Twilight Time Discussion Thread

[RiFiFi1955]

Hey guys! Does anyone know when Screen Archives will be running their normal black Friday sale for TT? From what I remember it was for a good period of time in years past. Not sure if they announce when it starts though. Thanks in advance!

[hariseldon]

Not sure they called it a BF sale, but the whole catalog has some price reduction so maybe something similar in a couple of days.

2017
" WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 8TH AT 4PM EDT AND ENDS FRIDAY, DECEMBER 1ST AT 4PM EDT!
193 TITLES ON SALE!! CLICK THE LINK FOR THE FULL LIST!"

A week later in 2016
2016
SCREEN ARCHIVES ENTERTAINMENT EXCLUSIVE TWILIGHT TIME SALE!! 75% off 2011-2013 titles -- 50% off 2014-2015 titles -- 25% off 2016 titles through JULY ONLY. Sale starts Wednesday, November 16th at 4pm Eastern and ends Tuesday, December 6th at 4pm Eastern.

WEDNESDAY seems to be a key day -- so 11/7 or 11/14

[oildude]

[bdgking]

Only 45 more units remain at Screenarchives of Guess Who's Coming To Dinner then it's sold out .
No more copies remain at Twilight Time

[Dailyan]

Originally Posted by bdgking

Only 45 more units remain at Screenarchives of Guess Who's Coming To Dinner then it's sold out .
No more copies remain at Twilight Time

[dommie]

Originally Posted by oildude

FYI from Twilight Time's web site, the upcoming November release of Charlton Heston's Antony and Cleopatra is Region A locked. Pre-orders begin this Wednesday at 4 pm.This is one of only a handful of TT releases that are locked. I have updated this information in the first post.

Speaking of Heston, I sure wish someone would put out a Blu-ray release of 55 Days at Peking. You can't even find a U.S. domestic DVD of this these days, let alone Blu-ray. This is a title that is ripe for a TT release. I am not even sure who has the rights to this one. Samuel Bronston produced films seem to be hard to come by these days. Another lost one is the John Wayne Circus World; nowhere to be found as far as U.S. domestic releases are concerned.

It's also interesting to see The True Story of Jesse James coming from TT. This film was directed by Nicholas Ray, who, ironically, also directed 55 Days at Peking.

[StarDestroyer52]

Originally Posted by dommie

Speaking of Heston, I sure wish someone would put out a Blu-ray release of 55 Days at Peking. You can't even find a U.S. domestic DVD of this these days, let alone Blu-ray. This is a title that is ripe for a TT release. I am not even sure who has the rights to this one. Samuel Bronston produced films seem to be hard to come by these days. Another lost one is the John Wayne Circus World; nowhere to be found as far as U.S. domestic releases are concerned.

It's also interesting to see The True Story of Jesse James coming from TT. This film was directed by Nicholas Ray, who, ironically, also directed 55 Days at Peking.

The Weinstein Company did own them but as part of the bankruptcy its now with some company called Lantern Entertainment.

[hariseldon]

Originally Posted by hariseldon

Not sure they called it a BF sale, but the whole catalog has some price reduction so maybe something similar in a couple of days.

2017
" WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 8TH AT 4PM EDT AND ENDS FRIDAY, DECEMBER 1ST AT 4PM EDT!
193 TITLES ON SALE!! CLICK THE LINK FOR THE FULL LIST!"

A week later in 2016
2016
SCREEN ARCHIVES ENTERTAINMENT EXCLUSIVE TWILIGHT TIME SALE!! 75% off 2011-2013 titles -- 50% off 2014-2015 titles -- 25% off 2016 titles through JULY ONLY. Sale starts Wednesday, November 16th at 4pm Eastern and ends Tuesday, December 6th at 4pm Eastern.

WEDNESDAY seems to be a key day -- so 11/7 or 11/14

After thinking about it a bit and realizing tomorrow is the opening of Nov Preorders, it would seem to make next week a bit more likely than trying to start 2 big things simultaneously -- I guess making an assumption there will be a 2nd Big thing

[Aclea]

“Laugh not. I may have the instruments of a barber, but I have the desires of a prince.”

