Recent content by Rob Ray

Speaking of bloopers and such, I found an interesting blooper in the "All About Eavesdropping" episode which concludes the second season: Clearly, the Petrie's kitchen set was revamped to serve as the Helper's living room for this episode. Because of this, there is one very brief shot of Rob...

It's open matte. While I would prefer OAR of course, there's no harm done on this title. I've saw the film theatrically in 1966 and again last year at UCLA and I've owned the full-framed laserdisc for years. It plays fine in full-frame. By the way, it's never looked or sounded better on home...

I watched the first few minutes of "Counsellor at Law" again last night to refresh my memory on the print quality. Gee, Bill, you're hard to please. While it's true that the source was not a fine-grain taken directly from the negative and digitally facelifted (a la 42nd Street), it is a...

Who knows why "The Love Trap" looks so nice? The film got a lucky break somewhere. I suspect it has something to do with the fact that it's a hybrid film like Universal's "Lonesome" (which I would kill to have on DVD). The nitrate didn't get trashed because it's a talkie. The nitrate didn't get...

I love to argue with you, Bill! Nothing wrong with that at all! Let's keep this thread alive so that others on the forum will be curious enough to want to check out "Love Me Tonight" and "Applause" when they arrive on the 25th. I'm not aware of any significant reissue of Applause over the...

I'm constantly amazed at the high quality video "spruce-ups" (I know Robert Harris would point out that most of these are not true film "restorations") we're seeing on DVD. How Warner managed to get "Little Women" looking as good as it does is amazing. Studio by studio, it's the ones who have...

Bill asked:

Apparently Kino tried to track down the missing footage for Love Me Tonight but to no avail. I've discussed this release at length with Miles Kreuger (and, in fact, alerted him the day this was announced by Kino, hoping in vain that he could track down a complete print from some European...

I'll toss out a few thoughts in what I agree is a most fascinating thread: I saw the print at the Dome twice and thought it looked terrific. A tad dark perhaps and the colors in the credits did not look at all like those on the laserdisc, but I had no complaint. The sound was played a bit too...

Bill asked:

An excellent source for examples of early Technicolor as it may have looked in the late 30s is Ronald Haver's excellent book entitled "David O. Selznick's Hollywood." In it are scores of frame captures from vintage prints of "Garden of Allah," "A Star is Born," "Nothing Sacred," "The Adventures...

Bill, Far be it from me to tell you what to buy and not buy, but I've seen "Sleeping Beauty" many times in 70mm (at the late, great Windsor Cinerama in Houston, at Long Beach's Widescreen Festival, and at Hollywood's El Capitan) and the DVD is about the best home video representation of that...