Savant's new reviews today are

Another busy night, so not much chat here ... but I do have four reviews. I notice the American Cinematheque is restarting their annual Film Noir festival next week - I'll have to see if I can squeeze a few in. Thanks, Glenn Erickson

Savant's new reviews today are

Four fine pictures tonight, not a dog among 'em. Savant is burning candles at both ends these days, so I'll have to keep this short ... I also hope there aren't too many errors in these ... I've been proofreading, but it's late and I'm tired, as Gary Larson once said. Thanks for the encouragement - Glenn Erickson

Savant's new reviews today are

Happy Sunday. More exciting release news. Kino has issued a DVD of Fritz Lang's Liliom, which I've always wanted to see but never have. I wrote about it in my discussion of Films Blanc about five years ago. It's one of those titles that never seems to come. I'll find it on some outing eventually.

Columbia Tristar has announced an R1 DVD of A Matter of Life and Death for May 25. This is very good news for us; fans have been expecting this one since 2001 when Columbia finished a remaster. Curious that it bears the English title, but I suppose it's better than the American one; Stairway to Heaven. Thanks, Glenn Erickson

Savant's new reviews today are

There was just no way of even beginning to do these discs justice without seeing them all - I'd never seen The Circus before, for instance. This is my only excuse for not having more review variety up today. Reviews will follow, post-haste, for Onibaba, Vanishing Point, The Dresser, and Best of Burlesque. Time Without Pity, Pirates of Tortuga and A High Wind in Jamaica are on their way as well.

Thanks to the many writers who sent me web addresses of sites containing info about the movies Suddenly and The Manchurian Candidate being pulled from release. I'm leaning toward the idea that the biggest influence on the second film being yanked may have been a contractual money dispute, and not the crisis of conscience story - although supposedly banned, it played sporadically anyway, especially on television, during the 25 years it was supposedly unavailable. I myself saw it in 1973 or 1974. Another Hollywood legend that's not entirely accurate. Thanks again, Glenn Erickson

Savant's new reviews today are

It's a pleasant Sunday in a California week that has seen record heat, fog, and some snappy cold evenings. Not a heck of a lot to report, except that I received some mail objecting to my positive review of the image quality of The Ten Commandments. I guess I need to stress that DVD Savant hasn't the resources or time to analyze every transfer from a scientific POV, and I've never been interested in reviewing the specs, as do Hi Fi magazines when they judge the quality of a recording by looking at oscilloscopes. The Commandments looked fine to me, and I revised the review only when some reliable helpers gave me a comparison with the older Paramount disc release. The special edition extras weren't at the Kevin Brownlow level of quality, but I doubt that many viewers will be dissatisfied with the transfer or the extras, even Charlton Heston's awful, lame joke.

I flipped when I saw Image Entertainment's May schedule - They're bringing out Riccardo Freda's The Ghost on a double bill with The Dead Eyes of London. It turns out the disc is really from Retromedia, and might be an abject dog. But even that label has occasional reasonable presentations, so here's hoping. Otherwise, Image also has what will hopefully be a good disc of Frank Sinatra's Suddenly!, where he plays a gangland assassin waiting for a Presidential whistle stop at a rural railroad station.

Here's a question maybe somebody better read about Ol' Blue Eyes can answer: Sinatra reportedly withdrew The Manchurian Candidate from distribution because of its similarity to the JFK assassination. That's also been the reason given for an absence of Suddenly on television in the middle 60s (which I haven't confirmed). Why then, did Sinatra star several years later in a third movie about an assassin with a high-powered rifle, 1967's The Naked Runner? Is the JFK withdrawal story just a myth to cover up the fact that The Manchurian Candidate wasn't a box office hit? Thanks for reading, Glenn Erickson

Savant's new reviews today are

The Home Theater Forum had an online discussion with Warner Bros. the other night, and pried a ton of titles out of them for the next two or three years. These promised DVDs for 2004 caught Savant's eye: The Asphalt Jungle, Gun Crazy, Murder My Sweet, Out of the Past, The Set-Up all July, The Bad Seed, Children of the Damned and Village of the Damned, The Hunger, It's Alive! Halloween, The Fearless Vampire Killers, GoodFellas: SE, Hitchcock 7-film boxed set, Mean Streets: SE, Seven Brides For Seven Brothers: SE both versions!, THX-1138 SE. That's a pretty hefty pack of goodies. Here's a big thanks to Warners and to the Home Theater Forum for breaking this news. Glenn Erickson

Savant's new reviews today are

Happy Sunday. Los Angeles held its annual Marathon today, which I completely missed, even though the route snakes within three blocks of the Savant homestead. Savant instead took one of his rare movie excursions, slipping out of town at 4:30 AM and heading north to Red Rock Canyon, to try and find locations used in the Westerns MAN OF THE WEST and THE BIG COUNTRY, and the science fiction film ROCKETSHIP X-M. Red Rock Canyon is an area with several interestingly weathered cliff faces that catch the light nicely and are easy to spot in many old films. I did find most of the views I was looking for, although a particular set of cliffs escaped me. Where the Mars explorers find the blind cavegirl, and where Gary Cooper guns down Lee J. Cobb must have been only a few yards away, but I ran out of time. My guide was Vic Henney, a veteran hiker who seems to know every side road, ghost town and rock formation within two days' drive of LA. It took me years to find Bronson Caves by myself, so he was a great help. Vic spotted three separate exact locations in Death Valley from one look at the DVD of ROCKETSHIP X-M. We spent an hour at the site, burned up a lot of expensive gasoline, and were back by 11 AM.

Pictures? Great idea, but that's for people who remember to recharge their digital camera batteries. I'm learning.

Reader mail was fun this week. Reader "Arnaud" settled the PASSION OF ANNA title debate by saying Bergman used the title L182 because it was to be Svensk Filmindustri's 182nd film.

Like the rest of you, I'm deluged by junk mail of various kinds, but I still want to respond to every Email I receive. So try to use subject headings that indicate that you're not trying to enhance part of my body or are selling drugs online. I answer Emails immediately, or if I'm working, every night. I received a couple of "undeliverable" messages this week, accredited to full mailboxes at the reader end. I didn't remember to resend them all, so if you didn't get a response, don't be afraid to re-submit. Thanks, Glenn Erickson

Savant's new reviews today are

An outfit called Ivy Films surprised me this week with a trio of rare (well, at least in the U.S.) Italian imports, each starring a bombshell Italian sex goddess. All three are good pictures with reasonably good transfers, and I'm happy to billboard them here.

Various other bits of news:

About half a year ago, I couldn't identify some shots from a space movie that showed up in one of those fake sex docus on a Something Weird disc. Martin H. Larsen from Denmark sent me to a website that cleared it all up ... the clips came from a rare German film, subsequently raided to make the kiddie film I once saw them in, The Space Explorers. It's a pretty interesting story. Thanks, Martin.

Some bad news: Fox's DVD of ONE MILLION BC is the 91 minute version, not the extended 100 minute version we were given on laserdisc. I'd hoped that just the box was incorrect, but I measured it. Too bad. I'm reviewing it fairly soon.

For PAL folk, there's an amazing bulletin, another tip, this one from Marshall Deutelbaum. Anchor Bay's DVD of Wim Wenders' ultra-long three-film cut of UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD is nowhere in sight (and may still be in legal limbo) but there's an Italian DVD offered on the web: FINO ALLA FINE DEL MONDO. If anyone gets this I'd be excited to hear about it ... is it complete? - does the music run fast?

And that's it until Sunday. Thanks, Glenn Erickson