Given a big boost at the box-office by being one of the first wave of CinemaScope films thanks to producer Walter Wanger cannily brokering a deal with Allied Artists and 20th Century Fox, 1954’s The Adventures of Hajji Baba is the kind of film that made a pile of cash and pleased audiences before promptly being forgotten as they moved on to the next big thing. True, it’s not the most memorable of Arabian adventures and it was never going to stand alongside The Thief of Bagdad in the pantheon of screen classics – don’t expect any genies or flying carpets - but it is fun, cannily using its modest budget to best effect even if from time to time you do tend to notice just how much of it is set in the desert or out in perennial western movie location Lone Pine to save on building any big exterior sets (you don’t even get exterior establishing shots of the caliph’s palace while the joyous crowds in the finale are kept firmly offscreen and described by the characters) and how much Nat King Cole’s title song is constantly reused by Dimitri Tiomkin as a low volume echo effect with so little variation in its lyrics.

The story is simple, throwing John Derek’s ambitious bazaar barber and Elaine Stewart’s spoilt rotten princess on the lam from her father together. He thirsts for adventure as others do for wine – especially if its profitable – and finds himself agreeing to take her to her fiancé, the evil Nur-El-Din (Paul Picerni), and dodging the caliph’s men who are sent to bring her back. Complaints flow from her lips like water from the springs of Al Baqir (“Was ever a princess so cursed? The coffee is cold and the bath is hot!”) and her answer to all but flattery is to silence everyone by threats of a flogging. You know exactly where this relationship is going – in fact, you probably know where everything in this story is going unless it’s your first movie – but getting there is fun.

It’s the kind of film where no-one, but no-one notices that Stewart is very obviously a girl when she’s in disguise as a boy until they see her hair and where, naturally, as she realises her own selfishness and starts to change she becomes more naturally beautiful as the film progresses. The one unexpected aspect – well, apart the final wedding night scene that it has to be said is one of the oddest I’ve ever seen (I still have no idea what tone they were going for there) - is the role played by a roving band of escaped harem girls led by redheaded Amanda Blake (“I prefer to choose rather than be chosen”), who more or less are the film’s forty thieves: as one victim notes, “They're beautiful, yes, and enchanting, but they're sirens - cold. Their hearts are full of hatred. They rose up out of the hills like demons and rode us down! Those of us who were not killed in the fighting were hung up for the vultures.” Good job they hate Picerni even more than they hate the male travellers they prey upon even if they do regard Derek and Stewart as bird food…

John Derek is more Jon Hall-lite than the next Errol Flynn, but he has enough enthusiasm and athleticism to carry the movie, whether he’s jumping over or pole vaulting onto horses or sparring with Elaine Stewart while trying to avoid his head and his body ending up in different places. Stewart is more impressive, managing to sell her conversion from bossy cow to a selfless heroine worth rescuing better than the script does. Thomas Gomez drifts in and out of the film as a likeable merchant while we’re waiting for the belated arrival of Picerni as the kind of villain who offers his fiancé a quickie divorce and her freedom if she’ll go along with his plan to kill her father so he can control a crucial trade route as part of his plan to conquer all of Persia. And that’s not his only line in seduction technique: the smoothy tries to win her over by proudly describing the qualities of all the brightly Technicolored (well, color by DeLuxe) bottles of poison that hang from his tent like baubles on a Christmas tree. Which brings me to the film’s considered colour design, the work of Vogue photographer and color consultant George Hoyningen-Huene and production designer Gene Allen…

