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Studios Reducing/Ending Retail DVDs of Classics - Warner Interview - Page 2

post #31 of 131
8/8/09 at 1:19am


Quote:
Originally Posted by Pete York View Post

I hadn't heard that about Sony, interesting. If the choice is a) doing nothing, b) MOD style model or c) downloads, I'd certainly prefer to see the studios go the MOD route. Not that I really have anything against 'c', but I imagine the studios would try something stupid, like restricting the consumer's 'use' under the DRM banner.
Found the article re: Sony and MOD style releases:

http://www.videobusiness.com/article/CA6525167.html?nid=3513

This was January 2008, and it never came to fruition, with Warner beating them to the punch this year. It seemed practically ready to go from the article.

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post #32 of 131
8/8/09 at 3:24am
Well it was great while it lasted. I now own so many of my favorite films, some quite rare (with a good batch of very rare Hammer movies coming from Sony in September in the UK). This could be a bit of a nail in Blu-ray's coffin, as we now know that just a tiny fraction of classic films released on DVD will make it to Blu-ray.
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post #33 of 131
8/8/09 at 4:33am
Steve, good thread here.  Those of us that primarily reside on the Std TV/DVD board have seen the trend recently as well....less of the older shows seeing releases.

As someone here mentioned, it's been a good ride while it lasted.  WB has released many titles that are in my collecttion so while I'd like to see more, I'm grateful that I have many titles that I'd not have guessed would have been available.
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post #34 of 131
8/8/09 at 4:34am

Over at the Classic Horror on DVD Forum, someone talked to Mr. Schlesinger about, e.g. future Hammer titles:

 

Quote:

Mike Schlesinger kindly gave me the following information just last week:

"There will be at least one more Hammer set, but it won't be until at least next year and no content has been decided yet."


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post #35 of 131
8/8/09 at 5:52am
I'm sure the general thrust of this article is correct, but one flaw is that it's based entirely on an interview with a representative of the one studio that has almost completely stopped releasing classic films (except via the Archive).  I'm sure someone from Sony, who is releasing a number of classic boxed sets in the next few months, would have a different perspective.
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post #36 of 131
8/8/09 at 6:13am


Quote:
Originally Posted by Rob_Kozlowski View Post

Quote:


Exactly, Rob. I grew up with old movies on all the local Chicago broadcast channels, and now I teach at a film school where 90% of the students have never even HEARD of the Marx Brothers. Fortunately, they were delighted by a clip from DUCK SOUP.  Still, there was offered a Films of the 1930s class this fall and exactly ZERO students signed up. And now, TCM is the only channel really showing any movies made before 1990. The Godfather is pretty much the oldest movie of which these kids are aware and I'm sure in another 20 years, young people will have no knowledge of films that lack CGI and graphic scenes of torture.

I really do not like that last comment: its a patronising and insulting stereotype of young people. I'm sure its not meant to come out that way, but the suggestion young people know no better then "torture movies" is pretty insulting to me.
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post #37 of 131
8/8/09 at 7:58am
Well nothing lasts forever. 

This boom in classic catalog titles was fun while it lasted and while I do wish we could've gotten another year or two out of it I can say on the positive side that my glass is about 4/5 full.  While there's still some highly desired key titles I fear will never be released, I'm pretty satisfied with the variety of titles I did get to add to my collection.

I've noticed the studios starting to taper off catalog releases starting as long as 3 years ago so this is no surprise for me especially in this economy.

My own personal theory as to where the market went is that DVD collecting was a fad for many during the boom years.  I think the real core market for catalog titles was more or less the same as it is today sans economic conditions but the market was buoyed by people purchasing anything and everything, collecting just because it was cool to collect DVD's at the time.

I don't think I'll see another boom period for catalog media like what we had in my lifetime.


