criterionforum.org

For those of you who seem to be having trouble with the Warner Archive 5 for $50 sale, might
I suggest the following:
1) Click on Sale
2) Under 1-16 of 766 items click "View All". This condenses all available titles into seven
pages, thus eliminating reclicking every 16 titles.
3) Under "Sort By" enter "Sort A to Z"
4) Take out that alphabetized "Must Have" list you've been keeping and start scrolling.
Also, as a general rule, the most recent titles are rarely included in these whopping big sales.
Neither are multi-disc titles.
I hope this is of some help to you.

Heads up on the 5 for $50 sale. Although this wasn't the case yesterday, the discount is no longer valid for more than 5 titles at a time, which means the SAVINGS coupon ($20 off order of $100) can't be combined with the current sale.

I did it this morning!

Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold
Pretty Maids all in a Row
Legends of the Superheroes
The Outfit
Hit Man
Stranger on the Third Floor

for $60

Didn't work for me in any combination beyond either 5 for 50 or 20 off 100

Well by the time my eligible titles situation was resolved the back and forth weirdness with my shipping/billing address kicked in again and my "10 for 10 - $20.00/SAVINGS" went away as well. However I tried again early Saturday and the discounts went through. I still think there are some serious gremlins in the Archive site causing these discounts/specials to come and go at will.

Sorry if this has been posted before, but what is the difference between 16X9 Letterbox and 16X9 Fullscreen? Those are the descriptions in their respective Screen Aspect sections of the Full Product Description. Yet, at the top it says Widescreen. Am I being thick about something?

I'm assuming Letterbox releases are those with extreme widescreen aspect ratios (i.e. 2.35:1) that will still show black bars on the top and bottom of the screen. Fullscreen means it will fill your entire widescreen TV. They're all anamorphic, so you don't have to worry about that.

Letterboxed within the 16:9 frame

and

Filling the 16:9 frame

They could really clear up some of the confusion by simply listing the aspect ratio (1.85:1; 2.35:1) like virtually all mainstream DVD (and Blu-ray) packages do.

...Blah, blah, blah

Beyond a Reasonable Doubt and While the City Sleeps are being released remastered tomorrow.

Bitching, bitching, bitching....

It will be interesting to compare them with the Exposure discs (While the City Sleeps already released, Beyond a Reasonable Doubt forthcoming) in terms of picture quality, price, and projected longevity of the discs. The R2 Exposure discs tend to be about £7 plus shipping, so it's an attractive proposition, but then again Warner often have access to the best elements. It's not about bitching; it's about finding the best bang for the buck. And as it appears Warner has all but abandoned pressed DVDs of catalog titles even though there is clearly still a viable market for them, well, it's no surprise there getting criticized for it from folks who were looking forward to a very long list of titles they said were forthcoming that never materialized.

New tomorrow.

Remastered:

The Unfinished Dance (1947)
While the City Sleeps (1956)
Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1956)

Standard:

The Age of Innocence (1934)
Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina (1997)
The Hunley (1999)
The Day Lincoln Was Shot (1998)

New releases today:
http://yfrog.com/z/h4cig3j" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Remastered:

Abbott and Costello Meet Captain Kidd (1952)
Rio Rita (1942)
Don't Make Waves (1967)
The Impossible Years (1968)
Merry Andrew (1958)

TV/Animation:

Chuck Norris: Karate Kommandos

Are The Age of Innocence (1934) Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina (1997) any good?

A question about DVD-R longevity: Zipporah Films' website (which sells Frederick Wiseman's movies on DVD-R) states that it uses "high quality DVD-Rs, which have an archival life of 30-50 years." Can anyone speak to how legitimate this claim is? (Obviously no one has tried a Zipporah disc 30-50 years after purchasing, but is it true that some DVD-Rs are supposed to last this much longer than your standard over-the-counter burnable disc?) Does Warner boast anything similar about its own DVD-Rs?

swo17 wrote:A question about DVD-R longevity: Zipporah Films' website (which sells Frederick Wiseman's movies on DVD-R) states that it uses "high quality DVD-Rs, which have an archival life of 30-50 years." Can anyone speak to how legitimate this claim is? (Obviously no one has tried a Zipporah disc 30-50 years after purchasing, but is it true that some DVD-Rs are supposed to last this much longer than your standard over-the-counter burnable disc?) Does Warner boast anything similar about its own DVD-Rs?

I'm not going to be of much help, but there is a post over at hometheaterforum from someone who had just spoken with a CS rep for archive. Apparently the rep stated that the archive discs should last just as long as pressed DVDs, and that they use high-quality DVD-Rs (such as Verbatim). They're also going to be publishing data that supposedly supports these claims at some point.

By the way, what method works best for testing to make sure the discs work properly when they first arrive? I generally fast-forward though them at 10x speed to make sure they don't skip or crash, but surely there's a less primitive way to test them.

Short of actually watching the film that's what I do to test them also. That's the most thorough check without getting into some really odd stuff.

I would think that if you run the disc through DVD Decrypter and are able to rip the VOB files without errors, it's a safe bet that your disc is fine. Plus, in doing this you've just backed up the disc to your harddrive.

I've found that doesn't always work though. For example A Screaming Man stopped on my Sherwood, but ripped and played fine on my laptop.

New today:

Vitaphone Varieties (1926 - 1930)
The Boy Friend (1971) - Remastered (Restored Director's Cut/Roadshow version with vintage behind the scenes featurette)
Savage Messiah (1972) - Remastered
Meet Me in Las Vegas (1956) - Remastered (Special Features: two musical numbers excised from the film)
Rose Marie (1954) - Remastered (Special Features: Outtake musical number)
I Love Melvin (1953) - Remastered Re-Release (Special Features: Musical outtake)

I'm thrilled to see two more Ken Russell titles available. I saw The Boy Friend over the summer during a Ken Russell retrospective at the Walter Reade. The print was pretty dire at times and the theatre claimed it was the best print in existence. The short remastered clip on the website looks miles ahead of what I saw.

So, do I get a free upgrade of my I Love Melvin, Warners?

HA! I got the Warner Archive e-mail and immediately clicked over here to see if Domino was bitching about having to re-buy I Love Melvin! Since he has that covered, allow me to chime in and bitch about the Ken Russell dump job.

Wait til you witness my epic tanty when they dump Lili in the Archives instead of giving it the deluxe Blu-ray treatment it deserves

Does anybody have The Great Garrick? I've had two copies that have the same problem. They seem to play okay during normal playback, but when it gets to the 8th chapter (70th minute) I can no longer fast-forward or rewind without the DVD glitching up and either reverting back to an earlier chapter or crashing altogether. It seems like the start of the 8th chapter is when the problem begins, although on my PS3 it actually crashes earlier when trying to fastforward, at around the 1:06 mark or so. I've tried it on several different machines and all have basically the same problem. Haven't had this issue with any of my other archive titles.