Warner Chat.... (1 Viewer)

[Ronald Epstein]

What amazes me is that a few years ago
it seemed Warner was very concerned that
they would not make money off of releasing
their classic film library to the format.

It is my *hope* that they have been proved
wrong, because I have been enjoying so many
of their classic releases over the past year.
This comes from a guy that rarely watched
anything from the '30s and '40s (except Marx
Brothers and James Cagney), and now can't
seem to get enough.

Just this week alone I purchased Mutiny
On The Bounty, Mrs. Miniver, Gaslight, The
Great Ziegfeld and Goodbye Mr. Chips.

Thanks to studios like Warner and Fox, I
have become addicted to classic B&W films,
which I find quite odd since I hated watching
them as a kid. I guess it goes to show (with
the exception of this year's Oscar Nominees)
how bad Hollywood films are these days.

 

[Jeff D Han]

Yeah, Ron, Warners has done a good job with
releasing classics recently with excellent
video transfers and extras (Casablanca, The
Treasure Of The Sierra Madre, A Christmas Story).

I guess I started the ball rolling about the snappers,
and I apologize if I hurt this thread. My main problem
with them is that if you do alot of on-line ordering
(which I do), you can easily get damage to the
cardboard shell, or a broken hub. When this happens,
if you don't have a good printer to grab cover art,
you are shit out of luck. If you get a snapper
with a broken hub, I don't think there is a way to
get a replacement for the plastic holder. If I am
wrong about this, I would like someone to tell me.

 

[Herb Kane]

Jeff:

Contact Margaret Higgins at the address listed below or call her via the number in the link. Just a couple of weeks ago, I needed a bunch of trays and she sent me replacements -- free of charge.

http://www.ivyhill-wms.com/Ihwms2/request.html

[email protected]


Herb.

 

[Jeff D Han]

Thank you, Herb.

 

[John Hodson]

I think it's in the writing Ron; Hollywood movies in the main treat their audiences like imbeciles. Listen to the dialogue in Casablanca, Citizen Kane, The Great Ziegfeld et al, and there isn't the modern assumption that the folks watching have got the attenton span, or the IQ, of a (very stupid) goldfish.

There's a rich depth in, for instance, such a seemingly simple movie as The Searchers, and yet this was a film produced for a general audience, its 21st century equivalent paying no such attention to character, dialogue, narrative or style, preferring instead to swamp the screen with mind-numbing CGI imagery.

Warners have given me such joy this past couple of years, I want to give them a huge (er, manly) hug. I remember I cried out when I saw the beauty that was The Adventures of Robin Hood, there's something that's so visceral about seeing a movie - an movie that I know a love like an old friend - that's been dusted off, spruced up, and is so damn squeaky clean that it looks and sounds new.

Universal and MGM must have seen the dividend Fox and Warners have been reaping from presenting their back catalogue in this way, yet the latter particularly still insists of simply issuing bare bones discs that have been given a cursory cleanup, and non-anamophic to boot. I can't understand why Columbia's classic output started out to promisingly yet has deteriorated so badly.

I'm looking forward to the Warners chat; here's looking at you, kids!

---
So many films, so little time...

 

[Michael Allred]

That's because it's kinda old news now, it was posted a while back. I forget if their news is searchable or not. Same goes for www.dvdfile.com (they also posted the FF only news.)

 

[Patrick McCart]

Well, an answer that is unsatisfactory is better than no answer at all. Warner IS deciding on what packaging is used on a title-by-title basis, so they're at least being honest.

 

[Jack Briggs]

I always thought the original release of Casablanca was the gold standard of black-and-white films from the 1940s. It just couldn't look any better than this, I said to myself upon hearing about an all-new SE coming to market. I purchased it anyway. And it was better than the first release. Amazing.

Warner truly has come around. This should be one heckuva session.

 

[JulianK]

Jose - good news for you! - MGM (UK) are releasing The Comfort of Strangers on May 1st.

 

[Roy Batty]

Thanks a lot for the tip, Julian.

For such a film, bonus material may not be of great consequence, so let's hope MGM will do it right in the audio/video department, although I would not mind a Schrader's commentary track, along with Christopher Walken if possible! And since we are at it, why not toss also another audio track for isolated Badalamenti's great, GREAT score?

Wishful thinking, I guess, for what will be most likely a plain vanilla release.

 

[JulianK]

MGM's press release didn't even mention that Schrader was the director, so I'm not expecting anything more.

 

[Mark Bendiksen]

I agree, Ron, and that's why I have been ecstatic about many of the classics that Warner and Fox have released on DVD recently. It's rare these days when I'm actually truly excited about a new theatrical release of a major studio picture. I risk sounding like a "film snob" when I say this, but the best movies being made right now were not financed by the big studios, although in some cases the studios (like the Fox Searchlight division of Fox) end up distributing some of them.

 

[Jeff_HR]

I sure hope I can get thru this time. Had no luck on the last chat I attended. I'll have to start working on my list of questions.