Warner Brothers Archive Collection (DVDs only)

[Feego]

Are those double features on the same disc?

[dr. calamari]

For those who missed it, Class of '44 (1973) is now available for ordering.

June 1 titles has been announced:
Five Star Final (1931)

This is a superb film that's shockingly overlooked and forgotten today, it features one of Edward G Robinson's best performances as an absolute asshole tabloid publisher and an excellently scheming Boris Karloff playing his yellow journalist digging up shit. (Karloff at one point poses as a reverend to 'counsel' a character in order to get their story). Great performances all around, especially Aline Macmahon.

I've wanted this on DVD since I got my first DVD player in 2001! Besides Robinson and MacMahon (who I've never sen in anything else, sadly) this has one of Karloff's best performances in a genre other than Horror, and he really displays much more versatility than he was ever given credit for having.

[MoonlitKnight]

New new new

Bureau of Missing Persons (Roy del Ruth 1936) Bette Davis
the Girl From 10th Ave (Alfred E Green 1935) Bette Davis
Fog Over Fricso (William Dieterle 1934) Bette Davis
Conquest (Clarence Brown 1937) Greta Garbo, Charles Boyer
Come Live With Me (Clarence Brown 1941) James Stewart, Hedy Lamarr
the Gorgeous Hussy (Clarence Brown 1936) Joan Crawford, Robert Taylor, Lionel Barrymore
Navy Blues (Clarence Brown 1929)
Double Feature: Hell's Heroes (William Wyler 1930) / Three Godfathers (Richard Bowlslaski 1936)
Double Feature: Madame X (Lionel Barrymore 1929) / Madame X (Sam Wood 1937)
Double Feature: Make Me a Star (William Beaudine 1932) / Merton of the Movies (Robert Alton 1947)
Double Feature: Love is on the Air (Nick Grinde/Jo Graham 1937) / You Can't Escape Forever (Jo Graham 1942)

Alan Rudolph's "Endangered Species" (1982) is also now available, if anyone cares. :-"

[Ashirg]

There is also The Golden Arrow.

[Perkins Cobb]

Alan Rudolph's "Endangered Species" (1982) is also now available, if anyone cares. :-"

I'm a fan, actually. Not a masterpiece, but underrated.

[Cronenfly]

Alan Rudolph's "Endangered Species" (1982) is also now available, if anyone cares. :-"

I'm a fan, actually. Not a masterpiece, but underrated.

I thought I knew pretty much the whole Rudolph catalogue, but I'd never heard of this one; how does it sit with his later '80s work?

[HarryLong]

Until I checked his IMDb, I would never have guessed that the director of MRS PARKER & THE VICIOUS CIRCLE had also directed this (not to mention BARN OF THE NAKED DEAD).

[HerrSchreck]

I think Madame X has to be a contender for having been made into a movie-- directly and spinoffy (i e 1931's MILLIE, which stars Helen Twelvetrees in the lead role of the anguished woman.. I have a copy laying around but never got to it)-- more times than any other. I mean, sheesh, by the time Barrymore did his 1929 version it had already been filmed three times. After the Barrymore it was filmed three more times. Those are just the official versions using the story 'proper'.

Never viewed the Barrymore version though there's a decent version floating around out there from a nice TCM broadcast. The Sam Wood (apparently Gustav Machaty had a hand in helming it somewhere in there too, one of the reasons I sought it out and watched it) version isn't bad per se but nothing really to write home about. Even Warren William, who always gurantees some carbonation-bubbles for the screen viz whatever he appeared in, is relatively forgettable in his nice-guy/"wronged husband" role. The story itself is pretty much Douglas Sirk five-kleenex territory: Hi class woman in a good marriage falls from grace after having an affair and booted out. She falls low in society and eventually winds up a blasted-out brassy hooker, thought by the children to have died (honorably) long ago... finally, after being swallowed up by the street, accused of murder.

Enter her son, who-- he's become an attorney-- is assigned her lawyer in a twist that would make even Chuck Dickens leap to his feet his head hair bunched up in his hands screaming "Aw come on, boys, give us a fuckin break.." I won't give up the ending, but in another director's hands, the son's (especially the way the script for this version rolls it out) connection to the broken down, unsightly splotch that he has no idea is actually his mother, she keeping silent about herself to save his career and image of his momma, he grabbing her by the hand and pleading from the gut "Oh how cruel is the world to leave this poor good woman completely alone..."-- shoulders bunched up at the ears, hands clenched at his heart, eyes pleading endearingly at the sky-- "O won't somebody come forward to help me help this woman, I know there's good in her-- I just know there is!"... in another director's hands, wow, you could be driven rather quickly over that specific edge of insanity it prompts you to heat up pliers over the stove til they're orange then run around outside laughing and tweaking people with them for catharsis. You'd go from Jimmy Stewart's Mr. Smith to Karloff's Fu Manchu in no time flat.

