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Posted: |
Apr 27, 2012 - 7:59 PM
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By: |
Essankay
(Member)
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Are their releases worth buying? I'm thinking about getting Assault on the Queen.
Of the titles I've picked up from Olive so far - APPOINTMENT WITH DANGER, UNION STATION, ROPE OF SAND, and NO MAN OF HER OWN - all of them have looked quite good. I can't remember any serious problems. They certainly look as good as any of the Warner or Fox releases of the same vintage. I've got THE LAWLESS on pre-order and I'm seriously tempted by SUMMER & SMOKE, SANDS OF THE KALAHARI and the upcoming TOO LATE BLUES and 1900, based on my experiences so far.
As far as their prices go, I'm happy to pay a bit more to get back-catalogue titles on real pressed discs. When you compare their prices with the srp's of DVD-R releases they don't seem too bad (and yes, I know, they frequently discount them, but the fact of the matter is the srp of a DVD-R release is typically about $20). Their srp's are right in line with Twilight Time. Lack of extras (definitely lack of substantive extras) seems to be the new standard for most back-catalogue digital releases - Warner issued THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS without even so much as the trailer, the only place in the world you can see any of the deleted footage from that film! And considering how worthless some commentary tracks are, it's hard know if one should feel deprived by lack of that extra or not.
Olive's licensing of the Republic catalogue is very good news as far as I'm concerned - there are many desirable films to be found there. Olive has quickly become one of my favorite new DVD labels.
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Posted: |
Apr 28, 2012 - 8:54 AM
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By: |
johnjohnson
(Member)
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This summer, Olive Films will bring High Noon to Blu-ray. Director Fred Zinnemann's classic 1952 Western stars Gary Cooper (Design for Living) as Will Kane, a small town Hadleyville sheriff who learns - on the day of both his retirement as well as his marriage to the beautiful Amy Kane (Grace Kelly, To Catch a Thief) - that vicious outlaw Frank Miller (Ian MacDonald, Johnny Guitar) is out of prison and gunning for him.
Much to Amy's chagrin, Kane decides to stay in Hadleyville and bring Miller to justice. As the minutes pass - and Miller's train draws ever closer - Kane finds the townspeople increasingly unwilling to stand beside him, and he finds himself wrestling with the notion that he alone might have to face Miller and his gang.
Written by Carl Foreman (The Guns of Navarone), High Noon features an impressive ensemble that includes Thomas Mitchell (It's a Wonderful Life), Lloyd Bridges (Airplane!), Katy Jurado (Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid), Otto Kruger (Saboteur), Lon Chaney Jr. (The Wolf Man), Harry Morgan (Dragnet), and Lee Van Cleef (The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly).
The film, which unfolds in real time, was a huge success at the 1953 Academy Awards Ceremony, winning the following Oscars:
Best Actor: Gary Cooper
Best Film Editing: Elmo Williams and Harry W. Gerstad
Best Original Song: "High Noon (Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darlin')" by Dimitri Tiomkin and Ned Washington
Best Score: Dimitri Tiomkin
In addition, the picture received further nominations for:
Best Picture: Stanley Kramer
Best Director: Fred Zinnemann
Best Screenplay: Carl Foreman
Olive's 60th Anniversary Edition presents High Noon in a new transfer, restored in HD from the original negative. The disc also contains the following supplements:
The Making Of High Noon behind-the-scenes featurette, narrated by Leonard Maltin
Theatrical trailer
High Noon streets on July 17th.
http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=8606
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Posted: |
May 11, 2012 - 9:51 PM
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By: |
johnjohnson
(Member)
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In August, Olive Films will bring Johnny Guitar to Blu-ray. This striking Western deconstruction stars Joan Crawford (What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?) as iconoclastic frontierswoman Vienna.
