Preston Sturges on DVD

[tryavna]

Fans can't be with out Todd McCarthy and Kenneth Bowser's, 76-minute documentary, Preston Sturges: The Rise and Fall of an American Dreamer, featured on Criterion's Sullivan's Travels DVD. It's one of the best profiles of a filmmaker you'll ever see.

The commentary by Noah Baumbach, Kenneth Bowser, Christopher Guest, and Michael McKean is also a hoot, as are recordings of Sturges singing his songs! It's an amazing package; definitely one of Criterion's best 1-disc special editions.

Buy now!

I agree with Gordon that the docu on Sturges is superb!

Not much of a fan of the 4-person commentary, though. IMO, Guest and McKean get in the way of the more relevant info.

[otis]

Finally got my hands on a copy of the R2 Sturges box set, and thought I'd post some caps of each film as I watch them this week. I'll aim for a film a day. We start with Hail the Conquering Hero, which looks pretty terrific on my humble 14" screen:

[otis]

Up next is The Great Moment, which is rather soft, and exhibits occasional damage around splices and dissolves, but these flaws don't detract too much from some beautiful lighting and great use of deep focus:

[otis]

The Great McGinty: very nice print. Dog for David, gams (not Cyd's) for the straights.

[otis]

Christmas in July:

[otis]

The Palm Beach Story - what a joy! I've tried to match the Beaver caps from the R1, which seems to have a bit more grain, but is apparently missing the trailer hosted by the great Bill Demarest pointing a gun at a stuffed deer head: "I'm a sportsman, see? Yeah, me, Bill Demarest, I make with the shotgun, see? Bang bang!! And what's more, I'm a member of a very exclusive hunting outfit in Preston Sturges's new movie The Palm Beach Story. Very exclusive, see? The Ale and Quail Club. Bang bang!!"

[otis]

Not much time today, so just one cap from Sullivan's Travels. Quality pretty good (though not as good as the Criterion), but as this one shows, the subtitles have been excessively simplified to cope with the high-speed dialogue. And what dialogue! What an incredible film!!

R2:


Criterion:

[otis]

De rien, David. Last in the set is The Lady Eve with Hank and the lovely Barbara, Charles Coburn, plus Sturges regulars Bill Demarest, Eric Blore and Alan Bridge. One of the delights of my week-long Prestonfest has been seeing the Sturges stock company appear in film after film: Franklin Pangborn, Raymond Walburn, Robert Greig, Jimmy Conlin, Julius Tannen, Harry Rosenthal, Esther Howard, Georgia Caine, etc. How great it must have been for Sturges to be able to write scripts with them in mind, to have a team of collaborators he knew he could rely on to do justice to his material. Not forgetting the contributions of people like Victor Milner, Stuart Gilmore, Hans Dreier, Edith Head, etc. And how lucky for them to get to work regularly with such amazing material, such a brilliant filmmaker.

As with Sullivan's Travels, the R2 disc is perfectly watchable, without being quite up to the standards of the Criterion. I did notice cigarette burns at the reel changes, which I presume the Criterion doesn't have. And again, the subtitles leave something to be desired. Nevertheless, the 7-film boxset is currently going on Amazon UK for a jolly reasonable £32.97, and apart from McGinty, with which I was a little underwhelmed, these are some of the most wonderful films to have been made in 40s Hollywood. Hail the Conquering Preston!

R2:


Criterion:

[justeleblanc]

I might be wrong, but Sturges's son confirmed for me that Universal will be releasing their 7-film pack this summer in R1. I told him that it would be nice if they were available separately so we didn't have to rebuy Sillivan, Eve, or Palm Beach.

Now Sturges is a VP at Universal... is it possible that the release has been postponed a little to make way for individual cases? (Watch Universal announce the same fascist set on Monday, so I'm probably going to be wrong.)

Still, it's something to hope for.

[Gregory]

It's a pretty sure bet that, even if we had the choice, the pricing structure would be such that the whole set would be considerably cheaper than buying four of them individually.
By the way, since you have the ear of a Universal VP, could you please convince them to either get busy on Make Way For Tomorrow and Ruggles of Red Gap, or license them to Criterion?

[sherlockjr]

Amen, Gregory. Those are near the top of my list.

[Gordon]

So, what happened to Universal's R1 box?

[souvenir]

So, what happened to Universal's R1 box?

coming in November looks like - DVD Times link

The upsetting thing is that, like the R2 set, the titles do not appear to be available individually.

[justeleblanc]

Yeah, I hate Universal's box set stragies.

[Matt]

So, what happened to Universal's R1 box?

The upsetting thing is that, like the R2 set, the titles do not appear to be available individually.

But they probably will be at a later date. Note that each film is on a separate disc, unlike the recent Glamour Collections and upcoming Screen Legends Collections which are all packed together on a couple of discs per.

[htdm]

If the W.C. Fields and DeMille boxes are any indication, they may not. Universal has so far kept the titles in those collections strictly limited to the box sets.

