DVD Review HTF REVIEW: James Stewart: The Signature Collection (RECOMMENDED). (1 Viewer)

[Member 323668]

Getting OT now, but in my opinion Fox is the best studio now as concerns the technical quality of their catalog DVD releases.

Everything they touched in the last 12-18 months almost reached perfection. Their new Clark Gable Collection including "The Tall Men", "Call of the Wild" and "Soldier of Fortune" is a perfect example. It is beyond belief how magnificent the picture quality is. Same praise for the new "Jayne Mansfield Collection", the Mr. Moto and Charlie Chan box sets - not to speak of their great Film Noir series and their Studio Classic releases.

Fox is becoming now what Warner used to be.

 

[Jim_K]

Yep, A whopping 2 million into Black Swan (by a different studio) and Warner supposedly pulling The Hanging Tree for restoration yet The Naked Spur isn't worth the money?! Sorry it doesn't add up.

Whats funny is the online site I use has The Naked Spur at #20 in their Top 25 pre-orders list. None of the others from the set are on the list. For whatever it's worth it looks like the most popular movie in this set. Go figure.

It's a shame this is considered by Corporate Hollywood as just some minor cult film not worthy of putting money into it. In this context the same could be said of about 99% of all classic films, might as well let 'em all rot into dust then.

I'll reserve final judgment until my copy arrives though if most of the reports are accurate then Warner really screwed up.

 

[Todd Mattraw]

I don't have "The Naked Spur" DVD, so I'm going on the screencaps seen here and at DVDBeaver, and the picture quality is mediocre enough that I will stick to the Reagan collection on Aug 15 and skip the Stewart box. But could there not have been a middle ground, something short of the expensive Ultra-Resolution process but better than what was in fact done, that might still have resulted in a better final product at a reasonable (for WB) cost?

This is my favorite western and I would gladly have waited and paid more for a superior product --- not perfection perhaps but at least something better than this. As it is, I'll stick with my VHS copy as the DVD screencaps certainly look about the same. Sad but true.

Todd

 

[Cees Alons]

Oh, I'm buying the box, no doubt here. It's worth its money even without The Naked Spur.
And worth even more now I finally can own a copy of The Naked Spur as well for that price.

Its just unfortunate that it turns out this way, I would have loved a more pristine transfer of that particular movie, of course.

But the James Stewart Box is a must-have for a collector like me.
(Just like the Rock Hudson Box is worth its money to me for The Spiral Road alone.)


Cees

 

[Patrick McCart]

I think Fox could justify the price of restoring The Black Swan due to the new interest in pirate movies, as well as the possibility that techniques used on that film can be used again. It's sort of like how LDI's first wave of cleanups aren't nearly as good as the latest 2K and 4K work they've done. They could buy better systems and make better programming thanks to the first few experiments. There's also the factor of benefactors. Perhaps there's some wealthy fan out there that donated a few million for the restoration or it's an executive's favorite movie.

The DVD at least seems to have really good color. Maybe it would have been a matter of either using the transfer with a soft image, but great color... or making a new transfer with messy color fringing, bad color, but relatively sharp.

 

[seanOhara]

The screencaps are definitely disappointing, but they're not horrible. I think Warners is suffering from having raised our expectations too high.


We don't know what the initial state for the Black Swan or the current state of The Hanging Tree is like. It could be the existing elements look like something Madacy would turn its nose up at, justifying the restoration, whereas what's availabe for The Naked Spur is passable (albeit at the lower end of what's passable).

 

[Michael Elliott]

I'm 100% certain now that DVD was the downfall of film.

I haven't seen THE NAKED SPUR but plan on doing so very soon. I haven't seen any of the screen caps here because they are absolutely pointless to me because their value is absolutely nothing. With that said, as others have mentioned, not everything can get the full blown treatment. Whatever this film ends up looking like on DVD, I'm personally happy to get to watch it. Perhaps I'm weird but I don't need a stellar transfer to enjoy a film.

 

[Robert Harris]

The following has been posted in response to a thread at DVD Forums:

"Very simply, regarding only numbers, and speaking in Fox numbers...

Because the film is not nitrate, which brings additional problems into the mix, the cost to properly restore Naked Spur could easily run 1 1/2 to 2 times the cost of The Black Swan.

In comparison to Grand Prix, which has been noted in this thread, creating a transfer element from a clean 65mm original runs far less.

On another front, apparently Warner technical services has checked their new restoration and video master of The Searchers against their studio print, and has found that the new master satisfactorily represents the original film.

While I will dispute neither their technical position nor their professionalism, my personal guess is that their sample print may be flawed, and not representative of an original approved answer print.

RAH"

 

[John Hodson]

If anyone's interested, read the comments in that thread from about here

 

[Robert Crawford]

Wow, if this is true then Warner is making a big mistake!

RAH might not want to dispute some of those things, but consumers such as myself have to because it appears to me that they are showing a total disregard towards their consumers and the people that truly love this great film. I don't know what is going on in their decision-making process, but I do know that I'm rethinking my decision to buy that upcoming HD DVD release on 08-22-06. With these new HD formats, expectations are much higher than of any other prior video format so Warner and the rest of the studios need to be prepared to meet those expectations. Otherwise, their consumers will resist the urge to buy their products.

