Merry Christmas

                                           My Christmas card to all of you, Merry Christmas.

Fantasia (1940) and Fantasia 2000 (1999)

 This month of November, The Disney classic Fantasia is now 80.

                                                                  Theatrical Trailer

                                                          Fantasia 2000 Theatrical Trailer

    In 1982, Fantasia was reissued with a rerecorded Dolby soundtrack conducted by Irwin Kostal.

                For the 1990 reissue the Stokowski soundtrack was restored and back in the film.

                         The Film Show's segment about Fantasia and the 1990 restored version.

                               D23's The Fantasia Legacy: A Conversation with Eric Goldberg

The Disney artists reused animation of one of the ghosts from the Night on Bald Mountain segement from Fantasia for The Black Cauldron (1985). Hen Wen the oracular pig's vision of the Horned King in her drinking water.

Interview with Producer Joe Hale

Skull Rock Podcast interviews Joe Hale for the 35th Anniversary of Disney's The Black Cauldron

Edit: If The Skull Rock Podcast site goes down, you can find the episode at this link: https://www.dix-project.net/item/5509/skull-rock-podcast-35-anniversary-of-disney-s-the-black-cauldron-with-producer-joe-hale

Wales

 

    (screenshot of the title card from the 1958 Walt Disney People and Places travelogue short: Wales)

from  an 2015 article from Wales Online. (back when Maleficent (2014) was in theaters there) 

 https://www.walesonline.co.uk/lifestyle/showbiz/how-walt-disneys-take-welsh-7234080

"Out-performing even bomb-proof comic-book blockbusters like X-Men: Days Of Future Past, it’s gifted its star Angelina Jolie with a much-needed commercial hit, while allowing Disney to capitalise on the success it enjoyed with last year’s musical-fantasy Frozen.

Once upon a time, however, the mouse-eared US film giant’s track record wasn’t quite so spellbinding.

Indeed, their 1985 take on Welsh folklore such as The Mabinogion – the little remembered and unlamented The Black Cauldron – failed badly to work its magic on an indifferent public.

Based on a series of books called The Chronicles of Prydain by Philadelphia writer Lloyd Alexander – who drew inspiration for his fantastical landscapes from the time he spent here during World War II – it told of a lowly assistant pig keeper called Taran whose dreams of becoming a brave warrior lead him into battle with John Hurt’s Grim Reaper-like Horned King and his army of skeletal zombies.

Clearly regarding it as a chance to make its epic masterpiece, Disney bought the rights to Alexander’s work in the early ‘70s – predating even the original United Artists’ cartoon version of Lord of the Rings by several years.

However, the process of adapting it into the cinematic spectacular they’d hoped for fell foul to prolonged delays, largely because studio execs didn’t feel the then animation department was quite ready for the size of the task at hand.

Eventually though, Disney – desperate to change its uncool squeaky-clean image with older children and teens – began production in 1981 and revealed it would be the very first full-length piece of animation ever to incorporate CGI."

"More pressure was then placed on the studio’s coffers by the outbreak of a three-month long animators’ strike in 1982, which set the project back still further and pushed an already dilapidated and overworked team of artists to its limits.

Furthermore, an 11th-hour sea change in Disney’s senior management line-up heaped on more woe, those drafted into replace the previous top brass having drastically different ideas about how The Black Cauldron should turn out.

As a result, the editing saw entire sequences either having to be hastily re-done or cruelly expunged altogether.

Ultimately, however, the biggest blow came from indifferent cinema-goers themselves.

Disney’s great white hope only managed to muster $21m in domestic US takings, meaning it even faced ignominious defeat at the box office to lightweight fare such as The Care Bears Movie.

But it was Wales which would come out the biggest loser, because while The Black Cauldron’s characters all have names like Hen Wen (a prophetic pig), Fflewddur Fflam (voiced by the late Nigel Hawthorne), Orwen and Eilonwy, the country itself never gets a namecheck.

“In fairness, it’s the same in Alexander’s novels, which he sets in the mythical land of Prydain,” says Cardiff-based film critic Gary Slaymaker.

“Aside from that though, there’s very little which can be said in support of The Black Cauldron. It’s an awful mess.

“For all the money thrown at it the animation looks like a rough first draft – too jerky and jarring – while tonally it’s all over the shop, with weak characterisation.”

He added that Disney’s attempt to break free from its tried and tested formula had been, although admirable, a massive misstep.

“It was the first animated film of theirs which wasn’t a musical, as well as being the first to earn a Parental Guidance only certificate - both of which probably went a long way to help kill its appeal.

“Actually, I remember it being pretty scary in places, particularly the scenes where an army of sword-wielding skeletons are conjured up from beyond the grave.

“It reminded me a bit of the final scenes in Raiders Of The Lost Ark where the Ark of the Covenant is opened and the wrath of God causes all the Nazi soldiers’ faces to melt.

“In fact, there were reports that, during the film’s initial screenings Stateside, hordes of screaming little ones had to be ushered towards the exits by their parents because it had all proved too much for them.

“It seems Disney’s efforts to appeal to an older demographic had failed, most teenagers in that post-Star Wars age being far more likely to go and watch sci-fi than sword and sorcery.”

With its 30th anniversary looming, however, Slaymaker believes The Black Cauldron might still benefit from a critical reappraisal.

“I’m sure a lot of animation fans out there want to see the complete uncut version of this film.

“And, who knows, there could be a lot of axed footage sitting undiscovered in some vault in the US.

“I hope so, because there’s the germ of a good film in The Black Cauldron somewhere – one which the kids of today, with their love of shows like Game of Thrones, would be far more predisposed to enjoy.”

