Paramount - ONE new oldie !! (1 Viewer)

[Joe Caps]

Paramount has finally announced a older title for this year - and it is a loser.
the 1970 Julius caesar - the kind of film that will turn you off to Shakespeare forever.

 

[John Hodson]

Warners has clearly demonstrated that great marketing, great publicity (they are currently playing the market like a violin - look at yesterday's announcement, it's got us desperate to open our wallets to them...again), and great product can make them $$$$s, while the other flounder in their wake.

The template is there for all to see - but why can't they deliver? All we'll get is reports that 'Paramount thinks the back catalogue market stinks', and everyone there will, for just one minute, wonder why, shrug their shoulders, get one with marketing the latest pathetic remake...and the films will stay in the vault.

It beggars belief...Paramount - you've given us barebones versions of The Strange Loves of Martha Ivers, The Detective and you've got Ace in The Hole. What part of the words 'Special Edition' or 'Box Set' do you not understand?

 

[Andy Sheets]

Is that the one with Jason Robards as Brutus? What a snooze that performance (and movie) was. It didn't turn me off of Shakespeare, but it certainly did everything it could to do so.

 

[Joel Vardy]

I guess we can forget about The Africa Queen for '06 or even '07? We need a bit more than apathy about this disturbing trend from the HTF .

Joel

 

[JPCinema]

This news confirms to me that Paramount is nopw the worst studio for releasing classic films. Now its just repackaging the previously released titles and lots of TV. Very sad to the demise of a studio that I once looked forward to seeing and buying their monthly releases. Is the person who makes the decisions a 19year old who thinks an old classic is "Ferris Buehler's Day Off"?

 

[RoyM]

Ken, actually I think your theory has a lot of merit. I have begun to entertain that very notion myself; namely that the DVD divisions of studios (like Paramount) who have such disregard for catalogue titles are probably being headed by 30-something year old execs who think that just because they themselves hate B&W films or anything that was made before 1982, there is no market for such product. Hence, their endless parade of SE's and re-releases of crappy teen oriented and action movies from the last twenty years, while genuine classic films languish in their vaults.

It's really pretty sad...

 

[John Hodson]

I can't remember if it was Paramount, but Billy Wilder told the story of making a pitch to a young exec, during that sad twilight of his career, and was greeted with '...and what have you done previously Mr Wilder.'

 

[Steve...O]

In the TV on DVD forum Dave Lambert posted some of his thoughts on the lady who replaced Martin Blythe. Not complimentary in the least. It seems this person has virtually no interest in listening to any kind of feedback.

This is quite disturbing as it does not bode well for not only theatrical releases, but the wonderful TV on DVD sets that Paramount had been doing.

 

[Patrick McCart]

I thought it was OK. Not as good as the 1953 film, but decent.

Let's hope Paramount at least is using a new 16x9 2.35:1 master. The previous Artisan DVD used a pan & scan version of this Panavision film.

 

[dana martin]

lets see,

no African Queen

no Wings

none of the Republic Library

sounds like someone in the company needs to see what they own, don't get me wrong, cant wait for the triple dip of The Ten Commandments, but the last thing i need right now is another 80's or 90's comedy,drama,horror repackaging, what i want is someone dig in the archives and bring out the hidden gems

 

[John Hodson]

My God, Paramount is on a roll From The Bits:

Paramount, meanwhile, has a repackaged DVD release of Ghost set for 5/2. There's no word yet on extras. The studio has also announced a 3-disc American Heroes Collection for release on 5/9, that will include In Harm's Way, The Bridges of Toko-Ri and Hell is for Heroes.

 

[Richard Matich]

I want Wings [1927]!! I want the Crowd [1928]!! I want The Big Parade [1925]!! + precode Paramount titles. Its these kids that they get to run these things [departments] Fresh out of Harvard or Wharton bussiness schools. They have little to no knowlege of classic cinema. Thank God for George Feltinstien and Warners.

I rant like a little child but those 3 titles are an important missing part of my collection of classic movies.

 

[walter o]

well at least Paramount for awhile was consistant in giving us (even though barebone and trailerless) great back catalog from theirs and CBS's vast film library.

To me the biggest offender is MCA, no older library titles since November! Where is the sci-fi classcis?!

 

[Patrick McCart]

I agree with the sentiment about titles. Paramount could do a whole wave of their silent films (Old Ironsides, Wings, The Covered Wagon, Docks of New York, The Last Command, Running Wild, and The Wedding March). And those films feature names like James Cruze, William Wellman, Gary Cooper, Josef von Sternberg, W.C. Fields, Emil Jannings, Erich von Stroheim, and Fay Wray.