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post #38 of 131
8/8/09 at 9:34am
The Hammer films for release in September are exclusive to a company called Movie Mail, so it looks like a deal between them & Sony. They are: The Camp On Blood Island, Yesterdays Enemy, & The Damned (US These Are The Damned), all 'scope & b/w.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Marcel H. View Post

Over at the Classic Horror on DVD Forum, someone talked to Mr. Schlesinger about, e.g. future Hammer titles:

 

Quote:




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post #39 of 131
8/8/09 at 10:46am
I am a 22 year old male and classic film lover and am extremly grateful for the wealth of classic film on DVD. Warner Home Video and TCM have educated me greatly and I will continue to watch TCM an purchase whatever classic film becomes available, in cluding Esther Williams vol 2!!

I don't have a blu-ray player yet, but when I get one I plan to purchase whatever classic films are available in that format. I know that many classic film might never see a blu-ray release but thank God for the longevity of the DVD format. Yet, I'm sure that the essential classic films will find thier way to blu-ray.

We've already seen:
Casablanca
The Searchers
Adventures of Robin Hood
Rio Bravo
Gigi
American in Paris

Wizard of Oz(Coming)
Gone with the Wind(Coming)
North By Northwest(coming)
The Third Man
That's Entertainment Trilogy
Ben-Hur

I'm sure we'll see eventually:
Singin in the Rain
Citizen Kane
It's a Wonderful Life
The Philadelphia Story
Miracle on 34th Street
Meet Me in St. Louis
All About Eve
Rear Window
Vertigo
Psycho
Yankee Doodle Dandy
The Maltese Falcon
Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Double Indemnity
Grapes of Wrath
Mr.Smith Goes to Washington
The Band Wagon
Top Hat/Swing Time
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
The Thin Man
It Happened One Night
and others

 

 

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post #40 of 131
8/8/09 at 11:16am
Stereotype?!? Get a grip, my feline friend. Rob_Kozlowski is a teacher who was stating facts (you know, those icky things that get in the way of our preconceptions) about a class that was offered, and then used his observations of students at his school to make a generalization. There are always exceptions,. I was a film studies major in the late '90s, an am completely in accord with Mr. Kozlowski's point-of-view. At my school, all the young whippersnappers could talk about was how cool Quentin Tarantino made violence look. I remember hearing a couple guys deride and mock Double Indemnity as being so "old-fashioned". I have many other like anecdotes. Generalization or exception to the rule? Generalization or stereotype? I say it's the big G all the way. And I say it's entirely justified. You don't? Fare thee well, Mr. James 'Tiger' Lee.
Quote:
Originally Posted by James 'Tiger' Lee View Post


 
 
I really do not like that last comment: its a patronising and insulting stereotype of young people. I'm sure its not meant to come out that way, but the suggestion young people know no better then "torture movies" is pretty insulting to me.
 


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post #41 of 131
8/8/09 at 12:12pm
Facts about one class do not speak for an entire generation, which is what I interpeted the post as being about. And I'd thank you, Mr. BrianI to not use that as an excuse to rip into me, just because I'm not a pessimist about MY generation

Edited by James 'Tiger' Lee - 8/8/2009 at 07:34 pm GMT
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post #42 of 131
8/8/09 at 12:47pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Billy Batson View Post

The Hammer films for release in September are exclusive to a company called Movie Mail, so it looks like a deal between them & Sony. They are: The Camp On Blood Island, Yesterdays Enemy, & The Damned (US These Are The Damned), all 'scope & b/w.

 



 

The Damned is my second most wanted title (after the one on the left), so I am going to wait until Sony releases it in Region 1 (it should be coming out next year)..
MovieMail has had an exclusive agreement with Sony for a while now, with titles such as The Wrong Box & The Hireling out on DVD through their website.
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post #43 of 131
8/8/09 at 12:59pm
I sometimes wonder if there was simply too much crowded on the market at one time. Most people I expect like many genres, so we were probably rushing around buying classic films, but not enough of particular titles to help them sell
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post #44 of 131
8/8/09 at 1:55pm
[quote]I sometimes wonder if there was simply too much crowded on the market at one time. Most people I expect like many genres, so we were probably rushing around buying classic films, but not enough of particular titles to help them sell[/quote]
I agree with that.  There's quite a number of old films on DVD that I have never even seen but would gladly buy blindly (I do so quite often); but I simply don't have enough money.  It's as simple as that.
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post #45 of 131
8/8/09 at 2:28pm
This 26-year-old can also vouch for the veracity of Mr. Kozlowski's statement. I was in a film school where the students, after watching "Lawrence of Arabia," complained that David Lean should have cut to another shot after 7 seconds. What philistinism, I thought. It made me angry. It is no stereotype. It is a fact. This is one of many reasons I feel I can't relate to the generation to which I belong. Insult us all you want: we deserve it.