From Olive's official synopsis:
"Crawford's saloon owner battles the local townspeople, headed by Emma (Mercedes McCambridge, The Exorcist), the..sexually repressed, lynch-happy female rancher out to frame her for a string of robberies. The title character, played by Sterling Hayden (Dr. Strangelove), is a guitar-strumming drifter with a dark past who was once in love with Crawford and has been offered a job in her saloon. Director Nicholas Ray's epic film is considered one of the most original westerns of all time - the women are far tougher than the men, and some saw in the film a bizarre allegory for the McCarthy-era Red Scare."
Olive's Blu-ray presents Johnny Guitar in its 1.37:1 original aspect ratio; the distributor has used a new HD transfer, one restored from an archival 35mm print.
Supplementary materials include:
Introduction by Martin Scorsese
Johnny Guitar streets on August 7th.
http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=8701
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Posted: |
May 26, 2012 - 11:30 AM
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By: |
manderley
(Member)
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.....Over at the HTF there's talk of Olive releasing a good looking, The Quiet Man on Blu before the end of the year.....
I hope everyone will be satisfied with the transfer.
My comments here will represent another viewpoint.
I saw the film for the first time when it came out in 1952. It is a delightful tale which captured the emotional qualities of the Irish people---at least at that time, and at least in a movie-like world.
There is common agreement that this film is beautiful to look at. The film was awarded
an Oscar for its photography.
But even at the tender age of 12, I thought that this was the worst-looking Technicolor film
I'd ever seen up to that point, and I was tremendously disappointed by "the look". I've seen the film many times since and not radically changed my opinion despite the continuing adulation by so many.
The Irish countryside depicted in the film is gorgeous, no doubt about it, but this film,
to me, is the perfect example of a film winning photographic Awards for its scenery rather than its photography---even more than THREE COINS IN THE FOUNTAIN or TO CATCH A THIEF did.
In viewing the film over and over through the years, I believe my distraction with the
film is its desperate inconsistency with the lighting and exposure from shot-to-shot in
the exteriors. Even with the grand Republic budget old Herbert Yates granted them,
the filmmakers were obviously in terrible difficulties with the weather on location.
Budgetary time constraints probably forced them into a very tight, unyielding shooting schedule where they couldn't wait for better weather (as many other location films' budgets
allow) and, thus, they had to shoot when they could. It's one thing to take advantage
of momentary weather "oddities", as Ford and his photographic collaborators often did,
but it's another thing to have sequences with oddities continuing throughout them---with
the cameraman physically unable to match the images from shot-to-shot.
The horse race near the end of the film is a perfect example of this. The weather, in a continuous-time linking of shots goes from terrible overcast to hazy sun to bright sun,
over and over again. Additional well-photographed studio shots are inserted into this
as needed, and as a result, the whole thing has a choppy overall look. There are shots where the light is changing even as the shot is running.
There are other shots where the natural light is obviously so low that you have to open up the lens to get a reasonable exposure. When you do that, the depth of field decreases tremendously, and if you are even slightly off (with Technicolor in those days) the shot might well be slightly out of focus. There are several of those in the film, as I recall.
On a location film such as this, when you have a tight schedule and a difficult constant weather pattern, it is almost mandatory to build certain "cover sets" to allow you to shoot interiors when the weather outside is erratic and photographically unacceptable. You can start an exterior in the light you choose for it, and when it goes bad, move to the interior set and shoot pieces of that sequence---the cabin, the bar, etc.---and then later come back to the exterior when the weather stabilizes. If you've selected your shooting hours or days well, this brings a real consistency to the final cut of an extended exterior scene.
The other way to solve the consistency problem is to change the script, as I've done on several projects I've shot over the years. Working with the writer and director before the film begins, you map out several exterior "cover" sequences which you can go to if the weather turns bad. I've had rain sequences, overcast sequences, dawn sequences, and night sequences built into the script beforehand to use for these purposes. I even had a snow sequence planned into a film that wasn't previously in the script before and was very glad we had that when it started to snow unexpectedly. That saved the producers about 5 days of lost shooting time---time which is Big Money on a location shoot! I've always been a great admirer of Hal Wallis' westerns for Paramount in the '50s and '60s. He always seemed to pick the best months of the year to shoot his higher elevation sequences, often with bright blue sunny skies and gorgeous Aspen trees changing to their gold colors. This kind of production process takes very careful planning and scouting for the best absolute moment to shoot.
