Press Release PHE Press Release: Paramount Presents! The Sheik (1921) (Blu-ray) (1 Viewer)

[Robert Crawford]

Personally, I love the sound of organ music.

 

[Thomas T]

Personally, I love the sound of organ music.

I'm a percussion guy myself. The sound of a drum beat and my eyes light up. Must be my Puerto Rican heritage.

 

[Robert Crawford]

I'm a percussion guy myself. The sound of a drum beat and my eyes light up. Must be my Puerto Rican heritage.

Frankly, I love all instruments! My absolute favorites are the bass followed by the drums because I wanted to play those instruments, but my freaking parents wouldn't let me because of the noise so instead they gave me a clarinet. You can guess how that worked out. One of the few things I still hold against my parents.

They did the same thing with my younger brother, but instead he got the organ.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

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[Thomas T]

Frankly, I love all instruments! My absolute favorites are the bass followed by the drums because I wanted to play those instruments, but my freaking parents wouldn't let me because of the noise so instead they gave me a clarinet. You can guess how that worked out. One of the few things I still hold against my parents.

They did the same thing with my younger brother, but instead he got the organ.

Outside of jazz scores, drums rarely get a chance to shine. Antonio Sanchez's score to Birdman (2014) is a good recent example. But other jazz scores like Johnny Mandel's to I Want To Live (1958) and Elmer Bernstein's The Man With The Golden Arm (1955) also used percussion effectively.

 

[Robert Crawford]

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Yeah, I'll be purchasing this silent classic.

 

[richardburton84]

I have nothing against the use of organs in a proper underscore. In fact, one of my very favorite film scores of all time uses an organ prominently ..... Bernard Herrmann's Obsession (1976). But it's not the entire score. And let's get real, Gaylord Carter is no Bernard Herrmann. If nostalgists enjoy their organs, fine but I stand my original statement.

I’m of this particular mindset. I don’t mind the sound of an organ when used to add a little extra color to the orchestra or for dramatic effect (I particularly love it’s use in Dimitri Tiomkin’s Fall of the Roman Empire score), but hearing nothing but organ in a score can get a bit monotonous, especially if it’s being used to accompany a particular long silent film like say Intolerance or Fritz Lang’s Die Nibelungen films.

 

[Vern Dias]

I’m of this particular mindset. I don’t mind the sound of an organ when used to add a little extra color to the orchestra or for dramatic effect (I particularly love it’s use in Dimitri Tiomkin’s Fall of the Roman Empire score), but hearing nothing but organ in a score can get a bit monotonous, especially if it’s being used to accompany a particular long silent film like say Intolerance or Fritz Lang’s Die Nibelungen films.

Now, this is a reasonable statement about organ and silent films, unlike the original poster's rather disrespectful comment regarding a widely respected artist:

Yes and this time dump the godawful Gaylord Carter noise and give it a proper orchestral underscore.

Unfortunately, many original scores for silent movies are merely repetitions of the same themes associated with a character or an activity. You can't blame this on the performer(s) if they are using the actual sheet music that was composed for the film. Making a comparison to a newly composed or orchestrated score (Napoleon) is simply not a valid one.

For anyone who might be curious about what a more modern take on the theatre organ might sound like, check this out:


Make sure you play it in your HT and enable Auro 3D or DTS Neural X for best results.

 

[TheSteig]

Ill probably get this is the restoration is an improvement over the KL release, which Im happy with. Is this going to be a 4K restoration? Did I miss that somewhere ??

 

[darkrock17]

Ill probably get this is the restoration is an improvement over the KL release, which Im happy with. Is this going to be a 4K restoration? Did I miss that somewhere ??

The press release on the first page doesn’t mention 4K anywhere just a new blu-ray release. How much could you improve on a 100 year old film?

 

[richardburton84]

The press release on the first page doesn’t mention 4K anywhere just a new blu-ray release. How much could you improve on a 100 year old film?

Look no further than the current Blu-ray of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari for the answer to that question. Granted, that film had the camera negative to work off of, but still.