In my opinion the declining interest in classic films (and TV shows as well) is almost as bad as the declining interest in fine art, music, drama, not to mention ignorance of history (a very popular malady these days), declining mathematical skills, rapidly declining manners, even more rapidly growing provincialism, etc. Blame the schools, blame MTV and Entertainment Tonight, blame the current generation of hack filmmakers who only know about life from other films, blame whoever you want, but only solutions will do anything about it. Mandatory art education in all grades may help.

Quote:
Originally Posted by BrianRi View Post

Stereotype?!? Get a grip, my feline friend. Rob_Kozlowski is a teacher who was stating facts (you know, those icky things that get in the way of our preconceptions) about a class that was offered, and then used his observations of students at his school to make a generalization. There are always exceptions,. I was a film studies major in the late '90s, an am completely in accord with Mr. Kozlowski's point-of-view. At my school, all the young whippersnappers could talk about was how cool Quentin Tarantino made violence look. I remember hearing a couple guys deride and mock Double Indemnity as being so "old-fashioned". I have many other like anecdotes. Generalization or exception to the rule? Generalization or stereotype? I say it's the big G all the way. And I say it's entirely justified. You don't? Fare thee well, Mr. James 'Tiger' Lee.


 


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post #46 of 131
8/8/09 at 3:10pm
I personally have found people of my age who do enjoy and respect the classics. I have also found people who don't, but so what? You're always going to find people with different tastes and perceptions. Criticising how David Lean handles a shot is not being a "phillistine", it is called an opinion.
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post #47 of 131
8/8/09 at 7:37pm
TCM isn't the *only* channel out there showing old movies; Fox Movie Channel shows golden oldies along with its more recent fare, and the MGMHD channel shows movies going back to the 1960s... in high def.  I now have a widescreen high def version of Fitzwilly on my DVR -- a great improvement over the pan and scan VHS tape. :)  Encore's Westerns channel also shows a lot of older westerns.  Not that this is quite the same as the myriad of local channels that used to show old films which introduced an entire generation to the pleasures of older films, of course.  

I am a staffer at a university and the kids for the most part are unaware of anything before their birth unless they heard about it in class. I hire a work-study student every year to work in my office and the vast majority of them are completely unaware of older films.  They might have heard of Humphrey Bogart. 
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post #48 of 131
8/9/09 at 4:05am
"Digital Delivery" will at long last give the studios their pot of gold as far as controlling distribution is concerned.

They will finally once again operate as monopolies. Forget any idea about independent stores, sales, special offers or anything like that. It will be the deathknell of international sales. Think Warner Archive, only ten times worse because nothing will ever "leak" into the secondary market.

The studios will finally have what they always wanted: absolute and total control of what is available, when, where and how much they can charge for it.

You only have to look at the Amazon download service - unless you have a friend who trusts you with his or her credit card, they know when you're not in the USA and you can't get hold of the stuff.

If it;s doing to be streaming services, that's even worse: held in thrall to a digital deity that can pull whatever it likes whenever it likes. Favourite movie withdrawn from the list? Tough; you'll never see it again.

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post #49 of 131
8/9/09 at 6:51am
 I think old movies will still get released, even if very slowly. The DVD and Blu-ray production plants need to crank out stuff. Production plants need to keep product coming. Ten years plus into the DVD market, everything "big" is out, so the studios will have to look at what they have.
Night of the Creeps is coming out next month. I bought that movie on LD back in the day, and it hasnt seen a video release since then. Its not a classic, but it is a cult title. I hope to see Futureworld, and Year of the Comet, among others, get a release someday!

