Make Mine Music Discussion

[blackcauldron85]

I'm really confused as to why you can't order/preorder the two films on the DMC website. You have to actually call them and say you want to preorder them... eventually they'll turn up on the site?

[Jules]

MT and MMM are actually the best of the shorts films, imo (along with F&FF). Sort of tragic they were the last released like this, but better late than never, right?

I expect they are so late to blu-ray owing to how difficult it must be to market them. At least with F&FF and Ichabod you can play around with Mickey and well ... Ichabod. With the Latin American films, you can use their "South of the Border" setting as a selling point.

But poor MMM and MT have no overarching theme to tie all the "shorts" together (well, besides music). There isn't even a Deems Taylor-like figure in between each segment à la Fantasia, to help make at least some tenuous links between segments. So how do you sell them on home video? I guess the only reason they got a DVD release in 2000 was because it seems Disney back then was happy giving even incredibly obscure films in their catalogue wide releases. It's a different situation these days, of course. (Which is also why I'll probably have to sell both my kidneys on the black market to import these to Malta. )

Still, I very much appreciate these films and what the animators were trying to achieve, even if the results weren't always necessarily great, or even good. I do consider certain segments in these films as "experimental", and being experimental means that one has to expect that certain audiences will not take to them easily. Years and years and years ago ( ) before I got the films on DVD, and would read UD's reviews religiously, I was not expecting much from both movies. I recall the UD review describing Blame it on the Samba as utterly pointless, being about "Latin dancing and nothing more".

I was truly expecting some unimaginative piece of tripe with just Donald and José bobbing around to the music. What I saw instead left me grinning from ear to ear, my toes tapping, my eyes dancing. Sure, there is no real point to it, but there doesn't have to be. It exists solely to stimulate the senses, and that is a perfectly valid reason for its existence!

Even it that makes the segment sound uninteresting, I have to say that it is executed wonderfully. Beautiful art direction, kinetic character animation, dazzling effects animation, and very amusing use of the live-action Ethel Smith on the organ! Considering these films were made at a probable fraction of the budget afforded to something like Fantasia, I have to say that the disparity in resources behind the scenes isn't as visible onscreen as you'd imagine it would be.

Frankly, you forget that at this point the Disney studio was barely even using their previously-much celebrated multiplane camera, because planning out sequences for it and executing them was so expensive! (If you pay attention you'll notice that even the single-narrative features of the 1950s, with the exception of Sleeping Beauty, are highly austere productions, at least in comparison to Snow White, Pinocchio, Fantasia and Bambi. Special effects and niceties were kept to a minimum, and multiplane shots were barely perceptible, if not inexistent!)

One more thing. Generally speaking I think the musical arrangements in MMM and MT are lovely too, and make for a perfect marriage with the animation. I don't care if the music is "dated." It is of its time, and I enjoy it nonetheless.

Disclaimer: I am a musician, so perhaps that helps.

[Farerb]

I'm really confused as to why you can't order/preorder the two films on the DMC website. You have to actually call them and say you want to preorder them... eventually they'll turn up on the site?

From what I know they're not on the site just yet for you to directly order, but a customer service representative can create an order for you for these titles.

[blackcauldron85]

^ thanks . I wonder if Disney is trying to keep the titles a secret for some reason... By having them shown on the site (especially under "New Releases"), I'd think that'd drum up some more sales, no?

[Disney's Divinity]

I expect they are so late to blu-ray owing to how difficult it must be to market them. At least with F&FF and Ichabod you can play around with Mickey and well ... Ichabod. With the Latin American films, you can use their "South of the Border" setting as a selling point.

But poor MMM and MT have no overarching theme to tie all the "shorts" together (well, besides music).

I suppose they could have focused on Donald in MT's marketing at least, since he's a known character. MMM is out there on its own though with mostly original characters. I've always loved the whale short though; tbh, when I re-watched the shorts films via Netflix DVDs several years ago, I loved MT straight through and generally enjoyed MMM and FF&F as well. My family didn't own the shorts films when I was a child like they did everything else, so before that Netflix viewing when I was much older I'd seen only a few of the shorts before ("Little Toot," "Casey at the Bat," "Willie the Whale") solo on the Disney Channel. (The Channel was so different back when I was a child in the '90s; they showed old shorts all the time back then.) They probably aired "Little Toot" alongside "Susie the Little Blue Coupe." I always thought Cars was a ripoff of those shorts, and nowhere near as good.

Anyway, the Blu-ray releases of the shorts films are the only versions I've ever owned (will have ever owned in the case of these two) of them.

[Farerb]

^ thanks . I wonder if Disney is trying to keep the titles a secret for some reason... By having them shown on the site (especially under "New Releases"), I'd think that'd drum up some more sales, no?

I was informed that they are available to order on the site.

[NeverLand]

^ thanks . I wonder if Disney is trying to keep the titles a secret for some reason... By having them shown on the site (especially under "New Releases"), I'd think that'd drum up some more sales, no?

