MGM/Fox May War/Western/Comedy titles (1 Viewer)

[Brent Avery]

Almost completed purchasing most of these releases - finally added If It's Tuesday This Must Be Belgium, What Did You Do In The War Daddy? and The Night They Raided Minskys. Hope to check them out this weekend.





















Excellent image on this release - if it can look pretty sharp with well saturated colors on a front projector I have to give it at least 8 out of 10. And the movie itself was entertaining enough. Silly but still funny. I liked the opening theme music by Henri Mancini too.

 

[CineKarine]

Review of Man of the West here

 

[Richard--W]

I've spot-checked all the new western releases. No RYAN'S DAUGHTER or PASSAGE TO INDIA calibre transfers in the bunch, but nothing to complain about, either. I'm impressed with DAY OF THE OUTLAW, a noir western by the great Amdre DeToth that should win over fans of both genres as it becomes better known. Next up is the sub-genre of the town-tamer in MAN WITH THE GUN starring Robert Mitchum.

This batch wets my appetite for more ...

 

[CineKarine]

For those of you who, like me, love reading reviews : Savant on Man of the West.

 

[DanMel]

I just got my order from deepdiscount, but have to send back both copies of the Fox western set. Garden of Evil was loose from the center holder in both sets and all scratched up which is unacceptable for two sets. I'm not even puting them in the player to see how they play. They are going straight back to the post office. If it were one of the other movies in the box I would have written it off but I must have a prestine dvd of Garden of Evil, which is why I ordered two on the buy one get one free deal, and they are both going back for replacement without even putting them in the player. If it takes 15 returns to get a box where Garden of Evil is not loose from the case and sliding all around then so be it.

 

[Simon Howson]

I watched The Gunfight at Dodge City last night and really liked it. It is only a B western but the story is familiar but compelling, and the acting is great all round (including Timothy Carey hamming things up as usual in an uncredited role). It was directed by Joseph M. Newman who seems to be an under-rated director of low budget films. He made another excellent western with McCrea in the previous year called Fort Massacre.

 

[DanMel]

The westerner has either been completly restored by MGM or they struck it from a prestine negative original source. I have never seen the picture quality look as good as it does on the latest release. I watching it upconverted to HD on a 42 inch Panasonic Plasma and it is spectactular for a black and white film. The asian import that I had when upconverted looked horrible with ghosting all over the faces and very dark and blurry. The new release has none of these faults and am very impressed with MGM's treatment to a Samuel Goldwyn title, which has been rather poor in the past. This is the asian import version that I compared it to but do not have the HBO version:

Amazon.com: The Westerner [Gary Cooper and Walter Brennan]: Movies & TV

Below is another reviewer on Amazon who has the original HBO release:

"I'm not going to review this dead bang CLASSIC...Gary Cooper at his prime, William Wyler at his....nuff said. What I am going to inform everybody is I just viewed the new MGM 2008 DVD against my long out of print HBO copy that I paid a fortune for and the differences are striking...I thought the original DVD was very good for its age...a bit grainy but with some good contrast and bite...but this new DVD looks like a print right off the original negative!!!! I can't believe they are not touting the amazing improvement but the first DVD was early in the DVD era and was obviously in retrospect a transfer from an inferior source. the verdict..If you are a classic film or western fan or a fan of Gary Coopers...this WILL be the best $10 you EVER spent!!! Yee Haaa!"

 

[Robin9]

You're a brilliant salesman! I'm placing my order immediately!

 

[Simon Howson]

Does anyone know how it compares with the old Goldwyn DVD version?

 

[Robert Crawford]

If you mean the HBO release, I'll let you know later today.




Crawdaddy

 

[Simon Howson]

I think it is because MGM transfers are now being done by Deluxe Digital, with maybe Fox checking / preserving the elements.

Whatever it is, the quality has gone up on MGM discs. They are still bare bones releases, but the transfers of The Gunfight at Dodge City, Navajo Joe, and The Westerner are all very good.

 

[Simon Howson]

 

[DanMel]

I would personally love to see screen captures of the old HBO release. It would seem that since that title was going for 100 or more dollars for many years because of it being out of print, no one has ever posted screen captures of this movie. This may be do to the fact that the picture is not all that great on the original HBO version and people that own it do not want potential customers seeing how it looks for all the money being spent on it. I was greatly disapppointed that dvdbeaver did not even post comparison shots. I would suspect the difference is night and day if the original HBO version looks anything similar to this bootleg asian import edition that I own:

Amazon.com: The Westerner [Gary Cooper and Walter Brennan]: Movies & TV

As this is one of my all time favorite movies, I have searched for screen captures of the HBO version for at least 8 years now to no avail.

