Savant's new reviews today are

Well, the big news this week is the Warners announcement over at The Home Theater Forum of an accelerated DVD schedule, that sounds like a minimum 5 hot library titles a week for the next two years. George Feltenstein appears to have the green light to continue with his creative packaging and promotion, for most everything in the Warners library that fans want to see.

I do see some readers getting out of hand, counting invisible chickens by not listening carefully to the online answers. "We're looking into" a particular title does not mean it's on a schedule ... it just means they're aware of it, as they are a couple of thousand titles, maybe more. With a couple of exceptions -- Queen of Outer Space, The Giant Behemoth -- there was no direct answer to the idea that Warners would be exploiting more of the Allied Artists titles in their library. When someone asked about a list of six or so horror films - four classic MGM titles and two Allied Artists 50s camp sci fi titles, the answer was, "We have a set planned for most of those." I interpret that as saying that the four MGM titles, once released in an earlier laserdisc box, will come out as a set. The Warners reps aren't trying to trick anybody, but communicating with DVD fans can be a lot like talking to kids ... at some point one has to just answer their zillion questions with, "Now, now, we'll see." The nicest thing about Warners is that with Feltenstein at the keyboard, we can at least trust that he's aware of every title that people shoot at him --- he doesn't fudge his responses.

Surprisingly, nobody asked the simple question that would have made the exchange go simply. That query would be, "Hello you great guys at Warners! You walk on water! Could you just rattle off as many unannounced titles as you can, that are already seriously in the works for release?" Somebody did that a couple of sessions ago and we were given a big chunk of the whole schedule!

Thanks for reading. An interesting milestone this last week ... Savant's youngest son turned 21. That means I'm no longer the father of children, but the father of adults. All that's left now are a cane, thicker glasses and future grandchildren nobody will let me hold because they'll worry the old dotard might drop 'em! --- Your graying Savant, Glenn Erickson