Is SONY releasing any pre 1970's films? (1 Viewer)

[OliverK]

It is indeed pretty obvious that the 40s are regarded like this but at least from the announcements for US releases it is obvious that the 50s and 60s do not fare better.

It is just an observation though and not a complaint. While we might be doing rather fine with 80s and 90s and even 70s catalog it would be incorrect to say that we are doing fine with catalog in general as other decades certainly are much less well represented. Two of these decades, the 50s and 60s, also offer widescreen and color movies that have the potential to look very good on Blu-Ray so one might expect more releases of movies made during those years. In the end if it sells good enough I am sure we will see more older catalog but I have a feeling it will be less and later than on DVD for a long time.

 

[Brandon Conway]

I really don't think it's much different than the same period in DVDs life, save the additional care needed to prep the HD masters, which reduces the numbers by comparison. Let's look at what was released in Q3 2000 on DVD, which is the same time into the format that Q3 2009 is for BD (without the somewhat damaging format war for DVD back in 2000).

7/4

Alice in Wonderland (1951) (Buena Vista)
Annie Hall (MGM)
Bananas (MGM)
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* But Were Afraid to Ask (MGM)
Interiors (MGM)
Love and Death (MGM)
Manhattan (MGM)
Robin Hood (1973) (Buena Vista)
Sleeper (MGM)

7/11

Anatomy of a Murder (Sony)
Diabolique (1996) (Warner)
Freejack (Warner)
Jaws (Universal)
Mackenna's Gold (Sony)
National Velvet (Warner)
Searching for Bobby Fischer (Paramount)
Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (Sony)
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (Paramount)
Trial by Jury (Warner)
What About Bob? (Buena Vista)
White Sands (Warner)

7/18

The Best Years of Our Lives (MGM)
The Crush (Warner)
Easy Money (MGM)
Henry V (1989) (MGM)
The Princess Bride (MGM)

7/25

My Cousin Vinny (Fox)
The Secret of Roan Inish (MGM)
Space Jam (Warner)
Steel Magnolias (Sony)
White Men Can't Jump (Fox)

8/1

Bronco Billy (Warner)
A Bug's Life (Buena Vista) (Re-issue)
Carrie (MGM)
Child's Play (MGM)
The Dark Half (MGM)
The Gauntlet (Warner)
Hercules (1997) (Buena Vista)
The Howling (1981) (MGM)
Jailhouse Rock (Warner)
Kelly's Heroes (Warner)
Leviathan (MGM)
Misery (MGM)
Monkey Shines: An Experiment in Fear (MGM)
Phantasm (MGM)
Phantasm Oblivion (MGM)
The Prophecy (Buena Vista)
The Prophecy II (Buena Vista)
Pumpkinhead (MGM)
Rescuers Down Under (Buena Vista)
Silent Fall (Warner)
Species (MGM)
Species II (MGM)
Swamp Thing (MGM)
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre II (MGM)
Viva Las Vegas (Warner)

8/8

Brian's Song (1971) (Sony)
Cat Ballou (Sony)
Nashville (Paramount)

8/15

Above the Law (Warner)
Altered States (Warner)
Assassins (Warner)
The Big Blue (Sony)
Copycat (Warner)
The Defender (Buena Vista)
Demolition Man (Warner)
Executive Decision (Warner)
Fargo (MGM)
Fire Down Below (Warner)
Forever Young (Warner)
Hard to Kill (Warner)
Kalifornia (MGM)
Ladyhawke (Warner)
The Last Boy Scout (Warner)
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (Warner)
Memphis Belle (Warner)
Murder at 1600 (Warner)
The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (Paramount)
Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear (Paramount)
Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult (Paramount)
New Jack City (Warner)
Outland (Warner)
Passenger 57 (Warner)
The Pelican Brief (Warner)
Planet of the Apes (Fox)
Beneath the Planet of the Apes (Fox)
Escape from the Planet of the Apes (Fox)
Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (Fox)
Battle for the Planet of the Apes (Fox)
Platoon (MGM)
Point of No Return (Warner)
Shane (Paramount)
Six Degrees of Separation (MGM)
Sleepers (Warner)
The Specialist (Warner)
Suddenly, Last Summer (Sony)
Tango & Cash (Warner)
Tequila Sunrise (Warner)
Under Siege II: Dark Territory (Warner)
The Witches of Eastwick (Warner)

