to make young folks cry

by

You can either believe me when I say that I've been quite busy with the cliche year 12 student stuff OR you can just assume that I've actually been taking sky diving lessons with the cast of Pushing Daisies. Your choice. Anywho, I'm going to start ranting right now....

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SO these gorgeous, pixelated screenshots are from The Thief and The Cobbler. When I was about 5 years of age I remember watching this film at my grandma's house and being totally blow away by it, thinking "WOW, this has got to be one of the best things ever seen and I will not shut up about it even though nobody else even cares". After 7 or so years having not seen it though, looking it up on YouTube, finally getting clued up about its history and watching 'recobbled cuts' of this film (phew), I now realise it is one of the greatest failed masterpieces of all time.

Apparently Richard Williams, the same genius behind Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, spent approximately 30 years developing this movie. Inspired by Middle-Eastern art, he envisioned this film to be ground breaking- something you could hold up to Shakespeare, Westwood or Dali. Sadly, money, time, accessilibility and the fact that the movie would be competing with Aladdin (petty things, y'know) got Williams taken off the job. It was then shipped off and butchered by Fred Calvert and The Completion Bond Company. Amongst the barrage of half-arsed animation, there are salvages of pure artistry such as the chase between Tack and The Thief through the Escher-esque palace grounds and the glimpses of One Eye's war machine, which bring to realisation what this movie could have been.

To date, there are hundreds of cinephiles and animators worldwide making countless efforts to restore The Thief and the Cobbler to it's true form. Whilst I still consider the movie a massive part of my childhood and, well, like it, the fact that it could have really just kills me. Go watch it guys so we can be angry and share our utter contempt over cheesecake or something.