 

[darkrock17]

Look no further than the current Blu-ray of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari for the answer to that question. Granted, that film had the camera negative to work off of, but still.

The 2014 Kino release looks ok, kinda hard to see a difference from theirs and international release though.

 

[Thomas T]

unlike the original poster's rather disrespectful comment regarding a widely respected artist:

Oh, and I can't stand Teresa Wright, Henry Fonda, Frank Capra and Werner Herzog either "Disrespecting" widely respected artists comes easily to me. I have no sacred cows and I'm sure Mr. Carter's reputation will survive my disrespect.

 

[Robert Crawford]

Can we stop now!

 

[David_B_K]

I’m of this particular mindset. I don’t mind the sound of an organ when used to add a little extra color to the orchestra or for dramatic effect (I particularly love it’s use in Dimitri Tiomkin’s Fall of the Roman Empire score), but hearing nothing but organ in a score can get a bit monotonous, especially if it’s being used to accompany a particular long silent film like say Intolerance or Fritz Lang’s Die Nibelungen films.

I quite like the organ when it is used with an orchestra as in Saint-Saens' Organ Symphony or Handel's Organ Concertos and some of Mahler's symphonies. It's also nice as an accompaniment to Baroque brass music. I agree that an organ score for an entire silent film can get monotonous. However, I'll take it if that is all that is offered.

A couple of years ago my wife and I watched a couple of Harold Lloyd movies (High and Dizzy & A Sailor Made Man) with an organ accompanist at a downtown Houston episcopal church with a huge organ. The sound of a real organ has much more presence than an organ recording, unless they record the organ in high def multichannel sound.

 

[Arthur Powell]

Even though The Sheik is far from being my favorite silent and I passed on the earlier Kino blu since I was satisfied with the David Shepard DVD, I just placed my order for this release. Going off the top of my head, this will either be the fifth or sixth silent era title released onto blu-ray by a studio as opposed to a third party licensor (the discrepancy in the total count is due to how one chooses to classify The Jazz Singer). As such, a release like this is a rare event and should be supported.

 

[warnerbro]

Thank you thank you, Paramount. Please also release SON OF THE SHEIK which I think is even better. And please give us the music and effects score created in the 1930s. I love it. I love orchestral scores for silent movies, but I also think Gaylord Carter is awesome. I believe he did the score for WINGS which was awesome. Please release more silent films. I think this is a good way to preserve them and expose people to them. They didn't need words. They had faces!

 

[StarDestroyer52]

Thank you thank you, Paramount. Please also release SON OF THE SHEIK which I think is even better. And please give us the music and effects score created in the 1930s. I love it. I love orchestral scores for silent movies, but I also think Gaylord Carter is awesome. I believe he did the score for WINGS which was awesome. Please release more silent films. I think this is a good way to preserve them and expose people to them. They didn't need words. They had faces!

They don't have Son of the Sheik. I imagine Cohen will get around to releasing the version that was licensed out to Eureka in the UK.

 

[warnerbro]

The EUREKA version of SON OF THE SHEIK is good. It has a Carl Davis score. EUREKA seems to be just about the best out there. The print used is the best I've seen. I just wish they had included the sound disc from the 30s as an option. It is amazing.

 

[roxy1927]

Well you haven't seen a movie unless you've seen a silent at the Loew's Jersey with organ accompianment. Most silents in New York are with piano at Film Forum or MOMA which are joys in themselves but the Loew's in Jersey City has given us a real time machine to enjoy silents as many people experienced them and it's pretty thrilling whether it's a comedy or drama.
I do have though have a problem with silents on video. To me they are dead in the water much like opera on TV. In a theater they are transcendental. Maybe if I had a home theater with a huge screen I would feel differently.
I used to find the organ a droning tedious instrument. Fortunately that has changed.
I have read of many organists at Radio City and not once has Coppola's name come up so maybe he was a standby. I do believe however he was a conductor when it was a presentation house.