Twilight Time Discussion Thread

[Arkadin]

Originally Posted by jacobb1313

I have no idea if this means anything, but searching for "Journey to the Center of the Earth" directly from Screen Archives' website doesn't bring up the Blu-Ray. Is it finally sold out... ? (Thank God I bought one already.)

I just looked and you're right--
JTTCOTE is now SOLD OUT!!
(it no longer appears under blu-ray tab)
there are 16 out of 18 TT bds shown.
(Grapes of Wrath, Zorba, Robe, dave Grusin, nudie musical-- don't count)

[rdodolak]

Originally Posted by jacobb1313

I have no idea if this means anything, but searching for "Journey to the Center of the Earth" directly from Screen Archives' website doesn't bring up the Blu-Ray. Is it finally sold out... ? (Thank God I bought one already.)

Yep, looks like it sold out sometime last night/this morning.

[silverlakephil]

Originally Posted by Deciazulado

Cover Girl Blu-ray Review

Disappointing about the PQ. I guess it's all about the elements they have on hand. I have this, so I'll check if what the reviewer says is true.

[Dex Robinson]

I was looking at the review for COVER GIRL (currently on it's way to me) and I'm not as distressed as I thought I'd be.

2.5 out of 5 for the video is pretty dismal. However, based on what I see, I think the best decisions were made under the circumstances. I've heard complaints that the transfer is too dark. Those initial reports didn't bother me too much because, in general, I think most home video transfers over the last 20 years have been too bright. Toning down the brightness from our current standard may not be a bad thing.

There is an old saying in photography that "shadows must die so that highlights can live". The gist of that being that exposure should be biased to preserve detail in highlights. That's an often ignored rule (even ignored in AS GOOD AS IT GETS). It looks like the COVER GIRL transfer follows that rule.

The review mentions the over abundance of grain. Well, you don't want more than there should be...but if this is the best source material, then the lesser sin is too much grain rather than scrubbing it. And I'm not seeing EE worth mentioning in the screen caps. I guess I won't be able to say anything about the color shifts until I've got the disc.

The review here has the first screen caps I've seen. Fortunately, I'm not seeing anything to panic about. I have hope and I'll remain optimistic pending the arrival of my disc.

[Deciazulado]

o/~ It's not enough to advertise a famous star they know.
If you want to get the crowds to come around
You've gotta have glorious Technicolor,
Breathtaking Academyscope and
SuperMonophonic sooooound. ~\o

[Pirate King]

Originally Posted by Deciazulado

o/~ It's not enough to advertise a famous star they know.
If you want to get the crowds to come around
You've gotta have glorious Technicolor,
Breathtaking Academyscope and
SuperMonophonic sooooound. ~\o

Well.... maybe it is my 63 year old eyes.. but I think that screen cap looks pretty damn good.

[JMK]

Yes, that is one of the better moments, but I still feel skintones are too magenta even in that sequence (if not necessarily in the exact frame of this screencap). If you look through all the screencaps, you'll see a noticeable disparity in saturation and general color accuracy.

[Banned User]

Originally Posted by PowellPressburger

But I plan on owning all the TT BLU releases.

You've got more guts then me. I've bought them all up until this last release then one day I added up how much I spent on those handful of releases and about had a heart attack. I'll probably pick up some more down the line, but with so many great releases coming out ( classic monster collection, James Bond Boxset, Hitchcock boxset, Indy Boxset, Jaws plus the B&N sale going on) its hard to spend so much for so little. Not knocking TT just saying my money tree is drying up.

If someone would like to send me donations please PM me. PLEASE FOR HEAVENS SAKE PM ME!

[captveg]

Originally Posted by PowellPressburger

I agree with those who can't believe they haven't sold out of Swamp Water and Rapture and the Big Heat.

The Big Heat will sell out eventually, no doubt in my mind about that.

As for the other two - it would help if I could see the films via a rental of a previous release, but they were new to DVD/Blu. I don't blind buy titles for $30.

[troysayshi]

Originally Posted by jacobb1313

I have no idea if this means anything, but searching for "Journey to the Center of the Earth" directly from Screen Archives' website doesn't bring up the Blu-Ray. Is it finally sold out... ? (Thank God I bought one already.)

Originally Posted by rdodolak

Yep, looks like it sold out sometime last night/this morning.

As you said has literally just sold out. I saw it on the site last time I looked (15 or so hours ago) but when I went to order those magnificent men... Journey was gone.

[ROclockCK]

Originally Posted by Arkadin

I just looked and you're right--
JTTCOTE is now SOLD OUT!!
(it no longer appears under blu-ray tab)
there are 16 out of 18 TT bds shown.
(Grapes of Wrath, Zorba, Robe, dave Grusin, nudie musical-- don't count)

Well, so much for the accuracy of the cart. Looks like whitesheik was right about that.

[rdodolak]

Originally Posted by ROclockCK

Well, so much for the accuracy of the cart. Looks like whitesheik was right about that.

What do you mean ROclockCK?

[hootowls]

Originally Posted by Banned User

As much as I like Journey to the Center of the Earth and Mysterious Island I find it a travesty that The Big Heat and Rapture aren't closer to being sold out. Two of their best titles IMO.

How all of the titles are selling is a reflection of the tastes of the percentage of blu-ray.com members that pay attention to the TT notices on the site, people on other related specialty sites and a few Facebook users. Maybe a few more, here and there, but the point is, a tiny amount of the total population that purchases blu-rays. You have to know about the availability of a title in order to purchase it; as time goes by, maybe TT's market penetration and awareness will grow and they'll find more people to purchase these and other titles. To that end, I think that companies that rely on FB to get the word out are limiting themselves too much - they should also have a proper web page to more fully display their wares. There's still a whole world outside of FB. IMO.

