Search results

It’s not a unique issue to Warner specifically or the film industry in general. A lot of large corporations have similar policies about not using outside vendors when the company already owns a business or facility that can handle that type of work. Internal billing is a huge thing for giant...

I think you could expand that to any film they wholly own. Brothers Grimm was the exception because Warner doesn’t wholly own it. It’s not a simple case that Warner Archive can outsource a film like Raintree County. I have no doubt Strohmeier and March could make it look better than it does now...

The problem with that is that Warner’s company policy doesn’t allow them to work with outside vendors for restoration/preservation work. They must work with MPI, the company’s in-house facility, and the cost of work at MPI tends to be significantly higher than working with third party...

I think the potential obstacle with that line of thinking is that Warner generally has a very strict, in-house services only approach to their restoration work. (I remember being told that Warner spent ten times what the 3D Film Archive does working on their own vintage 3D disc releases and that...

One Eyed Jacks is in the public domain; Universal takes a lot of risk doing a restoration on such titles because anyone can steal it and put it out as their own. You can in many instances copyright a restoration but you need to be able to prove that your new restoration is what’s being copied if...

The only thing impeding a physical media release of Raintree County is the same thing that has been all along: Warner is unwilling to release it on disc or license it to a third party unless it is in pristine, perfect condition, and the cost of restoring it to that condition is currently leaps...

In theory, no, but then you run up against Warner Archive’s internal policy of perfection or nothing at all. Between costs of disc mastering and limited sales potential, they get one bite at the apple now and they know it. For them, the current HD master of the general release version is not...

Not sure what a search for missing footage from Cleopatra has to do with a thread dedicated to expressing a desire to see Raintree County on Blu-ray...

The work on Gog was pretty impressive. I'm equally blown away by the work that David Strohmaier has done with the Cinerama titles - when you look at those restoration comparisons and see the before and after, it's amazing to see how those titles have been brought back to life with very pleasing...

I don't want to turn this into an anti-Warner rant, because they do a tremendous amount of good work, and their internal preservation program is top notch - even when things aren't seeing the light of day for public consumption, they are at least quietly preserving what they do have so that...

I guess our disagreement boils down to this: The Grass Is Greener will never be restored. It's a large format film shot with the same system as Spartacus, but couldn't look more different on Blu-ray. In general, I care about content first, form second. When I watch the Grass Is Greener on Blu...

I certainly interpreted your posting as meaning that you'd rather be no releases rather than imperfect ones. Re-reading it, that's still the overall conclusion I walk away with. And again, there's nothing wrong with that point of view. Fox didn't make a better version Stormy Weather because...

I disagree strongly with a lot of what you said, but I respect that we're on different sides here. To use your example of "Hawaii", that's an MGM movie, and as we know, MGM is essentially non-functional as a studio. They're an asset holding company that makes licensing and co-production deals...

I don't think they'll ever spell it out, but I imagine that it's one of those in between films. In between in the sense that it's a big enough production that they know it requires more than a quick DVD-R release to do it justice... but that it would cost more than it could possibly recoup to...

Video labels have also screwed this up by adding the claim "newly restored" to just about everything, when the truth is most often what they call a "restoration" is just a new scan of a film element that's in fine condition.

I completely agree as well. I almost never purchase with streaming but it has been incredible for rentals. Growing up in the era of VHS, where most movies were not priced for ownership, and where you were at the mercy of what your local video store carried, this modern era is mindblowing to me...

I've been really grateful for streaming services like iTunes and Vudu of late. They have HD copies of a lot of movies that are probably never coming to Blu-ray, and many more in SD that never even had DVDs. I know there are some things I'm interested in where there isn't an audience out there...

I would accept even less than that. I recently picked up "The Grass Is Greener" which Olive licensed, and though that movie was shot with the same large format system as Spartacus, you'd never know from the Blu-ray. It's soft, there's some fading on the colors, dirt on the print, and the audio...

I'm personally getting to a point where I'd just rather have a movie now than wait for day that may never come to get a pristine copy of it. I understand and to a certain extent appreciate Warner's position - they really are committed to the "perfect" part of the old Blu-ray slogan "the look and...