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Five fast reviews today, including the new Criterion disc of Night and the City for which Savant did a commentary for last October, ta-dah! I have some days off from editing work, an intense regimen that I love but that leaves little time for other activities. I'll soon be caught up with reviews and ready to take on the big February releases everyone's looking forward to, while trying to cook up other non-reviewing assignments.

Thanks for all the support, especially those people as excited about the rejuvenation of Major Dundee as I am. It's an odd turn of events and I'm dying to write about it. I should have worked harder to get published on Dundee or Peckinpah long ago. Some writers have asked why I'm not incensed that Sony is messing around with the 1965 original movie at this late date. Here was my answer to one of them:

"I put Dundee in a very special category, as a broken, unfinished, abandoned and screwed up movie. What it always needed was a full re-cut. The editing job is abominable and there were tons of slow motion action scenes that were unused - in the rush back then to hack together a quick release, nobody took the time to check them out. The dialogue tracks are raw garbage right from the cutting room with a few cheap wild lines thrown in where needed. Richard Harris didn't redub his badly pronounced Spanish and one laugh from Dub Taylor is repeated about 5 times.

So I'm happy this is happening ... Dundee might be reborn as a movie with some respect."

Thanks for reading, Glenn Erickson

No reviews today! A couple are almost ready but I figured I'd wait until the weekend when they could go out with fewer typos and errors of judgment. But I have a bunch of news tonight to tide thee over ...

I talked to Grover Crisp at Sony the other day. It's no joke, he has indeed recorded a new score for MAJOR DUNDEE, just last week in fact. There were acually three orchestras of different sizes recorded. It's apparently a full reworking, including Mexican mariachi music. Michael Schlesinger said that it "sounds like a real 1960s score," which hopefully is a good sign.

It's amazing to think that DUNDEE could be treated this well after officially being ignored by Columbia for so long. As I wrote last November I was able to see a screening of the extended version, and the old soundtrack was the element that still made the movie difficult to sit through. Finally viewed with a great-looking picture, the music now seems worse than terrible. Studios have re-scored silent films but I don't know if this is the first full-bore rescoring of a picture that already had an official original score ... even though this original was a sloppy patch-up job. Grover asked me to be silent back then about his intention to do the rescoring, and I have to admit that it seemed too wild of an idea at the time - I thought for sure it would be cancelled.

It does mean that the DVD (rumored) for later this year will be an extra special item. Theatrical screenings of the re-tracked DUNDEE will start on April 8 in NYC and April 15 in Los Angeles. New trailers and posters are being prepared. What an amazing development.

I received a copy of the upcoming NIGHT AND THE CITY Criterion DVD today - the one with my commentary on it. Haven't had the nerve to listen to it yet. I'll report later after I find the courage. John Cameron Swayze, I aint, but it was another exciting experience, as they say.

Notes on news from elsewhere come through helpful Savant correspondent Gary Teetzel:

Yet another great James Cagney movie is coming, one Savant has received numerous inquiries about over the years. Warners has announced LOVE ME OR LEAVE ME for April 26. It's part of a six-movie Doris Day set.

And with absolutely zero fanfare, ADV Films is re-releasing the first DAIMAJIN film by itself next week. According to their website it has been remastered in 16:9. Hopefully the other two will follow. Savant's review of their older 3-film boxed set is here.

More Scorsese, vintage gangster films, new Home Vision and Criterion titles ... and even some Bettie Page exploitation to be reviewed soon at DVD Savant. Thanks for your patience! Glenn Erickson

Savant's new reviews today are

Some interesting release developments to report. We're unsure of what's happening at Media Shock Blasters, but The Mysterians seems to have been slotted back to March 22, with the unusual B&W scope monsterfest Daikaiju Baran (Varan, the Unbelievable) has been announced for May 31. Both may be Movies, the Unreviewable at DVD Savant, as screener requests have so far been fruitless (sniff). I like to think that Savant is marginally responsible for cheerleading the interest in these pictures, with my look at The Mysterians generating a couple of hundred eager email responses from readers desperate to see a good copy of the film. So maybe the MSB people will relent.

Gary Teetzel informs me of more desirable Warners discs on the horizon: a big Errol Flynn boxed set with Captain Blood, The Sea Hawk, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, Dodge City, They Died With Their Boots On and a docu disc will be coming out on April 12. Fans have been begging for those swashbucklers forever, so this may be a biggie; hopefully The Sea Hawk will be the restored longer version. Warners also has The Band Wagon and Easter Parade in two-disc special eds for March 15. The Warners people must be working overtime this year! -- Thanks, Glenn Erickson

Savant's new reviews today are

A quick review drop-off today ... thanks for all the help with errors (hopefully the reviews above are in better shape) ... Glenn

Savant's new reviews today are

A lot happening this week once again. I reported here last November that I was able to see a screening of an extended version of Sam Peckinpah's Major Dundee, but at that time it was requested that I not mention that Columbia was considering re-scoring the film, something that I'm not sure has ever been done. The screening convinced me that the movie would be greatly improved just by removing all the music - I think it's the main reason that Dundee doesn't play well - but it was just an idea at the time. Now The Film Score Monthly has broken the news on the web, and I'm wondering exactly what's going on. I'll try to find out if the rescoring is going to happen, as the prospect of seeing the film revived in a watchable form is very attractive.

