criterionforum.org

Due July 22. Supplements TBA. Some art here.

New Special Editions
Clint Eastwood's Bird
Bertrand Tavernier's 'Round Midnight
Jack Webb's Pete Kelly's Blues
Anatole Litvak's Blues in the Night

About time for the Bird SE. Warners needs to redo Eastwood's back catalog while he's still healthy (his mind didn't seem to sharp during Ennio Morricone's Oscar presentation).

Otherwise, how are the other films in this set? I've been meaning to see the Tavernier for years, but from reading the Electric Mist thread, it sounds like the man's reputation is overblown.

Warner Bros. seem to have abandoned the original poster art covers.

Very glad to see Blues in the Night get a release. It's an odd little film with Richard Whorf, who's better known as a director than an actor, as the hotheaded leader of a blues band that includes Elia Kazan. The film is hard to pin down in terms of genre because it has elements of both musical and noir. There's also a dream sequence, edited by Don Siegel, that's off the charts.

What? No love yet for Pete Kelly's Blues?

It's an odd little film, as were pretty much all of Jack Webb's pet projects. This one is easily the best, though one's tolerance for it will depend to a great degree on one's tolerance for Webb's brand of non-acting. But how can you not like a movie in which Andy Devine plays a tough cop? (He literally kicks Webb's character out of a chair at one point.)

This would have been a perfect time for a special edition of Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser.

I had a lot of problems with Bird (I remember it being beset by a lot of the usual musician-biopic qualities), but it was more than a decade ago that I saw it, so I may revisit it sometime.

Round Midnight is excellent. Dexter Gordon's wonderful in it. Hopefully there'll be all kinds of goodies on the SE.

Saw it when it first played in the U.S. Watched the LD a few times. [DVD's never quite made it out of the cellophane, unfortunately; guess it never will if there's a special edition coming...]

Recall seeing Pete Kelly's Blues on TV somewhere along the line; I suppose I watched the whole thing, but it was rather odd as I recall.

Bird, for some reason I've managed to not see more than a few minutes of it. Siskel and/or Ebert swayed me into thinking it was kind of a stinker (at least in terms of adherence to reality). Some day... perhaps the supplements will push me to finally watch it.

Well, I was definitely on auto-pilot when I "upgraded" Round Midnight. This is a film I really like, so when I saw in this thread that a special edition had been announced, I sold my old DVD and then put the new release in my wish list at DD. When their sale started earlier this month I ordered the thing without ever having looked at any specs. It turns out it's identical to the previous release, except with a keepcase. I'm not too disappointed because I got the new one for $11, which is about equal to the net amount I got from the old DVD. Still, it sure would have been nice for Warner to get some actual features (aside from the trailer and brief cast biographies) to justify re-releasing this title as part of this "promotion" of theirs.
I think this is the first year that Warner has started re-releasing snapper titles in keepcases with no other changes. It makes me wonder why they're bothering with that now. Maybe snapper cases have gotten prohibitively expensive as almost no one is using them anymore. I never really understood the wrath against them.

I have about ten snapper cases that have torn front covers, all from normal wear and tear.

I have several hundred keep cases with NO damage whatsoever.

I have probably have about the same number of snappers and none of them have gotten worn out, at least so far. I've had McCabe and Mrs. Miller for about six years and it still looks brand new, and I store my DVDs in vertical stacks on the shelf! Some of them, such as the older Image and Milestone silent releases, I bought used online and they did arrive somewhat beat up in a few instances.

I've also found that the actual closing mechanisms break fairly easily. The first ever DVD I bought was the brand-new release of Goldeneye. I couldn't get it to close right after maybe a month or so. Very frustrating for a 12-year old.