More childhood trauma…
Over at the Auteurs' I have a gander at a nice French Warner version of Fritz Lang's splendiferous 1955 Moonfleet (pictured above), and consider how the opening of the Warner Archive will affect the hunt for cinephile gold among owners of foreign-region DVD players. One things for certain, the Foreign Region DVD Report will be delving into a considerably thinner margin in the near future…
Very excited about Warner Archive’s titles, but 2 issues: they only ship to USA addresses, and there’s a new note with each title, which was definitely not there when the site was launched:
Important Note: This film has been manufactured from the best-quality video master currently available and has not been remastered or restored specifically for this DVD and On Demand release.
I guess we’re very fortunate to have these [and future] titles, and hopefully the transfers will be ok….
The transfer of William Conrad’s Brainstrorm (the last great classic noir) was excellent, and since I had never seen the film in its proper widescreen aspect ratio, I was in heaven.
The response to the Warner Archive has apparently been staggering, and Warner deserves all the money it will rake in on this. (The films will not be available through Netflix and other rental services, which is only fair, although I imagine public libraries could buy them.) We are going to see a lot more rights holders experiment with this sort of availability. It is a triumph of the long tail.
The pricing is not bad at all considering that at the moment, Warner is not charging shipping on these disks. The foreign availability issue is undoubtedly a legal one — who owns what where can be tricky — but my understanding is that Warner is working on this, and at least some titles will be more widely available internationally.
Glad to see from The Auteurs Notebook piece that Glenn likes Jack Webb’s -30-, a lovely film with one of the all-time great closing lines: “They’re printing the funny papers.” Who expected warmth from Jack Webb?