8/22

Brainstorm (Warner)
Farinelli (Sony)
Logan's Run (Warner)
Runaway (Sony)
Westworld (Warner)

8/29

12 Monkeys (Universal)
Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein (Universal)
Arsenic and Old Lace (Warner)
Braveheart (Paramount)
The Invisible Man (1933) (Universal)
North by Northwest (Warner)
Phantom of the Opera (1943) (Universal)
The Sound of Music (Fox)
Stand by Me (Sony)
The Thing (1982) (Universal)
Tremors (Universal)

9/5

The Amityville Horror (1979) (MGM)
Beach Party (MGM)
Bikini Beach (MGM)
A Bucket of Blood (MGM)
Candyman (Sony)
Edward Scissorhands (Fox)
Fantastic Voyage (Fox)
The Fly (1958) (Fox)
Return of the Fly (Fox)
The Fly (1986) (Fox)
The Fly II (Fox)
Fright Night (Sony)
Grumpy Old Men (Warner)
Grumpier Old Men (Warner)
Heavy Traffic (MGM)
I Know What You Did Last Summer (Sony)
Jewel of the Nile (Fox)
Men in Black (Sony)
The Omen (1976) (Fox)
Damien: Omen II (Fox)
Omen III: The Final Conflict (Fox)
Omen IV: The Awakening (Fox)
Pajama Party (MGM)
Porky's (Fox)
Screamers (Sony)
Stranger than Paradise (MGM)
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (Fox)
Waking Ned Devine (Fox)

9/12

The Craft (Sony)
Faraway So Close! (Sony)
Mary Reilly (Sony)
This Is Spinal Tap (MGM)

9/19

42nd Street (Warner)
Adam's Rib (Warner)
Alien Visitor (Buena Vista)
BUtterfield 8 (Warner)
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Warner)
Dark Victory (Warner)
The Dead Zone (Paramount)
The Delta Force (MGM)
Delta Force 2 (MGM)
Dillinger (1973) (MGM)
Frogs (MGM)
Good News (Warner)
Jezebel (Warner)
Pat and Mike (Warner)
Pet Semetary (Paramount)
A Star Is Born (1954) (Warner)
Take Me Out to the Ball Game (Warner)
Tales of Terror (MGM)
The Unsinkable Molly Brown (Warner)
Woman of the Year (Warner)

9/26

2010: The Year We Make Contact (Warner)
Gladiator (1992) (Sony)
Rudy (Sony)

Buena Vista: 10
Fox: 22
MGM: 43
Paramount: 10
Sony: 21
Universal: 7
Warner: 57

Total: 170

Some things learned from looking this up:

1) MGM and Warner were going NUTS early in DVDs lifespan. Of course, most of these releases are fairly below standard, such as being Full Screen or flippers. I still can't believe we haven't got better releases of some of these on DVD (I'm looking at you, Woody Allen films). So there were indeed more older catalog titles; some really great movies, to be sure. But it came with some serious caveats, such as ported over Laserdisc transfers and non-anamorphic releases. In other words, they didn't have to work as hard to bring them to us; in fact, many were simply thrown out into the market. One simply can't do that when spending the $$$ it takes for an HD master. Many of those big Warner and Universal titles saw re-releases on DVD 3-5 years later (MGM has a worse track record of revisiting titles, even if it's needed). The standard of these early DVD releases would, quite frankly, cause a riot in the Home Theater community if the attitude was repeated today.

2) The number of titles that pop up that have also just been released/are about to be released on BD is eerie. Warner especially is hitting many of these titles again in the same way. Hell, Point of No Return and Tango & Cash made their DVD debuts and their BD debuts on the same day both times!

