Warner Brothers Archive Collection (DVDs only)

[jwd5275]

Sorry, I think that is the problem. (Posted it right before falling asleep...) I thought it was a general survey not linked to my email. However, if you are on their mailing list due to having ordered anything from them, you should have the survey in your email too. I was a little long, but seemed worth-while to complete.

It seems that they are planning a subscription streaming service for $15. They are taking input on HD and the possibility of extras like Criterion does on their Hulu channel. However the major drawback for me (which I voiced my opinion on) was that their stated goal is to have only 250 titles up at once and to turn those over each month by removing and replacing 150 movies each month, which seems kind of silly when you have that much material available and probably would be a deal-breaker for me.

...and in related news they just announced some great Lon Chaney films including Tell it to the Marines, as well as West of Zanzibar and two others directed by Tod Browning.

[domino harvey]

As feared, Warners has brought Sidney's masterpiece Scaramouche back as a DVD-R

[swo17]

As many times as you've had to use that suicide booth, I would have thought you'd run out of quarters by now.

[souvenir]

It seems that they are planning a subscription streaming service for $15.

In the survey I took it showed the potential price as $11.99 per month.

[jwd5275]

Wow. Mine said $14.95...

[domino harvey]

Will this too be Windows-only? I'd actually be interested if the service were more aligned with Hulu Plus or Netflix at under or around $10 a month (and of course Mac-compatible)-- and revolving titles is idiotic. I somehow suspect they'd never cover the overhead of their servers at the proposed model

[jwd5275]

The survey had questions specific to Apple products, so who knows....

[duck duck]

At one point a year or so ago NetFlix did have Gilda Live!, so I'm guessing it is more of a contract thing than limit the physical and try to stream their own digital. (yes, I know but that's just the way I talk.)

[Jonathan S]

Show People now added... I think this is the first MGM "Thames Silent" (Photoplay) to be dumped in the Archive?

[felipe]

Show People! I've been waiting for that for a long time.

[Jonathan S]

According to speculation on Nitrateville, Show People almost certainly won't be the Thames Silent version with Carl Davis score and restored footage. It will probably be the same as the laser edition and the US TCM broadcasts which I gather use an original Metro-tone music track.

[FilmFanSea]

According to speculation on Nitrateville, Show People almost certainly won't be the Thames Silent version with Carl Davis score and restored footage. It will probably be the same as the laser edition and the US TCM broadcasts which I gather use an original Metro-tone music track.

Since Turner Entertainment was a partner in the film's restoration (with Kevin Brownlaw's Photoplay Productions), it's odd that they broadcast (or would release on DVD-R) a "lesser" version. But, then again, I doubt they're putting much effort into these Archive releases anyway.

[starmanof51]

I see on the classicflix blogspot that Warner Archives has put out a four film (Vol 1!) Maisie collection. Someone poke Matt.

[Matt]

I'm on it. But I'm waiting for a sale since the $50 price tag is really testing my love of Ann Sothern.

[JonasEB]

According to speculation on Nitrateville, Show People almost certainly won't be the Thames Silent version with Carl Davis score and restored footage. It will probably be the same as the laser edition and the US TCM broadcasts which I gather use an original Metro-tone music track.

Since Turner Entertainment was a partner in the film's restoration (with Kevin Brownlaw's Photoplay Productions), it's odd that they broadcast (or would release on DVD-R) a "lesser" version. But, then again, I doubt they're putting much effort into these Archive releases anyway.

Well, the version TCM shows has the soundtrack that was originally made specifically for and released with the film and it's not like other Metros such as The Kiss which have generic & shoddily assembled, practically mocking, soundtracks.

Taking it off would be like removing the Movietone scores of Sunrise or Seventh Heaven. It's only lesser in one sense but arguably superior in another. That said, I'm not much of a purist in this regard, I don't think John Ford's Four Sons would be any better with its Movietone soundtrack (the "innovations" of which sound as cloying as the film already is - probably historical importance only.) I think I would prefer the Carl Davis score instead, especially if the decomposing parts of Show People are fine in that version.

[beamish13]

WAC on Frank and Eleanor Perry's LAST SUMMER:

delayed until we can complete the original theatrical version, and this has proved problematic for quite a while. We're still trying to resolve the outstanding issues. Thanks.

[stroszeck]

Sad to hear Last Summer doesn't apparently deserve a pressed release...

[Dylan]

Many people at Warner love Last Summer, but there's been a lot of trouble finding any elements - and this title has been a project over there for over a decade. Currently, there is an "edited for TV" version that has very good picture quality (this aired on TCM in HD last year, albeit in 1.33:1 - either open matte or cropped from 1.66 or 1.85 - and I must say that the editing ruins the final scene and renders it almost completely incomprehensible) but the only-known copy of the original 1969 x-rated version is a single 16mm print, which was only discovered last year (and in Australia, no less). The 1985 Key Video VHS is an R-rated version with more footage than the TV version, but the visual quality is poor & apparently it has a few cuts too. I would assume that WB will attempt a composite edit of the TV version and the 16mm print, but if they're in different aspect ratios or if they have alternate takes/footage that may prove impossible.

The current situation of Last Summer is surprising to everybody - it received almost exclusively positive reviews at the time, performed fairly well at the box office, and was nominated for an Oscar. And yet, all of the elements and every single 35mm print have just vanished. It's a salvage operation and WB are sitting on some tough decisions regarding a release - either use the TV edit and 16mm print as elements, or keep searching. The fact that they've opted for the latter suggests that they haven't exhausted their resources. A documentary about all of this would be fascinating, now that I think about it.

