"IN OLD ARIZONA" ON DVD

[FilmGauge]

I had always hoped that the 1928 Fox Film "IN OLD ARIZONA" survived; I had never seen it around at all. It does survive, and Fox has this out on DVD---obviously with no fanfare or publicity. Shot in 1928 and released in January, 1929, Warner Baxter plays the Cisco Kid in this early talkie and won an Oscar. The DVD, made from the best surviving material, is available at places like Amazon and Deep Discount. The print used even has overture and exit music, something Fox was doing with many of their early sound era features.

[bobfells]

Yes, it seems that the DVD of IN OLD ARIZONA wasn't released by Fox as much as it escaped. I stumbled across it in a bargain bin a couple of years ago. It offers two soundtracks: the original that's a bit noisy but clear, and a restored soundtrack that kills the noise but also the crispness of the dialogue sound too. I prefer the unrestored version.

[FilmGauge]

I would imagine the sound compression is a killer for a Movietone track. The sound already has very little tonal range on this optical system, so it needs to be heard as is. I played mine in regular Mono sound.
By the way, my DVD indeed is from 20th Century-Fox.

[MattBarry]

I would imagine the sound compression is a killer for a Movietone track. The sound already has very little tonal range on this optical system, so it needs to be heard as is. I played mine in regular Mono sound.
By the way, my DVD indeed is from 20th Century-Fox.

I picked this one up on DVD (I can't remember where) right around the time it was released. I had no idea it was available till I saw it on the shelf, and bought it right away. Although I haven't watched the DVD in several years, the quality was fine given the age of the film.

[Unclehulot]

I would imagine the sound compression is a killer for a Movietone track. The sound already has very little tonal range on this optical system, so it needs to be heard as is. I played mine in regular Mono sound.
By the way, my DVD indeed is from 20th Century-Fox.

It wasn't necessarily compressed, but filtered and denoised to death. It IS possible to leave the "life" (such as it is) in one of these tracks but to concentrate on removing sonic debris (ticks, pops, hum, etc.). Unfortunately, producers these days find NOISE to be the big item to concentrate on. How many reviews have you seen of an old film that simply comment that the sonic restoration is successful when the noise is minimal. What often happens is that overzealous noise reduction throws the sonic baby out with the bath water! The worst examples I can think of were on the 1931 Frankenstein (one of the dvd versions...can't remember which), and Fritz Lang's M (again can't remember...maybe the old UK dvd?), where any instance of ambient background noise was completely removed. If nothing else, the constant shift from NO noise to noise behind dialogue and music was much more distracting than an overall constant noise level. Of course, this is just one kind of thing. There are many examples where the noise hasn't been attacked as agressively but lows and highs have been erased in order to focus the sound into an area without as much noise. In this case, it would take an A/B comparison for most people to realize what is "missing".

The best description I've heard is that de-noising programs attempt to do something akin to removing cream from a cup of coffee! I'm afraid that as long as the race of critics doesn't stand up and demand something better, we are doomed to over-processed audio, ironically just as BluRay gives us a much better chance of delivering a full-bandwidth audio track!

In any case, definitely listen to the "unrestored" track of In Old Arizona!

[jhdk]

Amazingly, this is coming to blu-ray by Fox this June
http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=10683" target="_blank

[Rick Lanham]

Amazingly, this is coming to blu-ray by Fox this June
http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=10683" target="_blank" target="_blank

Well, that figures. I just bought the DVD and haven't watched it yet.
Ha.

Rick