Funny story, i was asking some co-workers if they had ever seen Torchwood. No one had heard of it, they asked what was it about. I said its kind of like a British X Files. None of my late 20 something co workers know what The X Files was! They must of not been allowed to watch it when they were kids!
How do you not know what it is, even if you never watch it!
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post #50 of 131
8/9/09 at 6:55am
I won't pay for movie downloads until they are DRM free. I want to be able to take the file and convert it to a DVD so I know that I will always be able to play it.

I am hopeful this will happen soon, I mean not that long ago all music files on iTunes had DRM.
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post #51 of 131
8/9/09 at 9:30pm
So if studios cant make money on releasing old flicks on DVD, then how in the hell is it that small studios without deep pockets managed to thrive and survive on nothing BUT older flicks? Just looking at DVD drive-in,  Navarre/Code Red are releasing Deliver Us from Evil and Fox Affair along with Teenage Graffiti and Teenage Mother (plus Code Red is releasing a single disc with Stunt Rock all by itself). Severin Films is releasing Screwballs in a couple of months.

So if they can do it with films that nobody has ever heard of (outside of weirdos like me) then why the hell cant The Big Studios do it with Hammer flicks or the like?

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post #52 of 131
8/9/09 at 9:41pm
There are a couple of things going on here I need to comment on, especially since I bought just about every classic set Warners released. The line “there are some complaints from fans who have been trained by DVD to “want everything now, and everything in the best possible quality”  really annoys me. While I agree we wanted everything now, we wanted to PAY for everything now.
 
Look, I realize the films of Marie Dressler, Margaret Sullavan, and Robert Montgomery may not have made them any money; the WarnerArchives is the best place for them (though I would have purchased box sets had they released them) but as far as I am concerned they lost plenty of money during the pre-crash years by waiting so long to release really excellent, in-demand films with more mainstream appeal (their World War II films, the still-unreleased Errol Flynn , Judy Garland, and Esther Williams films, the pre-code films of Jean Harlow, etc)
 
So if Warners ever expected their classic DVDs to sell units comparable to a Transformers or a Harry Potter film then that is just too backward looking. As Kurt Anderson noted in his Sunday New York Times Book Review piece, almost everything is a "niche" these days.

"In a typical week nowadays, fewer than 6 percent of Americans see the most popular scripted series on television. So we have arrived at a strange new historical moment. Literature is just another (minor) sector of the culture industry, but now even the mandarins agree that certain pop artifacts — “The Sopranos,” “The Simpsons,” Radiohead — are cultural creations of the first rank. Meanwhile, popular culture and mass media are no longer very popular or mass. By and large, both entertainment and art appeal to niches, cultural tribes that range in size from tiny to smallish. "


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/books/review/Andersen-t.html?em 

I still believe properly released and marketed classic film DVDs would make money today.
 
My understanding is THE THIN MAN box set did very well for them; I recall it very near the top of the Amazon DVD sales chart - right up there with films released in this decade. So where for example is the still-charming Leslie Caron film LiLi ?- I played my laser disc for my then-little niece years ago, she still fondly recalls the film. Perhaps if Warners mines their inventory to "re-discover" films with some appeal beyond the "niche" instead of endless releases of North By Northwest, Casablanca, The Wizard of Oz, they might still make good profits on their unreleased classics.
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post #53 of 131
8/10/09 at 11:22am
I don't believe that today's generation is any more or less interested in classic films than any other generation was. Growing up in the late-70s-early-80s, few of my friends showed interest in much of anything beyond "Star Wars", "Ghostbusters" and Indiana Jones.

I think the real problem now is that we live in an age of media overload. I've pretty consistently watched 2-4 films per week since I was a kid in the late-70s. Up until about 1990, I saw everything that I was interested in, and still had time left over to discover films on tv. Now, I only manage to see a fraction of the theatrical releases that I'm interested in, even though I watch about the same number on films. And there's an ever-growing number of films released on video that I've never even heard of.

