Warner Archive Collection Blu-ray Discussion Thread

[emw107]

Originally Posted by hariseldon

My 4 item order from the sale came in a box along with quite a lot of other folks.

I was surprised that my order of 4 blu rays from MZ were sent in a padded envelope and not a box. Nothing damaged, thankfully, but I thought for sure it would be boxed.

[EVOLVIST]

*sigh* I'm incurably hooked on WAC. I haven't put in a pre-order for any of the new titles yet, but damn, I've ordered The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex & She Wore a Yellow Ribbon to go with my Hitchcock WAC set that I haven't watched yet.

Monday night (since I was off work) I watched the B&W version of Doctor X all the way through, which I had only spot-checked before.

I didn't think I would fall in love with this stuff.

[HenryHill]

Originally Posted by EVOLVIST

*sigh* I'm incurably hooked on WAC. I haven't put in a pre-order for any of the new titles yet, but damn, I've ordered The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex & She Wore a Yellow Ribbon to go with my Hitchcock WAC set that I haven't watched yet.

Monday night (since I was off work) I watched the B&W version of Doctor X all the way through, which I had only spot-checked before.

I didn't think I would fall in love with this stuff.

Freaks (1932) - One of Us! Scene (6/9) | Movieclips - YouTube

[EVOLVIST]

Originally Posted by HenryHill

Freaks (1932) - One of Us! Scene (6/9) | Movieclips - YouTube

Such a good movie. Is it known why this site displays the WAC cover, yet it has a TBA date?

[Gunsnroses092789]

Originally Posted by EVOLVIST

Such a good movie. Is it known why this site displays the WAC cover, yet it has a TBA date?

Fan-made cover. This has never been announced for Blu-ray.

[EVOLVIST]

Originally Posted by Gunsnroses092789

Fan-made cover. This has never been announced for Blu-ray.

Figures. I hate when they do that. A buddy of mine slipped me a copy of the film on a hard drive several years ago, and boy does it look good in 1080p.

I don't know the provenance but it's not some YouTube rip or anything. Probably from one of the streaming services. I would gladly pay for a spinning disc. I don't like collecting digital copies.

[HenryHill]

Party Girl dropped to $9.99 on Amazon, so I bit. I've never seen it, but you can't go wrong with Cyd Charisse.

[EVOLVIST]

Originally Posted by HenryHill

Party Girl dropped to $9.99 on Amazon, so I bit. I've never seen it, but you can't go wrong with Cyd Charisse.

I'm tempted but then I read Metrocolor, which I had a bad experience with Gigi, also from 1958. However, the screenshots look a little better for Party Girl.

Do you know much about Metrocolor? Perhaps it's a case by case basis.

[whiteberry]

Originally Posted by HenryHill

you can't go wrong with Cyd Charisse.

Party Girl '58 Cyd Charisse - Vicki Gaye -(Dancer)/HD - YouTube

[belcherman]

Originally Posted by HenryHill

Party Girl dropped to $9.99 on Amazon, so I bit. I've never seen it, but you can't go wrong with Cyd Charisse.

They had me at noir musical.

[Ned Brainard]

Originally Posted by EVOLVIST

I'm tempted but then I read Metrocolor, which I had a bad experience with Gigi, also from 1958. However, the screenshots look a little better for Party Girl.

Do you know much about Metrocolor? Perhaps it's a case by case basis.

The blu-ray for Gigi was put out ca. 2008 so that disc probably should not be viewed as reflective of current standards and restoration practices. BTW - the blu-ray for The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex will likely put you over the moon with delight. That disc and the one for the 1951 version of Show Boat are the best Technicolor restorations I've seen from WAC in the last year or so with Ziegfeld Follies and Good News coming in ever so marginally behind. I do have a few more titles like The Three Musketeers, Ivanhoe, and Take Me Out to the Ball Game in my "to watch" pile so my rankings could easily change.

[hariseldon]

Originally Posted by EVOLVIST

Such a good movie. Is it known why this site displays the WAC cover, yet it has a TBA date?

Some people are under the impression that the Database is a personal wishlist. Unreleased items have been there for years and years apparently never being removed even after being reported.

[EVOLVIST]

Originally Posted by Ned Brainard

The blu-ray for Gigi was put out ca. 2008 so that disc probably should not be viewed as reflective of current standards and restoration practices. BTW - the blu-ray for The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex will likely put you over the moon with delight. That disc and the one for the 1951 version of Show Boat are the best Technicolor restorations I've seen from WAC in the last year or so with Ziegfeld Follies and Good News coming in ever so marginally behind. I do have a few more titles like The Three Musketeers, Ivanhoe, and Take Me Out to the Ball Game in my "to watch" pile so my rankings could easily change.

Yeah, no doubt. I've had Gigi for a while, which means that I should have learned my lesson when I bought The Adventures of Robin Hood not long ago. It's one of the worst BDs I've seen in a while, but that's just because technology has left it behind. But Gigi isn't that bad; I just think the colors look a little hazy, so I wondered if that was a hallmark of Metrocolor. Probably not, as you've intimated.

But hell yeah, I'm looking forward to some eye-candy this weekend with Elizabeth and Essex and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. I haven't seen an old skool Western in a long, long while, so that helped my decision. Who knows what I'll pick up next, but it will likely be some of those three-strip Technicolor flicks until I've exhausted WAC's current offerings.

[gudemameshiba]

Originally Posted by captainsolo

Since people asked me on facebook if I had had any news I wrote WHV again to see if I could get a response. The last I had heard was two years ago when they said they would get back to me-but this of course was at the start of Covid and before the restructuring.

If you ever hear back again I would love to know! I have made do by borrowing titles from the library to create backups for a few discs I own that have failed. (All the more reason to restore The Divorceé, A Free Soul, and especially Top Hat and release them on Blu-ray IMO!)

[NeilZ]

Originally Posted by gudemameshiba

If you ever hear back again I would love to know! I have made do by borrowing titles from the library to create backups for a few discs I own that have failed. (All the more reason to restore The Divorceé, A Free Soul, and especially Top Hat and release them on Blu-ray IMO!)

I'm shocked Top Hat still hasn't been restored actually.

[Benoit Blanc]

Originally Posted by whiteberry

Party Girl '58 Cyd Charisse - Vicki Gaye -(Dancer)/HD - YouTube

My pants just told me to buy this. Can't say no to my pants.

[dressedtokill]

Originally Posted by NeilZ

I'm shocked Top Hat still hasn't been restored actually.

Unfortunately, like most films distributed and produced by RKO, there's a lot of issues with the film elements. They require a lot of work and that takes time and money. The same thing happened with Bringing Up Baby, another RKO property and that one took ages to come out.

[playingphysicist]

Originally Posted by dressedtokill

Unfortunately, like most films distributed and produced by RKO, there's a lot of issues with the film elements. They require a lot of work and that takes time and money. The same thing happened with Bringing Up Baby, another RKO property and that one took ages to come out.

One thing I didn't know until recently is that quite a few RKO titles' trailers don't survive, either.

[hurm]

I feel like it never gets mentioned but in terms of picture quality, Annie Get Your Gun is my favorite WAC release. It looks so stunning!

[darrellmaclaine]

Originally Posted by hurm

I feel like it never gets mentioned but in terms of picture quality, Annie Get Your Gun is my favorite WAC release. It looks so stunning!

I think one of the reasons Annie looks so great is that it was out of circulation for so long, it was never struck to death for TV/video/revival purposes. The DVD was great too, one of the very best looking of a Technicolor film, particularly for when it came out.