Warner Archive Collection Blu-ray Discussion Thread

[Shane Rollins]

Originally Posted by hoytereden

I used to look forward to their monthly announcements because more often than not there would be 2-3 titles I’d buy and there’d be at least one dvd upgrade in there. They’ve more or less abandoned those dvds in their library and 4K titles (from existing Blu-rays) have taken their place. I doubt I’ll ever see Blu-rays of the Dickens/Lean duo or the Antoine Doinel set from them.

I'm still waiting on the Powell/Pressburger movies, The Unbearable Lightness Of Being, and like 500 other titles.

[Shane Rollins]

Originally Posted by SanCarolina59

From the former owner of HTF, with permission from George F., apparently The Man Who Came To Dinner should be out by Christmas if nothing’s changed on the schedule/timeline, although it’s noted this information was given last year and things could very well have changed. The original information is quoted below:

"My great aunt Jennifer ate a whole box of candy every day of her life. She lived to be 102 and when she'd been dead three days she looked better than you do now!"

I don't know how they seriously thought about recasting Woolley's role, he was truly perfect in this film. Hope it finally gets released.

[BluPat]

Does anyone know what studio owns Oliver Twist (1948)? It was on Turner Classic Movies yesterday and it looked beautiful.

[Shane Rollins]

Originally Posted by ilenewoodsfan99

My current theory is that since MGM will be celebrating its centennial next year, Warner will release a bunch of their MGM library onto blu ray and 4K then. If I'm right, during a Q&A on a podcast, George mentioned they had plans for The Wind and The Crowd. Maybe a release to celebrate is part of that plan?

Of all the MGM titles I want (that WB owns), Greed, the rest of the Marx Brothers films, Raintree County, and The Wall are the big ones.

The rest are owned by MGM, but I don't know if they can truly be called MGM movies (most are UA, and that anniversary flew right by).

[DavidRoylance]

ITV own this.

Originally Posted by BluPat

Does anyone know what studio owns Oliver Twist (1948)? It was on Turner Classic Movies yesterday and it looked beautiful.

[Egbert Souse]

FYI, Pink Floyd The Wall is owned by Pink Floyd Music, but it think Warner still has theatrical and streaming rights.

[Shane Rollins]

Originally Posted by speedracer5

I am here for all the Bette--especially Beyond the Forest! I saw this in the theater at the Portland Art Museum a few years ago and it was unbelievable. I know that Bette hated the film and only did it to call Warner's bluff when they wanted to screw her out of the money they owed her for one more film. I absolutely love how miscast Bette is and she knows she's miscast. Her performance is so over the top campy, and that wig! I just loved it and I'm so happy that I took the opportunity to see it in the theater.

Originally Posted by Shanghai Express

It's amazing and should be a well-known camp classic. Her performance is balls-to-the-wall. She may have hated it but she sure as hell didn't phone it in.

Weird that it was on TV all the time from the 50s to the 90s, and was even released on VHS, but never on disc and rarely if ever shown on TCM.

Originally Posted by speedracer5

I heard that there was some sort of rights issue, which seems crazy that it could be shown all those years, and then all of a sudden it can't. Unfortunately, as someone born in 1984, Beyond the Forest wasn't on my radar in the 1980s, and the 90s was when I was just starting to discover classic film, but film noir wasn't really on my radar in middle school in the mid-90s. I was more interested in comedies and musicals. I missed my chance!

Could be a rights issue, could be the star blocking the release (her estate could own the film either out of hatred for the film or just to stick it to the studio, like Swayze did with Skatetown, U.S.A.), or the elements could be a mess.

Originally Posted by Shanghai Express

Weird that it was on TV all the time from the 50s to the 90s, and was even released on VHS, but never on disc and rarely if ever shown on TCM.

Same thing describes Raintree County, and the reason for that is that film's elements are in horrible shape. I'm sure if I carefully went through the lists of movies that WB owns, we could find hundreds if not thousands of films with major elements issues. Beyond The Forest could be one of them.

[Shane Rollins]

Originally Posted by darrellmaclaine

There certainly might be extra MGM stuff next year but they can't promote it in any meaningful way like WB100 as they don't own the company, just the pre-86 library.

While I don't know if this kind of relationship exists today, studios have worked together before. In fact, WB and MGM worked together before on multiple occasions, at the very least when assembling various promotions and box sets for Stanley Kubrick and Oliver Stone.

