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Posted: |
Dec 14, 2010 - 10:42 AM
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By: |
Katie @ SAE
(Member)
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TWILIGHT TIME, new limited edition DVD label, launches with release of John Huston’s 1970 thriller, The Kremlin Letter
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA (December 14, 2010) — The new DVD specialty label, TWILIGHT TIME, launches an ambitious slate of limited edition classic films with an initial offering of John Huston’s The Kremlin Letter (20th Century Fox, 1970) on January 25th, 2011. In line with TWILIGHT TIME’s innovative limited series concept, just 3000 units of this and following releases will be produced, aimed at the collector/classic film aficionado market. At a retail price point of $19.99, titles will be available exclusively online through www.screenarchives.com, the nation’s largest independent distributor of specialty soundtracks.
The January 25th debut of The Kremlin Letter will be followed by a new release on the last Tuesday of each month, with a potential ramp-up to a monthly pair after a six-month trial run. Currently on the schedule: director Richard Fleischer’s cult favorite noir melodrama, Violent Saturday (1955); the aviation thriller, Fate Is the Hunter (1964); the surprisingly down-low Pat Boone musical, April Love (1957); and the legendary The Egyptian (1954), directed by Michael Curtiz, and starring Jean Simmons, Victor Mature, and Gene Tierney.
TWILIGHT TIME is the brainchild of 30-year Warner Bros veteran Brian Jamieson and filmmaker/music restoration specialist Nick Redman. In his long tenure at Warner Home Video, Jamieson initiated and oversaw countless legacy restorations, including the films of Stanley Kubrick, Samuel Fuller’s The Big Red One, and Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch. Redman, a film historian and Oscar nominee for his 1997 documentary, The Wild Bunch: An Album in Montage, is also a prime mover behind Twentieth Century Fox’s pioneering series of limited edition soundtracks. This program, spearheaded by Fox Music executive Tom Cavanaugh since 1993, has seen the restoration and release of hundreds of classic film scores, earning industry-wide recognition, sturdy consumer support, and high praise from film music fans. The flourishing limited edition model for Fox’s soundtrack releases is the inspiration for TWILIGHT TIME.
“In the 1990s,” Redman says, “Fox was the only studio looking to exploit its deep-catalogue music assets in this way. Under the supervision of Tom Cavanaugh, the program was so successful that now every studio has a limited edition soundtrack program. Now Fox is taking the lead again, by taking that limited edition model to DVD.”
Jamieson adds, “Fox is embracing the opportunity to optimize the film enthusiast’s dream, providing long sought-after collectible and fully restored titles, in their original aspect ratios, through the Twilight Time label, all manufactured to the highest quality available, and at a very affordable price.”
Fox Home Entertainment executive Dave Shaw has green-lighted licensing for an initial 20 titles, with more in the offing as the limited edition approach takes hold. Unlike the notorious movies-on-demand offerings currently on display, each TWILIGHT TIME release will be a DVD (not a DVDr) properly pressed from a restored transfer supervised by Fox’s head of Assets Management, Schawn Belston, another longtime lynchpin of the studio’s catalogue restoration program. Each will be accompanied by a collectible 8-page booklet complete with original essay, stills, and poster art. And—continuing the ongoing Fox tradition of synergy between movies and music—each TWILIGHT TIME DVD will offer, whenever possible, that extra most coveted by cinemusic enthusiasts: an isolated score.
According to Redman, the isolated score “synergizes Fox Music's ongoing CD restoration program with the new limited edition Fox Classics movie series, and it offers an added bonus to DVD buyers—both those who are already film music fans, and those who perhaps will become score aficionados as a result. One of Twentieth Century Fox’s great legacies is its music—and here is a way to bring that rich history to the DVD consumer.”
With its emphasis on films featuring stand-out scores from exemplary composers—Violent Saturday by Hugo Friedhofer, Fate Is the Hunter by Jerry Goldsmith, and The Egyptian by no less than two giants, Bernard Herrmann and Alfred Newman—it’s no wonder that film music specialist Craig Spaulding of Screen Archives wanted to throw his hat into the ring with TWILIGHT TIME. But he’s also a fan of the limited edition model, and sees business potential in expanding it from soundtracks to DVD.
