| Title,
Star, Company & Release Date |
Cover
Art |
Key
Extras |
Glass
Mountain, The
(Dulcie Gray)
VCI - June 26 |
 |
Short
animated 1939 featurette of Debussy's "Claire de Lune";
theatrical trailer |
Interesting
and lesser-known 1949 British film with post-war and opera
background, given new life by VCI. Transfer is quite workable
and mono sound okay with but minor hiss.
|
Stranger,
The
(Orson Welles)
MGM - July 10 |
 |
Theatrical
trailer. |
Surprising
to see MGM rescue this title from public domain hell, but a
welcome event as the film is an above average thriller. Edward
G. Robinson steals the show from Welles and Loretta Young. With
modest grain evident, this is the best version of the film
available on DVD despite a few speckles and other debris. Roan
Group did have a pretty decent version previously available. The
mono sound is clear.
|
20
Million Miles to Earth: 50th Anniversary Edition
(William Hopper)
Sony - July 31 |
 |
Audio
commentary with Harryhausen and visual effects artists Dennis
Muren, Phil Tippett, and Arnold Kunert; making-of featurette
with Harryhausen ; interview with Joan Taylor, co-star of the
film; featurette on music director Mischa Bakaleinikoff. |
This
new two-disc version is the one to have of this, one of Ray
Harryhausen's best films. His characteristic stop-motion work
with the Venusian creature gives it real character. The 1.85:1
anamorphic transfer is very good indeed, crisp and clear and
pleasingly clean for the 50-year old film. The mono sound is
quite good. For those somehow interested, a Legend Films
colourization version is also offered and is apparently based on
the colour scheme originally envisaged by Harryhausen.
|
Blueprint
for Murder/Man in the Attic
(Joseph Cotten/Jack Palance)
Fox - Sept. 11 |
 |
Theatrical
trailers for both |
A
neat mystery programmer packaged with a middling version of Jack
the Ripper, the latter featuring a rather ripe Jack Palance
performance. Part of the Midnite Movies series, but Fox's
packaging uses two discs instead of the single two-sided discs
sported by MGM entries. Both films are transferred full frame as
originally shot and look very presentable with nice image
detail, particularly Blueprint for
Murder; sound is clear on both.
|
Graduate,
The: 40th Anniversary Collector's Edition
(Dustin Hoffman)
MGM - Sept. 11 |
 |
Two
strong audio commentaries - one by actors Dustin Hoffman and
Katharine Ross, the other by directors Mike Nichols and Steven
Soderbergh; featurette of directors and academics discussing the
film's influence; soundtrack CD |
There's
not much new that needs to be said about the film itself. It
remains a strong piece of entertainment despite its overexposure
by virtue of its many iconic images evoking the 1960s. The
2.35:1 anamorphic transfer is the key improvement - the sharp,
clear image now allowing the film to shine properly. The mono
sound is very clear and quite dynamic and makes the inclusion of
DD and DTS 5.1 tracks unnecessary.
|
Return
of Dracula, The/The Vampire
(Francis Lederer/John Beal)
MGM - Sept. 11 |
 |
None |
Both
films are buoyed by fine portrayals by lead players Lederer and
Beal respectively, but ultimately they're little more than minor
entertainments due to workmanlike scripts at best. If the films
are personal favorites, however, the 1.85 anamorphic transfers
should please as are both are above average with sharp and quite
clean images. The mono sound is in good shape in both instances.
|
Anne
of the Thousand Days/Mary, Queen of Scots
(Genevieve Bujold/Glenda Jackson)
Universal - Sept. 18 |
 |
Isolated
music score for Mary, Queen of Scots
with commentary by film historians Nick Redman and Jon
Burlingame. |
Two
excellent films about Tudor England are packaged in this
two-disc release. Both play a little loose with the facts, Mary
more than Anne, but that's
easy to overlook with acting so good and subject matter so
interesting. Each title sports a 2.35:1 anamorphic transfer
that's quite presentable though subject to some noticeable edge
effects. The DD 2.0 sound is essentially a mono experience in
both cases, though somewhat more dynamic sounding on the Mary
disc.
|
Great
Northfield Minnesota Raid, The
(Cliff Robertson)
Universal - Sept. 25 |
 |
Theatrical
trailer. |
A
superior western that was a bit of a beacon during the genre's
weakening 1970s decade, it relates the story of the ill-fated
James and Younger brothers' raid on the title location. Gritty
action artfully blended with some humour and a realistic look.
The 2.35:1 anamorphic transfer is top-notch - colourful and
nicely detailed. The mono sound is clear.
|
Funny
Face: 50th Anniversary Edition
(Audrey Hepburn)
Paramount - Oct. 2 |
 |
Featurette
on the collaboration between Hepburn and fashion designer
Givenchy; theatrical trailer |
One
of Paramount's pitifully few classic releases, this is a new
release for the previously-available title. Fred Astaire and
Audrey Hepburn don't work that well together, but the Gershwin
music and the Astaire artistry make this musical a must anyway.