I've just finished reading The DVD Revolution: Movies, Culture, and Technology by Aaron Barlow. It's the first book I've read about the impact of DVD and I was very impressed; it would make an excellent textbook. It covers the history of previous non-theatrical delivery systems for movie entertainment, including 9.5 mm and Castle films before going into the DVD revolution and discussing extras, special editions and ways that the format is and isn't exploiting its possibilities. Having been with the DVD phenomenon since before the beginning, I wasn't prepared to see it discussed in these terms, and the author's ideas are very interesting.

Savant's friend Bruce Holecheck already writes for Nathaniel Thompson's Mondo Digital, a more horror-fantastic oriented website than DVD Savant, but he's just started a weekly column over at DVD Drive-In called Cinemuck. It's the kind of column I'll read to keep up with cult movies, some of which I don't necessarily want to see - for instance, I have a screener of a new release The Killer Must Kill Again that I am going to check out, because the director and cast interest me. But Bruce's descriptions of the ick factor in notorious titles like Entrails of a Virgin let me read about what I'm missing.

I can also report that I just saw a screener of Ray Harryhausen: The Early Years and will be reviewing it soon. Sparkhill's collection of the master animator's early work includes a lot of input from Harryhausen in person.

That's the news for now .... Glenn Erickson

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Greetings! The sun is shining on Los Angeles after about 3 solid weeks of gloomy skies and rain - except for a reprieve long enough for the Rose Bowl Parade; I think somebody in Pasadena has sold their soul to the Devil. With all the rain-related misery happening, not to mention the cataclysmic disaster on the other side of the world, I won't complain about the weather causing me to lose DSL for a few hours. But that's why my Tuesday update is promptly being uploaded on Wednesday.

More editorial long hours due to a last-minute rush job, but I've a stack of desirable discs to review and won't let them down. Thanks for all the letters and especially the ones about the DVD Savant Book - no complaints so far. Why, that orange cover alone is worth the price, as one can use it as safety equipment if lost in the snow ... Thanks, Glenn Erickson

Savant's new reviews today are

The late winter/early spring genre and special interest DVDs are all being announced, and it's a great crop. Some of these studios are putting top vintage titles out at a dizzying pace. From Criterion alone we have Casque d'Or, Kagemusha, Touchez pas au grisbi, La Commare Secca, Night and the City, Thieves' Highway, Tout Va Bien, My Own Private Idaho, The River, Young Torless, Andrej Wajda's War Trilogy, Sword of Doom, L' Eclisse and Jules & Jim. Warners is racing out with The Letter, Little Caesar, The Public Enemy, Angels with Dirty Faces, The Roaring Twenties, White Heat, Bringing Up Baby, Libeled Lady, Philadelphia Story, To Be or Not to Be, Stage Door, The Band Wagon, Bells are Ringing, Easter Parade, and Finian's Rainbow. Columbia TriStar has Bunny Lake is Missing, We Were Strangers, Twentieth Century, My Sister Eileen, Strangers When We Meet, and Behold a Pale Horse. Fox has The Laughing Policeman, The Agony and the Ecstasy, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Call Northside 777, House of Bamboo, Panic in the Streets and is promising Laura, The Street with No Name and Nightmare Alley in June. MGM lists Raging Bull, Charly, The Barbary Coast, Come and Get It, Dead End, Arrowsmith, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, Electra Glide in Blue, Krakatoa East of Java, The Purple Plain, Beach Red, The Quiet American, The Four Feathers and Viva Maria!. Add to that The Mysterians and several other Toho science fiction pictures from Media Schock Blasters and it all adds up to a season that even Savant can't possibly cover in its entirety. But he'll do his best. The Emboldened titles are the ones that excite Savant the most.

Sometimes I wish I were a New Yorker; the Pioneer Theater in the East Village will be having a one-night Barbara Steele triple bill on February 13, showing what are reportedly good prints of The Ghost, Castle of Blood and, of all things, The Horrible Dr. Hichcock!

Thanks again from a soggy California! Glenn Erickson

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Hello and Happy New Year! Three announcements of the vanity - self promotion kind: The Hollywood Reporter has picked its ten best DVDs for 2004. One of them is THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY and the other is GUN CRAZY, Savant's first effort at an audio commentary.

In addition to that, the DVD EXCLUSIVE 'awards' has nominated the THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY disc in its "Overall DVD, Classic Film" category:

DVD Exclusive website.

Finally, I've heard from some readers dismayed at Amazon's notice that the DVD Savant Book ships in "2-3 weeks." That's not true and Amazon hasn't fixed the info yet. It ships in only a couple of days, my publisher assures me.

Thanks for reading! Glenn Erickson