“We’ve been in business since 1975,” Spaulding says, “We’re a Mom-and-Pop business, but when we send out an email blast to our customer base, it goes to 30,000 people. And I can tell you, they collect more DVDs than they do audio. The potential niche for Twilight Time is bigger than the niche for soundtrack releases. And since we’re selling the label exclusively, it’s a no-brainer. The audience will have to come to us to get it.”
TWILIGHT TIME will be focusing its initial efforts on bringing out heretofore unreleased-on-DVD films from the 1950s and 60s: what Redman calls “Fox's Cinemascope period, those gorgeous widescreen entertainments that had it all—beauty, glamour, drama.” But, he adds, “We will also be selectively tackling the earlier years—the 1930s and 40s—and sampling every genre, presenting, hopefully, something for everyone.”
Jamieson notes that “these films are revered by true cineastes and film buffs. They complete the ‘void’ in their collections. This is niche marketing in the true sense of the term: identifying a certain consumer demographic, and then satisfying their needs. Twilight Time will be serving both the collectible drive of film enthusiasts, and, in a larger sense, the cause of cinema literacy.”
A genuine devotion to our cinematic heritage is the heart of the matter for both TWILIGHT TIME founders. “Our label is called Twilight Time,” explains Redman, “because that is what we are facing: the sun setting on the world of physical media. But before all the light ultimately fades over the horizon, we aim to make Fox’s legacy shine as brilliantly as possible for as long as we can.”
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Nick and Craig, I'm thrilled for your new venture and wish you much success.
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Posted: |
Dec 14, 2010 - 12:09 PM
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By: |
joec
(Member)
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do wish that Warner Home Video gave some of their MOD Archives line the same treatment.
latimes.com/entertainment/news/homeentertainment/la-et-dvd-vintage-20101214,0,3289441.story
latimes.com
Twilight Time label will appeal to '50s, '60s film buffs
The specialty group will release Fox DVDs previously unavailable in the U.S.
By Susan King, Los Angeles Times
December 14, 2010
Advertisement
A new DVD specialty label, Twilight Time, featuring limited editions of vintage 20th Century Fox films, was launched Tuesday. The first film under the Twilight Time banner is John Huston's rarely seen 1970 spy thriller, "The Kremlin Letter," which will be available Jan. 25. A new title will be offered on the last Tuesday of each month thereafter.
Only 3,000 units of each title will be made available for a limited time, geared to the classic-film DVD collector. Besides the disc, the package will come with an eight-page booklet about the movie, featuring original essays, stills and poster art, and in some cases, the musical score. Priced at $19.99, Twilight Time titles will be available only at http://www.screenarchives.com.
After "Kremlin Letter," the label will release Richard Fleischer's 1955 melodramatic thriller "Violent Saturday"; the 1964 aviation thriller "Fate Is the Hunter," with Glenn Ford; the 1957 musical "April Love," with Pat Boone and Shirley Jones, and the 1954 epic "The Egyptian," starring Jean Simmons and Victor Mature.
"I wanted to come up with five films that had never been released on DVD in the United States and five films that were basically different genres," says Nick Redman, a filmmaker and restoration specialist who came up with the idea for Twilight Time with 30-year Warner Bros. veteran Brian Jamieson. "That way, we would say to our potential audience we are going to go right across the map. The common denominator is that these are, for the most part, '50s and '60s widescreen classics."
Twilight Time is following the same blueprint Redman drew up nearly 20 years ago with his 20th Century Fox series of limited-edition soundtracks. In 1993, Redman was asked to go deep into the Fox music vaults to see if there were any scores from films from the 1940s, '50s or '60s that could be released on CD "and see if anyone was interested," Redman says. "We created a deal with the American Federation of Musicians for a limited-edition market where we would address the 3,000 to 5,000 people in the world who care about soundtracks."
