Warner Brothers Archive Collection (DVDs only)

[Ashirg]

Future title include (all remastered):
The Impossible Years (1968)
The Prize (1963)
Savage Messiah (1972) - Ken Russell!!
The Wheeler Dealers (1963)

[domino harvey]

Jesus, the Silver Chalice gets a real DVD and the Prize is MOD?!

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

Future title include (all remastered):
Savage Messiah (1972) - Ken Russell!!

Those bastards. Can't Russell catch a break, ever?

[knives]

Thanks - that run time is intriguing as all my books and internet sources (including Warner Archive) give 86 or even 85 minutes for The Locket. DVD Beaver states 85m 27s for the WA release. With PAL speed-up - which would indicate a proper PAL transfer - I'd expect it to be 83 minutes at most. Could the almost 88m run time include material added by Odeon, like copyright notices?

The other giveaways of an improper NTSC-PAL (or PAL-NTSC) conversion, to my eyes, are a soft-looking image - often softer than good VHS, though it might only be obvious on a large screen - and sometimes motion blurring or even jerkiness. They often have a grey, low contrast look, too, with no real blacks.

It definitely doesn't have jerkiness and softness is one problem the transfer doesn't have(like I said the only bit of ugliness is a massive scratch through one reel). I'll see if I can get a more specific time today.

[Jonathan S]

Thanks. Maybe it's from the same print as the WA release; the Beaver review mentions "a short sequence at 35-minute mark with some lines running on the right side of the screen." On their relevant capture it looks like one heavy scratch just right of centre.

By the way, I find it most amusing that Warner's advertising (underneath Beaver's review) asks, "What is the reason you don't indulge in the Warner Archive?" Just one? There are so many reasons! Starting with the fact Warner don't ship direct to the UK...

[knives]

That's it exactly. The Beaver caps look like they could have just as easily come from the real DVD.

[matrixschmatrix]

Interesting article about the economics of Warner Archive.

The perfected dual-layer discs will allow Warner to release more classic TV series through manufacture-on-demand as well as provide extra features.

You know, if Archive titles started to be consistently remastered, anamorphic, dual layered, and they started putting special features on them, it seems like this whole thing really wouldn't be that bad.

[swo17]

Other than the fact that they become coasters in five years.

[domino harvey]

Also, still screw the deaf

[matrixschmatrix]

Other than the fact that they become coasters in five years.

Where does this come from? I've seen people saying it in a couple of places, but obviously it's not out of experience with actual archive discs, since the program's only been around since 2009. Is it just that DVD-Rs generally don't last longer than that?

With the subtitles thing, obviously that's a problem but it's equally obviously fixable- it's not inherent to the format.

[knives]

DVD-Rs aren't professionally pressed among other things so they tend to fall apart quickly. Mostly it's the encryption that wears downs and becomes unusable.

[swo17]

I was referring to the fact that it's a burned disc. I've tried to play CDs that I burned several years ago and several of them don't play well or at all.

[Roger Ryan]

Yeah, that's a given. Professionally-pressed CDs and DVDs are estimated to work for a good 80 years or longer whereas CD-Rs and DVD-Rs can crap out in as little as four or five years.

[JMULL222]

It's a good complaint in theory, but honestly: how many of us wouldn't be able to back up and reburn these films at the first sign of trouble without the slightest drop in quality? It's a simple process, with freeware readily available.

[swo17]

That's a good solution in theory, but I'm not willing to live my life that way anymore after too many computer crashes from trying to maintain a permanent archive of my film collection.

[Gregory]

Couldn't they be stored on an external hard drive? I was planning to back up all my burned media on a 2 TB hard drive or two but haven't gotten around to it yet.

[swo17]

Those can crash too, and then where are you? The last time I dealt with this I'm pretty sure the mere act of trying to copy files over from my dying computer to my external actually irreparably damaged sectors of my external. Either that or they both failed in a similar way at the same time. And I lost years of work on many files that I never even bothered to watch once. It's just more hassle than it's worth to me.

[PillowRock]

Yeah, if you have much of a collection (and keep adding to it) and want to be completely safe with mirrored backups and what-not ....... it can get to be a lot like what a lot of companies pay IT people to spend a fair percentage of their full time jobs doing.

And some of the Archive titles that most interest me are available on pressed DVDs from France for 10 euros plus shipping.

[Gregory]

I agree about the risks and that the hassle of trying to have reliable discs is not worth it for 99% of this stuff, taking into account what they're charging. I've already had the hassle of getting a replacement for one that wouldn't play right out of the shrinkwrap.
Not that anyone would necessarily care, but I've made two large orders of Archive titles and do not plan to do this again. The first, from a couple years ago, which I don't regret, was Once Upon a Honeymoon, Mad Miss Manton, and several of Katharine Hepburn's RKO films, for about $11 per disc, which was worth it to avoid the trouble of getting them elsewhere, especially if I can get them backed up soon.
The second order was a bundle of Myrna Loy titles (interesting but nothing I couldn't live without owning) and a bundle of Lon Chaney films. The reason for the Chaney order was that I didn't think I'd do any better than the price per disc of the bundle and really wanted to see the Archive disc of He Who Gets Slapped. I was disappointed to find that He Who Gets Slapped, the film I was most interested in from the whole order, is a TCM broadcast master that, as far as I can see was transferred way too fast. The thing only runs 72 minutes and looks a lot like a Sennett comedy. If this was the way I'd seen this film in the past, I hadn't remembered it. I guess my standards have gone up since the days when you pretty much took what you could get with silents (I guess those days are here again, at least with the the studio properties we'd hoped to see get a better treatment).

[Murdoch]

There's a French release of He Who Gets Slapped that, according to the Amazon page, runs 80 minutes. Anyone know anything of the quality?

[Peacock]

There's a French release of He Who Gets Slapped that, according to the Amazon page, runs 80 minutes. Anyone know anything of the quality?

I don't know how the Archive's He Who Gets Slapped will turn out, but the French DVD is ugly as hell. Worse, the intertitles are in French (that, in my case, I don't mind much), black fonts on a white (or most of the time, a pale purple tint) background to make sure you go blind.

[Murdoch]

#-o That's what I get for skimming.

[isakborg]

Perhaps this belongs in the Von Stroheim thread, but I keep searching for a review anywhere of the archive issuance of The Merry Widow. Has anyone seen it? Or, given the routine bashing here of the archive, am I to be the canary in the coal mine, make the purchase and report back what I have discovered?

[knives]

I'm already the canary. The transfer is probably the same one that's been playing on TCM which is really good.

[MoonlitKnight]

Well, lately they've been doing a good job putting out lots of their 20s/30s/40s titles... now how about some more 60s/70s/80s titles? [-o<