[ROclockCK]

Originally Posted by rdodolak

What do you mean ROclockCK?

According to rezpekt yesterday:

If you trust ScreenArchives' webstore system then this is how much they had in stock yesterday:

MYSTERIOUS ISLAND (1961) 317
RAPTURE (1965) 353
JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH (1959) 389
BIG HEAT (1953), THE 512
EGYPTIAN (1954), THE 859
DEMETRIUS AND THE GLADIATORS (1954) 988
BELL, BOOK AND CANDLE (1958) 1048
SWAMP WATER (1941) 1193
PAL JOEY (1957) 1265
BITE THE BULLET (1975) 1323
DESIREE (1954) 1381
WAYWARD BUS (1957), THE 1667
AS GOOD AS IT GETS (1997) 1969
PICNIC (1955) 2054
ROOTS OF HEAVEN (1958) , THE 2327

389 Journey Blu-rays - over 1/10th of the total original stock - sold in barely a day and a half? I suppose it's possible, but considering this title's sales pace since the 500 remaining announcement almost one month ago (when posters were still claiming that over 700 were left according to the cart), that extreme spike seems highly unlikely.

What's more likely, is that Redman really was telling the truth when he dropped by here with that little courtesy 'heads-up' about the 500 left announcement going up on SAE Friday, June 15th.

[rdodolak]

Originally Posted by ROclockCK

According to rezpekt yesterday:


389 Journey Blu-rays - over 1/10th of the total original stock - sold in barely a day and a half? I suppose it's possible, but considering this title's sales pace since the 500 remaining announcement almost one month ago (when posters were still claiming that over 700 were left according to the cart), that exteme spike seems highly unlikely.

What's more likely, is that Redman really was telling the truth when he dropped by here with that little courtesy 'heads-up' about the 500 left announcement going up on SAE Friday, June 15th.

Ok, I see where you're going with that. Could be but looking at the posts in this thread and the Journey thread, here are some remaining numbers for Journey which were posted throughout the past couple of days.

The numbers that rezpekt had posted were from sometime on Monday:

~ Mon (389)
Tues 2:38 PM (355)
Tues 8:07 PM (230)
Wed 8:05 AM (109)

So, if the inventory was accurate then that would mean quite a few copies sold over the past day. Now that might not be all that unrealistic especially if you had a lot of buyers sitting on the fence that jumped off in the fear of missing out. I also wouldn't be surprised if a few flippers jumped in to clean up the scraps. Of course the cart could be off but that would be an odd thing for a business to do. Why purposely misrepresent your inventory numbers since that could turn out to be a larger headache. Now, if we see a large quantity start showing up on eBay then we know what happened.

[ROclockCK]

Originally Posted by rdodolak

Ok, I see where you're going with that. Could be but looking at the posts in this thread and the Journey thread, here are some remaining numbers for Journey which were posted throughout the past couple of days.

The numbers that respekt had posted were from sometime on Monday:

~ Mon (389)
Tues 2:38 PM (355)
Tues 8:07 PM (230)
Wed 8:05 AM (109)

So, if the inventory was accurate then that would mean quite a few copies sold over the past day. Now that might not be all that unrealistic especially if you had a lot of buyers sitting on the fence that jumped off in the fear of missing out. I also wouldn't be surprised if a few flippers jumped in to clean up the scraps. Of course the cart could be off but that would be an odd thing for a business to do. Why purposely misrepresent your inventory numbers since that could turn out to be a larger headache. Now, if we see a large quantity start showing up on eBay then we know what happened.

The *wild card* here is SAE also has that Amazon presence rdodolak. And there's no guarantee that their cart on the SAE site is hotlinked to their Amazon store, updating automatically in anything close to real time. So it's quite possible that a sales spike on Amazon might not be reflected in the site's available stock for hours...or heck, maybe even days.

So relying on that cart count, whether roughly correct or not, just seems risky to me...especially if it's a title you really want.

[ROclockCK]

Originally Posted by Pirate King

Well.... maybe it is my 63 year old eyes.. but I think that screen cap looks pretty damn good.

I don't have an IB Technicolor print banging around for reference Pirate King, but ditto this one:



Mr Harris certainly knows his stuff, especially the history of films on film, so my first instinct would be to give him the benefit of the doubt about what Cover Girl *should* look like vis-à-vis its native 3-strip imbibation prints.

Nevertheless, taken at face value by a fan not as intimately familiar with the source celluloid...well...I'm certainly not cryin' here...

[rdodolak]

Originally Posted by ROclockCK

The *wild card* here is SAE also has that Amazon presence rdodolak. And there's no guarantee that their cart on the SAE site is hotlinked to their Amazon store, updating automatically in anything close to real time. So it's quite possible that a sales spike on Amazon might not be reflected in the site's available stock for hours...or heck, maybe even days.

So relying on that cart count, whether roughly correct or not, just seems risky to me...especially if it's a title you really want.

Well, that is a good point ROclockCK ... we really don't know how SAE's Amazon operations are intertwined, if at all, with its own web site.

[RingOfHonor]

How does one see how many remaining copies they have in stock? I want to be sure to get the Big Heat before it goes OOP but with all the other sales right now I can't afford it

[rdodolak]

Originally Posted by RingOfHonor

How does one see how many remaining copies they have in stock? I want to be sure to get the Big Heat before it goes OOP but with all the other sales right now I can't afford it

Put 9999 copies in your cart and the cart will automatically reduce the number, alledgely, to the number still available on hand. However, there's no telling really because TT may have additional copies in a warehouse somewhere. SAE doesn't always keep the entire stock on hand.

EDIT: The site is still showing 488 copies on hand.