Pre-Order Warner "Best of" Decade Collections (Blu-ray) Available for Preorder (1 Viewer)

[Ejanss]

(snicker!) "...Blu-ray + Ultraviolet".

 

[B-ROLL]

(snicker!) "...Blu-ray + Ultraviolet".

A wise man has said "Digital is FOREVER, or seven years, whichever comes first" ...

I've found that, depending on the code(s). you can sometimes redeem UV WB codes through MoviesAnywhere or VUDU....

 

[fdabbott]

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Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory Blazing Saddles All the President’s Men The Exorcist Dog Day Afternoon Kelly’s Heroes A Clockwork Orange Superman: The Movie Deliverance Every Which Way But Loose



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Blade Runner: The Final Cut The Shining (1980) The Lost Boys Caddyshack Lethal Weapon A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) Purple Rain Full Metal Jacket Tango & Cash Risky Business



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The Goonies Batman (1989) Beetlejuice The Color Purple The Neverending Story Poltergeist (1982) The Outsiders: The Complete Novel Gremlins National Lampoon's Vacation Little Shop of Horrors: Theatrical Version and The Director's Cut




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The Matrix Dumb and Dumber: Unrated Version The Shawshank Redemption Friday: Director's Cut The Mask Goodfellas Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery The Wedding Singer: Totally Awesome Edition Rush Hour Unforgiven



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The Hangover The Hangover: Unrated Version Ocean's Eleven The Blind Side Best In Show I Am Legend Million Dollar Baby Letters from Iwo Jima A History of Violence Mystic River

Not one western in any of them. They can keep their Blu-rays. As usual the studios is discriminating against people who love westerns, just as they still do with their Warner Archive TV Collection releases. They issued the first season of "Paradise" and refuse to release the other 2 seasons, even though collectors have offered to pay top dollar for a complete series release. Until they start releasing these items, we western lovers will never buy anything else from them. I have a petition we sent to them, with 7,000+ signatures confirming this decision on our part.

 

[Ejanss]

Not one western in any of them.

Uh, ahem...Best of the 90's??

 

[Rick Thompson]

I didn't care about more than maybe three of those films the first time around, and there isn't a single one of them I'd be interested in buying.

 

[DVBRD]

Not one western in any of them. They can keep their Blu-rays. As usual the studios is discriminating against people who love westerns, just as they still do with their Warner Archive TV Collection releases. They issued the first season of "Paradise" and refuse to release the other 2 seasons, even though collectors have offered to pay top dollar for a complete series release. Until they start releasing these items, we western lovers will never buy anything else from them. I have a petition we sent to them, with 7,000+ signatures confirming this decision on our part.

Uh, ahem...Best of the 90's??

You forgot Blazing Saddles; I think that counts as a Western.

Trust me, if they do a "Best of the '50s" collection, The Searchers will definitely be on that set, and if they go to the '60s, you WILL see The Wild Bunch. No excuse to allege an anti-Western bias at Warner Bros., especially since WAC has sold plenty of Westerns.

Aside from Unforgiven and GoodFellas, anyone notice that Warner's "Best of 90's" is almost entirely New Line?

A good chunk of films released by WB during this period were independently financed by Morgan Creek or New Regency and the rights have since reverted back to the financiers. This is why Ace Ventura, Heat, and LA Confidential aren't in that box set.

 

[AlanP]

Where are 40s,50s, 60s ?? Why didn't they open it up for a vote ??? Who wants these films again ? Should have been different films......

 

[alistairKerr]

Where are "The Best of the '20's", "30's", "40's" and "50's"? Some of us are still collecting films from these eras - it's not all about more recent offerings, is it?

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Where are "The Best of the '20's", "30's", "40's" and "50's"? Some of us are still collecting films from these eras - it's not all about more recent offerings, is it?

The problem is, only a small sect of the consumer population is buying those titles.

That is why they all come out through the Warner Archive, or for other studios, boutique labels.

Those "Best Of" sets are marketed towards a much wider, modern audience

 

[Ejanss]

The problem is, only a small sect of the consumer population is buying those titles.

More accurately, it's from Warner, who thinks nobody buys ANY titles from before 1982, except for Casablanca, The Searchers and Wizard of Oz.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

More accurately, it's from Warner, who thinks nobody buys ANY titles from before 1982, except for Casablanca, The Searchers and Wizard of Oz.

I think my explanation was pretty accurate.

 

[Ejanss]

I think my explanation was pretty accurate.

Well, WHE's mainstream paranoia that "Nobody's buying retail disks, so why bother to sell them vintage catalog they've never heard of?" is partially correct in that retail disk isn't really for sale anywhere anymore.
Big-box retail has pretty much cleared off their shelves, except for point-of-purchase displays for current or just-reduced new-release and promotional titles.

Real disk fans had been buying online pretty much since Blu-ray was invented (simply because retail either didn't have the disks, or MSRP was just too danged expensive compared to Amazon), which is why the Archive became the "sane" half of Warner, since they had a private customer base they could cater to.

 

[Robin9]

More accurately, it's from Warner, who thinks nobody buys ANY titles from before 1982, except for Casablanca, The Searchers and Wizard of Oz.

