5 minutes ago
Warners Archives DVDs and other random notes
Friday, April 3, 2009
Before I forget, here is a link I've been meaning to post here for months. Via cartoonist Alex Robinson: Candid photos of Buster Keaton while he worked on the 1964 nearly-silent Samuel Beckett film entitled "Film". You cannot go wrong clicking on this link.
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I had big flappy hands of excitement over Warnerarchives.com and their (currently) 155 archival movies they are offering for the first time. Supposedly hundreds of these previously unreleased archival films will eventually be available, and DVDs are made to order. OMG flappy hands!
Some people have been waiting to hear about others' experiences before ordering their own DVD, so I thought it would be worthwhile to blather about my own experience. Because I have a problem controlling myself, I ordered one of these films -- "Cain and Mabel" (1936) -- Sunday night. It arrived just 3 days later.
The disk works great and the print is nice. I'm pretty sure it's the same print that is seen on TCM from time to time. This is bare-bones stuff: the only extra feature is the trailer and there are no chapters, you just skip forward 10 minutes with your remote. It's like recording a copy off TCM, basically, but I have to tell you the quality of the disk is significantly better than what I get when I record myself. My DVD recorder isn't out of date, either, it's barely over a year old. The screencap stills from Warner's disk are less fuzzy and there aren't any blips from when my digital cable spazzes out for a second.I'm sure some are disappointed with these bare-bones disks but I'm pretty happy with it. It's legal, convenient, and -- let's be honest here -- it's no more expensive than bootlegs. Or you can pay $50 for a legitimate VHS copy of a movie released in very limited fashion back in 1812, which has terrible video quality, which may not be copyable onto DVD, and which won't get released again. While I think $20 is a few bucks more than these disks are worth, I'd much rather give my $20 to Warner and encourage them to release more of these movies legitimately than any of the other options. Unless I want to wait until it's on TCM again, and trust me, the amount of time I waited for "The Money Trap" to show again was almost too much to bear
Since I first posted this, I discovered Ivan at Thrilling Days of Yesteryear and Thad at Thadblog have both weighed in on the subject, both with differing opinions. Check out their entries and comments. The more opinions, the better.
Allegedly there is some coupon code to save money on WB Archives disks floating around somewhere, but I don't know where it is and I didn't hear about it until after I'd ordered. You might want to check into it.
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I recently took a good long time off from blogging. During that time I didn't have a chance to properly reply to comments here on SBBN, tags, or other important comments, and I am sorry.
Piper tagged me for The Impossible Truth Behind Snake Plissken's Eye Patch, which I didn't participate in because, hey, taking time off. I also haven't seen "Escape from New York" for 15-ish years and couldn't have been witty or amusing about it if I'd even tried.
A big thank you to Friend Mouse, who has passed on the Premios Dardo [1] award to me recently, and who I did not properly thank in time. Check out Mouse's blog for some great TV show recaps!
And finally, I'm participating in Ibetolis' Counting Down The Zeroes blogathon at Film For the Soul. I'll leave my contributing movie as a surprise, but I am pretty dang excited about it. You should go check out the entries thus far, they're all excellent without exception. I'm intimidated. There, I said it.
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And that's pretty much it. Have a good weekend.[1] My Spanish is terrible, but isn't "Premios Dardo" the proper way to say this? Most of the English-speaking bloggers I've read say "Premio Dardos", but the plural doesn't work correctly; "Premio Dardos" means "Darts Award." Properly pluralized, "Premios Dardo" means "Dart Awards", which is I think the way it should be. But I'm not sure! Which is why I'm waffling about it! But anyway, here is your explanation for why I call it the "Premios Dardo".
Posted by Stacia at 3:18 AM 2 comments
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2 comments:
I wish I had seen this before I posted my "lecture" on the same subject. Great post, Stacia.
Hey Ivan, good post. I'm going to add a link to it and to Thad's posts here, the more opinions the better.
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