3) Sony and Fox were releasing more back then, but not in the wild fashion of MGM and Warner; Paramount, Buena Vista and Universal were releasing about the same amount. Lionsgate was even non-existant for catalog titles (they had yet to gain Artisan's catalog).

4) Most of the great DVD special editions didn't start appearing until 2001-2002. That's year 5 and year 6 of the format. BD is, by this standard, ahead of the DVD curve.

5) Not listed here, but smaller companies, such as Trimark, Laserlight, Madacy, WinStar, etc. were big on the DVD bandwagon with mostly sub-par material. We simply don't have much of the same with BD because of the cost of releasing in HD. This is also the era of Anchor Bay licensing Universal and Buena Vista catalog.

Final Conclusion: In my opinion, quality of presentation trumps quantity of titles, so while there are certain films I wish were on BD that got released in Q3 2000 on DVD, I don't think I'd be happy if they pushed them out with the same limited attention. One can debate the quality of the films themselves in this comparison, though one man's classic is another man's cure for insomnia....

 

[Danny_N]

Out of the 170 DVD's released in Q3 2000, 38 are pre-1970 which translates to 22,3%. Out of the 72 BD's announced for Q3 2009 only 1 is pre-1970 which translates to 1,3%.
22,3% vs 1,3% seems like a significant difference to me.

As for quality, I bought quite a few of the pre-1970 classics in your list and most of them were excellent. I could remember wrong but full screen transfers and flippers were for the most part already a thing of the past in 2000.

 

[TravisR]

DVD was more successful than Blu-ray and DVD didn't have a format war for its first year and a half (DIVX doesn't count) so why wouldn't it be taking longer for older titles to come to Blu-ray?

 

[OliverK]

And DVD did not have to compete with an extremely widespread format with very low software prices that is still deemed to be good enough by the majority of customers.

 

[Brandon Conway]

And those early titles that made it to DVD would look like shit if they put them on BD right now without the correct preparation. If you think people complained about Patton and The Longest Day, that would be just a fraction of the complaints that would be heard if they released, say, Annie Hall at the same comparable quality.

Hell, they just released Star Trek II on BD in far superior quality (comparatively) than was done in 2000 on DVD and people bitched and moaned endlessly about how they were screwed over by the quality. And that's for a film that is only 27 years old and in no where near as bad shape as the films before 1970, especially films pre-50s.

If you want it done RIGHT (like Sony has done so far) you're gonna have to be PATIENT. If you're just looking for numbers of titles without regard to presentation, stick to DVD.

 

[Danny_N]

I love it when people tell me to stick to DVD . In retrospect maybe I should have, just like most classic movie lovers are doing apparently or sales would be sky high.
Anyway, going through the list from Q3 2000 I recognize 22 titles that are out on BD. Apart from Kahn I don't think that there were many complaints about the other 21. Although people complain about everything these days, right or wrong, so I might have missed some.
But why do you assume that the lack of pre-1970 titles is mainly caused by the studios taking their time to do them right?

 

[Brandon Conway]

It's not an assumption. And I wouldn't say "mainly". A big factor, yes, but market saturation and targeting other consumers than the classic collector have a share of the cause.

 

[Danny_N]

What then? Are you telling me that the HD masters which were used for recent DVD's of the Boetticher set, Touch Of Evil, Breakfast At Tiffany's, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence, El Dorado, Odd Couple, Funny Face, Sabrina, Roman Holiday, To Catch A Thief, Psycho, Vertigo, Rear Window and loads of others are all not of sufficient quality for BD?
If quality is the primary concern of the major studios then why did MGM release The Good, The Bad And The Ugly as that is really a subpar release?

Edit: I replied before you edited your post which changed the intent of your answer slightly and made my reply redundant. But I'll leave mine as is as it shows the titles I believe we could have if the market was there.

 

[Brandon Conway]

A release that, if released in Q3 2000, would have been the Greatest Movie Presentation on Home Video of All Time by a looooooooong shot.

