criterionforum.org

All on May 31:

Once Upon a Time in the West (Leone)
A Man Called Horse (Silverstein) (Of course, I just bought this one)
Big Jake (Sherman)
Rio Lobo (Hawks) Second Hawks film to make it to Blu and it's this?

domino harvey wrote:Rio Lobo (Hawks) Second Hawks film to make it to Blu and it's this?

Of course. Forget the rest of Hawks's career--all that stuff with Cary Grant, Humphrey Bogart, and Marilyn Monroe--Rio Lobo is in color and widescreen, prerequisites for big-studio Blu releases the overwhelming majority of the time.

domino harvey wrote:A Man Called Horse (Silverstein) (Of course, I just bought this one)

Is this one any good?

Dammit, man, how long are they going to delay Chinatown?

knives wrote:

domino harvey wrote:A Man Called Horse (Silverstein) (Of course, I just bought this one)

Is this one any good?

It's not bad, though I think I actually prefer its sequel, "The Return of a Man Called Horse" (1976).

I actually only bought it to do a double feature with the sequel, both still unseen by me

domino harvey wrote:Rio Lobo (Hawks) Second Hawks film to make it to Blu and it's this?

It's like the time there was the rumor Carlos Kleiber was coming out of retirement to conduct . . . Rienzi.

While I was going through the Amazon Blu-ray store looking up which movies in my collection I was going to upgrade, I came across several Paramount titles which had the "Sign up to be notified when this title becomes available" tag attached to them. This could mean that there are plans for these title in the near future. Here they are:

Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)
Come Back, Little Sheba (1952)
Hud (1963)
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)
The Naked Gun Trilogy
Nobody's Fool (1994)
A Place in the Sun (1951)
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Roman Holiday (1953)
Save the Tiger (1973)
Stalag 17 (1953)
Titanic (1997; that's one's pretty much agiven)

I'm sure there are plenty more, but these were the ones I was able to uncover.

AfterTheRain wrote:This could mean that there are plans for these title in the near future.

On the other hand, it could mean there are plans for these titles in about 15 years. I seriously doubt Come Back, Little Sheba will see a Blu release any time soon. But Titanic and the Indiana Jones movies are certainly possible. But really, those "Sign up to be notified..." pages are generally not directly related to any correspondence from the studios.

I know that. That's why this little bit of news should be taken with a grain of salt.

AfterTheRain wrote:Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)

This is being released by Paramount France in September.

MoonlitKnight wrote:

knives wrote:

domino harvey wrote:A Man Called Horse (Silverstein)

Is this one any good?

It's not bad, though I think I actually prefer its sequel, "The Return of a Man Called Horse" (1976).

The sequel I think is slightly better, and for what its worth both had an influence on the initial cycle of Italian cannibal films. Such as the motif of heroic explorers captured and then learning to love the tribe in The Last Cannibal World and Man From Deep River, then having to undergo painful initiation rituals. And of course the jaw-droppingly bad taste, pure exploitation scene of Cannibal Ferox in which Zora Kerova is hung by the breasts to die has an obvious inspiration from similar, slightly more motivated, scenes in these films.

Although I suppose a lot of this ritual of endurance stuff can also be traced back to the less elaborate trials Rod Steiger undergoes in Run of the Arrow.

Of course, there's also a third film in the series, "Triumphs of a Man Called Horse" (1984), which I've never seen, but about which I've heard very few good things.

How awesome is this cover?

Cash Flagg wrote:

AfterTheRain wrote:Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)

This is being released by Paramount France in September.

This is coming to US on 8/23.

Also The Firm is a Best Buy exclusive starting 5/29.

DVD Talk and Beaver on A Man Called Horse.

I sometimes think Brando's films have been black-balled from restoration and Blue-Ray.One of the best,most innovative,influential westerns ever made was Paramount's One Eyed Jacks directed by Brando.The DVD's available of OEJ are transfers from hades,they are,at best, terrible.Brando's director's cut is out there somewhere,it's just a matter of Paramount seriously searching it's archives in an effort to find it.OEJ is a film that needs the restoration and Blue Ray format it so deserves.

One Eyed Jacks' big problem (probably an insurmountable one from a studio perspective) is that it's public domain, owing to an old copyright screw-up, so there's very little incentive for Paramount to invest in a proper restoration / transfer / release, since the market will always be swamped by competitors. If this title ever does get treated properly it will have to be a labour of love. That will probably depend on a label like Criterion being highly motivated and having easy access to original elements. If that latter part proves problematic, bye bye Brando.

There's probably no bigger fan of ONE EYED JACKS on this forum than myself (saw it on original release at the tender age of 7!) but the last time I saw it theatrically was sometime in the '80s. It was all over network TV from 1966 till the '80s and even made it to cable. The last time I recall it surfacing was on AMC in the late '90s and the transfer was letterboxed to 1.85. It may well have been the last Paramount film shot in VistaVision.

As zedz has reminded us the copyright is the hangup here. The film was produced by Brando's company, Pennebaker Productions, with financing and release through Paramount so the title very likely reverted to Brando after the 2nd copyright renewal. As Brando's affairs, both personal and financial, were in more or less shambles even before his death, it's a lead pipe cinch that the film is in public domain by now. If not, it's certainly in the final days and if the Brando estate (either with the assistance of Paramount or not) has not yet made the effort to proclaim ownership and issue cease and desist orders to the many scavenger types hawking these awful pan'n'scam DVDs then I doubt they'll ever make the effort.

I agree with zedz also that unless ONE EYED JACKS is somehow rescued by some high profile champion (shout out to Martin Scorsese!) it will continue to languish on the shelf at Paramount. At least I hope it's still languishing at Paramount. Worst case scenario would be its elements turning to Technicolor soup in some shed on that goddamned island of Brando's! And don't look to Criterion to lead the charge. As Matt (or was it Jeff?) has intimated before, there's something of an antipathy to Brando by one of the top dogs at Criterion. They're much more interested in personal faves such as ROBINSON CRUSOE ON MARS (now in Blu too!) and THE NAKED PREY (to name but two other Paramounts from the same era) than ONE EYED JACKS.

As Matt (or was it Jeff?) has intimated before, there's something of an antipathy to Brando by one of the top dogs at Criterion.

They did release The Fugitive Kind, which doesn't even seem to be as well liked as One Eyed Jacks, so perhaps there's a little hope.

props55--I understand your post--it is sad that movies like OEJ will be gobbled up,and forgotten.I thought when Brando died there would be a resurgence of interest in his movies.Movies like One Eyed Jacks,Viva Zapata,The Appaloosa,etc should not be left behind and,abandoned. Brando was the best,most revolutionary actor,of his generation,maybe the best actor of all our American generations.To forget Brando,is to forget the essence of who we are relative to our sense of rebellion.

Had Kubrick actually directed ONE-EYED JACKS as planned, we'd probably have two or three Blu-rays by now

All in different aspect ratios, two of which display stretching.

Blu-ray+CD

Audio:
English dts-HD MA 5.1, English mono 2.0, Japanese 5.1, Russian 5.1, Hungarian 2.0, Polish 2.0
Subtitles:
English, Japanese, Thai, Korean, Mandarin, Cantonese, Hindi, Indonesian, Hungarian, Polish, Turkish, Greek, Portuguese, Bulgarian, Malay, Romanian, Icelandic, Arabic, Hebrew, Czech, Slovakian, Croatian, Serbian, Slovenian, Russian, Ukranian, Estonian, Latvian.

Looks to have most places covered.... but no Spanish or French, so I guess that the North American release will have a slightly different release.