Richard:

I'm guessing The Big Parade will come out this year since WB has finished restoring the 1925 version (mostly from the camera negative, no less). A wave of King Vidor films including The Crowd would be an excellent idea, too.

walter:

Universal is releasing 4 film collections in the next few months. One Cecil B. DeMille set (with all 5 of the Paramount films Universal owns), another for Marlene Dietrich, another for Mae West, and another for Carole Lombard. Minimal extras, but the four sets combined equal 21 films.

Even if practically sold in bulk stock, Universal's remasters of their pre-1950 films are for the most part absolutely stunning.

 

[Doug Bull]

There are still many terrific Westerns in their post 50s Catalogue.
I would love to see Charlton Heston's PONY EXPRESS.

Are their Silents now owned by Universal?

 

[Richard--W]

Julius Caeser (1970) was the first Shakespeare I ever saw at the movies. True it's been done better, but I'm quite fond of this version, and of Heston's Mark Antony in particular. It has much to recommend it, Jason Robards notwithstanding. I look forward to a decent widescreen transfer on DVD.



Very likely true.

Studios operate in a world of high-finance and corporate banking. They look at what makes a lot of money and what doesn't. Few studio executives are as knowledgeable as the consumers on this board. They are required to have a different set of skills. Everybody knows old movies sell on home video, but not as much as new movies do, so the attitude is, let's stick with what we know makes money.

Decisions are being made by extremely young executives (that means over 21 under 30) who are not necessarilly knowledgeable about film culture, film history, or film production. They know more about Accounting and Management, and their jobs are grandfathered in, so to speak. They know movies began with Star Wars; anything older than that is disdainfully dismissed as something their parents might be interested in. You can't reason with them.

The worst I ever met was a young woman preservationist who brought her feminist agenda to the job -- that means no westerns on the roster, or as she put it "no more testosterone fantasies, please!" She said something about all these old westerns are the same thing -- "a group of guys on horses ride in one direction shooting off their guns, then they ride in the other direction shooting off their guns and nobody wants to see that anymore!" she declared. In other words, let the westerns dating back to the 1910s rot in the can while we preserve the important films. The cold hard reality is that which movies are preserved or released and which are buried is often politically motivated, reflecting someone's attitude or prejudice.

That's a fact.

Listen to Dan Curtis's commentary on The Night Stalker / The Night Strangler disc. He talks a little about this.

Remember the series Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman with Jane Seymour? It was a woman's western with good ratings and it made money, but it was cancelled anyway because it was a western. When asked about the cancellation, Jane Seymour observed that although execs realized Dr. Quinn was a profitable show, a contemporary program with younger female leads in that slot would be more popular and more profitable. So she was cancelled. To that I would ad, the kids who run the biz today hate westerns more than they hate black and white or subtitles.

 

[John Hodson]

That's sadly, very true. I'm just been debating on another forum with some chaps who claim to be western fans, and yet hate Ford and Wayne, and all those 'corny old films'. I just can't square that circle.

 

[Simon Howson]

Yeah, a lot of 70s 'Film Theory' added nothing to the average understanding of cinema.

The Warner DVD release forumula seems to be working. Create good quality transfers, package 5 or 6 movies in a boxed set based on actor, director or a theme. Providing a significant discount for the purchase of the movies in boxes will motivate viewers to buy the entire set instead of just 1 or 2 films, even if the viewer is blind buying 40% of what they watch.

There is no point having a vault full of classic films that aren't being exploited for their economic worth. Warner has figured this out. Plus, doing HD transfers now will make it a lot easier to repackage the titles for HD in the future. They are essentially investing money now for the HD era.

I don't understand why more studios haven't noticed what Warner is doing. For example, Columbia releases some good titles, but they are often very expensive. Surely if they took less profit per disc they would encourage a lot more blind buyers, thus over all producing more revenue and profit.

 

[GregoryMesh]

No, they are owned by Paramount. Silents were not big on TV in 1949, so Universal didn't purchase them. And Paramount is releasing their first silent DVD in March - The Ten Commandments. I guess, if we want Wings on DVD, somebody needs to remake it and after about 2 releases, just in time for HD-mini BluRay, we'll see it released! At least Universal and Fox lend their catalogue to other studios while Paramount and Sony just sit on them.

 

[Joe Karlosi]

Since Paramount released THE NAKED JUNGLE and THREE VIOLENT PEOPLE (another western with Heston) I think there's a good chance.