CinemaScope actually gets billed above the cast in this film, and Twilight Time’s Bluray offers an exceptional transfer with remarkable clarity with only one noticeablly soft shot (a process shot, which were particularly prone to loss of detail even without the compression of the Bausch and Lomb Scope lenses) and no dreaded teal push in the remastering. Which is especially reassuring since the film overall favours more pastel tones and a symbolic color coding scheme for the main locations and characters, opting for orange, red and brown for the caravans, green for the Turcoman women’s camp, sky blue for the bazaar, white for the Princess and black-against-white for the evil Nur-El-Din’s camp, and they all look the way they should in line with those descriptions from the film’s original publicity. Perhaps unsurprisingly considering he spent most of his career in television, The Affairs of Dobie Gillis director Don Weis’ use of the Scope frame isn’t as ambitious as other early Scope helmers like John Sturges, but it’s still a handsome looking film that makes the most of its high, wide and handsome locations and looks particularly good in this release.

Aside from an isolated music and effects track (aside from a single, Tiomkin’s score never had a soundtrack release) and a booklet the only extra is a non-anamorphic original theatrical trailer, but it’s a good looking and enjoyable release.

[tomkatholic]

It actually is teal pushed and darkened, it's just that the original was so saturated with bright colors that it still looks bold regardless.

I disagree with your assessment of Weis' use of Cinemascope-- the film is very consciously using dead space in an unusual fashion. Compare this to the same year's King Richard and the Crusaders and you can see a stark difference in approach using not dissimilar materials. The French critics loved this film, by the way, and between this and I Love Melvin many considered him to be an underrated auteur

[RCRochester]

Originally Posted by The Great Owl

This movie is so darn good, and it's one of the absolute best Twilight Time titles. Don't wait!

Here's my review from way back when...

[Show spoiler]

The authorities of an old mining town by the Grand Canyon are baffled by a series of brutal murders. A deputy sheriff, played by Cornel Wilde (Leave Her to Heaven, The Big Combo), is pressured by the community to solve the mystery while he deals with a dark event from his past and while he romances a beautiful socialite, played by Victoria Shaw (Westworld, The Crimson Kimono). When his girlfriend is abducted by the killer, the deputy is drawn into a harrowing confrontation on a cable car that is suspended 2,500 feet above the Canyon.

Edge of Eternity was directed by the legendary Don Siegel, who also helmed Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Dirty Harry, and Escape from Alcatraz, and, like those films, it benefits from some stunning location photography. The Grand Canyon itself is the real star of this story, and it looks amazing in this widescreen feature that was filmed in CinemaScope. An early scene involving a car crash into the Canyon and a middle scene with an aerial search of the Canyon are both quite breathtaking, and they set the stage for the awesome finale. Although the fight scene on top of the suspended cable car above the Canyon occasionally shows its limitations with rear-screen projection and such, it's still a nail-bitingly intense sequence even by today's standards. I will not go so far as to say that Edge of Eternity is a masterpiece, because the pacing of the story is somewhat quaint, but the photography and the action scenes make it into one of the most worthwhile films of my collection.

The experience of watching a film like Edge of Eternity today is a nostalgic reminder of the suspension of disbelief that has been lost with most of today's films that are overly reliant on computer-generated visuals. I probably speak for many movie enthusiasts when I say that I'm weary of scenes in contemporary films where the camera pans out to show some massive CGI city or CGI landscape that is intended to take our breath away, but simply makes us yawn. As someone states on the commentary track of this Blu-ray, "Movies used to take us places, but most of them don't do that anymore." Edge of Eternity, which can now be seen in its original widescreen CinemaScope glory, is a film that really takes us somewhere.

I cannot say enough great things about this Twilight Time Blu-ray.

I watched this movie last night and really enjoyed it. The murder mystery plot may be a tad unsophisticated but the whole thing is very engaging. But those visuals, wow, the shots of the Grand Canyon are obviously wondrous, but I also just liked seeing things like the rundown mining town, the shots of the Arizona desert, the Kendon's small but luxurious home, Victoria Shaw's colorful 50s outfits, etc. I was a little unsure of this movie before buying it and while the screenshots look good I don't think they do justice to how gorgeous this whole thing looks, but I picked it up during the Sony sale and after finally getting around to watching it, I was really impressed.