I was informed that they are available to order on the site.

That's right!



Make Mine Music (Blu-ray)



Melody Time (Blu-ray)

[Jules]

A user on Blu-ray.com has posted screencaps of Make Mine Music from what I think is an HD stream. Assuming the upcoming Blu-ray is sourced from this same master, brace yourselves for very heavy and destructive DNR and filtering, akin to The Sword in the Stone.

While this would be very disappointing to me, there really is (i.e. won't be) any other HD option for this movie any time soon, and I truly hope that at the very least it looks better blown up to a large screen than the old DVD, riddled with compression artefacts as it is. (At least the film will be presented in its proper frame rate. The uncut Region 2 DVD is cursed with a constant stutter and ghosting due to a horribly inept NTSC to PAL conversion.)

I will keep my fingers crossed. When the disc arrives in the mail I will pop it in to see what it looks like, and perhaps in motion things will not look as bad as they do in those screencaps. Also, maybe Disney have actually prepared a newer HD master of the film behind the scenes, and the previous one is limited only to streaming options in Europe.

Animation historian and author Thad Komorowski claims that Melody Time in HD looks "putrid" due to hugely incorrect colour grading. I don't know if the current HD master for Melody Time is the same one from which the Once Upon a Wintertime segment on the Olaf's Frozen Adventure Blu-ray was sourced. If so, it'll be soft, but not smeared like those Make Mine Music screencaps. I cannot comment on the colour grading.

[blackcauldron85]

Thanks, Farerb and NeverLand! I just pre-ordered them. Eeek, Jules- I hope they'll look alright (well, better than alright!). Do you have a link to the pictures you saw?

[Farerb]

The images are from this website Clindor posted a year ago:
https://www.disneycentralplaza.com/t237 ... isney-1946

[Jules]

It's censored.

And I'm not talking just the boob shot here. The Martins and the Coys is missing ... again.

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.ph ... 98&page=11

I can't believe this. I am so incredibly disappointed I feel literally deflated. I've been checking the relevant thread on Blu-ray.com every day in anticipation. I hadn't been this excited about a new Blu-ray release since almost the start of the format. I am serious.

Can't believe I've been waiting for this film on Blu-ray for over 10 years, only to practically lose hope it would ever make it to the format, and then to be overjoyed to see it announced last month, and now to wish I'd never even heard it was coming out.

[Disney's Divinity]

That's a shame. I must have never seen that short before, since I think I've only seen Make Mine Music on DVD where it was also removed. I'll still buy it myself, but I understand why others will be disappointed.

[D82]

That's really disappointing. Do you have at least the UK DVD, Jules? It's not in full HD, but at least it's the uncensored version. It's still available on Amazon UK. But I still don't understand why the full The Martins and the Coys segment was cut in the first place. Is it because of the guns? There are guns in many other Disney films and they haven't been edited because of that. Does anyone know what version is on Disney+? If it's on the service; I've checked it and in Spain it's still not available.

[Sotiris]

But I still don't understand why the full The Martins and the Coys segment was cut in the first place. Is it because of the guns? There are guns in many other Disney films and they haven't been edited because of that.

It wasn't (just) the guns. It was supposedly offensive to Appalachians.

[estefan]

Does anyone know what version is on Disney+? If it's on the service; I've checked it and in Spain it's still not available.

Make Mine Music is the only movie in the Disney animated canon not to be on Disney+, which is disappointing. I'm hoping this Blu-Ray release means they will add it at some point, but there's been no announcement yet.

[Jules]

That's really disappointing. Do you have at least the UK DVD, Jules? It's not in full HD, but at least it's the uncensored version. It's still available on Amazon UK. But I still don't understand why the full The Martins and the Coys segment was cut in the first place. Is it because of the guns? There are guns in many other Disney films and they haven't been edited because of that. Does anyone know what version is on Disney+? If it's on the service; I've checked it and in Spain it's still not available.

I actually have the Danish DVD, released back in 2006. I bought it immediately, and that's the only version of Make Mine Music I've ever known. While I was very happy to have it back then, I immediately started hoping for a better release, if only to improve the AV quality. I think the Danish release, as well as all the other European versions, is taken from the same master as the USA Gold Collection release, except that in the American version they made further modifications to that version.

The film scan isn't bad considering it probably dates back to the '90s, but it is nevertheless an extremely dated presentation by 2021 standards. To make matters worse, the PAL version of the film was poorly converted from NTSC, giving rise to smeared ghost frames and a visible stutter on camera pans.

I think I've been waiting for the HD version of the film since then. Strangely, I was never worried about potential edits, because I figured that by the time it makes its way to Blu-ray Disney would be beyond that practice. I was worried it would never come to Blu-ray in the first place, since it is one of the most, if not the most obscure film in the Disney canon.

