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What A Disgrace wrote:You really should consider getting Tag Gallagher to do a video piece for Letter From an Unknown Woman or Pursued, though.

I'll second this. A Tag Gallagher piece will take a release I'm on the fence about into 'must have' territory.

As one of the people critical of Olive's cover art (particularly the sloppy High Noon cover), I will acknowledge that since the High Noon announcement, the covers have improved markedly. The bad covers never stopped me from pre-ordering to begin with (I have almost a dozen Olive releases on pre-order right now- they've had by far the most interesting release slate this year), but I'm glad they've moved in a positive direction with cover art. If they could pick up an intelligent extra or two from someone like Gallagher, it would be icing on the cake.

My take:

1) Scott (misterlime) has always been very nice and informative at HTF, so I'm a bit bemused he would jump on Jeff like he did (completely unwarranted) and that's simply too bad.

2) I really don't see the big deal about their covers, but on this forum even Criterion gets absolutely lambasted for anything people dislike about cover art, so one has to not be too sensitive to such things around here.

3) My understanding is that Olive simply does not have the budget to produce bonus content. In all honesty as long as I get the films in a well presented manner I don't care all that much about bonus content. This is especially true for the Republic films, which have had 2-disc editions with the film looking like utter crap in the past on some titles. What good is bonus content when the feature is near impossible to watch?

4) This forum has a tendency to bite back HARD when slighted to any degree. While Scott was hardly a perfect gentleman, the responses in this thread, in general, made it very easy for him to continue to be rude. Dumping gasoline on a fire doesn't solve anything.

I guess the takeaway here is that you pretty much have to be a crank if you're running a small indie DVD label these days.

Remind me, after all this folderol, the Olive Blu-rays are pretty good in the image department, yes? Because I'm about to drop a bunch of coin on them, despite this misterlime fellow's best efforts to talk me out of it.

They range from okay to excellent. I can't recall one off the top of my head that made me go that's test material (Despair possibly excluded), but at worst they're rather good and uniform like the old Paramount discs.

I've only seen a couple of their Tashlin Blus but they both looked great.

I wonder if Tag could self publish the material? I'd be more than happy to pay a few bucks each for his video essays, he's a master of the form.

Oh yes, if he's listening even as someone not terribly interested in extras I'd pay good money for a disc of his essays.

I'll third that. Simply the best extras ever. You learn more about a film from one of Tag's video essays than you can from the very best commentaries by anyone else. Though I'm not sure how far fair use would go if he tried to sell physical copies of things like this without any kind of licensing. It would be awesome if he ever were to take a page from Bordwell and Thompson just throw some up on the web gratis.

He's done that before, there's a link somewhere on the board to an essay he did about The Flowers of Saint Francis

david hare wrote:Tag was the person I was referrring to above. He could have offered them fantastic pieces on the McCarey, the Walsh, The Ford (his chapter on Quiet Man in the book is the best thing ever written about it.)

Their attitude totally sucks (as the kiddies would say.)

That's incredibly frustrating. Gallagher's John Ford book is some of the most essential, enlightening criticism I've had the pleasure to read. This is a real missed opportunity that could have raised the esteem of Olive to something closer to the level of a Criterion or MOC. I hope they reconsider, but it appears they share the sad myopia of the majors when it comes to insightful commentary. We are cursed with a situation where rights holders seem to prefer supplements about the craft of movie making rather than the art of film (especially in the United States).

Announced for 9/4, DVD/BD:

Child's Play (1972)
The Dark Mirror (1946)
Man on a Swing (1974)
Man-Trap (1961)
A New Leaf (1971)
The Secret Beyond the Door (1948)

For the record, that's 4 Paramounts and 2 Republics.

SECRET BEYOND THE DOOR on Blu?

Jesus Christ.

A New Leaf on Blu?!

captveg wrote: The Secret Beyond the Door (1948)

Fuck, and I just bought this too.

The Dark Mirror has some great special effects, it'll look beautiful in Blu as well

Am I allowed to post these images from HTF?

Is it just me, or do have improved their covers? (well, at least some of them)

Yep. They've gone a long way since Knock on Wood and those Bob Hope films.

Wow! I'm going to have to have every one of those. The fact that the company is run by assholes is sorely disappointing, but you can't argue with their library and their commitment to Blu-ray.

knives wrote:

captveg wrote:The Secret Beyond the Door (1948)

Fuck, and I just bought this too.

Ha. I actually just bought that and the German disc of The Dark Mirror. Oh well, welcome upgrades all the same.

Definitely buying the two noirs, will consider buying a couple more if I can afford them.

domino harvey wrote:The Dark Mirror has some great special effects, it'll look beautiful in Blu as well

I was struck by this when I saw it last year, too, how much more seamless the effects were than I would have expected. Wouldn't have expected to see it on Blu, but I agree that it's a good choice.

david hare wrote:this label is the new MoC

I only wish that MoC could manage the volume that Olive has!

david hare wrote:I look forward soon to their Republic Borzage double of Moonrise and I've Always Loved You, with the UCLA color three strip resto of the latter corrected and re color graded for BD.

I asked them about Moonrise, along with Siodmak's The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry and de Toth's Pitfall, and they said that all 3 films are no longer part of the Republic library so they can't release them. I'm not sure if the rights reverted to another company or perhaps to a producer, but whomever has them I wish Olive would license from them. Especially Moonrise.

Goddamn, I am SO excited for Secret Beyond the Door, one of my top noirs. The Dark Mirror is great too, and I'm looking forward to checking out Man-Trap and A New Leaf.