoulder
It's the truth, it's actual
Ev'rything is satisfactual
Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay
Wonderful feeling, feeling this way
Mister Bluebird's on my shoulder
It is the truth, it's actual... huh?
Where is that bluebird? Mm-hm!
Ev'rything is satisfactual
Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay
Wonderful feeling, wonderful day!
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Frank Angel
Film God
Posts: 5305
From: Brooklyn NY USA
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 08-28-2005 07:24 AM
quote:
Yesterday I bought 20.000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA - it carries a 2004 copyright designation. Only in Special Features the 1955 release date is mentioned.
Are they afraid that audiences might say: "Hey, this LADY AND THE TRAMP movie is fifty years old, let's buy a new movie?" - "Yeah, but not SNOW WHITE, it's 68 years old!"
No, Christian, you have to think with a much more sinister mind. You are giving them way to much credit. What they are REALLY doing here is what they have lobbied Congress for decades. They want to totally eliminate the copyright time limitation.
Originally the copyright law was designed to gave governmental monopolistic protection to artists' works for a very specific, very limited time frame. Why? because our capitalistic system abhors monopoly, or at least it used to. Copyright protection only lasted for 24 years. It was renewable again, only for another 24 years. After that, the work belonged to the public, i.e., it moved into the famed Public Domain status. And amazingly, a reading of the original law shows that the intent of the authors WASN'T to give protection the author (although that was the secondary effect), but it was a way that Congress devised to insure that the PUBLIC would have access to works that educate, entertain and edify. The idea being, if you give the author monopolistic protection for a limited time, they could reap more profit from actually creating artistic works, thus encouraging them to create more for public good. The idea being that an artist could actually write or draw or compose more if he didn't need to wait tables or drive a horse and buggy taxi, etc. Central to that idea, however, was that the protection ended after a specified period of time. The other central point of the law was to ensure that after that period and the work went into Public Domain, that PD status was sacrosanct. Once the copyright protection expired, it belonged to the public and couldn't be reversed.
Well, that was then, this is now. The original thrust of the law which focused on the public good has long been forgotten; it is no longer the poor struggling artist who holds copyrights but the huge, powerful multinational entertainment conglomerates. And these corporations, once they saw their copyrights about to expire, plied Congress (you know, those guys who are there to protect our interests....the public's interest), plied them with wine women and song, and probably in a few cases, wine, pretty boys and song, and got the law changed again and again to make sure that the time limit was, for all practical purposes, totally castrated.
First they got the limit extended to 75 years, then when they saw that that wasn't enough, so they got this unchallenged nonsense: "the life of the artist plus 50 years" (what exactly is the life of Disney Entertainment. Inc or 20th Century Fox?) and they get and extra 50 years MORE to boot! It's a joke. But, because this has been the goal of every studio from the first time they realized that the Public might actually get rights to expired copyright works, even the life of the artist plus fifty years isn't enough for them. What they really want is the government to give them monopolistic protection FOREVER, along with using the FBI to be their personal policemen. Thus, you see them doing stuff like this -- taking a work that was copyrighted at a given date, and summarily saying that the copyright has started all over again. It's bullshit and it should be legally challenged.
What they are doing by claiming 2004 as the copyright date is blatantly trying to circumvent the legal limitation of the copyright protection. This is an affront to Public Domain, which has already taken a hit with the again unchallenged claim that the once inviolate Public Domain status for IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE is revoked.
No place in the current law is there any provision for recopyrighting a work in order to thwart the copyright time limitation, just because it is issued in a different medium. And they probably will get away with it. As a Disney executive once said at one of those wine and brie parties they are so fond of, when asked what was going to happen now that the FANTASIA copyright was only a year away from expiration, he chuckled and said, "You really don't think this company will ever allow FANTASIA to go Public Domain, do you?" The arrogance of these people is astounding. To them, the original limitations of copyright seems to just be a quaint relic and something for them to manipulate, the public be damned.
Even more outragious, look closely at the copyright insignia on some of the films Disney released a few years back and you'll see the statement, "For purposes of Copyright, the country of origin of this motion picture is the United Kingdom." So this "all American" company is willing to, in effect, publically renounce it's American corporate citizenship just so it can get some additional benefit that the British copyright law provides. How's THAT for being a corporate Benedict Arnold?!!
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Frank Angel
Film God
Posts: 5305
From: Brooklyn NY USA
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 08-29-2005 07:09 AM
quote: Jesse Skeen
I have to wonder if those who are against releasing this movie have actually seen it.
This was never an issue of any PC crowd objecting, it was Disney corporate who have been so protective of keeping their image so purely vanilla and squeeky-clean who made the decision to withdraw this title. But again I say, that this in and of itself is a subtle form of racial bias in that their opinion of the black community is that, unlike educated Disney executives, black folk are not sophistocated enough to understand historical context of a film make over half a century ago.
Although all I have is my teenage memory of the film, I am with Jesse on this one -- all I remember is that Uncle Reemus was a warm and compassionate character and was certainly treated sympathetically. I remember thinking how great it would be to have an uncle like him. So what's the complaint?
quote:
quote:
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One thing that seems funny to me is that BVHE omits the original production year.
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On the packaging...
This is very dangerous. The copyright law is very specific. You neglect to put the proper copyright insignia on the work in the appropriate format and you sell a single copy without it, you loose copyright protection. Period. You can't even refile. Again, that's because the law's primary intent was to protect the public, not the author. It was the author's responsibility to comply. Once a work is given to the public without fulfilling the requirements of the law, it then belongs to the public. The author cannot go back and "fix" the mistake. And so it was with many works where the renewal was either not filed properly or not filed in time. Too bad.
I believe there is one episode of Star Trek, the original TV show that did not have the copyright insignia displayed and it became Public Domain.
But that was before the law was completely gutted. It could all have been changed as the studios manipulated the provisions in the last three ammendments that they got passed. Whatever, I am sure Disney isn't worrying about it.
Here's a telling aside that always makes me smile: When the studios were lobbying to get the "life of the artist plus 50 years" ammendment pushed through, Congress held one of those "public hearings" that the public only hears about after they are over. The studio lawyers were whining that the "artist" should have his family still benefit from his works after he dies (how big of them to worry about the starving artist and his family -- you know, the artist who they cheat out of royalties). The legendary folk singer Pete Seeger was asked to testify at the hearings by the common cause group which was opposed to the changes. He ended his statement with this great quote -- "I really don't think the extension is a good idea because it would be much better for my off-spring if they had to earn their own living."
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