That said, most of those titles will likely be on BD within a couple years any way. For example, Rear Window made it out on DVD in March 2001, year 5 of DVD.

 

[Greg_M]

Sony has just released "Midnight Express" I love this film but after reading the review at Blu-ray.com I'll stick with my standard DVD.

I don't understand why grainy, colorless, films are being released on Blu-ray when older larger format films are not?

I've been looking for "Lord Jim" but it's now OOP and going for big bucks. It would look fantastick on blu-ray but it's nowhere to be found, same with Lawrence and Funny Girl. Instead we get the black and white classics (Dr Strangelove and In Cold Blood) Both excellent films but not what you would use as demonstration discs.
What is sony waiting for?

 

[Brian Borst]

I'd rather have the companies releasing great films instead of only looking what could be a 'demonstration disc'.

 

[Powell&Pressburger]

Originally Posted by Greg_M

Sony has just released "Midnight Express" I love this film but after reading the review at Blu-ray.com I'll stick with my standard DVD.

I don't understand why grainy, colorless, films are being released on Blu-ray when older larger format films are not?

I kinda hear what you typed but I like the idea of older films being released on blu. I know they tend to take longer on stuff like Lawrence of Arabia etc... but gove them more time.. I'm impatient here also.

But I love films like Midnight Express that are being released. They are not reference in terms of say something like Sin City or Watchmen or Speed Racer etc.. but they should be judged on the basis of their original film negative and transfer.

I LOVE GRAIN! SONY did such a great job on their transfers for KRAMER vs KRAMER. I rate it high, it isn't a bug's life but this transfer is top notch.

I would guess Midnight Express looks as good as it could in respect to what type of film stock and lighting was used etc. These things must be taken into consideration. You can't compare something like Midnight to something like a bug's life etc because it shouldn't be.

But I am waiting for some releases from WB like KLUTE and NETWORK, and ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN...

Wish Sony would release more classics but I would like to see MURDER BY DEATH released on BD, along with OLIVER! (which seems to me could cause a lot of issues cause of all the different diffused lighting etc... It will never look pristine... but some may be dissapointed even with the best they can give it... also woudl be cool to get some more Ray HARRYHAUSEN films released on blu but not as box sets.. it hurts sales. Sep BD releases is good.

I wanted IN COLD BLOOD Badly and I liked Capote but I could not bring myself to purchasing the DOUBLE disc for the films. I hated the fact each film had to splt the cover art. Looked horrible and cheap. I despise double released films like that.

but again these transfers should be judged on a film to film basis, and ask yourself ... is this the best the film could look theatrically? does it present the film in a filmlike look? Chances are sometimes the projected prints couldn't look any better.

 

[Brian Borst]

Jack, I have to agree with you. I'm not so much a fan of grain (that would more likely indicate I want grain on every title out there) but I want the film to look the way it's supposed to look. If it was shot slightly softer than usual, I want to see that.
There were a lot of complaints about 'Ghostbusters' (not a pre 70's title, but anyway) and the amount of grain it had. I finally got to watch it today, and although some shots had more grain in them, the rest looked amazing to me. Could not find a fault with the grain in it.

 

[Felix Martinez]

I'm kinda glad not many classic catalog titles have been released so far. I'd rather the studios get them right. Look at Patton/The Longest Day.

As for Sony, when their Blu catalog gates open, the quality of the product should be superb.

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

They are working on some obscure 60ies movie, something like Larry the Arab I think https://static.hometheaterforum.com/imgrepo/a/a8/htf_images_smilies_smiley_wink.gif">[/QUOTE]
[b]Make God your agent! Akaba!
[/b]

[QUOTE]Lawrence of Arabia, xxxxxxx Sound of Music, xxxxxxxxx, Agony and the Ecstacy, xxxxxxx My Fair Lady, West Side Story, xxxxxxx Ben Hur, Ten Commandments
[/QUOTE]
There, I simplified the list for you.

 

[Brandon Conway]

Some websites are listing Easy Rider, some without a date, some with 10/13/09 as the release date.