[Dylan]

Last Summer is a masterpiece. One could see this as a cynical look at teens, but I think it's more primal than that. It touches on something either natural within people or basic to how the natural has been distorted by civilization (depending on which is the real cause). Lord of the Flies and Our Mother's House deal with some of this too, but I think Last Summer is the superior work. Evan Hunter's original novel is also great, as is the sequel Come Winter.

I'm guessing that at some point the Allied Artists library, or a portion of it, ended up in somebody's hands other than WB, and somehow the materials for this film were carelessly shoved into some larger collection that ended up somewhere in the world owned by people who probably don't know what they have. And perhaps they passed it down to somebody else who boxed it up in storage or got rid of it. Just one scenario.

Years ago all the Allied Artists films were available from some company whose name I can't recall now. But up until 1980, you could get 16mm copies of this to rent through them, probably even 35mm. Something else is telling me that all of this material ended up at Orion for a while. Who bought out all the Orion material? Somebody told me that they remember talking with Orion when they closed asking them what was going to happen to the films and they said some of it was going to be tossed. Sad to think that it got junked or is sitting in some warehouse in LA somewhere with everyone looking for it and no one being able to track it down. My guess is also that the existing print from Australia was not the one used for the VHS but that came from this Allied Artists stash. It was copied then and returned to where it came from to be lost. The Australian copy is probably something someone no longer had a company to return it to and so they kept it.

Meanwhile...

Mommie Dearest is wonderful, but I've never seen the camp value in it. People write about this like it's a John Waters film. I would agree that the drama is sensational at a few points, but I just found it all very fascinating. I didn't snicker once - it's powerful stuff. It also has one of Henry Mancini's best scores.

[stroszeck]

I agree pretty much with everything that's been said now and before about Mommie Dearest, but in spite of Perry's checkered filmography, there are at least a couple of master works on the list, including David and Lisa as well as one of Burt Lancaster's best performances (and a personal favorite movie of mine) The Swimmer. Maybe it was because of personal issues that I had in my own personal life at the time, but the last time I watched The Swimmer it really had a poignant, if not profound, effect on me and I really connected with what Perry was trying to say (albeit somewhat clunkily).

[Dylan]

I agree pretty much with everything that's been said now and before about Mommie Dearest, but in spite of Perry's checkered filmography, there are at least a couple of master works on the list, including David and Lisa as well as one of Burt Lancaster's best performances (and a personal favorite movie of mine) The Swimmer. Maybe it was because of personal issues that I had in my own personal life at the time, but the last time I watched The Swimmer it really had a poignant, if not profound, effect on me and I really connected with what Perry was trying to say (albeit somewhat clunkily).

I haven't seen most of his movies, including David and Lisa, but I too love The Swimmer (even if it's not nearly as great as the John Cheever short story it's based on - which I would recommend very highly if you haven't already read it). Wonderful cinematography and score. Ladybug Ladybug, which appears to be out of circulation, sounds fascinating.

[colinr0380]

Mommie Dearest is wonderful, but I've never seen the camp value in it. People write about this like it's a John Waters film. I would agree that the drama is sensational at a few points, but I just found it all very fascinating. I didn't snicker once - it's powerful stuff. It also has one of Henry Mancini's best scores.

I think Mommie Dearest is a great film to watch in a double bill with We Need To Talk About Kevin! What I think most people find entertaining about it is that it takes the source material and, through taking everything at face value, performs the impressively bizarre feat of making the eternally put-upon daughter the most horrible and unsympathetic character in the film!

[britcom68]

"Phantom Tollbooth" is a debacle. Jones absolutely betrayed Jules Feiffer's wonderful, understated character designs, and while it ostensibly shares the same plot as the book, it lacks the intelligent playfulness of Norton Juster's writing. There's no real subtext to the film at all; it's such a threadbare and unimaginative interpretation that I wonder why Jones even made it.

I have always said you can spot a Chuck Jones cartoon by the shape of the characters' eyes, but spotting a good Chuck Jones feature is impossible unless you close your eyes. The simple Feiffer drawings from the book are instead replaced by an at times psychadellic pallooza in Jones' film. It is ironic considering Jules Feiffer animated the short "Munro" ten years before Phantom in his iconic line drawings and Munro won the Oscar for animated short. Phantom Tollboth is a good example of a director-studio ignoring or underestimating how the simplicity of the source material made the book accessible and enjoyable. Jones failed similarly with his Kippling adaptations if only on a shorter duration.

For one Chuck Jones film that has some merit, I suggest Jones's 1962 feature "Gay Purr-ee." It is a predictable reworking of "Gigi," with animated, talking-singing cats. However, Jones has a three-minute sequence where the lead female cat, Mewsette (voiced with some depth by Judy Garland), is presented in a montage of Impressionist/Post-Impressionist stylized portraits. This sequence is better than a few Looney Toons moments that parody art similarly. Jones' animating in this particular montage is not an outright parody and even though the plot of this thin story crawls to a halt for this sequence, it is a welcomed variation in Jones's animation work. It reminds me strongly of the ending of Pixar's Wall-E, although at least in Wall-E their art history montage continued to tell the story of the characters in a neat epilogue whereas in Gay Purr-ee this similar animation stands out because it doeesn't advance the plot or characters.

[knives]

Jones animated on Gay Purr-ee but was not in any sense an auteur on it. It's an UPA film.

[britcom68]

Jones animated on Gay Purr-ee but was not in any sense an auteur on it. It's an UPA film.

Both Wiki and IMDb mention that Jones was not the director of Gay Purr-ee but indicate that it was due to his stuido contract which prevented him from actually directing this movie although Jones and his wife share writing credits. It's hard to say how much of Jones really did contribute to this film in direction since the dvd is not only barebones but OOP and there is no readily available scholarly work done on this film.