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The Stranger and Kansas City Confidential on Bluray (1 Viewer)

Scott Calvert

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Amazon has preorders up for both of these for a Feb release. I haven't heard anything about this. Could these possibly be public domain or are they coming straight from MGM?

Of course, I just bought these on DVD about 6 months ago.
 

Charles Smith

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So did I, just within this past year. Along with another in that series, "Woman in the Window".
 

John Hodson

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Originally Posted by Scott Calvert
Amazon has preorders up for both of these for a Feb release. I haven't heard anything about this. Could these possibly be public domain or are they coming straight from MGM?

Of course, I just bought these on DVD about 6 months ago.
Not from MGM; some outfit called 'Arts Alliance America'.
 

Douglas Monce

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Yeah there are several PD versions of Kansas City Confidential out there, but MGM owns the original film elements, so unless this company has licensed those elements from MGM, its likely to look pretty bad. Unless of course they found a good quality print somewhere. I'll wait and see how its reviewed.

Doug
 

Robert Crawford

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MGM thru Fox released the dvd of this title three years ago. I doubt they'll do anything in BRD due to low sales volumes.
 

GJN

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Has anyone seen the BD release of The Stranger? Amazon has it for 11.99 and I'm curious if this disc is worth it; the film definitely is.
 

Mark-P

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DVD Beaver recommends the MGM DVD of Kansas City Confidential over the new Blu-ray and since Amazon is selling that one for only $3.98 you can't go wrong there. However the MGM DVD of The Stranger is apparently out of print.
 

Paul Penna

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I agree; I have the MGM DVD of KCC and it's beautiful. On the other hand, I have a $1 DVD of The Stranger and it's not beautiful
 

Robert Crawford

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Originally Posted by Mark-P
DVD Beaver recommends the MGM DVD of Kansas City Confidential over the new Blu-ray and since Amazon is selling that one for only $3.98 you can't go wrong there. However the MGM DVD of The Stranger is apparently out of print.
I figured as such, luckily, I have both of the MGM DVD releases.






Crawdaddy
 

Douglas Monce

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I own the MGM DVD of Kansas City Confidential and it is really quite good. So far I've only seen the screen shots of the blu-ray, and its clearly not as good as the MGM dvd. However, considering the quality of the elements they likely had to work with, its really not bad.

Doug
 

Charles Smith

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Wow, talk about the kind of "progress" the home video business can do without...

Those MGM DVDs are great. I totally lucked out when a good friend who is nevertheless ignorant in these matters spotted them a couple of years ago and gave them to me, no doubt thinking "well, I need to find something, and I think he likes these old mysteries!" They had flown right under my radar at the time.
 

Douglas Monce

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Well lets put it this way, the new blu-ray appears to be far superior to any of the other public domain version of KC that I have ever seen.

Doug
 

Douglas Monce

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I just got Kansas City Confidential on blu-ray and did a little back and forth with the MGM DVD.

The blu-ray has a fair bit more detail than the DVD, but there are some problems. For one thing the blacks are a little bit crushed. Not radically, but there none the less. With out the MGM release to compare I probably wouldn't have noticed, but you do lose a little detail in the shadows, in the bushes of the pool scene for example.

Of course the blu-ray being encoded in AVC doesn't have the MPG2 artifacts that the DVD does.

I couldn't spot any edge enhancement.

The image does seem a little soft considering the HD transfer. Looking at the restoration demo shows where they went down the wrong path. Clearly they did some dirt and dust removal, which seems to have been done quite professionally. However they also did some grain removal which is where the detail went. If they had just done the dirt and dust removal and left it at that, this would have been a VERY respectable release. The before image, while fairly dirty, is shows quite a bit more detail, a long with the grain of the film. The after is just slightly soft, though much cleaner and unfortunately almost grain free.

Considering this is a PD release, and they probably didn't have access to first generation film elements, the film looks remarkably good with none of the missing frames of other PD releases. If you own the MGM release, I would probably suggest just sticking with it unless you can find the blu-ray pretty cheap. If you don't own the film this isn't a bad edition to buy. Again more detail than the DVD, no MPG2 artifacts.

The blu-ray also includes a DVD of the film.

Doug
 

revgen

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I just recently watched Kansas City Confidential (1952) on Vudu in HDX. And wow does it look good. The best comparison I can make is The Big Heat (1953) blu-ray from Twilight Time.

This is a film that definitely would shine if given a blu-ray treatment by MGM.

Unfortunately, I don't see it happening unless MGM packages it as part of a Film Noir set.
 

lukejosephchung

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revgen said:
I just recently watched Kansas City Confidential (1952) on Vudu in HDX. And wow does it look good. The best comparison I can make is The Big Heat (1953) blu-ray from Twilight Time.

This is a film that definitely would shine if given a blu-ray treatment by MGM.

Unfortunately, I don't see it happening unless MGM packages it as part of a Film Noir set.
You might ask Nick Redmond of Twilight Time to license this film...they now have a distribution agreement with MGM and he DOES post here!!!
 

Keith Cobby

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John Payne is one of my favourite actors (my most wanted on blu-ray is Slightly Scarlet) and I would also like to have the MGM DVD of Kansas City Confidential upgraded to blu-ray. John was also directed by Phil Karlson (KCC) in the VistaVision film Hell's Island which has not been released on home video.

I think all of these are currently the property of Warners.
 

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