DVDizzy Forum

BDF wrote:If there is no love for the shorts, they would never have released them on Disney Plus at all. We should probably be thankful they released any of them to begin with. I know I am.

Well, I agree and disagree with this. While I appreciate the fact that they are including the shorts on Disney+, somehow I'm not sure they should be applauded for it as in many ways that would be the least I'd expect if I were a Disney+ subscriber.

Keep in mind that very few of the shorts have turned up on blu-ray. Disney's decision there can be justified to some extent if one considers that those sets may not have sold well at all and resulted in a financial loss for Disney. However, the way I understand it there is no loss to be made by dumping the entire catalogue of shorts on Disney+. The worst that can happen is that people won't watch them much, but there's no risk of expensive-to-manufacture and unsold stock, right?

If my knowledge of how the home video department works and the costs involved in making the shorts available on streaming is wrong or I have failed to consider a very important factor, please feel free to correct me.

Jules wrote:

BDF wrote:If there is no love for the shorts, they would never have released them on Disney Plus at all. We should probably be thankful they released any of them to begin with. I know I am.

Well, I agree and disagree with this. While I appreciate the fact that they are including the shorts on Disney+, somehow I'm not sure they should be applauded for it as in many ways that would be the least I'd expect if I were a Disney+ subscriber.

Keep in mind that very few of the shorts have turned up on blu-ray. Disney's decision there can be justified to some extent if one considers that those sets may not have sold well at all and resulted in a financial loss for Disney. However, the way I understand it there is no loss to be made by dumping the entire catalogue of shorts on Disney+. The worst that can happen is that people won't watch them much, but there's no risk of expensive-to-manufacture and unsold stock, right?

If my knowledge of how the home video department works and the costs involved in making the shorts available on streaming is wrong or I have failed to consider a very important factor, please feel free to correct me.

Doesn't Disney need to buy more storage space to upload new stuff? But anyhow, they have been uploading more vintage stuff like the True Life Adventures which I doubt are popular with the kids these days so I don't see why the shorts would be a problem.

Well I guess I assumed they have space to spare!

Jules wrote:

Jean wrote:One would hope they have indeed restored them because they claim a lot, but how true can any of it be especially when they know nobody is going to be checking on them to hold them accountable. But knowing Disney, they are the type to preserve all their old films (such as Song of the South) but then have no interest in ever making them available to the public.

The bolded part is key. They do restore even when they have no intention of making a film public and profiting from it. Song of the South is the perfect example. Even if that film remains out of circulation until the Earth is swallowed up into our red giant sun, Disney will not be leaving the nitrate film to decompose in the vault. If humanity leaves planet Earth prior to the aforementioned apocalypse, I'm confident Song of the South will leave with it.

Jean wrote:The fact that Brave Little Tailor is available in other places as HD but not on Disney+ is just inexcusable. I don't see why Disney can't just release them all and if they don't think they're worthy of promotion (I'm sure they would get many older subscribers), then don't bother promoting them. They've been releasing tons of new films and stuff without any promotion whatsoever.

These sort of things tell me that their is very little love for Disney's own history at the upper levels of the company. I pray the film-makers at WDAS and Pixar (who care about this stuff) can exert some pressure on those on top.

Also, I know the classic Disney shorts are nowhere near as popular as the Warner Bros and MGM output. The latter films are more in line with modern sensibilities despite being the same age as the Disney shorts, and I think for most people Disney Animation is defined by the feature films and not so much the shorts. However, I must reiterate, there is nothing to be ashamed of with these films. The absolute majority are well-crafted and made, and a not insignificant amount are classics and/or masterpieces (even if their pacing and humour is tame by today's standards.)

I wonder what Disney will do when a film like Song of the South will enter the public domain. I'd love to see Criterion release it and if Disney is so ashamed of it, they can remove their logo from the cover and say they've sold it off so it no longer counts as theirs.

I'm guessing the Disney+ head honchos are separate from the filmmakers at WDAS and Pixar so I'm afraid that won't do much good.

