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I don't consider it presumptuous at all. I'm thankful when it happens.
As a fan of movies, nothing beats seeing a great flick on the big screen. I go to revivals all the time. They don't get nationwide big releases with marketing and such, but if you live near a decent-sized city with 'art houses' or a good university, you should have the opportunity to see all-time greats projected onto big screens - the way they are meant to be seen.
Obviously the main motivation for a Studio to do a major re-release with advertising and new prints (new scenes or not) is going to be mainly financial. So what? If it's a movie you love, you get a rare opportunity to see it again (or for the first time, for you younger kids) as a theatrical experience. Even with LDs, DVDs, fancy television sets and sophisticated home theater equipment, for me nothing compares to seeing movies in the movie theater.
Just in the calendar year of 2001 I got to see all these "old" movies in the theater: Brazil, Unforgiven, The Wild Bunch, Raiders of the Lost Ark, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Maltese Falcon, The Thin Man, Baxter, Cobb, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Probably a couple others I'm forgetting just now. Oh, and then there was Apocalypse Now Redux too, if you want to count that. I see at least that many revivals each year, sometimes twice that many. I cherish each opportunity.
But maybe that's just me?
As for the regular Disney re-releases, you always hear parents complain that there's nothing worth taking small children to see these days. Disney addresses that by re-releasing their classic animated library, so that new generations can rediscover the magic over and over again, and new generations of parents can share that same experience they had with their own children. I think that's smart business, not crass. BTW, for anyone interested, Beauty & the Beast is currently making the rounds on Imax screens, remastered and with a brand new musical number.
Last edited by Holden Pike; 01-10-02 at 05:03 PM.