Hello, Fox! (1 Viewer)

[Seymour Uranowitz]

I'm hoping to be able to figure out some lyrics that have always baffled me.

George,

This site might be able to help until the release date... Hello Dolly lyrics

Seymour

 

[Randy A Salas]

Joe, there are no appreciable extras. Just the (really bad) 7-minute 1969 making-of featurette, which is nothing but on-the-set footage and chatter for five minutes, then a promotional voice-over and scenes from the movie for the last two. There are two trailers (English and Spanish), as well as trailers for All That Jazz, The Rose, The Commitments and The Sound of Music. And that's it!

George, there are subtitles only during the spoken scenes. There are no subtitles during the songs.

Peter, the scene you've listed as a spoiler is the only artwork on the back cover of the DVD.

 

[BBbrowd]

Randy,

Was there no "Hello Dolly Retrospective" in the extras? A retrospective has been listed on some sites as one of the extra features in addition to the 1969 featurette that you mentioned. Just curious. I was looking forward to it being something newly produced.

 

[Joe Caps]

Not only was a retrospective promissed, but I knew some of the people who were working on it about two years ago!!

 

[george kaplan]

Seymour,

Thanks for the link. The lyric in question is during It Takes a Woman when they slowly sing

"And so she'll work until infinity
Three cheers for femininity
God Bless ????"

According to those lyrics it's simply God Bless Femininity. I look forward to checking to see if that's what it's been all these years. It always sounded like "God Bless her minding loyalty" or some such to me.

 

[DeeF]

The lyrics on that site aren't really correct.

It's "weaning the Guernsey," for instance.

The line you're looking for doesn't exist in the song, in the Broadway lyrics. I have it on the best authority that that line is simply a repeat of the one before it, with an added syllable:

God Bless Fem-i-NINE-in-it-y.

 

[Randy A Salas]

Chris, Joe: I have listed the extras in their entirety. There is no retrospective--unless it's a hidden feature, which wouldn't make a lot of sense. The Special Features menu is just a static screen, and I've checked and rechecked it to make sure that I didn't miss it or that there's no hard-to-see "more" icon. The screen is set up so that the "1969 Featurette" is the prime attraction.

I suspected something was up when I saw the back cover. It lists no special features at all, which is not typical for a Fox disc that does have features.

 

[george kaplan]

Thanks Dee. Like I said, I'll have to listen to this carefully when I get the new dvd.

 

[Jack Briggs]

This whole thing is fascinating; looking forward to the disc.

Slightly off-topic, but I'd be interested in Mr. Harris's ratings and assessments of some of the most lauded DVDs among videophiles (the "sacred cow" discs) — that is, how they rate visually as a "film experience." That'd make for a heckuva thread.

 

[Greg_M]

Fox has been holding this title back for years, now there is no retrospective? All this wait to tie "ALL THAT JAZZ" into the film of "Chicago" and all we get is a few trailers and an old doc? Even "Star!" is being delayed for extras (Again FOX missed their "Chicago" promotional dates with this title) What the hec goes on over at FOX? Poor planning? Yeah, I know they help contribute to this web site, but still.....

 

[Roger Rollins]

I am in agreement with Greg's comments. It's terrific that (as Mr. Harris has indicated) Fox has given a great transfer to this title, and it's great that they price it so very low ($15). But to release a title of this significance, give it a great transfer, and then release it with no extras of note is really, well...dumb. Sounds like Paramount......

I'm fairly certain the same buyers of this release at $15 would happily pay $20 or $25 to buy a release with a little more substance to it. HELLO, DOLLY! deserves a class A DVD release, not just a class A transfer from film-to-video. The extra revenue generated would have given Fox the ability to spend a little more on this release, and give it the bells and whistles that really should be there.

This brings up a very good point (one which is strictly my personal opinion). It seems to me that Fox's home video group is often lazy when it comes to creating high quality added features on their discs.

Their Studio Classics series basically relies on tired and recycled A&E Biography or AMC-Backstory documentaries, each one of which is so pedantic and factory-like, you can tell that Fox's TV people made them even before the end credits roll. (The A&E biographies, heavily laden with trailers from non-Fox titles, are particularly offensive).

On DOLLY, perhaps Fox was stymied from doing something more substantial by a music-rights issue? Perhaps Stresiand has approvals that could kabosh such a presentation? I don't know anyone who works at Fox, so I have no idea if they at least attempted to do something meaningful here. So perhaps it isn't fair to criticize them without really knowing if they at least TRIED to do something a little more impressive. Nonetheless, the net result is essentially a vanilla disc. What a shame.