While the public may not care about the Disney shorts very much, they shouldn't pretend like they don't exist either especially considering that they serve as the foundation of the company. The Mickey, Donald, and Goofy ones in particular as well as the Silly Symphonies.

^^ Somehow I doubt Criterion or any other boutique label would touch SotS. There's too much risk of a backlash. Maybe I'm wrong.

Your last point made me think that perhaps the reason the Disney shorts are not so well-known is because Disney has allowed them to slip into obscurity. The same could be said for the lesser-known WDAS films.

I noticed this morning that they added the Disneyland pre-opening special. "Mouseketeers at Walt Disney World" is also now on Disney+. So they are slowly adding some of the older tv specials.

JeanGreyForever wrote:While the public may not care about the Disney shorts very much, they shouldn't pretend like they don't exist either especially considering that they serve as the foundation of the company. The Mickey, Donald, and Goofy ones in particular as well as the Silly Symphonies.

Like I said, if the public didn't care, I don't think they would have put the shorts up at all. But considering that there are at least a handful of shorts available, if not the entire library, there must be some members of the public who do care, and there are some people at Disney who don't pretend they don't exist. Otherwise, the shorts wouldn't be there.

estefan wrote:I noticed this morning that they added the Disneyland pre-opening special. "Mouseketeers at Walt Disney World" is also now on Disney+. So they are slowly adding some of the older tv specials.

So they released the pre-opening program, but not "Dateline Disneyland", the actual opening day telecast? And I'm still waiting for "An Adventure In Color/Mathmagicland", the debut episode of "The Wonderful World of Color" and the first appearance of Ludwig Von Drake.

Jules wrote:^^ Somehow I doubt Criterion or any other boutique label would touch SotS. There's too much risk of a backlash. Maybe I'm wrong.

Your last point made me think that perhaps the reason the Disney shorts are not so well-known is because Disney has allowed them to slip into obscurity. The same could be said for the lesser-known WDAS films.

Well eventually the film is going to slide into the public domain and I can't imagine the film will be completely ignored then. Although I've also heard that Disney has plans for their early releases and how to to deal with them when they are in the public domain so we'll see.

The reason the Walt era is so classic now is because the studio didn't let those films disappear into obscurity. They kept re-releasing them and hailing them as classics until they were considered classics. The 90s suffered from the fact that Disney only cared about the Big Four and decided films from Pocahontas onwards aren't worth promoting because they didn't sell as much merchandise as TLM, BATB, Aladdin, and TLK. In the late 90s-early 2000s, they still made an effort to promote Pocahontas, Hunchback, Hercules, Mulan, and Tarzan, but because these films weren't easily marketable for the Disney Princess or Disney Villains franchises, they became ignored. Pocahontas and Mulan are only still somewhat around because of their tenuous connections to the DP franchise.

The live-action films are also completely forgotten because Disney never really bothered to keep them in the public consciousness generation after generation besides Mary Poppins and Old Yeller.

Big Disney Fan wrote:

JeanGreyForever wrote:While the public may not care about the Disney shorts very much, they shouldn't pretend like they don't exist either especially considering that they serve as the foundation of the company. The Mickey, Donald, and Goofy ones in particular as well as the Silly Symphonies.

Like I said, if the public didn't care, I don't think they would have put the shorts up at all. But considering that there are at least a handful of shorts available, if not the entire library, there must be some members of the public who do care, and there are some people at Disney who don't pretend they don't exist. Otherwise, the shorts wouldn't be there.

I don't know, there's a lot of junk on Disney+. Some of the early Disney Channel films for example won't have much of an audience but Disney is afraid of a dearth of material so they've been trying to include as much content as possible, which was also an incentive to purchase Fox. Some of the shorts are classics they can't afford to ignore like Steamboat Willie and Three Little Pigs but there's a reason they haven't felt the need to include every Silly Symphony or every short from Donald or Mickey's respective libraries. Not to mention, there's no easy way to find them all precisely because Disney didn't feel there was an audience who would want to binge-watch a bunch of old Pluto cartoons.

