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Got the Sirk thing today, and is the packaging always this flimsy for these vault titles? I'm almost afraid the paper spine will break in my kevyip it's so bare. It's basically a digipack without the slip, but that damned spine, it's tissue.

Beaver on the Sirk set. The softness on The Tarnished Angels is troubling, but it does feature more information than the European discs.

Uh, a serious what the fuck over here. I picked up the Cary Grant and Sirk boxed sets from Movies Unlimited. Both say first printing on the back cover. Both have nice printed covers for the discs. And both have what are very clearly DVDRs with the purple backs. Did people on the internet not look hard at the discs before saying they were real discs?

Mine a metallic and not purple. I picked them up when they were just released.

Ditto to Ashirg.

The packaging literally says DVD, not recordable media. Looking around on the internet, it looks like the first printing is real and then they just fill the packaging with DVD-Rs (which doesn't even make sense, the digipak packaging is a bigger cost than the fucking discs)-- but there's nothing on the sealed digipaks to separate it from the first printing [and it SAYS first printing on the packaging!] (and again, let me stress, my sets both said DVD WITHOUT the R that should go underneath the logo). To not even have something warning before unsealing, and to not be upfront with what's going on, God, I'm like ready to kick shit out of windows

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PaoLy7PHwk" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The Cary Grant set was publicly touted as being on pressed discs, so that's a complete bait-and-switch. I had never read that the SIrk set was DVD rather than DVD-R, so I'd assumed the latter.
If I missed my chance to get one of what was apparently a limited run of the Grant sets, I'll regret that. I can't hope to order everything I want within several months of release date, and if they're going to quietly switch things with cheaper, less reliable burned media, then they've pretty much lost my business. I'll see the stuff some other way.
Domino, have you contacted them about this and asked for a refund?

Hopefully this story has a happy ending: I called their customer service and the woman who helped me was pretty sympathetic and told me to send both sets back for a full refund. She told me they get the sets straight from Turner, who apparently hadn't bothered to tell Movies Unlimited that they'd be replacing pressed discs with burned ones!

This isn't exactly new news, but I just noticed that it hasn't been mentioned here yet, so I'll go ahead and mention that two new sets are up for pre-order: a pre-code double feature of The Song of Songs (1933) and This Is the Night (1932) and a collection of Audie Murphy westerns.

My copy of The Song of Songs/This Is the Night arrived today, and it came with a Movies Unlimited catalog. (This is the first time I've ordered from Movies Unlimited, so excuse me if this is a normal occurrence.) As I was flipping through it, I noticed that all of the TCM Vault Collection from Universal titles were listed as being DVDs, not DVD-Rs (as all of the Warner Archive titles are listed as). Even the Lost and Found RKO Collection. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't that only ever sold as MOD? Does that strike anybody else as odd?

PS. I can't wait to delve into This Is the Night later!

ETA a missing word.

Dirk wrote:My copy of The Song of Songs/This Is the Night arrived today, and it came with a Movies Unlimited catalog. (This is the first time I've ordered from Movies Unlimited, so excuse me if this is a normal occurrence.) As I was flipping through it, I noticed that all of the TCM Vault Collection from Universal titles were listed as being DVDs, not DVD-Rs (as all of the Warner Archive titles are listed as). Even the Lost and Found RKO Collection. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't that only ever sold as MOD? Does that strike anybody else as odd?

PS. I can't wait to delve into This Is the Night later!

ETA a missing word.

Mine is in transit. I really like This is the Night. I think the rap of being poor man's Lubitsch is glib and unfair. If I submit a 30s list for the list project, this will be on it.

starmanof51 wrote:Mine is in transit.

Now arrived, and they are pressed discs not burns.

Back Street (1941)
Reunited in New York City years after their marriage plans were sabotaged, Margaret Sullavan discovers that Charles Boyer is now wed to another. Desperate to remain a part of his life, she agrees to become his mistress. With Richard Carlson, Tim Holt, Frank McHugh.

Back Street (1961)
Producer Ross Hunter's 1961 filming of Back Street stars Susan Hayward (in a career-defining role) as a woman who meets and falls for a handsome Marine (John Gavin) returning home from World War II. Fate brings them back together when Hayward moves to the Big Apple to start a fashion design career, but upon learning that Gavin now has a wife and child, she must stay in the shadows and is forced to accept her role as his mistress. Co-stars Vera Miles, Charles Drake, Virginia Grey.

Sept 26

What a missed opportunity to include the 1932 John M. Stahl film -- one of the best melodramas made in Hollywood. It showed on TCM in an HD version not so long back, if I recall correctly.

Jean Arthur Comedy Collection on October 17:

The Public Menace (1935) - George Murphy, Douglass Dumbrille
Adventure in Manhattan (1936) - Joel McCrea, Reginald Owen, Thomas Mitchell
More Than a Secretary (1936) - George Brent, Lionel Stander, Ruth Donnelly, Reginald Denny
The Impatient Years (1944) - Lee Bowman, Charles Coburn, Edgar Buchanan, Harry Davenport, Jane Darwell

Hmmm...I love Jean Arthur, and I've not seen any of those. Any recommendations would be most welcome.

domino harvey wrote:Douglass Dumbrille

or, as he was known back in school, Dumbass Dougrille

carax09 wrote:Hmmm...I love Jean Arthur, and I've not seen any of those. Any recommendations would be most welcome.

I haven't seen any of them either, but the lovely Jean starring in a film called More Than a Secretary has got to be worth a look!

I haven't seen Public Hero #1, but the problems with the other three are (1) that these were not the kinds of roles or scripts that really did just justice to Arthur's talents; she was marking time under a contract with Columbia that she was miserable in. And (2) the films generally don't really integrate the funny and serious elements to any satisfying purpose, so the films don't completely succeed as comedies or dramas.

Damn, that's too bad. I was hoping for a viewing experience on-par with that Lombard "glamour collection" set from Universal from a few years ago. I was blown away by a few of those. In my opinion, Lombard and Arthur exist alone on the top tier of sexy screwballs.

I think nearly all those Lombards had the advantage of being produced at Paramount, several during Lubitsch's 1935-9 reign as production manager. As a rule, I find the routine thirties - and forties - output of Paramount much more stylish, polished and witty than Columbia's (I'm not thinking of the bonafide classics from either studio) so, while I've never seen any of those Arthur films, I'm not really surprised by Gregory's evaluation.

That said, if it had been available as easily and cheaply (to a UK collector) as the Lombard set, the Arthur collection would have been on my buying list. I did get Sony/Columbia's Icons of Screwball Comedy sets - mostly disappointing films to me (Theodora Goes Wild excepted) but at the price I was still glad to have them.

Yes Jonathan, I went back and checked, and the 3 films I was most impressed with in the Lombard set, were (initially) Paramount product. Good call. Does that mean that Universal controls Paramount and Columbia (in addition to their own) property from the period?

Now, what about Swing High, Swing Low? "Do the Tropics always smell like this?"

As far as I know, Sony still controls Columbia product but the TCM Vault Collection seems to access films currently owned by various distributors, including Warner. Universal has controlled nearly all the 1929-49 Paramount films since MCA bought them in 1958 for television. (One of the few exceptions is The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, as it was then considered unplayable on TV!)

By the way, Gregory referred to not having seen Public Hero #1 (MGM) but it is of course another Jean Arthur film The Public Menace in this all-Columbia collection.