African Queen in October???? (Now taken off schedule; see post 31) (1 Viewer)

[Charles H]

The last couple of AFRICAN QUEEN showings were rather disappointing in terms of print quality. Films shot in Africa in the 1950s (such as KING SOLOMON'S MINES and MOGAMBO) with highly-lauded photography were rather a letdown when they came out on dvd.

 

[Robert Crawford]

Watched it last night and it looked great. So did Faye Dunaway.

Crawdaddy

 

[Brandon Conway]

There's also Grease, Saturday Night Fever, and Star Trek: The Motion Picture. That makes 5 releases, and a total of 6 films pre-1980. Not exactly a spectacular amount of releases, and none pre-1970.

There's always a time for firsts. The African Queen would be the perfect opportunity for them to break that barrier.

 

[Jim_K]

About time.......and sold!

I'm not hopeful for a Blu-ray but if there is one that'll be the format I'll get it on. If not, DVD it is.

 

[ahollis]

Grease, Saturday Night Fever, Ferris Bueller, Godfather and the Star Trek Films are Paramount's "let's release another version in a year so don't add everything to the extras this time" releases.

I would almost wager that we will see another Blu-ray version of the above before we ever see a Blu-ray of The African Queen.

I guess I have a bad taste over Paramount. I thought could ease up when Legend released a bunch of their film last year, but I guess that was a one time event.

 

[Brandon Conway]

Since I don't care about extras, that doesn't bother me. But I believe The Godfather has everything from the original release, while Ferris Bueller has everything except the commentary, which from what I understand is per Hughes' request. I can't speak for the other titles.

 

[Christian Preischl]

Let's put it this way. Here's the current list of Centennial Collection releases:

Roman Holiday
Sabrina
Sunset Boulevard
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Funny Face
To Catch a Thief
The Odd Couple
The Man who shot Liberty Valance
El Dorado

Number of releases on DVD: 9
Number of releases on Blu-ray: 0

 

[ahollis]

And that was, I believe the fourth time Funny Face has appeared on DVD and each time they added one or two more extras. The rest were second and third time releases. The same films over and over. If people did not know their history, they would think Paramount only made a couple of dozen films. The Centennial Collection started last year, and it would have been a great format to also release their classics in Blu-ray also.

I guess we have strayed a little from the thread so to put us back, I can not wait until The African Queen arrives. I am also looking forward to any extras that may be on the disc. Thanks to Paramount for listening and making us lovers of this classic happy.

 

[PopBodhi]

"Thanks to Paramount for listening and making us lovers of this classic happy."

Hear, hear!

 

[RafaelPires]

Weel, accordingly to Classic Flix, it seems that this title has been taken off the schedule with no new date on the radar.
Very sad news.

 

[Colin McGuigan]

 

[mdnitoil]

Frankly, it seemed like too big of a title to dump into this collection. Not that Paramount is exactly famous for marketing their catalog, but this is probably the biggest back catalog item they have left. Presumably they could gin up some sort of marketing campaign on this title alone to extend sales.

 

[Simon Howson]

I guess Paramount will direct their attention to some reissues of Audrey Hepburn films.

 

[Jacqui]

And why not? There hasn't been a good Audrey Hepburn re-re-re-re-re-release in about a month or so.

 

[Eric Peterson]

I had a strange feeling that this would somehow fall through. It just didn't make sense that a release of this importance would suddenly just appear in a store without any hub-bub. This film is easily worthy of a major press-release.

I would suspect that it's still coming and not far behind (Maybe for the holiday season), but that someone simply leaked some information too early.

 

[BillyFeldman]

Gee, what a big surprise. I believe nothing I read on sites like Movies Unlimited, and yet people continue to just take what they say as gospel. You'll know The African Queen is coming when there's an actual press release from the studio that releases it - they're not going to be quiet about it.

 

[Jim_K]

Bummer

 

[gruagach]

Looks like I'll never see the end of The African Queen. As a kid when they showed it on the telly, I always had to go to bed for school. Then I drifted away from television in the mid-70's. Is it true Bogie's a cylon?

 

[John Morgan]

I don't know if this has anything to do with the delay, but a friend of mine who visits Paramount when he is in town told me that about 2 or 3 years ago, they were doing tests on THE AFRICAN QUEEN to get rid of those horrible matte halos in the process work. He saw a test and said it was quite impressive. I assume it was digital fixing rather than photo chemical. There are a lot of scenes with this problem and I would think it would cost a fortune to fix something native to the film, but I wonder if that could be a reason for the delay.

 

[BarryM]

I got my copy. it's a region 2 and plays nicely on my Pioneer uploading all-region player I bought this year. Best purchase I made recently.