[EVERYONE LIES]

Originally Posted by Aclea

“Laugh not. I may have the instruments of a barber, but I have the desires of a prince.”

Given a big boost at the box-office by being one of the first wave of CinemaScope films thanks to producer Walter Wanger cannily brokering a deal with Allied Artists and 20th Century Fox, 1954’s The Adventures of Hajji Baba is the kind of film that made a pile of cash and pleased audiences before promptly being forgotten as they moved on to the next big thing. True, it’s not the most memorable of Arabian adventures and it was never going to stand alongside The Thief of Bagdad in the pantheon of screen classics – don’t expect any genies or flying carpets - but it is fun, cannily using its modest budget to best effect even if from time to time you do tend to notice just how much of it is set in the desert or out in perennial western movie location Lone Pine to save on building any big exterior sets (you don’t even get exterior establishing shots of the caliph’s palace while the joyous crowds in the finale are kept firmly offscreen and described by the characters) and how much Nat King Cole’s title song is constantly reused by Dimitri Tiomkin as a low volume echo effect with so little variation in its lyrics.

The story is simple, throwing John Derek’s ambitious bazaar barber and Elaine Stewart’s spoilt rotten princess on the lam from her father together. He thirsts for adventure as others do for wine – especially if its profitable – and finds himself agreeing to take her to her fiancé, the evil Nur-El-Din (Paul Picerni), and dodging the caliph’s men who are sent to bring her back. Complaints flow from her lips like water from the springs of Al Baqir (“Was ever a princess so cursed? The coffee is cold and the bath is hot!”) and her answer to all but flattery is to silence everyone by threats of a flogging. You know exactly where this relationship is going – in fact, you probably know where everything in this story is going unless it’s your first movie – but getting there is fun.

It’s the kind of film where no-one, but no-one notices that Stewart is very obviously a girl when she’s in disguise as a boy until they see her hair and where, naturally, as she realises her own selfishness and starts to change she becomes more naturally beautiful as the film progresses. The one unexpected aspect – well, apart the final wedding night scene that it has to be said is one of the oddest I’ve ever seen (I still have no idea what tone they were going for there) - is the role played by a roving band of escaped harem girls led by redheaded Amanda Blake (“I prefer to choose rather than be chosen”), who more or less are the film’s forty thieves: as one victim notes, “They're beautiful, yes, and enchanting, but they're sirens - cold. Their hearts are full of hatred. They rose up out of the hills like demons and rode us down! Those of us who were not killed in the fighting were hung up for the vultures.” Good job they hate Picerni even more than they hate the male travellers they prey upon even if they do regard Derek and Stewart as bird food…

John Derek is more Jon Hall-lite than the next Errol Flynn, but he has enough enthusiasm and athleticism to carry the movie, whether he’s jumping over or pole vaulting onto horses or sparring with Elaine Stewart while trying to avoid his head and his body ending up in different places. Stewart is more impressive, managing to sell her conversion from bossy cow to a selfless heroine worth rescuing better than the script does. Thomas Gomez drifts in and out of the film as a likeable merchant while we’re waiting for the belated arrival of Picerni as the kind of villain who offers his fiancé a quickie divorce and her freedom if she’ll go along with his plan to kill her father so he can control a crucial trade route as part of his plan to conquer all of Persia. And that’s not his only line in seduction technique: the smoothy tries to win her over by proudly describing the qualities of all the brightly Technicolored (well, color by DeLuxe) bottles of poison that hang from his tent like baubles on a Christmas tree. Which brings me to the film’s considered colour design, the work of Vogue photographer and color consultant George Hoyningen-Huene and production designer Gene Allen…

CinemaScope actually gets billed above the cast in this film, and Twilight Time’s Bluray offers an exceptional transfer with remarkable clarity with only one noticeablly soft shot (a process shot, which were particularly prone to loss of detail even without the compression of the Bausch and Lomb Scope lenses) and no dreaded teal push in the remastering. Which is especially reassuring since the film overall favours more pastel tones and a symbolic color coding scheme for the main locations and characters, opting for orange, red and brown for the caravans, green for the Turcoman women’s camp, sky blue for the bazaar, white for the Princess and black-against-white for the evil Nur-El-Din’s camp, and they all look the way they should in line with those descriptions from the film’s original publicity. Perhaps unsurprisingly considering he spent most of his career in television, The Affairs of Dobie Gillis director Don Weis’ use of the Scope frame isn’t as ambitious as other early Scope helmers like John Sturges, but it’s still a handsome looking film that makes the most of its high, wide and handsome locations and looks particularly good in this release.