[tryavna]

That's a kick in the balls for people who already purchased Universal's own release of Palm Beach Story. In some ways, I can understand them including the films already released by Criterion because they'll offer cheaper alternatives for people who aren't too keen on extras. But since Universal has already duplicated My Little Chickadee in two sets, I guess they're not too bothered about people who don't like double-dipping or people who might just want one or two of the titles.

[souvenir]

If the W.C. Fields and DeMille boxes are any indication, they may not. Universal has so far kept the titles in those collections strictly limited to the box sets.

Same deal with the Marx Bros. set and I'm still waiting on anamorphic Vertigo and Psycho individual releases too

That's a kick in the balls for people who already purchased Universal's own release of Palm Beach Story.

It really is. I love Sturges but already own three of these and I'm not too keen on The Great Moment so I really only wanted the other three.

[Scharphedin2]

According to Benson's World, Hail the Conquering Hero was released individually a little while ago. Maybe the rest of the films in the box will follow... Then again, if you hold out for a little while, the Sturges Box will probably turn up on sale at Amazon (or a different e-tailer). I think I paid £ 39.99 for it last Christmas, which equates to less than the price of 3 individual titles (even with 30% discount).

[djali999]

That's a kick in the balls for people who already purchased Universal's own release of Palm Beach Story.

I dunno, how much did you pay for it? I think I dropped $7 on it, and I've had it for about a year now, so I think the price of a movie ticket for a disc I spin as often as that for one year is fair.

Sullivan's Travels and Lady Eve is worse for me, since I'll be dishing out for what will probably be inferior transfers, which I already own in better editions, in a box set that's already overpriced besides having no features, probably in an awkward package.

oh well, I'm the only one forcing me to buy it. I'll swallow that Thanksgiving turkey and like it.

[FilmFanSea]

So to get the three films that I (and--I suspect--many of us here) really want (Christmas in July, The Great McGinty, and Hail the Conquering Hero), I have to purchase three films I already own and one I don't want? Yeah, I know it only works out to 20 bucks apiece at full retail (and 25-30% less online), but then I have to either house them in the redundant box or buy individual keepcases and try to find some coverart.

I know I'm supposed to be all grateful that Universal even thought to put out these films to begin with (especially given Paramount's shameful behavior of late), but it just seems like a cynical and wasteful policy to give me no choice (the presence of the previously-released Palm Beach Story is especially irritating).

[bjeggert82]

This is REALLY annoying. I own the already-available 4 films in the boxed set. Frankly, I wouldn't mind selling off the other three that I already own. But since they're not packaged individually, that's not going to happen.

These are all magnificent films on their own--each warranting individual releases. I'm sure "The Palm Beach Story" release sold a lot of copies, and god knows the two Criterions sold, so what's the problem here? Universal did the same thing with their "Hitchcock Masterpiece Collection". Thankfully, they've now been releasing those individually (but still no remastered "The Birds" or "Vertigo" on individual releases).

What I'm probably going to end up doing is either making/trying to find some quality custom DVD cover art online for the 4 releases that are exclusive to this Sturges set.

Is anyone out there an expert at making custom DVD cover art? If so, could you make some custom high quality DVD cover art, clearly printed on quality paper to fit armary cases--perhaps with the original poster as the cover?

If you can, PM me and we can work out some kind of reimbursement for your work.

[Eclisse]

Amazon pre-order

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000HT3Q2S/

[djali999]

So what with the rest of Sturges' material soon to be available on DVD, minus Beautiful Blonde From Bashful Bend (Anybody seen that one, incidentally? How is it?), I have recently seen Sin of Harold Dibblebock on a rather jumpy and smeary Alpha DVD and I'm interested in getting it.

It looks like there's two others out there: a Goodtimes DVD and a more pricey one available under the "Allied Artists Classics" banner. Can anybody comment on the quality of these discs? Is there a decent version available somewhere outside of Region 1?

[Brian Oblivious]

So what with the rest of Sturges' material soon to be available on DVD, minus Beautiful Blonde From Bashful Bend (Anybody seen that one, incidentally? How is it?), I have recently seen Sin of Harold Dibblebock on a rather jumpy and smeary Alpha DVD and I'm interested in getting it.

It looks like there's two others out there: a Goodtimes DVD and a more pricey one available under the "Allied Artists Classics" banner. Can anybody comment on the quality of these discs? Is there a decent version available somewhere outside of Region 1?

I have not seen the Diddlebock discs, but I've seen Beautiful Blonde... on VHS, and it's got to be the least entertaining film Sturges directed in the 40s, if not ever. (Note I have not seen Vendetta or Les Carnets du Major Thompson yet- they're not available somewhere, are they?) David Thomson has a nice word or two to say about it under the entry for Betty Grable in his dictionary, but I've yet to locate a sustained defense for the film, and have not felt remotely inspired to mount one myself.