I watched the DL pre-opening show yesterday- it was really neat to see them building/painting/etc the pieces of the Park! The 2nd part of the show had some Mickey cartoons- The Sorcerer's Apprentice in black and white was super cool to me.

It doesn't make sense why they don't have even small "Collections" of the classic shorts, like they have for the Forky ones. I am so down for binging Pluto w/o putting my DVDs in.

Something funny about the "Mousketeers at Walt Disney World" special on Disney+ is they left in the commercials. I'm not just talking about bumpers promoting the next week's "Wonderful World of Disney." I mean, actual commercials for Tonka, Shell, Chevy, etc. that would have have been shown when the special first aired. Based on the video quality of the special, it looks like they dug up someone's VHS recording and only removed a few things.

As amusing as I think all of that is, I do genuinely love that they didn't edit out the commercial breaks. It really feels like a time capsule to a different television era.

estefan wrote: I mean, actual commercials for Tonka, Shell, Chevy, etc. that would have have been shown when the special first aired. Based on the video quality of the special, it looks like they dug up someone's VHS recording and only removed a few things.

I haven't yet watched that one, but the pre-opening Disneyland show was good quality, didn't look as it was from VHS, and it had an ad/tie-in with Hudson Cars which was really neat.

JeanGreyForever wrote:I don't know, there's a lot of junk on Disney+. Some of the early Disney Channel films for example won't have much of an audience but Disney is afraid of a dearth of material so they've been trying to include as much content as possible, which was also an incentive to purchase Fox. Some of the shorts are classics they can't afford to ignore like Steamboat Willie and Three Little Pigs but there's a reason they haven't felt the need to include every Silly Symphony or every short from Donald or Mickey's respective libraries. Not to mention, there's no easy way to find them all precisely because Disney didn't feel there was an audience who would want to binge-watch a bunch of old Pluto cartoons.

Well, maybe they'll post more gradually as time goes on. I myself would like to see more Pluto cartoons from before 1947, as well as some non-sport-related Goofy shorts, and maybe some more black-and-white Mickey cartoons. I think the reason they didn't post more shorts is because of some questionable content on them (smoking, racial imagery, etc.) that they would prefer to just keep hidden rather than have to explain as a product of the times.

blackcauldron85 wrote:It doesn't make sense why they don't have even small "Collections" of the classic shorts, like they have for the Forky ones. I am so down for binging Pluto w/o putting my DVDs in.

Donald Duck had a "collection" set at one point, mainly for his birthday on June 9. It showed several of his shorts featured here, but also a lot of movies (the Latin American movies, "Fun and Fancy Free", "Fantasia 2000", "Three Musketeers", etc.) and TV shows (both "DuckTales" series, "Quack Pack", the 2013 "Mickey Mouse" series, "Legend of the Three Caballeros", etc.) that he appeared in. However, I think that "collection" thing is gone now, sadly.

Are all the Renaissance films (besides the Big Four) and Post Renaissance films retain their logos or did they change it to the new logo?
Did they restore the logo to Hercules or is it still the new logo?

Jules wrote:^^ Somehow I doubt Criterion or any other boutique label would touch SotS. There's too much risk of a backlash. Maybe I'm wrong.

They released Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom. Twice. They can release Song of the South.

Song of the South will enter the public domain in 2041, barring any move on Disney's part to extend copyright law before 2024 (when Mickey Mouse goes into public domain). At that point, it could technically be released by anybody who has access to a print of it, but in the meantime, some very high-quality HD prints are already up on the Internet Archive if one knows where to look. Streaming may be the only way to access the film in 21 years anyway, as physical media may become so niche by that point that even boutique labels like Criterion would only be able to get the rights to "release" the film through their Criterion Channel and not on physical media, if physical media is still being made by then ( ).

Alby (who, ironically, just bought a laserdisc on ebay, so even if new physical media won't be around, the old formats will)

Big Disney Fan wrote:

JeanGreyForever wrote:I don't know, there's a lot of junk on Disney+. Some of the early Disney Channel films for example won't have much of an audience but Disney is afraid of a dearth of material so they've been trying to include as much content as possible, which was also an incentive to purchase Fox. Some of the shorts are classics they can't afford to ignore like Steamboat Willie and Three Little Pigs but there's a reason they haven't felt the need to include every Silly Symphony or every short from Donald or Mickey's respective libraries. Not to mention, there's no easy way to find them all precisely because Disney didn't feel there was an audience who would want to binge-watch a bunch of old Pluto cartoons.