Ideally, both WB and present-day MGM would get together, since they collectively own most if not all MGM films. They could each celebrate MGM's 100th anniversary. WB owns like 90% of MGM's movies, MGM owns the more modern stuff (plus several other studios, so they can plug those studio's stuff like WB plugged their acquired studios' stuff), and they could each put out dozens if not hundreds of movies. (Let's hope they're not the old discs though, since some of MGM's discs are pitiful.)

[Shane Rollins]

Originally Posted by romuald121

If you look it up, it says Paramount owns it but Universal released a DVD of it so might have been licensed by Universal

Universal bought several hundred Paramount titles in either the 60s or 70s including:

-The Cocoanuts, Animal Crackers, Monkey Business, Horse Feathers, and Duck Soup (first five Marx Brothers movies)
-The Crusades and Reap The Wild Wind (DeMille)
-Psycho, Vertigo, and several other Hitchcock movies
-One-Eyed Jacks (the film then fell into the public domain, but Universal still owns the physical elements)

...and many more.

[Shane Rollins]

Originally Posted by Egbert Souse

FYI, Pink Floyd The Wall is owned by Pink Floyd Music, but it think Warner still has theatrical and streaming rights.

Who owns PFM? Not trying to be dickish but I thought that was literally just a shell corporation for Waters, with everyone else receiving little if any profit from PFM's existence.

[JasonMichael]

I believe Pink Floyd Music is still owned by Waters, Gilmour and Mason. It's the entity that distributes royalties connected to Floyd. Waters owns the rights to the Wall stage show, which is why he is the one who tours it while Mason and Gilmour can only do a few songs from the album when they perform live. I don't know who owns the rights to the film. Mr. Souse is probably correct that PFM owns it.

[Shane Rollins]

Here's what I'm hoping for:

He Who Gets Slapped (1924)
Greed (1924)
The Unholy Three (1925 and 1930)
Ben-Hur (1925) (remastered)
The Scarlet Letter (1926)
The Singing Fool (both cuts)
Noah’s Ark (1928) (all surviving cuts)
The Maltese Falcon (1931)
Red-Headed Woman (1932)
I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932)
Baby Face (1933) – both versions
She (1935)
Top Hat (1935)
Anna Karenina (1935)
Captain Blood (1935)
A Day At The Races (1937)
Room Service (1938)
Wuthering Heights (1939)
At The Circus (1939)
Go West (1940)
The Big Store (1941)
The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942)
The Hard Way (1943)
Cabin in the Sky (1943)
The Seventh Victim (1943) (both cuts)
Humoresque (1946)
Johnny Belinda (1948)
Beyond the Forest (1949)
Quo Vadis (remastered)
Raintree County (1957)
Splendor in the Grass (1961)
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1968)
The Wild Bunch (1969) (remastered, at least the director's cut)
Last Summer (1969) (X-rated cut)
Zabriskie Point (1970)
The Strawberry Statement (1970) (both cuts)
Performance (1970) (all cuts)
Ryan's Daughter (1970) (both cuts)
The Devils (1971) (117-minute cut (which exists), complete Hell On Earth doc, and all special features)
Savage Messiah (1972)
Sybil (1976) (the original TV cut)
Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973) (at least rough cut, theatrical cut, preview cut and DVD cut)
O Lucky Man (1973)
Lisztomania (1975)
Helter Skelter (1976)
Desperate Living (1977)
The Great Santini (1979)
Salem's Lot (1979) (all cuts)
Carny (1980)
Divine Madness (1980)
Private Benjamin (1980)
They All Laughed (1981)
Star 80 (1983)
Mike's Murder (1984) (both cuts)
The Little Drummer Girl (1984)
Burglar (1987)
Hearts Of Fire (1987)
It (1990) (uncut, OAR, original sound)
Dogfight (1991)
Arizona Dream (1993) (all cuts)
The Secret Garden (1993)
The Grass Harp (1995)
Executive Decision (1996) (uncut)
My Fellow Americans (1996)
The Shining (1997)
Gummo (1997)
Pecker (1998)
Death To Smoochy (2002)
A Dirty Shame (2004)

...just to name a few.

[Taylor3978]

Originally Posted by BluPat

Does anyone know what studio owns Oliver Twist (1948)? It was on Turner Classic Movies yesterday and it looked beautiful.

Only Lean's Great Expectations has been released on BD, but his Oliver Twist has the same excellent composition and cinematography. I assume it has just been overshadowed by the Carol Reed musical (I prefer the Lean version, which though abbreviated actually felt like Dickens), though there were also objections at the time to Guinness' very stereotypical performance (down to the prosthetic nose). Criterion has done the Noel Coward/David Lean boxset, perhaps someday they might release a boxset of these two with Hobson's Choice (right after they release the Powell and Pressburger B&W boxset).