Craig Spaulding, who has owned and operated Screen Archives for the past 35 years, was thrilled when Redman approached him about Twilight Time. "I worked with Nick on releasing some Fox film scores a number of years ago," Spaulding says. "Then he got this idea about the DVD thing where they had isolated scores and I said we would like to be the distributor."
Most studios have focused on promoting and releasing contemporary titles on DVD, with vintage titles taking a backseat — much to the chagrin of classic film fans. Several studios have initiated a manufacture-on-demand DVD line for vintage titles that appeal to limited audiences. Warner Bros. was first out of the starting gate with Warner Archives, followed by Sony and MGM/UA. Most of these manufacture-on-demand titles don't contain many extras.
Redman feels that releasing classic titles in this method devalues the studios' catalogue. Presenting the films in a limited-edition package with far more extras than a manufacture-on-demand DVD provides a "bit more cachet to them," he says.
susan.king@latimes.com
Copyright © 2010, Los Angeles Times
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Great! Another reason to go deeper in debt! Man, I can't keep up with the CDs that I want, and now this...
Seriously, though; I do think this is cool. I just need to win a lottery.
--Ben
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I'm very excited about this as Fox's 50s and 60s CinemaScope period are a favorite of mine. I already have excellent anamorphic wide screen copies of THE EGYPTIAN and FATE IS THE HUNTER imported from Spain but I look forward to APRIL LOVE, KREMLIN LETTER and VIOLENT SATURDAY.
Yes, yes, I know it's all about the movie but if the cover of THE KREMLIN LETTER is any indication, the cover art could use a boost. Original poster art would be preferable but anything besides "heads".
As for blu-ray, with physical media giving its last gasp before dying and giving way to downloading and streaming and Classic titles on standard pressed DVDs a relic of the past, it's unlikely there's any PROFITABLE market for Classics (other than the biggies: GONE WITH THE WIND, CASABLANCA, WIZARD OF OZ etc) on the blu ray format.
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Posted: |
Dec 15, 2010 - 1:00 PM
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By: |
Ed Lachmann
(Member)
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I intend to be a constant customer of Twilight Time's, no matter what. But, I want to add my hope that there might be blu-ray releases of some of these, as well. Certainly, "The Egyptian" would be a dream come true in this format. One company that does this well is Masters of Cinema/Eureka from the UK. They released several of the Fox Murnau/Borzage box titles in blu-ray and are quite successful with them. French Carlotta then released the others (the Borzages) on blu, as well (their "Fellini Casanova" blu is lovely, also) . Eureka has released blu's of "Black Shield of Falworth", "Prince Valiant" and "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves". I have purchased most of these and they are quite stunning. One interesting person to contact about the viability of classic blu's is Nick Wrigley, director of MoC/Eureka (nick@mastersofcinema.org). Kino also took the blu plunge recently with "Pandora and the Flying Dutchman", "The General" and "Metropolis". Unlike CinemaScope, I think there is a demand for more classics on blu-ray. People are tired of re-treaded GWTW's etc. and might want some new old favorites that REALLY LOOK GOOD. And, the folks I know aren't interesting in streaming or downloading. This is more for the fans of, say, Lady Gaga. Plus, for most, downloading 1080p would be a large chunk of time. In fact, I think the slump in DVD sales today has a lot more to do with hardworking, product buying people being wary of the future of standard DVD's in a blu-ray world. Most every HDTV sold today is 1080 capable. A couple of questions: Aren't most film to digital scans now 1080p and, thereafter, standard DVD's releases are "reduced" to a lower resolution. And, providing this is true, how difficult is it then to press a blu-ray version? If these blu's were region free, sold internationally, a premium price tag added, plus limited in number how long would it take to sell out 3,000 copies of, say, "The Egyptian"? Look, I have the Spanish Fox standard release of "Sinhue, el Egipcio" and it really looks great, but nothing like a blu. Was it Oliver Stone who said "fortune favors the bold"? Fox is sitting on a treasure trove of widescreen technicolor wonders. Can't we have them in all their glory?
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