 

[Tyler Ruggeri]

I think we're being a little too hard on Fox in this thread. As people have pointed out, this is not an A title or even a highly regarded classic film (put it this way, it's not Citizen Kane). For Fox to work so hard on just the transfer for this disc and to put it out at such a low retail price shows that they deserve some credit. Paramount has only recently begun releasing their catalog titles at under $30 list but Fox has done so for a while. Also, Paramount was putting way few extras on those discs than Fox ever has. Remember War of the Roses special edition?

Also, if Fox did put a shitload of extras on this disc, not only would it raise the price but it may also compromise the transfer quality of the film itself (it is, after all, two and a half hours long). To get such a worthy transfer of this film for under $15 is a miracle, and I for one will be glad to add it to my library as is. It's not the extras that count, it's the film, and I'd rather have a great quality version of the movie with no extras than a so-so transfer with great extras any day.

Tyler Ruggeri

 

[Peter Kline]

You know I'm always amazed at the hostility shown when a film released on DVD (whether an A or B title) is not given the so-called deluxe treatment with lots of extras. Isn't it the film that is most important? A pristine transfer is worth tons more then any outtakes, pompous documentary or alternate scenes or whatever in my opinon. At $15, as Tyler says, it is a bargain.

 

[BBbrowd]

Dolly may not be a "Citizen Kane", but it's still one heck of a classic film and has more of a following than one might suspect.

I agree that it's the transfer and sound that is the most important and I will be very grateful if it's as great as the early reviews state. It's just that for so many of us this is an important and very much loved film, so it's only natural there would be a little disappointment in the lack of more extras. I know many people who would have been fascinated by a more complete package and would have gladly spent the money.

 

[Dan Rudolph]

Hello Dolly has a 6.2 (and only 1,016 votes) on IMDB. Doesn't really seem like a big a-list catalog title to me. Very few movies with 1,000 votes get fancy editions.

 

[Robert Harris]

There is a need to place "Special Editions" in perspective.

For something that didn't exist before Criterion created them for laserdisc, the term has become overused and abused...

to a point where too many releases are filled with "Special" additions.

Trailer

Cast bios (usually listing two or three films for the leads)

widescreen

stereo

free chapter list

special inside information

and finally...

previews of coming attractions for future DVDs.

The reality is that true Special Editions might fill one shelf of a DVD collection.

And that to hit a price point new documentaties, interviews, behind the scenes footage are extremely expensive to add if done correctly. As we have all seen, they are all too easy to add if they are not done correctly, but to what end? A good documentary can cost well in excess of one hundred thousand dollars.

The bottom line is that a major Hollywood title like Hello, Dolly! in an extremely high quality transfer on a single disc...

available from the likes of Deep Discount at $10.33 is not a disc which should be placed in a position of defending the fact that it isn't a $25 or $30 SE.

Compared by price to the back catalog offerings of some of the other studios, this could easily be a non-SE disc to street for $25.

I don't see where a problem exists.

For those who collected them, you'll recall that the Criterion SEs would cost anywhere from $75 to $150 or more.

 

[Robert Crawford]

RAH, it seems like some of us have become a little spoiled and want our personal favorite films to be presented as special edition dvds.




Crawdaddy

 

[Jon Robertson]

Their Studio Classics series basically relies on tired and recycled A&E Biography or AMC-Backstory documentaries, each one of which is so pedantic and factory-like, you can tell that Fox's TV people made them even before the end credits roll. (The A&E biographies, heavily laden with trailers from non-Fox titles, are particularly offensive).

While many of the included documentaries on that particular range are indeed saccharine, fluffy and grating in the extreme, the commentaries I have sampled have all been top-notch affairs.

 

[Robert Crawford]

I'm not so sure about that because even though I own 2100 dvds, I wouldn't have bought this dvd at that higher price because frankly, the movie isn't very good in my opinion but at that lower price I will probably add it to my collection.




Crawdaddy

 

[Randy A Salas]

it seems like some of us have become a little spoiled and want our personal favorite films to be presented as special edition dvds.

I think the point that people who care about this film (that doesn't include me) were trying to make is that a retrospective documentary was known to be in the works but was not included on the DVD. That's where the disappointment seems to lie--not necessarily that the disc doesn't have extras in general. Re-read what Joe said: He knows people who were working on a retrospective. What happened to it? Was it not completed? If such features can cost well in excess of $100,000 to produce, as Bob pointed out, why spend that much money and not include it?

Of course, adding a documentary of any length would have either compromised the movie's presentation if kept to a single disc or necessitated adding a second disc. The latter seems unlikely given the movie's apparently anemic following today, which wouldn't justify the extra manufacturing/production costs. If Fox spent the money to produce a documentary that it ultimately decided wasn't worth adding to the disc, that says a lot about what the studio thinks of the film's reception on DVD:

Great presentation + no extras + low price = Big profit potential
vs.
Great presentation + extras + high price = Low profit potential

Thankfully, the DVD that we do have features an outstanding presentation of the movie at a price that more than makes up for the lack of appreciable extras.