Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)

It's always been among my favorite Tennessee Williams film adaptations. It keeps you hooked till the very end. I cannot help but wish Sony would revisit this title since the DVD currently available (issued in 2000) has all kinds of problems from the early days of DVD. Typical of many of the "Columbia Classics" titles, it's dual sided and each side is single layered with both the widescreen version and p/s on opposite sides, each one with just a layer of space. The film often suffers from heavy compression problems because of that. The image also has visible "pulsing" at times. It also looks as if they let the automated noise reduction completely unsupervised since it even accidentally erases part of the the small-letter copyright info below the title at the beginning (strangely this is not the case on the p/s side, only the w/s). Also, being a 1.85:1 film, the full screen version is not open matte but genuinely cropped on the sides and, at times its very noticeable in the composition. Given Sony's record, and the limited popularity of the title, I think the only way this could get an updated transfer would be if a future boxset includes it (something like the Cary Grant boxset did for many of his previously released Columbia films... think maybe a Liz Taylor box). Here's hoping Sony's supposed (rather slow) re awakening with classic movies does something for this film... well, that's the word sorta going around on this forum isn't it? Ah well, any thoughts?