I'm trying to temper my comments because I don't know the whole story, but Warner needs to address those concerns about the color being off without trying to sweep it under the rug by simply acting like nothing is wrong with the color and ignore those that are saying there is a color problem.

We need to revive "The Searchers" thread and start a new thread in the HD Software area so people can be aware of this situation before they buy this upcoming HD DVD with their hard-earned money.

I am very disturbed by what I might be reading between the lines! Others should be too and all studios including Warner need to step up to the plate and do the right thing. I own about 3500 discs in the SD-DVD/HD DVD/Blu-Ray formats and if you want me to continue to buy your product in these new HD formats then you need to raise that PQ bar because like it or not, we the consumers will raise it for you.





Crawdaddy

 

[Adam_S]

I like what I see on DVD Beaver's site, the transfer looks soft but it looks way better than the vhs I've seen before. I was at the same screening the DVD Beaver emailer talks about and it was _not_ a beautiful print, it was an adequete print with an average amount of damage. Colors were good but they didn't 'pop' because I remember being disappointed it didn't look better as I was hoping the film would really stand out. The image was a lot clearer and sharper than the screencaps on dvd beaver but you can't really compare dvds and prints, just hope they are as similar as technology can make them. Clearly there was a failure here with Naked Spur, but maybe it means we'll continue to get films like this and the 3strip Northwest Passage that will be a huge leap beyond VHS.

heh, more memorable to me than that screening was I ate at Canters for the first time after the screening, I can still taste how incredible that Reuban was.

 

[Sten F]

Deleted.

 

[WadeM]

The transfer on The Naked Spur is far from terrible. Just because it's not top-notch excellent doesn't make the picture quality terrible--it's still quite a good transfer, it just wouldn't fall into the "excellent" category. Did anyone see Mogambo with Clark Gable that was recently released? That could also use a restoration, as it looks worse than The Naked Spur. But I still wouldn't complain about it--I'm just happy to have both movies released.

I would rate Naked Spur maybe a B- in terms of picture quality and I can't imagine anyone seriously considering passing on this movie. If you think The Naked Spur has a "terrible" picture quality, then I'd hate to know what you think of something like "The Quiet Man", which is a movie people can justifiably complain about...

 

[Cees Alons]

Just received my copy.

I couldn't help but quickly looked at some scenes of The Naked Spur.
Well, all I can say is this: I own a VHS (NTSC version) of this movie and haven't seen it many times elsewhere.

But this DVD (at least the parts I watched twenty minutes ago) is so much better, it's the best presentation I ever saw. It's very unfortunate that I'm "between HT's" at the moment, so I cannot watch it tonight with my best equipment, but I certainly will watch it.

And what I've seen now seems fully acceptable. It's not the best indeed, but from some comments I got the impression that it was plainly terrible. That it isn't.

And I'm happy and grateful I finally own a DVD of this fine movie (and the other ones, The Spirit of St. Louis to be mentioned firstly)!


Cees

 

[Mark-P]

Picked up the set for a really good price at Costco. It came out to just $5.50 per movie! Unfortunately I will agree with those who say that Naked Spur is not a very sharp transfer. If you watch it on a device with no overscan you will even notice rolling lines on the left edge of the frame which is indicative of an older analog transfer.
But here's something interesting that I didn't expect - The aspect ratio for Spirit of St. Louis is 2.55:1. It's very rare that a CinemaScope film released as late a 1957 would be in that ratio, as the studios had pretty much all gone to mag-optical prints at 2.35:1 by that time

 

[Robert Harris]

SoSL was released in April of '57, but shot in '56.

 

[Ken_McAlinden]

It was in active production for nine months during 1955 & 1956. They had to recast the leading role during the first month of production when James Dean died in a car crash before they had shot anything with him.

Its post production was apparently difficult as well with some folks claiming that segments and subplots had to be removed during editing in order to receive Charles Lindbergh's approval. The fact that it flopped at the box office might have drove Wilder mad if he had had time to think about it. By the time SoSL was released, he already had "Love in the Afternoon" in the can and was about to begin shooting "Witness for the Prosecution".

Regards,

 

[Eric Peterson]

Wow! I've read nearly every book on Wilder and I don't recall ever reading that. I remember reading that Jimmy Stewart lobbied for the job from the beginning, but that everybody thought he was too old. Do you know where you read this at?

 

[Ken_McAlinden]

I've seen it other places, too, but for a less than authoritative source, I think its mentioned in the IMDB trivia section. It's entirely possible that Dean's participation was not a done deal, but he was apparently the producers' first choice. Stewart was about twice the age that Lindbergh was when he made the cross-Atlantic flight, and I believe he did lobby heavily for the role, being an aviator himself.

Regards,

 

[Robert Crawford]

I haven't heard about the James Dean connection, but I did know that they started filming it during the mid-summer of 1955 and filming ended during the late winter of 1956 with the film being released a year later in 1957.