I still do not know whether I should get it or not. It's hard to spend so much money importing a film that is massively censored and horribly DVNRed to boot. Yet ... at least I'll have the other nine segments in a quality that can at the very least be blown up to a large screen, unlike the DVD. I'm already thinking if I can rip the my Danish DVD and the new Blu-ray, and splice in The Martins and the Coys myself.

However, I've never done this before. I'd need to make sure that while ripping the disc and re-encoding I do not harm the video and audio quality. I think the biggest problem is that I'll be inserting a 25 fps video clip (from the DVD) within a 23.blahblahblah fps rip from the Blu-ray. I think that, from a technical perspective that cannot be done without butchering the frame rate of either one or the other.

An easier job would be if there is actually the uncensored Australian HD rip of the film floating online, which I could download to extract a better quality version of The Martins and the Coys segment from it.

Again, I'm just dreaming here. I'm not sure I am actually capable of doing this job properly and without botching the video or audio.

[D82]

It wasn't (just) the guns. It was supposedly offensive to Appalachians.

Oh, OK. That makes more sense. I didn't know the characters were meant to represent a specific group of people from the US. I can see why they might find it offensive. Probably that's why the uncensored version is available in Europe and not in the US.

By the way, I've read some of the comments from the beginning of this thead and I was surprised that several American members only knew the censored version. I didn't know the The Martins and the Coys segment had been unavailable there for so many years. For me it's the opposite; I've never seen the censored version. I bought the Spanish VHS in the early 2000s, I think, and it had the opening short, and now I have the UK DVD as well, which as I mentioned, also contains the segment. I'm curious about one thing; does the censored version have the phrase "A musical fantasy in ten parts" at the beginning, right after the musical program is shown?

Make Mine Music is the only movie in the Disney animated canon not to be on Disney+, which is disappointing. I'm hoping this Blu-Ray release means they will add it at some point, but there's been no announcement yet.

I hope they add it and that it's the uncensored version. If other movies are not censored there and only have a warning, I don't see why this one should be different.

I actually have the Danish DVD, released back in 2006. I bought it immediately, and that's the only version of Make Mine Music I've ever known. While I was very happy to have it back then, I immediately started hoping for a better release, if only to improve the AV quality. I think the Danish release, as well as all the other European versions, is taken from the same master as the USA Gold Collection release, except that in the American version they made further modifications to that version.

The film scan isn't bad considering it probably dates back to the '90s, but it is nevertheless an extremely dated presentation by 2021 standards. To make matters worse, the PAL version of the film was poorly converted from NTSC, giving rise to smeared ghost frames and a visible stutter on camera pans.

I think I've been waiting for the HD version of the film since then. Strangely, I was never worried about potential edits, because I figured that by the time it makes its way to Blu-ray Disney would be beyond that practice. I was worried it would never come to Blu-ray in the first place, since it is one of the most, if not the most obscure film in the Disney canon.

I still do not know whether I should get it or not. It's hard to spend so much money importing a film that is massively censored and horribly DVNRed to boot. Yet ... at least I'll have the other nine segments in a quality that can at the very least be blown up to a large screen, unlike the DVD. I'm already thinking if I can rip the my Danish DVD and the new Blu-ray, and splice in The Martins and the Coys myself.

However, I've never done this before. I'd need to make sure that while ripping the disc and re-encoding I do not harm the video and audio quality. I think the biggest problem is that I'll be inserting a 25 fps video clip (from the DVD) within a 23.blahblahblah fps rip from the Blu-ray. I think that, from a technical perspective that cannot be done without butchering the frame rate of either one or the other.

An easier job would be if there is actually the uncensored Australian HD rip of the film floating online, which I could download to extract a better quality version of The Martins and the Coys segment from it.

Again, I'm just dreaming here. I'm not sure I am actually capable of doing this job properly and without botching the video or audio.

I understand you hoping for an HD version, especially with all the problems the DVD image had. I hadn't heard of the uncensored Australian HD rip. If you found it, maybe it would be the solution for you. But I don't know why Disney can't release an unedited edition. I know the problem is that they don't want children to see it, but they could release it as part of a line that is clearly just for fans and collectors, like they did when they released Victory Through Air Power, for example, through the Disney Treasures collection. But this time on Blu-ray, of course. I think that would be the best solution.

[Farerb]

I don't think Disney of today care enough about this film to treat it properly, I wouldn't be surprised if they just found an old censored master from the 2000's and decided to put that on disc as it is, maybe thinking that's how the film should be.

Right now I'm in no hurry to get it, I'll probably get it when someone sells it cheaply on Amazon (ebay is a pain).
Jules - if you find that Australian rip please let me know.

[D82]

I don't think Disney of today care enough about this film to treat it properly, I wouldn't be surprised if they just found an old censored master from the 2000's and decided to put that on disc as it is, maybe thinking that's how the film should be.

Who knows, maybe that's what they did.

Jules - if you find that Australian rip please let me know.

Let me know about it too, please, Jules.

[rodrigo_ca]

Sometimes, it's stuff like this that makes me wish I had never gotten into Disney films. If they don't care enough about them, why should I?