Flipped over My Darling Clementine (1 Viewer)

[Harry-N]

Pardon my thread title, but it seemed appropriate with its double meaning.

This past week, I picked up and watched, for the first time ever, the John Ford/Henry Fonda classic MY DARLING CLEMENTINE. I'd only ever seen snippets of the movie - enough to whet my appetite - on the M*A*S*H episode where the film is shown at the 4077th and it keeps breaking. So I finally decided to find myself a copy on DVD and enjoy it. I got the 20th Century Fox Studio Classics edition with a number 14 on the spine. Enjoy it I did. Good film.

But the DVD itself annoyed me a bit with its two versions on a flipper disc format. Not that flippers, by themselves annoy me all that much, but this one seems to have the label on the wrong side.

I popped in the disc for its initial run with the label side "up". The label says MY DARLING CLEMENTINE - SIDE A: FEATURE - ©2004 TCFHE - SIDE B (FLIPSIDE): SUPPLEMENTAL. This label indicates to me that the main feature is on the side I'm putting in, and that the supplemental materials are on the other side.

The menu came up and gave me a choice of watching the alternate version of the film or some supplemental material on the differences between the two versions.

I flipped the disc over to what intuitively is the "B" side, and the main feature (original version) was there.

I searched the forum here a bit but didn't find any mention of that. Are there other discs out there in the same "flipped" condition as mine? Or is my copy a misprinted anomaly?

Harry

 

[PhilDB]

Be sure to watch the Alternative cut too, as it is much closer to John Ford's original intentions. I.e. it is more subtle and has less Hollywood gloss.

If you haven't seen any other Ford films then you can't go wrong with the Warner Ford-Wayne boxset.I wish I that I could help you, but I bought the R4 release which is on two single-sided DVD9's.

My Sony R3K of Das Boot was mislabelled though. Side A was mislabelled Side B and vice versa.

 

[Robert Crawford]

Here is a thread, you might be interested in reading.



Crawdaddy

 

[Harry-N]

Thanks Robert. That was actually the FIRST thread I read when investigating this. While there's a post where a poster was confused as to which side was which, there weren't enough details to know whether the labelling was, in fact, backwards.

To those of you who have the disc, I'd appreciate it if you could pop in the labelled side and see which version of the film is on it.

Harry

 

[Lars Vermundsberget]

I seem to remember that I had the same problem with this disc.

 

[Jesse Skeen]

What the hell is up with these discs with printing only on ONE side anyways? It looks really awkward putting a disc in the player with no printing on it at all. I've got 5 HD hybrid discs and none of them have any printing on the regular DVD side.

 

[DeeF]

Yes, the label is on the wrong side of the disk. The recent Forbidden Hollywood 2-disk set has mismatched labels, too.

Still, this one is a fantastic DVD, and one of my very favorite movies.

 

[Radioman970]

I haven't seen this film in ages. Now I want to buy and watch it again. Wonderful film from what I remember...and great theme song. Cool MASH trivia too. Wish I had the movie and I wish I had the series MASH!

 

[Harry-N]

The episode of M*A*S*H that features MY DARLING CLEMENTINE is called "Movie Tonight". It's a classic where Colonel Potter promises the gang a great movie to lift them out of their doldrums, but just when it gets going, the film breaks and the camp fills in the time while Klinger's fixing the film with songs, impressions, and general entertainment. It's probably in my top five list of favorite M*A*S*H episodes.

The film, MY DARLING CLEMENTINE, was great to watch all the way through pm DVD. And though I haven't watched the alternate version through as a film, I have watched the little documentary where the film restorer gives comparisons of each of the scenes where the "preview" version differs from the released feature. The next time I watch the movie, I'll do the preview version.

I like how the restorer felt and expressed a bit of guilt about "faking" one of the restored scenes that he had to craft out of existing footage. But it all made sense once he put it together the way he did.

Harry

 

[Radioman970]

Oh yeah! They sing "I don't want no more of army life..." I love that! Probably haven't seen that one in at least 10 years. :frowning: I need to start buying these sets soon. Hopefully the full series set will come back soon.

 

[Harry-N]

That's the one. Season Five, Disc Three.

Harry

 

[Jeff_CusBlues]

Interesting Harry. I was also introduced to My Darling Clementine through watching this episode of MASH when it first aired. I have an old VHS that I copied off of American Movie Classics many years ago when they used to celebrate film restoration. They showed the original and the preview version back to back and I taped them. I need to pick up the DVD.

 

[Radioman970]

Cool Harry (Morgan? Heh!). Noted!

Hey, I noticed ebay sellers are selling all sorts of MASH dvds. Imports, etc. I was wondering if this is an official US R1 release...



Supposed to have all 11 seasons. If it is I'll probably buy it today. EDIT: Actually, I think that seller is just using pictures of the R1 set to sell cheap Chinese versions. His description is suspect since it mentions "Subtitles: Multi-lingual and removable" but it does say "Region 1: US, CA". I don't believe it since it's only $120 shipped. EDIT again: Yep, people are really getting cheated all over the place with these ALL region sets. They're selling for $250+ on amazon.com. They could stop this by just making the R1 available again. Doesn't make sense. Oh well, I'll just buy the Seasons one at a time. Oh, and back to the movie, My Darling Clementine as well. Both are higher on my list as of now.

 

[MarkHastings]

it saves in printing costs. With printing on one side, they only need to do one run as opposed to two. Two runs means twice the time, money, and work.

 

[Mark-P]

Regarding the so-called mislabeling of the sides. I think what has happened is that Fox may have come to the decision of having the labels correspond to the actual surface content rather than whether the label is up or down when you place it in the disc tray. In other words, if the main feature is on the labeled side, then you would have to put the labeled side down because the player always plays the bottom side. Make sense?

 

[Harry-N]

Yes, but counter-intuitive to the way every other disc out there is manufactured.

It's not a huge deal, I just found it odd that the label was on the wrong side and wondered if I had an anomaly or if all of them were like that.

The fact that you get the "movie" on both sides (in two different versions) is a plus here.

Harry