Below is another happy Gary Cooper customer's review of it. I do think the picture looks best upscaled to HD on a plasma TV. It looks better than the screen captures I think. What I have noticed in my only week long ownership of a plasma TV is that upscaling works best with movies that don't have a great deal of film grain on them or where the picture may not be as sharp but very clean. I have also noticed from watching Garden of Evil upscaled to HD that I don't think there will be all that much for improvement if these movies come out in Bluray from what they look in upscaled mode. If these pictures were taken from high definition sources then upscaling them seems to bring them very close to what they looked like in HD. Any future purchase in Bluray would more than likely be very minimal improvement for picture quality. I don't own a Bluray player yet but after reading reviews of Butch Casidy and the Sundance Kid in Bluray, I don't have high hopes that Bluray will always make a picture look incredable compared to a upconverted dvd release.

" I fnally have all Gary's new releases now and they all look great on my blu-ray player. Just like everybody else is saying, The Westerner looks so great it's almost beyond description . I also got my actual high-def blu-ray copy of another b+w film 20 Million Miles to Earth yesterday and I popped it in first b/c I wanted to see a b+w movie in high-def. I was quite disappointed as there is noticeable film grain in many scenes. Some scenes looked very good but overall, I wasn't real impressed with this particular dvd. Then I put in The Westerner and my jaw dropped to the floor!!!! This movie actually looks like it's in high-def. I don't think it could look any better if it actually was in that format. I had to get my mom to come look at it and she thought the same thing, she couldn't believe it wasn't high-def. It is far and away, the best looking movie I have in my entire collection. I wish all my old movies looked like this one. I also watched it on a standard player and a regular tv and it is still noticeably better. "

I would be very interested hearing Crawdaddy's remarks on the picture quality as I think this new version of the Westerner for picture quality really shines when watching it on a HD large screen format that is upscaled to HD using a HDMI cable. Actually I am not sure upscaleing to HD even works on a projection theater but I am clueless when it comes to Home theaters with HD projectors.

Also, if it helps the above reviewer and myself both have Panasonic plasma TV's of 42 inch for myself and 50 inch for her. It seems the movies she thinks really look incredable are the same one's that I do and this may be to watching them on the plasma screen. Garden of Evil looked spectactular 3D to both of us with Man of the West less so.

 

[Jean Paul Villeneuve]

Here's a few screen grabs from the old HBO version. The new MGM release blows it away, it's not even close.

[url=https://static.hometheaterforum.com/imgrepo/e/e2/htf_imgcache_30437.png] [/url]


[url=https://static.hometheaterforum.com/imgrepo/9/9a/htf_imgcache_30438.png] [/url]


[url=https://static.hometheaterforum.com/imgrepo/a/a6/htf_imgcache_30439.png] [/url]

 

[DanMel]

Yes it looks to be the same screen captures from the HBO release that I was able to preview from my asian import that I think was an illegal straight over port of the HBO release. I know it changes in contrast the same as what is reported about the HBO release. The difference while severe on screen captures is even more severe when upconverting both of these to HD on a HD TV. I would say that the picture for the new MGM release increases dramatically upconverted to HD and the picture for the HBO decreases dramatically when doing the same. I looked at the picture of the old release upconverted and the picture is blurred to an extreme and there is severe ghosting around all the faces and it is pretty dark with the cinema settings of my panasonic dvd player. On the other hand, the new MGM release is increased in picture sharpness, and all other aspects at least 2 fold when upconverted so it is even more a drastic change than what the above screen captures can compare. Actually it doesn't even look like the old release has progressive video but rather interlaced which may be another reason it looks so crappy on my new plasma HD TV which is set up for progressive viewing from the HDMI cable at 720p.

 

[Robert Crawford]

After viewing the newest dvd release of "The Westerner" it wasn't much of a comparison between it and the 1998 HBO release of the same film. However, I decided to do some scene comparisons anyway, but it didn't take long to see that this newest release is superior in every way to the previous release. It isn't even close and there wasn't one scene comparison that I had to do multiple times to tell the differences between the two dvds.







Crawdaddy

 

[Simon Howson]

I just don't understand why MGM would pay all that money on a new pristine transfer, but then not add a few extras to go with it. If they did that they could call it an SE and increase the price a bit.

Having said that, the film is the most important thing, and it is good that they have done the film justice.

EDIT: It may be my eyes, but it looks like the HBO disc is interlaced, whereas the MGM is progressive. That alone results in a huge quality difference.

 

[PatrickDA]

"Man of the West" incorrectly says that the film was released in 1954. How
could MGM (Sony) allow such a mistake to get by?

 

[DanMel]

Actually it is not (Sony) but MGM Fox. Wrong dates on boxes don't bother me as long as the movie is alright.

 

[PatrickDA]

It isn't a wrong date on the box, but...

"...generally dismissed in its intial 1954 release..."

Now, I'm sorry, but that just CAN'T happen in the
actual text on the back of the keep case. A wrong
date at the bottom, ok, fine, but not this kind of
mistake.