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Just a quick followup. Inside sources indicate that 1957 Best Picture winner THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI may be on BluRay by the end of this year, maybe November. Still no word yet on 1962's LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, however, which had once been expected to be out long before this but still has no releas...

My BluRay of the new restoration of THE AFRICAN QUEEN was waiting for me when I got back from Cinefest. I've only spot-checked the beginning and a few parts of the feature so far, but it looks amazing, with gorgeous color, sharpness, and film grain, and pretty good sound. I did take time to watch th...

What would really be great would be a box set of Mr. & Mrs. Sidney Drew films with every surviving short and feature all in one or maybe two places, along the lines of the great Arbuckle and Langdon sets. Anybody think something like that could break even? There is a Max Davidson set coming out in E...

Here are capsule summaries of each film (not counting the ones shown at the hotel while the rest of us were at the fantastic show at the Capitol in Rome). Other opions may (and probably will) vary. Overall it was a very strong program, one of the best in years. --Christopher Jacobs http://hpr1.com/f...

Well, it's over and I'm sitting in the Holiday Inn bar with several other cinephiles (a few of whom just went back up to their rooms), discussing the Cinefest and movies in general, among other things. There were lots of great silents and quite a few good sound films. This year's Cinefest had a very...

You probably liked BULLITT a bit better than I did, but the incredibly sharp BluRay transfer makes the film even more enjoyable as an historical document of 1960s San Francisco, all of it looking brand-new like you're watching it in a theatre in 1968. The boxcover misidentifies the aspect ratio, how...

As David mentioned, you can easily learn if it's nitrate by looking to see if it says NITRATE along the edge by the sprocket holes. If it says SAFETY FILM, it will be the non-flammable acetate based film, even if it also says NITRATE somewhere on the same print, as that would be from the nitrate neg...

--DELETED accidental double-post--
(darn dialup and server problems!!)

--Christopher Jacobs
http://hpr1.com/film
http://www.und.edu/instruct/cjacobs

I never saw SANDS OF OBLIVION on the Sci-Fi channel, and never noticed it on DVD anywhere, but apparently it came out on BluRay this past December. I happened to be walking through the "Best Buy" BluRay section last week seeing what all might be marked down to a reasonable price on some of their una...

I wonder if his project helped inspire that SciFi channel movie a few years ago called SANDS OF OBLIVION, mentioned in a thread a few months back. I finally got around to seeing that moderately interesting but ultimately disappointing movie the other night, and will post a review soon. I hope he get...

This derogatory film should incense anyone who views it. It is not humorous. I'm wondering where this sadly misinformed person ever read that the film was supposed to be "humorous," or do the ignorant always assume than any film made in 1915 must be humorous by defaut, either because it's obviously...

I never really cared for THE FRENCH CONNECTION to begin with, but had been considering getting the BluRay just to have for its historical/critical reputation. I guess I'll pass until they remaster it properly. It may be awhile, but it's possible, as I understand that the much-abused BluRay of GLADIA...

Luckily, my Panasonic projector has a good zoom range and I've got nice black velvet masking around my screen (movable horizontally as well as vertically) so I can zoom out a full-frame transfer to any aspect ratio, and BluRay's HD image shows minimal loss in sharpness in most cases. I'll probably t...

SLOW AS LIGHTNING sounds like it's very much in the pattern of AFTER A MILLION, and likely other even more obscure Kenneth McDonald titles for Sunset Productions -- a bit slow starting to set up the characters and then a mile-a-minute action until the end. As noted their flavor is strongly reminisce...

The "Power DVD" program (I think it's by Cyberlink or something like that) that came with my laptop will do this. It even has a little camera icon to save "snapshots" of frames to its folder on the hard drive. These framegrabs, however, are 720x480 pixels so they'll look squeezed or stretched, depen...

With the 82nd annual Academy Awards having been held last Sunday, I had a few people over for an Oscars-watching, wine & cheese & crackers party (and two young women showed up fashionably late but in lavish evening gowns for the occasion, so I had to quick put on my tux shirt and bowtie!). I also su...

