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Big Magilla
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Post by Big Magilla »

From Barrie Maxwell's column at the Digital Bits:

Recent discussions on the Home Theater Forum concerning Paramount's lacklustre classic record this year have revealed disturbing news for classic fans. Apparently the new head of Paramount Home Video has no interest in classic titles and one fallout from this is a decision to leave the Republic film catalog with Lions Gate for release. This would account for the cancellation of the various classic Republic titles (the John Waynes, Johnny Guitar, A Double Life, etc.) that were previously scheduled for May and July. If any of those titles (and others) do surface on DVD in the future, it would be through Lions Gate whose past track record with the catalog (via Artisan) was abominable. The lack of Paramount interest in its remaining classic titles does also not bode well for The African Queen, Ace in the Hole, The Buccaneer, Samson and Delilah, and other Paramount properties that classic fans have been after. It should be noted, however, that this news is based on indirect evidence (he said she said) as there is nothing on record from Paramount to confirm or deny the above as yet.
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Post by Big Magilla »

Eleven fewer will be missing come October:

Warner Home Video has today officially announced the Hollywood's Legends of Horror Collection which includes six classic 'masterworks of terror'. The three-disc collection will include Doctor X, The Return of Dr. X, Mark of the Vampire, The Mask of Fu Manchu, Mad Love and The Devil Doll. You'll be able to own this one from the 3rd October, with the set retailing somewhere in the region of $39.92. We have no word on any extra material at this time. We've attached the official region one package artwork below:

Warner has also announced a new Motion Picture Masterpieces Collection for release on 10/10 (SRP $49.92) that's due to include Treasure Island (1934), David Copperfield (1935), A Tale of Two Cities (1935), Marie Antoinette (1939) and Pride and Prejudice (1940), all of which are new to DVD. Each film will also be available separately for SRP $19.97 each. Extras will include vintage shorts, cartoons, theatrical trailers and more.
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Post by Precious Doll »

I wish Warners would get around to releasing a Jean Harlow box set including titles such as The Red Headed Woman, The Girl from Missouri, Hold Your Man, Red Dust etc.
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Post by Booster Gold »

It's funny to me when people get upset that Song Of The South isn't on DVD. Why, you ask? Because a DVD of Song Of The South is sitting on my shelf with the rest of my Disney movies. And I actually watch it quite frequently. (More so than Alice In Wonderland for example.) I made the transfer from a friend's Japanese laserdisc and designed the menu and box art from poster art found on the web. It looks quite nice, if I do say so myself.

Point of the story… no point really, just a little bragging. :cool:
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Post by kaytodd »

This may get the thread way off topic, but I would like to cast another vote for releasing Song Of The South on DVD. Sure, Disney seriously sanitized Joel Chandler Harris' stories about the rural U.S. South during the years after the Civil War. But anyone familiar with the original stories on which Cinderella, Snow White and The Little Mermaid know that Song Of The South was not the first nor last time Disney did that. And all of the blacks, including Uncle Remus, in the film are obviously of an inferior social class, actually subservient, to the whites. But Uncle Remus, while uneducated, is an intelligent, strong, warm hearted person of good character with a positive outlook on life. Many people see this as inappropriate, given his circumstances. They object because whites are not shown treating blacks brutally and blacks are not shown rebelling. But Ariel does not kill herself at the end of The Little Mermaid either. This is Disney.

Perhaps slavery and the Jim Crow decades are too fresh for many of us to enjoy a sanitized version of them. But the film is important. It is a wonderful story with enjoyable songs. And the white boy Johnny's mentor and father figure is a black man. I wonder what white bigots thought of that in 1946? It was also technically advanced for 1946 in the mixing of animation and real life actors. And I read somewhere that the actor who played Uncle Remus was the first live actor ever hired by Disney.

I agree a disclaimer at the beginning of the film, perhaps read by a respected black actor, would be appropriate. The important thing is to get this important work out there again. It is flawed, but it does not deserve to be buried.
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Post by Big Magilla »

Good choices, Criddic. I forgot all about Skippy, which I vaguely recall seeing many years ago though I could be confusing it with somehting else it's been so long. I still eat Skippy peanut butter, though.

Penelope, I'm with you on Song of the South. An introductory disclaimer would be all they'd need, but a commentary would be great especially if it's by a respected African American, say, Sidney Poitier or Angela Basset. A good thing I wasn't eating or drinking anything when I read Iger's comments or I would have choked on his integrity comment.

Reza, I would buy them all if I can afford them, i.e. they aren't all released at one time and they are priced right. I don't think there's much of a market for the early Oscar films, but packaged together the way Universal has been doing they could be marketed really inexpensively and recoup Warners' investment rather easily, but the Garson films and many of the others I mention are shown repeatedly on TCM and other classic film channels due to high viewer demand. I'm sure they would sell individually or in standard priced box sets, making them even more profitable for them.
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Post by criddic3 »

My vote for a classic release is for Skippy, the 1931 film that got Jackie Cooper a best actor Oscar nomination.

Also they could release a set with some of Gene Kelly's rarely seen dramatic films like Pilot No. 5, The Black Hand and Marjorie Morningstar.

A second Reagan collection should include his Secret Service of the Air series and the two Brother Rat movies. Maybe Desperate Journey, The Voice of the Turtle and others. He made many movies, all historically important.