I can see why it's been remade so many times, in terms of melodramatic plot with the potential to goose the paper tissue industry in a bad economy-- well, it's functional.

That courtroom scene though. That was the first time my eyeballs ever spun independently of one another, and the first time an eyeballdid a 180, and faced straight back inta my brain.

[Perkins Cobb]

Alan Rudolph's "Endangered Species" (1982) is also now available, if anyone cares. :-"

I thought I knew pretty much the whole Rudolph catalogue, but I'd never heard of this one; how does it sit with his later '80s work?

My memory is very vague, except that I thought it worked as a straight conspiracy-type movie and also had a recognizable dose of Rudolph's quirkiness. Some of the Altman regulars are in the supporting cast (Paul Dooley, John Considine). Cattle mutilations, leftover 70s paranoia, synth score by Gary "Dream Weaver" Wright ... let's say I was predisposed to like it.

[domino harvey]

Here's what paying extra money gets you. What a joke

[Perkins Cobb]

I'm surprised this wasn't a breaking point of some kind, even for Warner Archive boosters. I mean, doesn't "remastering" three titles and charging five bucks extra for them basically constitute an admission on Warner's part that all the hundreds of preceding releases looked like shit?

[movielocke]

the kicker, for me, is that the remastering $5 surcharge is only applied to 4x3 titles. Virtually every widescreen title required remastering because they needed an anamorphic widescreen master for the DVD transfer (therefore they couldn't use old Beta or 3/4" or 1" masters). so more than half of the archive titles have been remastered, and haven't gotten the $5 fee. They only apply the fee when they give 4x3 titles the same treatment that the widescreen titles have received from the beginning of the program.

[agnamaracs]

New ones... the next pages of discussion are gonna be fun.

Background to Danger (Raoul Walsh, 1943)
Brewster McCloud (Robert Altman, 1970)
Dancing Co-Ed (S. Sylvan Simon, 1939)
Keep Your Powder Dry (Edward Buzzell, 1945)
Mister Cinderella (Edward Sedgwick, 1936)
Nobody's Baby (Gus Meins, 1937)
Slightly Dangerous (Wesley Ruggles, 1943)
These Glamour Girls (S. Sylvan Simon, 1939)
Two Girls on Broadway (S. Sylvan Simon, 1940)
Vagabond Lady (Sam Taylor, 1935)

The first two are "remastered."

[knives]

Should I kill all the heads at Warners or just be happy we finally have the Altman, which I've never seen.

[domino harvey]

Sorry, but I'm saving my freak-out breakdown for the Warner Archives' announcement of Lili. It's possible I will break something of great value during that ensuing melee

[fdm]

The first two are "remastered."

They can choke on their crappy dvd-rs for all I care any more. No real disc, no sale.

[Numero Trois]

Should I kill all the heads at Warners or just be happy we finally have the Altman, which I've never seen.

I think killing 'em all will make you happier than actually watching the movie. Definetly one of the slightest of Altman films. Or at least his biggest lark.

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

Should I kill all the heads at Warners or just be happy we finally have the Altman, which I've never seen.

Give it until they put The Devils on the Archive.

[knives]

That's apocalypse type material there. I'd have to cause Arizona Bay early for that or The Merry Widow.

[bluebird1111]

Sorry, but I'm saving my freak-out breakdown for the Warner Archives' announcement of Lili. It's possible I will break something of great value during that ensuing melee

I feel your pain. I've been waiting over 20 years to see a new master created for TV and home video. I don't need a restoration, just a fresh telecine.

[domino harvey]

You'd think they'd remaster it and the Glass Slipper and release them as matching Blu-ray/SE DVDs... you'd think

[Flike]

Brewster McCloud (Robert Altman, 1970)

Really? I want to cry. ](*,)

[bluebird1111]

You'd think they'd remaster it and the Glass Slipper and release them as matching Blu-ray/SE DVDs... you'd think

Touche! SLIPPER has also suffered the same fate.

[domino harvey]

Are You Listening? (1932)
Devil's Doorway (1950) Anthony Mann!
Excuse My Dust (1951)
Fast Life (1932)
The Girl Said No (1930)
The Half-Breed (1952)
If You Knew Susie (1948)
Lovely to Look At (1952) Musical w/ Kathryn Grayson/Howard Keel and the Champions!
Remote Control (1930)
Show Business (1944)
Summer Holiday (1948) Arthur Freed-production
Two Sisters From Boston (1946) Musical w/ Grayson, Jimmy Durante, and June Allyson
the Wild North (1952)

[Oedipax]

Has anyone purchased Brewster McCloud? The quality looks pretty decent on the Warner Archives site preview, but I'm guessing it'll be non-anamorphic and might not look as great as the postage-stamp sized sample clip...