The 1.85:1 anamorphic transfer is very strong and represents a
substantial improvement over the original release. It's cleaner,
brighter, more colourful, and more detailed. The mono sound is
fine. The DD 5.1 track also offered adds little.
|
Jazz
Singer, The: 80th Anniversary Edition
(Al Jolson)
WB - Oct. 16 |
 |
Audio
commentary with Ron Hutchinson (Vitaphone Project) and Vince
Giordano; four vintage shorts with Al Jolson including A
Plantation Act; 6-film Jolson trailer gallery
including The Jazz Singer;
classic cartoon I Love to Singa;
feature length documentary The Dawn
of Sound: How Movies Learned to Talk; studio shorts
from or about the early sound era; over 4 hours of rare and
historical Vitaphone shorts from 1926-1936 (25 titles in all)
highlighting many gifted entertainers of the time; stills and
other publicity reproductions.
|
This
is the release to get if you get none other from the October and
November offerings - an extremely classy 3-disc set that gives
the first talking picture pride of place and just about as
superb a presentation as one could ask for. The film itself
tells the age-old story of youth seeking its own path as opposed
to one following parental expectations - in this case Al Jolson
as a popular jazz singer rather than as a synagogue cantor. The
film, which has only a few modest actual sound sequences with
much of it more in tune with silent film, utilized the Vitaphone
synchronized sound approach rather than the sound on film
approach that would later become standard. On DVD, it looks
sharp and well-detailed with a grayscale surprising appealing
for an 80-year old film. Only a few scratches and speckles
intrude. The mono sound is also well preserved with only minor
hiss at all evident.
|
Treasures
from American Film Archives III: Social Issues in American Film
1900-1934
(Various)
Image - Oct. 16 |
 |
176-page
book of credits and notes on each title in the set; audio
commentaries by various film historians and professors on many
titles. |
For
me, this is the best of the three Treasures
sets released to date under the auspices of the National Film
Preservation Foundation. Its unifying social issues theme makes
for a more coherent set of presentations than the previous sets
sported despite their admirable content. Grouped on four discs
under the headings "The City reformed", "New
Women", "Toil and Tyranny", "and "Americans
in the Making" are 48 films including 4 feature length
titles, all appealing and quite different from each other -
William Desmond Taylor's The Soul of
Youth (1920, delinquency), Lois Weber's Where
Are My Children? (1916, anti-abortion), Cecil B. De
Mille's The Godless Girl
(1928, atheism) and Redskin
(1929, with Richard Dix, native American issues). The other 44
short subjects comprise an astonishing range of subjects and
viewpoints (World War I, Prohibition, Americanization, traffic
safety, health, the suffragette and union movements, mafia,
etc.) The films themselves look very good for the most part. All
four features are very clear and detailed. The shorts are
similarly appealing though some are softer and more subject to
the vagaries of time. New music scores are presented with all
the silent titles, to good effect. Fans can also look forward to
the Treasures IV set in
the fall of 2008 (The American
Avant-Garde Film).
|
Burt
Lancaster: The Signature Collection
(The Flame and the Arrow/His Majesty O'Keefe/Jim Thorpe All
American/South Sea Woman/ Executive Action)
(Burt Lancaster)
WB - Oct. 23 |
 |
A
Joe McDoakes short, a cartoon, and one or more trailers with
each feature; vintage featurette November
22, 1963: In Search of an Answer on the Executive
Action disc. |
This
entry in Warner's Signature Collection line is a welcome treat
for Lancaster fans, but even they will probably admit that it
lacks many of the best Lancaster titles, most of which tend to
date from the late 1950s onwards. Most of the films here are
from Lancaster's early 1950s "athletic" period -
entertaining time-passers, of which Jim
Thorpe All American is the best. Executive
Action is from 1973 and one of the first big-screen
films questioning the events of Kennedy's assassination. I'm in
the minority here, but I've always found it to be a compelling
film with good work from both Lancaster and Robert Ryan (his
last film). The films all look quite presentable with His
Majesty O'Keefe, The Flame
and the Arrow, and Executive
Action (1.85 anamorphic) faring best. The mono sound
does the job in each instance. All titles are also available
separately.
|
Christmas
Carol, A: Ultimate Collector's Edition
(Alastair Sim)
VCI - Oct. 23 |
 |
Audio
commentary by film historian Marcus Hearn and actor George Cole;
the 1935 feature film Scrooge,
starring Seymour Hicks (the 60-minute version, still looking
rather dark and murky); featurettes on Alastair Sim, Charles
Dickens, and Renown Pictures; British and American theatrical
trailers. |
VCI
presents a new two-disc release of the Alastair Sim version of
the classic Dickens Christmas tale. This time, VCI has had
access to the original negative and the result is the
best-looking version of the film currently available on DVD.
Despite a few sequences that still look a little soft, there's
much better image detail and improved contrast. The transfer
looks quite clean now too. The film has been properly presented
in its full frame original aspect ratio, but an anamorphic
cropped version for presentation on high definition TVs has also
been included. It doesn't offer the same degree of crispness
evident on the full frame effort. An unnecessary colourized
version takes up disc space on the set's second disc. The mono
sound has also been spiffed up noticeably and an added surround
sound track provides little improvement on it.
|