Another very technical, behind-the-scenes, problem with a film like QUIET MAN is the beautiful emerald green of the countryside. In the original engineering of the Technicolor 3-color process, one of the 3 filmstrips had to be in the inferior taking position behind the other strip---a position which would put that film record slightly out-of-focus. It was decided that since the color of green is rarely present in faces or humanly recognizable subjects, the film strip recording green would be placed in this secondary position, with the understanding that if green trees, or green grasses, or green leaves were slightly out-of-focus, it wouldn't matter or be noticed much by the viewing audience. There is a lot of green in Ireland---and in THE QUIET MAN.
But now, 60 years later, THE QUIET MAN is what it is, and will remain so. I just hope that those who are praying for a gorgeous transfer will not be disappointed once again.
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Posted: |
Dec 15, 2012 - 5:45 PM
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By: |
johnjohnson
(Member)
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Olive Films have added up seven more titles to their February slate: Jean Renoir's The Diary of a Chambermaid (1946), Anthony Mann's Strangers in the Night (1944), Leigh Jason's Lady for a Night (1942), Kurt Neumann's She Devil (1957), R.G. Springsteen's The Red Menace (1949), Martha Coolidge's Plain Clothes (1988), and Alan Alda's A New Life (1988).
Exact technical specs and supplemental features to be included with these upcoming releases are yet to be revealed.
The Dairy of a Chambermaid
Adapted from the famous novel by Octave Mirbeau, the film tells the story of an ambitious chambermaid who decides to seduce a rich husband. Starring Paulette Goddard, Burgess Meredith, Hurd Hatfield, Irene Ryan, and Florence Bates.
Lady for a Night
Gambling boat operator Jenny Blake throws over her gambler beau Jack Morgan in order to marry into high society. When her husband is killed in an attempt on her life, she is charged with his murder. Starring Joan Blondell, John Wayne, and Philip Merivale.
Strangers in the Night
A lonely, mentally unbalanced woman invents a fictitious daughter and has the "daughter" write to a Marine stationed in the South Pacific. When the soldier returns back to the States, he goes to look up his pen pal, and is told by the "mother" that the daughter has moved away. An acquaintance of the women tells the soldier the truth, and in a rage the "mother" kills her. In order to cover up that crime, she realizes she must kill the soldier, too. Starring William Terry, Virginia Grey, Helene Thimig, and Edith Barrett.
She Devil
A scientist tries to help a terminally ill woman but instead creates a monster. Starring Mari Blanchard, Jack Kelly, Albert Dekker, and Fay Baker.
The Red Menace
A disillusioned, bitter ex-GI gets involved with the Communist party, and winds up falling in love with one of his "instructors." At first true believers, they realize their mistake when they witness party leaders murder a member who questions the party's principles. They try to leave the party, but are marked for murder and hunted by the party's assassins. Starring Robert Rockwell, Hannelore Axman, and Betty Lou Gerson.
Plain Clothes
Nick Dunbar, a baby-faced undercover policeman, poses as a high school student after a teacher is murdered. Back in school, Nick is subjected to bullies, crushes, and swings in popularity typical of most teenagers. Making matters worse, his brother is the prime suspect in the murder case. Starring Arliss Howard, Suzy Amis, George Wendt, and Seymour Cassel.
A New Life
A stylish comedy from M*A*S*H star Alan Alda about a New York couple who decide to divorce and fall in love again with different people. Starring Alan Alda, Ann-Margret, Hal Linden, and Veronica Hamel.
http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=10116
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I can't wait!
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