So how do you explain the fact that month after month Warner Archive release superb Blu-ray discs of films made long before 1982?

 

[Ejanss]

So how do you explain the fact that month after month Warner Archive release superb Blu-ray discs of films made long before 1982

BECAUSE
THE
ARCHIVE
IS
NOT
THE
RETAIL
DIVISION.

The retail WHE has been one of the most flat-out neurotic disk-studios of the past 10 years, some say almost deliberately trying to orchestrate the "death" rumors of physical-disk singlehandedly since '11 while promoting the doomed Ultraviolet, just because they're a bit shy about getting back on the horse after a big failed mainstream-retail rollout.
If you see one more re-re-release of the Hobbit Trilogy or Superman series announced at SDCC, with the latest FunkoPop figure or other collectible tsotchke to sell it--because WHE believes that disk collectors are either eccentric hoarders or fanboy completists--that's the main studio. They literally think they can't sell anything else.

To use another Warner metaphor, the Archive is more like the "Termite Terrace" of Blu-ray, a little, quote, "niche" division for a customer base retail WHE still considers an "outdated" market. But, since they generate sales--by going online where most of the customers actually are--and occasionally surprising the main studio by reviving sales for TV series, classics, and even those obscure Hanna-Barbera series Warner tried to laugh off the face of the earth twenty years ago, they're allowed to do what they know best.
I remember a few old vintage HTF discussions with George Feltenstein, and the stories about the titles they would have loved to do (like the comments about A Night at the Opera), if they weren't stuck out there on their own.

 

[Robin9]

BECAUSE
THE
ARCHIVE
IS
NOT
THE
RETAIL
DIVISION.

The retail WHE has been one of the most flat-out neurotic disk-studios of the past 10 years, some say almost deliberately trying to orchestrate the "death" rumors of physical-disk singlehandedly since '11 while promoting the doomed Ultraviolet, just because they're a bit shy about getting back on the horse after a big failed mainstream-retail rollout.
If you see one more re-re-release of the Hobbit Trilogy or Superman series announced at SDCC, with the latest FunkoPop figure or other collectible tsotchke to sell it--because WHE believes that disk collectors are either eccentric hoarders or fanboy completists--that's the main studio. They literally think they can't sell anything else.

To use another Warner metaphor, the Archive is more like the "Termite Terrace" of Blu-ray, a little, quote, "niche" division for a customer base retail WHE still considers an "outdated" market. But, since they generate sales--by going online where most of the customers actually are--and occasionally surprising the main studio by reviving sales for TV series, classics, and even those obscure Hanna-Barbera series Warner tried to laugh off the face of the earth twenty years ago, they're allowed to do what they know best.
I remember a few old vintage HTF discussions with George Feltenstein, and the stories about the titles they would have loved to do (like the comments about A Night at the Opera), if they weren't stuck out there on their own.

I suggest that in future if you want to criticise Warner's retail division you do so with more precision and refrain from loose generalisations such as "Warner."

 

[Sam Posten]

The retail WHE has been one of the most flat-out neurotic disk-studios of the past 10 yearson their own.

Relax.

 

[Ejanss]

Relax.

I'm on Warner's online fan focus-survey group, and--even if I weren't under NDA for the content--you don't wanna KNOW some of the test-balloon sales pitches we've been asked, as Warner tried bravely throughout the 10's to bail digital/Ultraviolet's sinking ship. By the end, we heard true desperation to ignore the inevitable.
Nowadays, it's desperation to keep HBOMax going, which is at least a little closer to reality, but this is a studio being dragged kicking and screaming back to the possibility that disk release is still a viable market nine years later. And yes, that's WHE, not their more successful brother Archive.

WHE was the only movie studio to actually buy a digital-merchant app, and they thought they'd singlehandedly cornered a market that never happened. That's not only got to hit hard, but it's one they're not giving up easily.

 

[MatthewA]

They have only themselves to blame for this state of affairs because they were the ones who were so gung-ho about DVD in the first place. If they expect people to drop DVD the way people dropped laserdisc, that won't happen because DVD actually got the mass saturation laserdisc only dreamed of. Also, since every subsequent videodisc format has been backwards compatible with it, Blu-Ray and 4k just reinforced DVD's saturation even further even if HD-DVD tanked.

Where Warner is concerned, their history in releasing one of the titles in the 1970s set comes to mind. Blazing Saddles got a widescreen DVD in the first year of the format, and that was its first OAR home video release. After they'd signed a licensing deal similar to the one Disney had had with them for years, Image finally put out a widescreen laserdisc a year later when the format was left for dead and Warren Lieberfarb was saying to his colleagues "stop producing laserdiscs". It had only gotten a better-looking pan-and-scan laserdisc — the old one from the 1980s was from a very beaten-up-looking print — in the early 1990s when WHV still distributed them in-house. Yet Mame was considered more worthy of a widescreen laserdisc in the pre-Image days.*

Almost everything good about Warner Home Video in the first decade of DVD is kept going by the Warner Archive. I'm glad they get to handle TV as well or else almost no shows would come out in their entirety if at all.

*I imagine Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory will get something, presumably a 4k upgrade, for its 50th anniversary next year.