Well, maybe they'll post more gradually as time goes on. I myself would like to see more Pluto cartoons from before 1947, as well as some non-sport-related Goofy shorts, and maybe some more black-and-white Mickey cartoons. I think the reason they didn't post more shorts is because of some questionable content on them (smoking, racial imagery, etc.) that they would prefer to just keep hidden rather than have to explain as a product of the times.

I don't think any of the Figaro shorts are included on Disney+ either. Not sure about Chip and Dale, I think Two Chips and a Miss is the only one included. On the Disney Treasures sets, a lot of those objectionable shorts were also kept separate so they would never include them on Disney+. Which means we might never see HD masters of them.

Escapay wrote:

Jules wrote:^^ Somehow I doubt Criterion or any other boutique label would touch SotS. There's too much risk of a backlash. Maybe I'm wrong.

They released Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom. Twice. They can release Song of the South.

Song of the South will enter the public domain in 2041, barring any move on Disney's part to extend copyright law before 2024 (when Mickey Mouse goes into public domain). At that point, it could technically be released by anybody who has access to a print of it, but in the meantime, some very high-quality HD prints are already up on the Internet Archive if one knows where to look. Streaming may be the only way to access the film in 21 years anyway, as physical media may become so niche by that point that even boutique labels like Criterion would only be able to get the rights to "release" the film through their Criterion Channel and not on physical media, if physical media is still being made by then ( ).

Alby (who, ironically, just bought a laserdisc on ebay, so even if new physical media won't be around, the old formats will)

I've seen the HD print on Archive, it's the best one I've found yet. Would like to own a version of that physically. I haven't been able to find any copy of the film with subtitles either which is annoying because I always like to watch films with subtitles.

Disney Plus Snaps Up ‘Miraculous’ TV Movies From ZAG, ON Kids & Family
https://variety.com/2020/tv/global/disn ... 234712530/

Disney+ Passes 60.5M Subscribers, Reaches 5-Year Streaming Goal In First Eight Months
https://deadline.com/2020/08/disney-nea ... 203003841/

Disney+ Rapidly Becomes The Third Biggest Streamer In The UK Amid Huge Rise In Viewing During Lockdown
https://deadline.com/2020/08/disney-bec ... 203004509/

Disney+ Gains Foothold in Streaming Battlefield, Nielsen Says
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live- ... ys-1307189

Disney Plus Hotstar to Launch in Indonesia in September
https://variety.com/2020/streaming/asia ... 234725872/

Local Content Gets Priority as Disney Plus Hotstar Confirms Indonesia Launch
https://variety.com/2020/streaming/asia ... 234730335/

Why would they do that when they have Hulu?

Disney is launching a new Star-branded streaming service internationally
https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/4/21354 ... abc-fx-fox

Sotiris wrote:Why would they do that when they have Hulu?

Disney is launching a new Star-branded streaming service internationally
https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/4/21354 ... abc-fx-fox

My theory is that, not being the sole owner of Hulu, Disney would have to share the profits of an international expansion of the service. I wouldn't be surprised if in the years to come, when Disney is the sole owner of Hulu, the service will either be rebranded as Star Hulu/Hulu Star/Hutar/Stalu/etc or Hulu will be pulled off entirely and be replaced in the US by Star

JeanGreyForever wrote:I don't think any of the Figaro shorts are included on Disney+ either. Not sure about Chip and Dale, I think Two Chips and a Miss is the only one included. On the Disney Treasures sets, a lot of those objectionable shorts were also kept separate so they would never include them on Disney+. Which means we might never see HD masters of them.

None of the Chip 'n' Dale shorts are available, either, I don't believe. As for Figaro, the only cartoon that includes him that is available is "Pluto's Sweater".