I'd like to see Hope's Cat and the Canary on DVD.
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Post by Penelope »

About Song of the South...apparently, Disney CEO Robert Iger has nixed any DVD release of the film for the near future; here's what he had to see at March's stockholder meeting:

"My name is Howard Cromer. I live in Cypress, I'm a Disney shareholder. I'm actually delivering a message from my son, 10. He wants to know in recent years, in the midst of all your re-releases of your videos, why you haven't released Song of the South on your Disney Classics?" [Applause] "And, he wonders why. Frank Wells told me many years ago that it would be coming out. Well obviously Frank Wells isn't around anymore, so we still wonder why. And by the way, Mr. Iger, he thinks it was a very good choice when they made you CEO of Disney." [Applause]

Iger: "Thank you very much. You may change your mind when I answer your question, though. Um... we've discussed this a lot. We believe it's actually an opportunity from a financial perspective to put Song of the South out. I screened it fairly recently because I hadn't seen it since I was a child, and I have to tell you after I watched it, even considering the context that it was made, I had some concerns about it because of what it depicted. And thought it's quite possible that people wouldn't consider it in the context that it was made, and there were some... [long pause] depictions that I mentioned earlier in the film that I think would be bothersome to a lot of people. And so, owing to the sensitivity that exists in our culture, balancing it with the desire to, uh, maybe increase our earnings a bit, but never putting that in front of what we thought were our ethics and our integrity, we made the decision not to re-release it. Not a decision that is made forever, I imagine this is gonna continue to come up, but for now we simply don't have plans to bring it back because of the sensitivities that I mentioned. Sorry."

I got to see Song of the South during its 1980 reissue, but would love to see it again, not only for any cinematic interest but, actually moreso, for its historic interest. I find it rather ironic that Joel Chandler Harris' stories are still widely published, but the film has disappeared from view (and despite the fact that there's a popular theme park ride based on the film). What they should do is include a documentary about the background of the film, including comments (and maybe commentary) by literary/cinema academics, historians, and notable African-Americans. It's an educational opportunity.
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Post by Reza »

Magilla,

If all the films you list below were released on DVD, would you buy them all?
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Post by flipp525 »

Big Magilla wrote:Disney needs to find a way of releasing Song of the South.

This reminds me of that cartoon TV Funhouse segment on ”Saturday Night Live” where the two kids visit Walt Disney’s secret vault with Mickey Mouse as their tour guide and together they find a complete caché of hidden racist treasures much to lil’ Mickey and Walt's chagrin.
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Big Magilla
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Post by Big Magilla »

Criterion, Warner, Fox and even Universal continue to release treasure troves of films on DVD, but eight years into the format we are still missing a number of films that should be produced before the studios abandon the process for the next format.

I've complained before about Fox cannibalizing its previous releases instead of bringing out more films, but they've probably brought out proportionately more of their product than any other studio. Still missing, though, are such classics as Cavalcade, Lloyds of London, Wilson, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Come to the Stable, The Mating Season, With a Song in My Heart and Sons and Lovers. Now that they've acquired distribution rights for MGM, which is really the old United Artists, we can add The Whisperers, The Subject Was Roses and True Confessions to the list.

Warner Bros. has plans to release a second set of Astaire/Rogers films and Robert Mitchum and Paul Newman box sets but won't say which films will be included. Hopefully Home From the Hill and The Sundowners in the Mitchum set and Rachel, Rachel in the Newman. Greer Garson's Madame Curie is among their Decision 2006 titles, but where are Pride and Prejudice, Blossoms in the Dust, Mrs. Parkington and The Valley of Decision?

Warners is also sitting on a treasure trove of early Oscar nominated and winning performances. Granted most of these films are not very good, but the performances are historically important. They could easily fit Madame X (Ruth Chatterton), The Letter (Jeanne Eagels), Coquette (Mary Pickford), Disraeli (George Arliss), The Divorcee (Norma Shearer), Romance (Greta Garbo), Min and Bill (Marie Dressler), A Free Soul (Shearer, Lionel Barrymore) and The Sin of Madelon Claudet (Helen Hayes) on four or five disks.

They could also do a better job of releasing vintage dramas from the 30s through the 60s such as Night Must Fall, The Citadel, Waterloo Bridge (the Mae Clarke version is promised but not the better known Vivien Leigh), Watch on the Rhine, The White Cliffs of Dover, The Corn Is Green, The Green Years, The Secret Garden, Tea and Sympathy, The Catered Affair, Something of Value, The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, Fanny, Light in the Piazza and The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. They've released a lot of musicals, and are supposedly readying a Show Boat box set to include all 3 versions but where are Lili, The Student Prince and Kismet?

Universal is still sitting on most of its Paramount catelogue. Make Way for Tomorrow is in bad need of restoration that they probably don't want to spend the money on, but what's their excuse with Ruggles of Red Gap previously released in a fine print on both VHS and laser disc? They should have capitalized on the Academy's Olivia de Hvilland tribute with a box set of her films to include Hold Back the Dawn, To Each His Own and The Heiress, all shamelfully still missing. What about a Barbara Stanwyck set to include Remember the Night and All I Desire? How about more Deanna Durbin? And when are they going to release the remainder of the early Lubitsch? Trouble in Paradise was licensed to Criterion, Love Me Tonight to Kino and Design for Living is in the Gary Cooper collection, but what about The Love Parade, Monte Carlo and The Smiling Lieutenant? They also need to start releasing more of their 50s and early 60s product including The Incredible Shrinking Man, This Happy Feeling, A Time to Love and a Time to Die, Tarnished Angels, This Earth Is Mine, A Gathering of Eagles, The Chalk Garden and the Tammy films.

I also wait in vain for them to release She Done Him Wrong, Shanghai Express, The Trail of the Lonesome Pine, Midnight, The Major and the Minor, Ministry of Fear, Phantom Lady, The Blue Dahlia, A Foreign Affair, Mary, Queen of Scots and Resurrection.

Columbia needs to get moving on its promised releases of early Capra including The Bitter Tea of General Yen. Disney needs to find a way of releasing Song of the South.
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