35th Anniversary of Disney's The Black Cauldron

on this day of July 24th back in 1985, The Black Cauldron was released to theaters.

BBC One's The Film Show March 1985 interview with Roy E. Disney

Lloyd Alexander's Unused Script

Excerpts from Didier Ghez' interview with The Black Cauldron's co Director Richard Rich

from the book Walt's People Volume 2

"DG: The Black Cauldron took 10 years to produce. What were the greatest ideas that were discarded through production?

RR: The story went in many different directions. They even had the writer, Lloyd Alexander come in and do a screenplay. They brought in another writer to do a screenplay But with Disney's animation approach at that time, the storyboard was key. It was more of a collaborative effort.

        Then Pete Young took that one and went to a room by himself. Pete died when he was still on that project. He was just a young guy in his late twenties.

He went in and brought lots of things and got people excited.

but [the challenge] was more in trying to find the approach to that film and to that story that would meet the Disney qualifications. The conflict was always about how far to push the darkness in it. in attempt to find a middle ground, it was probably too scary for kids but not too scary enough for the teenage market. I don't know that the balance was ever found, but it was an attempt to move off of the sweetness but still having the sweet qualities of Disney in there, with a love story, and Gurgi."

"DG: Why did you end up up not using the script by Lloyd Alexander?

RR: As often the case, animation is such a visual thing. The Lloyd Alexander script was extremely long, too long, Condensing the story into a seventy-five minute story was extremely difficult for him."

Storyteller Record Albums

Storyteller and read along from Disneyland Records (Walt Disney Records)  narrated by the legendary movie trailer narrator Chuck Riley 

                                                                                

When The Black Cauldron was in theaters in 1985 in Sweden.... It was even more severly cut

from  https://www.non-disneyinternationaldubbingcredits.com/taran-och-den-magiska-kitteln--the-black-cauldron-swedish-voice-cast.html

               

• Premiere (first dubbing) : 11/29/1985
• Premiere (second dubbing) : 07/01/1998 (VHS release)

• There are two Swedish dubs of this film. The first from 1985 and the second from 1998.
• Several scenes were cut out of the Swedish 1985 dub as the censors thought they were inappropriate for children. These scenes were not dubbed in the original dub. The scenes that were cut are in the third YouTube video.
• The original dub is unavailable for public viewing as it is being kept in the Swedish Archives. There are several extracts that have been uploaded online which are the only pieces to be publicly viewable.
• The second dubbing was made for the first sales (and only) VHS release in 1998. The reason for the creation of the second dub was to dub the scenes cut from the Swedish premiere.

                                       The Black Cauldon - Swedish Original Dub Scenes

                         The Black Cauldon - More Scenes from the Swedish Original Dub.avi

                                Black Cauldron - Removed Scenes in Swedish Original Dub

Donald Duck Magazine drawing

                                 https://hellyeahprydain.tumblr.com/post/14619456135

Model Sheet Oddities

Back full on topic on The Black Cauldron (1985)

Here are two animation model sheets that are made for the film

from lowery.com: https://auction.howardlowery.com/Bidding.taf?_function=detail&Auction_uid1=3392598

They named the mean dog "Burny"?

So they are not "henchmen" nor "barbarians", but Huntsmen.

Are they the film's Huntsmen of Annuvin  perhaps?

Bobby Driscoll

Walt Disney's Peter Pan (1953) turned 67 on the 5th of this February of 2020.

It got me to thinking about the Disney veteran, former child star, actor and artist Bobby Driscoll [1937 - 1968]

I remember when I was young,

my family and I would watch VHS tapes of Disney Sing Along Songs and the Disney classics.

Disney's Sing Along Songs: Zip A Dee Doo Dah (1986) had some clips of the popular songs from the Disney catalogue as well as the title song Zip A Dee Doo Dah from  Song of the South (1946).

While Song of the South was (and still is) permanently withheld from circulation,

Bobby's second Disney film  So Dear to My Heart (1949) was available at the time, so this was one of the films we watched a lot.

memories aside,

 here is a documentary about Bobby.

interesting articles not talked about in the documentary: The Role I Liked Best... (Saturday Evening Post; 1951-01-27) — DIX - Disney Index Project (relaunch β) (dix-project.net)

Driscoll Appeal Against British Court Conviction Is Lost - Disney Cancels Plans to Bring Child to England Next Year (Showmen's Trade Review; 1949-11-05) — DIX - Disney Index Project (relaunch β) (dix-project.net)

some photographs from Early development of Sleeping Beauty (1959) from the early 1950's with Bobby Driscoll and Kathern Beaumount

              Images from the 2008 "50th Anniversary Edition" of Sleeping Beauty (1959) DVD


Milt Kahl one of Walt's top animator's, who animated and designed Peter and Wendy, did character designs for The Black Cauldron (1985).
You can see Milt's drawings as posted by animator Andreas Deja here: https://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2013/02/milt-kahls-black-cauldron.html






                                     

video with a short history about Bobby Driscoll who was buried on Hart Island. also in the video an interview with Black Cauldron special effects animator and current Disney animation film preservationist Dave Bossert.

you can also check out this Bobby Driscoll tribute blog here: http://rememberingbobby37.blogspot.com/

1969 interview with Lloyd Alexander

Happy New Year of 2020!

Last year was the 50th anniversary of the last book of The Chronicles of Prydain: The High King.
it was Published in 1969.

In the same year the books series author Lloyd Alexander did an interview for Imperial International Learning's  Meet the Authors.