And that's just the movies. That's not even counting the hundreds of cable television channels, video games and the internet that all vie for attention. If so many new releases - many starring big names and made by filmmakers with substantial reputations - slip through the cracks and go unnoticed, it's hardly surprising that decades-old films aren't getting much attention.
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post #54 of 131
8/10/09 at 11:33am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Worth View Post

I don't believe that today's generation is any more or less interested in classic films than any other generation was.

 


Same here. It's not like a huge majority of kids in the 1950's were watching silent movies or had some deep interest in German expressionistic films of the 1930's. Most of them just liked modern movies and weren't interested in older movies. And that's the same as today.
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post #55 of 131
8/10/09 at 11:34am
I am not surprised by this news.

I know for a fact that classics have not been selling well.
In fact, one major studio in particular lost a lot of money
on classic sets that practically sold to no-one. 

I think these MOD programs such as the Warner Archives
is a great idea for the fact that it is bringing titles to surface
that would never have been released mainstream.  I do
realize, however, some of the complaints about the program
including the type of media being used and the problems with
ordering.

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post #56 of 131
8/10/09 at 11:47am
I agree. I just received ...ALL THE MARBLES (1981), a rather obscure catalog title that I thought would never find its way to DVD. And yet here it is in anamorphic widescreen with the original trailer included and in really terrific quality. To say Warner Archive has done some work in upgrading their mastering process for these DVD releases is an understatement. Granted, I can't vouch for the quality of ALL the Warner Archive releases (my recent purchase of THE MOON IS BLUE was only so-so as it featured the same video master as was released in France on DVD, reel change marks and film dirt included and the opening credits slightly clipped at the beginning - but it was progressively-encoded with the trailer), some serious effort must have been taken on the mastering/authoring side for a release of the quality of ...ALL THE MARBLES to find its way to DVD via this program.
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post #57 of 131
8/10/09 at 12:04pm


Quote:
Originally Posted by Chuck Pennington View Post

I agree. I just received ...ALL THE MARBLES (1981), a rather obscure catalog title that I thought would never find its way to DVD. And yet here it is in anamorphic widescreen with the original trailer included and in really terrific quality. To say Warner Archive has done some work in upgrading their mastering process for these DVD releases is an understatement. Granted, I can't vouch for the quality of ALL the Warner Archive releases (my recent purchase of THE MOON IS BLUE was only so-so as it featured the same video master as was released in France on DVD, reel change marks and film dirt included and the opening credits slightly clipped at the beginning - but it was progressively-encoded with the trailer), some serious effort must have been taken on the mastering/authoring side for a release of the quality of ...ALL THE MARBLES to find its way to DVD via this program.

Chuck,

Thanks for posting about ...ALL THE MARBLES.  I am interested in this one but would have passed without a verified anamorphic release from WB Archives.  I've only bought the Barker Tarzan set from the Archive site but this might be another one if I can find a discount coupon or a couple of other titles on my list.
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post #58 of 131
8/10/09 at 12:33pm


Quote:
Originally Posted by TravisR View Post
 

But in the 1950s, there was no real outlet for access to older movies. TV was in its infancy, home video and the internet were pipe dreams; I don't even know if they had repertory houses then.
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post #59 of 131
8/10/09 at 1:13pm
Check out my post with pics here: *** Official Warner Archive DVD Review Thread - Page 7 - Home Theater Forum Community

Quote:
Originally Posted by Jeff Willis View Post
Thanks for posting about ...ALL THE MARBLES.  I am interested in this one but would have passed without a verified anamorphic release from WB Archives.  I've only bought the Barker Tarzan set from the Archive site but this might be another one if I can find a discount coupon or a couple of other titles on my list.


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post #60 of 131
8/10/09 at 3:01pm


Quote:
Originally Posted by Chuck Pennington View Post

Check out my post with pics here: *** Official Warner Archive DVD Review Thread - Page 7 - Home Theater Forum Community

 



 

Chuck,

I saw your review right after I posted earlier here.  Great review and screen caps.  This looks like a buy for sure.  I'll watch for discount coupons.
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