Looks like Warner Brothers has wised up and is offering a line of rarities from their vaults on DVD. They include such juicy titles as Boetticher's Westbound, Cukor's The Actress, Walsh's A Distant Trumpet, Minnelli's Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Borzage's The Shining Hour, and even films that were believed, at least by some of us, to be lost, like the bondage & espionage Ann Dvorak classic I Was an American Spy! There's even that bizarre must-have bit of craziness from Jack Webb, The D.I. Some of the films have a link to a trailer or clip to let you check out the video quality, and they specifically mention showing them in their original theatrical format. They've got 150 titles so far either in release or pre-release.
The price is $19.99 per title. I don't see them on Amazon, at least not yet. And speaking of Amazon, this may save us from the humiliation of paying, say, $149.99 for a copy of Four Horsemen in a dubious Chinese dub (presently advertised).
Please consider supporting this effort, not just for Warners; if this is successful, it might convince other foot-dragging studios to dig into their archives and do the same thing! Then maybe we can finally get our grubby paws on Dwan's Angel in Exile and The Woman They Almost Lynched, Ulmer's Her Sister's Secret, and Sternberg's The King Steps Out.
Here's the link.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Good News on the DVD Front!
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6 comments:
I was hoping for The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond, but hopefully that'll come with the next bunch. Still, it's a good number of films I'd like to see or re-see.
Good news indeed but… speaking of Sternberg, it's a shame that his superb ANATAHAN has become invisible for decades. Sirk's SUMMER STORM would also be nice to see again one of these days… among dozens of other titles…
Peter - the Warner Archive has a place to vote for desired titles. I'm planning to ask for Legs Diamond. Olivier - Summer Storm and Anatahan are indeed movies devoutly to be wish'd. I've only seen Summer Storm once years ago in a 16mm print; fortunately I have a pretty good VHS transfer of Anatahan - an amazingly beautiful, transporting film.
UPDATE – According to this L.A. Times article, Warner will be manufacturing the DVDs you order “on demand - not only creating the DVD but also placing it into a hard plastic case featuring custom art, wrapping it and shipping it” - which explains why you probably won’t be able to order these DVDs from Amazon or other non-Warner sources.
The good news is that Warner plans to bolster its list of available titles “at the rate of 20 new titles a month.”
For the complete story, click: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-warnerbros23-2009mar23,0,4288760.story
They're freakin' expensive though, man. The right price for something like this should be $15 max. MAX I tell you! Especially... in these trying times.
Agreed, Erich. They must be playing on the rarity angle. But really, this "price point" can't have been thought through. $15 or $12 would assure many more sales, I think.
I'm hoping, by the way, they'll make Vidor's masterpiece Beyond the Forest available. For that I'll gladly pay $19.95.
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