I had several people over Monday night for a BluRay double feature of the original versions of THE LADYKILLERS and THE PINK PANTHER. Everyone enjoyed both immensely. THE LADYKILLERS (1955) , released in the US in 1956, is an entertaining black comedy with a typically British flavor, marking the end ...

Well, having just seen them on BluRay a few nights ago, I'd say that both GREAT EXPECTATIONS and BLACK NARCISSUS heartily deserved their 1947 Oscars for Best B/W & Color Cinematography and Best B/W & Color Art Direction.

--Christopher Jacobs
http://hpr1.com/film
http://www.und.edu/instruct/cjacobs

Two notable classic Oscar-winning films from 1947 have come out on BluRay, but so far are available only from Britain’s ITV. Since both are British productions, this is perhaps not surprising, but fortunately both are region-free discs that will run on BluRay players world-wide. One is a must-own, a...

I've got the 1929 version on Laserdisc and while it definitely has the early talkie look and pacing, I still prefer it to the Lana Turner version due to the performances. Ruth Chatterton should have won Best Actress that year over Mary Pickford, or at least tied with Jeanne Eagles. --Christopher Jac...

Was Melies' THE DREYFUSS AFFAIR originally released as one "long" movie, or was it made available (either exclusively or as an alternate choice) in the individual episodes? Melies' CINDERELLA (1899) runs about 6 minutes and since the scenes dissolve from one to the next rather than cut (as also done...

If they did a good transfer, it's quite possible that a beautiful-looking DVD could be the result. I've got another Anthony J. Xydias production on an old original 16mm that looks as sharp as a 35mm print, AFTER A MILLION (1924). That one also stars Kenneth McDonald and is an enjoyable if low-budget...

I was able to tape a bunch of episodes on Beta back when Winnipeg's CBC affiliate was running them, since our cable company luckily carried both CBC and CTV back then. I'm not sure if I got every episode but I remember enjoying them a lot. I also got most of the episodes of WHAT DO THOSE OLD MOVIES ...

Projection speeds of silents, just like aspect ratios of post-1953 non-anamorphic talkies, will likely remain a subjective personal preference vs. "director's intention" vs. "actual projection practices at the time." This is one more argument for frame-by-frame transfers to video and multi-speed pla...

Langdon is an acquired and/or peculiarly individual taste, especially his features. As a college student I quite liked SOLDIER MAN and SATURDAY AFTERNOON (still classics) and I followed the standard opinion that THE STRONG MAN and TRAMP, TRAMP, TRAMP were his two good features, that LONG PANTS had m...

it is obvious that this additional film can be restored to a pristine condition, just as they have done before. . . . In my opinion, "Metropolis" didn't need to be lengthened to be understood. But since the lost parts were located, it's probably good to reassemble it completely. The next thing is t...

And getting back to the original topic of this thread, the first time I saw TILLIE'S PUNCTURED ROMANCE was in a so-so 8mm dupe back in college, which was probably at 16 or 18 fps but still looked jerky, crude, contrasty, and not particularly coherent most of the time -- the exact stereotype of those...

What?! Nobody's attempted a guess yet?! With all the recent talk about the upcoming CHICAGO disc and its Mont Alto score, I thought the first and possibly the second clips might have been from that. Then I listened to the third clip, whose rapid and drastic changes of mood (including "Jingle Bells" ...

Here are reviews of a few more British import BluRays I've recently gotten. Though perhaps not so "classic" by our usual standarads, they're all more than 30 years old at this point and one celebrates our favorite decade of the late 20s-early 30s. All three of these were selling for the equivalent o...

I've got both the Laserdisc (73 min.) and the old Image DVD of TILLIE'S PUNCTURED ROMANCE (72 min.), and did not find either objectionably slow. It may be because at its heart, TILLIE is more of a classic melodrama than the typically broad comic farce of most of the other Keystones, so it plays bett...

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Cinefest 2010 reviews

Past Oscar-winners on BluRay