Fox Archives MOD Blu-rays are coming (1 Viewer)

[jayembee]

These 4 titles are no longer available on Movie Zyng and Oldies.com anymore. they are only available from a 3rd party seller on amazon now. I'm thinking these must of been old stock they found stored away somewhere. I can't imagine they would of brought them back in print on BD-R's only to discontinue them a few days later.

Yup. As I had reported here earlier, I placed an order with Oldies for the four on May 28. On June 2, I got email from them saying the order had been cancelled "as the product(s) are currently unavailable". Damn it.

 

[jayembee]

Are you talking about the Twilight Time version or Eureka? I just watched my Twilight copy of The Gang's All here and though the picture looks great the colors seem dark and a bit dull. I heard the Eureka transfer has more accurate colors. I thought about getting it if it is in fact a better transfer.

In case you aren't aware, the Eureka blu-ray is OOP. There seems to be one copy available on eBay, for US$63, shipped from the UK.

 

[Frankie_A]

Just pulled a DVD from the our college film library shelf, Fred Zinnermann's A HATFUL OF RAIN, beautifully shot in CinemaScope by Joe MacDonnald and released by Fox, only to find to my horror that it's authored as a Pan&Scan atrocity. How they were authoring DVDs in P&P after VHS's demise is hard to comprehend. I need this title for a Film Nior class. How can I justify showing such a abomination to students without hanging my head in shame? I searched high and low for a newer release, letterboxed 'scope version to no avail If anyone knows where I can get a decent BluRay of this title...please let me know.

And seeing as how Disney now owns the Fox catalog, it is really questionable if they will have any interest in older, less-than-blockbuster titles -- and black and white no less. If it's not going to bring them in multimillions, the House of the Rodent won't be interested in it.

 

[Peter Apruzzese]

Just pulled a DVD from the our college film library shelf, Fred Zinnermann's A HATFUL OF RAIN, beautifully shot in CinemaScope by Joe MacDonnald and released by Fox, only to find to my horror that it's authored as a Pan&Scan atrocity. How they were authoring DVDs in P&P after VHS's demise is hard to comprehend. I need this title for a Film Nior class. How can I justify showing such a abomination to students without hanging my head in shame? I searched high and low for a newer release, letterboxed 'scope version to no avail If anyone knows where I can get a decent BluRay of this title...please let me know.

And seeing as how Disney now owns the Fox catalog, it is really questionable if they will have any interest in older, less-than-blockbuster titles -- and black and white no less. If it's not going to bring them in multimillions, the House of the Rodent won't be interested in it.

Amazon appears to have “A Hatful of Rain” on their streaming service for rent and sale in widescreen and HD. The clip they show is definitely ‘scope. Can you stream it in your class?

 

[Frankie_A]

Actually, we are streaming everything remotely via our own IT servers processing our library DVDs to the server, so we can only use what is in the library. I was aware of the Amazon scope version but when remote started with covid, we made the decision that we would require students to have to pay for film rentals. It wound up that we watched ACT OF VIOLENCE instead.

 

[Frankie_A]

Sorry...we would NOT require students to have to pay for rentals when a film is required for class. And thanks for the heads-up on the Amazon scope version. If they have it, there must be a master authored. The fact that they don't respect the work enough to release it on disc says volumes. Although I'll bet there was a scope version released in Europe -- they Europeans are far less skiddish about letterboxed video that we are. They were broadcasting letterbox of scope movies even when the majority of TV sets were not much bigger than 27in CRTs.

 

[Joel Arndt]

Sorry...we would NOT require students to have to pay for rentals when a film is required for class. And thanks for the heads-up on the Amazon scope version. If they have it, there must be a master authored. The fact that they don't respect the work enough to release it on disc says volumes. Although I'll bet there was a scope version released in Europe -- they Europeans are far less skiddish about letterboxed video that we are. They were broadcasting letterbox of scope movies even when the majority of TV sets were not much bigger than 27in CRTs.

A bit of history regarding Fox Cinema Archives. It was created after the success of the Warner Archive Collection and followed Warner's original business model of releasing films that wouldn't otherwise get released on DVD using existing masters only no matter what their condition. As we know, Warner moved away from this philosophy fairly quickly and by its second year was releasing films that were remastered, even issuing updated versions of films that had already been released. However, Fox never really moved much beyond issuing films on DVD using older masters, many of the pan and scan ones having been created for television years before. And, yes, you could say there was a lack of respect for the works as I read that the person in charge of this program really had no interest in deep catalogue titles.

The Fox Blu-ray program discussed in this thread was a ray of hope that some of the previously released titles would be upgraded, but that never came to pass as this was abandoned after the initial four releases. A shame because I've read that updated masters of many of these films have been created. There are quite a few Fox films I'd like to get if widescreen versions were released.

And yes, I remember visiting Italy in 1976 and seeing a letterboxed film on TV which really fascinated me since this wasn't done in the US at that time.