Aside from an isolated music and effects track (aside from a single, Tiomkin’s score never had a soundtrack release) and a booklet the only extra is a non-anamorphic original theatrical trailer, but it’s a good looking and enjoyable release.

This has to be a tough sell. The biggest name is the composer.

[The Great Owl]

I'll be purchasing Oklahoma Crude, The True Story of Jesse James, and Sunshine in a couple of days, but I couldn't quite pull off day one as I usually do. I bought Ozzy Osbourne tickets earlier this week, and that put a nice dent in my disposable income.

[xochipilli]

I also have a question regarding TT's end of year sale, as the topic has been raised a little further up the thread. I'm trying to save up in order to cross a large number of titles off my want list, and while I already have a good amount ready, it's not as much as I'd like. Like the other poster I noticed the sale is usually in November, usually starting either wednesday or thursday, but I'm wondering if it's possible that they wait for December. I know that's unlikely since a November date allows the orders to arrive in time for Christmas, but I looked back at 2017 and in that year there were no sales in October, whereas this year there was a Sony sale in September and a 15-15-15 sale in October, so maybe TT would like to let people save up before the sale. Any thoughts?

[thatguamguy]

My advice is, go through your wish list and figure out the ones that are most likely to sell out, and get those first. There will always be more Twilight Time sales, and titles pretty much never sell out anymore when they are not on sale. Unless you are trying to get literally every title, you shouldn't worry about "catching up", because they're just going to put out more that you want anyway.

[xochipilli]

Originally Posted by thatguamguy

My advice is, go through your wish list and figure out the ones that are most likely to sell out, and get those first. There will always be more Twilight Time sales, and titles pretty much never sell out anymore when they are not on sale. Unless you are trying to get literally every title, you shouldn't worry about "catching up", because they're just going to put out more that you want anyway.

Thanks, but that's actually not what I was wondering. My list of TT titles is actually quite short, but since I only started buying titles a year ago I'm just focusing on getting them as quickly as possible so then I can go back to buying more films from other studios and labels. What I actually would like to know is if there's a chance the sale might only happen in December, so that I can plan accordingly. Twilight Time never announces their sales in advance, do they?

[thatguamguy]

Sometimes you get a day or two of notice. You should expect the sale to be in November, with maybe a little spill into December. My understanding is that they are an understaffed company and these sales hit the employees hard, and shipments get delayed, so that it makes more sense to have the HUGE sale in November, and then spend December catching up on shipments and closing out the year. It's better for the employees and the customers both.

[78deluxe]

Originally Posted by xochipilli

Thanks, but that's actually not what I was wondering. My list of TT titles is actually quite short, but since I only started buying titles a year ago I'm just focusing on getting them as quickly as possible so then I can go back to buying more films from other studios and labels. What I actually would like to know is if there's a chance the sale might only happen in December, so that I can plan accordingly. Twilight Time never announces their sales in advance, do they?

Every company knows November is IT. Wait till December to start a sale and many customers already blew the disposable income from November.

This is why sales start earlier and earlier in November. Trying to get the consumers money before they blow it all.

[SeanJoyce]

November, December; makes little difference, since sales appear to occur monthly now. If you miss it either of those months, just catch it in January.

[Aclea]

Even before the B&N Criterion sale the last month hit my wallet pretty hard with so many BD offers trying to get a head start and avoid getting lost in the crowd, it could almost pass for Black Friday (and may turn out to have had better offers judging by the last two years).