Laurel and Hardy HD restorations – Blu-rays coming? (1 Viewer)

[battlebeast]

I just want to see the full BotC.

 

[Tony Bensley]

Oh well. At least I won't be surprised when I get a cancellation notice form Amazon. To be honest, I was anticipating that we would be likely disappointed with this release. As well as being a producer of DVDs, the Film Detective also hosts a streaming service, and several of the L&H silents are free to view right now on its website. Most of shorts are taken from the 1990s masters used for The Lost Films of Laurel and Hardy DVD and VHS series. At least one bore a 1993 copyright date, and several others were sporting the needle-drop scores used for the DVDs. One short curiously was mastered from a Blackhawk print. I was surmising that this set was going to be recycling these twenty to thirty year old SD masters. If I am correct, then we probably would have had the incomplete version of The Battle of the Century. Since this is all still conjecture, I was refraining from commenting until the set was released and those suspicions could either be confirmed or refuted, but that seems to now be a moot point. Actually, I wouldn't have trashed the set so much because I do believe that it would be good to see these shorts again made available, and twenty dollars is hardly highway robbery. However, I would have noted that the work of putting out a high quality HD remastering of the shorts on DVD and/or blu-ray still needs to be done.

Arthur, could you kindly keep us posted regarding your Amazon preorder on the off off chance the release hasn't been cancelled?

CHEERS!

 

[Tony Bensley]

I just want to see the full BotC.

It's taken far far too long for this to get a proper home video release!

 

[Arthur Powell]

Arthur, could you kindly keep us posted regarding your Amazon preorder on the off off chance the release hasn't been cancelled?

CHEERS!

I will do so. As of now, Amazon is telling me that it needs "a little more time" before it can give me a delivery estimate. Another odd thing is that the release date is listed as March 31 - a Sunday. Isn't it traditional that media releases are done on Tuesdays?

 

[Arthur Powell]

This is the word from a rep from the Film Detective on another forum:

On behalf of The Film Detective I wish to apologize for announcing that we are going
to have to cancel the release of the Laurel and Hardy project. The group that offered
us the material to distribute did not have the proper permission to grant us home video
rights. Once we realized that this was a problem we immediately pulled the release.
Hopefully at some point in the future we can negotiate with the current rights holder and release most of what we planned on in this collection and perhaps even on Blu-ray too.

Philip Hopkins,
The Film Detective

 

[Tony Bensley]

This is the word from a rep from the Film Detective on another forum:

On behalf of The Film Detective I wish to apologize for announcing that we are going
to have to cancel the release of the Laurel and Hardy project. The group that offered
us the material to distribute did not have the proper permission to grant us home video
rights. Once we realized that this was a problem we immediately pulled the release.
Hopefully at some point in the future we can negotiate with the current rights holder and release most of what we planned on in this collection and perhaps even on Blu-ray too.

Philip Hopkins,
The Film Detective

This isn't the first time that that group has tried to offer Laurel and Hardy material they don't have home video rights to, if my memory correctly serves. Sorry that The Film Detective was subjected to this b.s. in any case!

CHEERS!