Wagon Master in September

Classicflix have an announcement for John Ford's 1950 movie here, complete with artwork. Release date September 15.

Re: Wagon Master in September

Excellent news. Hope there are others to be announced for that date also.

Re: Wagon Master in September

I wonder what the transfer will be like. I have the R2 which is OK, but I would double dip if this represents an improvement.

Re: Wagon Master in September

Great! Well done Warner! Still wanting 7 Women though.

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You are talking about the DVD right?

Re: Wagon Master in September

At ruddy last...same day as Directed by John Ford I see.

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Count me in for this. At least WB has announced one title, hopefully "7 Women" will arrive with this as this is the same time that the documentary arrives.

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It depends on what sort of jumpers they are wearing.

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Thanks to Warners for throwing us a few bits of candy. I shall be ordering this one!

Oh and another vote for 7 Women.

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Also THE FUGITIVE and FLESH.....

Re: Wagon Master in September

I thought some of you stated that Warner has abandon normal dvd releases?






Crawdaddy

Re: Wagon Master in September

There has certainly been a lot of that, but on the other hand, I would call a single title release to be a lot closer to ZERO than they what they released in the past. This is their first new announcement for months and this doesn't come out until September.

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We'll see. This is only one release. If/when they start to announce a few more then I'll start to breathe a little easier.

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I'm not so sure you will do so then based on all the doom and gloom I've read here for weeks about Warner.






Crawdaddy

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Nice to see one (measly) pressed DVD coming in the near future but.....Is there some ray of hope I'm missing? I see more and more quality titles I've been wanting to own being dumped into the Archives. Titles that are (arguably) worthy of better treatment.

I see the future....... of Warner catalog titles on obscenely overpriced, low quality, barebones presentations. and that future............ isn't pretty.

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Well it's about damn time. I sold my laserdisc years ago, figuring that a DVD release was imminent. So I was a little off...

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At last...John Ford's self-proclaimed favorite film is finally being release. Ben Johnson and Harry Carey Jr. were never better (well, maybe Harry Carey Jr. had a little bit better role in '3 Godfathers'). I had burned my laserdisc to DVD-R years ago...can finally ditch it.

Thanks Warners...be getting this one right away!

I don't know who claimed that, but Clasicflix analysis of releases definitively proves that Warner's releases are down dramatically on last year.



My recollection is that Warner's 2008 output was down on its 2007 output as well. More from Classicflix here:
http://classicflix.blogspot.com/2009/07/dvd-release-score-card-second-quarter.html

Let's face it, the dvd market is in dumps because sales are down due to the poor world economy, but Warner is still releasing far more classic films to dvd than any other major studio.  Also, the dvd market has been slow for a couple of years now as people aren't buying dvds like they've done in the past.  It's easy to blame the studios, but they have to adjust to the supply and demand from their consumers, otherwise, they lose money by releasing product that's not moving enough units to justify the releases.

Wagon Master is John Ford at his most sublime.
One of the great westerns.
I love the idea of giving supporting players the starring roles.
I enjoy watching Ben Johnson, Harry Carey Jr, and Ward Bond carry this classic and memorable western.
I especially enjoy the irascible Charles Kemper as the father of the Cleggs, the most memorable villain in all of Ford's films..
I really admire this film and WHV's upcoming release is appreciated.

Simon:  According to the chart you posted I think the term "releases are down dramatically" best applies to Fox. They've gone from 21 releases to 3.  That's a reduction of over 80%.  Warner's has gone from 44 to 30 which is around 30% which seems like a modest reduction compared to Fox. Plus they have announced a few upcoming releases like Wagonmaster  Has Fox announced any upcoming releases?   And for sheer omission its hard to top  Lionsgate.  According to this chart they've released 0 films, yet they are sitting on the entire catalog from Republic and numerous quality independently produced classic films including such gems as Johnny Guitar, Pitfall, Ramrod, Cry Danger, South of St. Louis, etc.  Yet they continue to do absolutely nothing with these ffilms.  And this has continued to be the case whether or not  the economy is good or bad.

We were told by Warner in the latest chat that their regular release schedule was "full steam ahead" and wouldn't be altered because of Warner Archive. The data that Classicflix have compiled demonstrates that claim was untrue.

Show me where Warner stated that they would release the same amount of releases this year as last. 

The Beaver released a review a couple of days ago:

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film2/DVDReviews46/wagon_master.htm

 

Looks really good. I preordered a copy. Please Warner, more SD-DVDs. ;)

As someone on the Criterion forum posted... if we all buy this, maybe WHV will release another dvd this year! 

After getting used to seeing Archive releases from Warner...a Warner barebones DVD release would seem like a 2-Disc SE to me

That could well be their new strategy...

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