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Two fat boxed sets on the review altar today, with the pricey-but-packed James Dean bunch heavily favored; I can't believe that the Warner Home Video department isn't half dead, what with the sheer volume of library product they've put out so far this year - and they still have Bette Davis and Joan Crawford boxed sets in the pipeline.

On the other hand, I got an email from MGM cancelling a particular title (nothing that I was waiting for), saying that it would be re-announced by Sony at a later date. I hope the rest of MGM's slated releases do come out as planned. There's still no word on Region 1 releases of the three Sergio Leone special editions that are already out in R2, so I have to assume that Sony will be visiting them at a later date. The Special Exhibition at the Los Angeles Museum of the American West is sixty days away and I had hoped they would be out in time, but no. (The link allows one to view a Quick Time rendering of one of the featurettes from the upcoming Duck You Sucker special edition.)

Am looking forward to spinning Criterion's au hazard Balthazar, an extremely unusual Robert Bresson movie I've been reading about for thirty years but have never seen. And there are more Fox thrillers and Home Vision Japanese films on the horizon. Hope your Memorial Day was a pleasant one & thanks for the corrections! Glenn Erickson

Savant's new reviews today are

Greetings from L.A.. Hope you are enjoying the long weekend and possibly doing things more exciting than reading DVD reviews! Here are five more, including a couple of favorites. Take care, Glenn Erickson

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Hello .. this is a plug for friend Dick Dinman's new 30-min web radio show, DVD CLASSICS CORNER ON THE AIR which debuts on Thursday May 26 at 10:00 - 10:30 (West Coast Time) . Just type in www.wmpg.org and highlight "listen to WMPG". Dick's very special guests (applause) will be Gene Barry (star of the original WAR OF THE WORLDS ) and John Ericson (Spencer Tracy's co-star in BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK) . The following week (June 2nd) his distinquished guest will be Mr. Karl Malden and he'll be doing a tribute to the legendary Steve McQueen. (Danke, end of plug ..)

It suddenly turned hot in Los Angeles, like summer-hot, and the air conditioners are going. I've just heard that the Bette Davis and Joan Crawford boxed sets are on their way, which is welcome news. I also have some excellent Criterion discs to dig into, and a compilation of material on Edward R. Murrow that made me curious. Finally, I'm going to review HOUSE OF BAMBOO s little earlier than I thought - it's too much fun not to. Hope that the school year is ending nicely ... take care. Glenn Erickson

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Hello ... Six (count 'em, 6) reviews today! Unless I find FURY or I AM A FUGITIVE FROM A CHAIN GANG in a bargain bin, this upload finishes my reviews of Warners great Controversial Classics series. But I've just been told that Marlon Brando and James Dean boxed sets are on the way so I'll turn my collar up and start affecting a writing style that sounds like mumbling. Am looking forward to new transfers on EAST OF EDEN and REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE; my DVD producer was in charge of Warners restoration back in the 1990s and was the one who found the lost stereophonic tracks on a lot of Warners movies of the time. Also, I first met editorial friend Michael Sheridan (director/producer of the That's Entertainment! movies) in 1998 when he was first trying to launch a James Dean documentary. It's finally finished and is said to be an extra in the James Dean boxed set, which is marvelous.

Won't be covering the Steve McQueen movies and there's a boxed set of Gary Cooper pictures that's from Universal and thus may be hard to get a screener on. I've heard a rumor that Uni has been trying out sending VHS tapes as screeners ... wha...? But maybe I'll get lucky and get an early review of PETER IBBETSON, a surreal masterpiece nobody under 50 has seemingly ever heard of. Well, somebody at Universal apparently has.

An upcoming Fox disc has both Pan-Scanned and letterboxed transfers, a worrisome development that I hope doesn't lead to Fox being as cavalier as Disney or Sony when deciding how to format their DVD offerings. Somebody tell Wal-Mart that even people in trailer parks have widescreen TVs now. Especially people in trailer parks!

Thanks for listening to the rant .... more reviews on Tuesday! Glenn Erickson

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Greetings from Los Angeles, where Savant is enjoying Warners Controversial Collection and sniffing around a new stack of goodies, like Fox's House of Bamboo and Media Blasters Varan, the Finally Reviewable - Believable. This column is long, to cover something Savant doesn't normally cover:

Today Savant has a book report, on Chaplin and Agee: The Untold Story of the Tramp, The Writer and the Lost Screenplay by John Wranovics, from Palgrave MacMillan. James Agee was one of the first film critics to have his reviews published in print; Savant's perceptive sister gave me a copy of Agee on Film when I was in high school. This book does tells the untold story of Agee's publishing career and how he championed both Charles Chaplin and John Huston in print, and came to Chaplin's defense during the days when the comedian was persecuted by politicians and newspaper columnists. In what now might seem an opportunistic move, Agee's association with Huston led to an erratic Hollywood career of only a few years. This led to his becoming the principal screenwriter on two classic films, The African Queen and Night of the Hunter.

Agee mingled with a lofty Hollywood crowd and was present at the waning days of the Salka Viertel salon, a gathering place for intellectuals, European émigrés and poets like himself. Val Lewton and Greta Garbo might cross paths there. He takes a job doing a recut and narration track for a Phillipino movie about Genghis Kahn, which loses him the writing job on Huston's Moby Dick. But the book keeps as its backbone Agee's unending attempts to interest Chaplin in a screen story that eventually takes on the the title The Tramp's New World, the extended (78 pages) prose treatment for which is printed here for the first time. Agee had alcohol problems, suffered heart attacks and died in 1955, before Night of the Hunter was released. It's unlikely that Chaplin ever read his treatment, although we read a number of letters between the two men that might make the project possible, if the actor/director seriously thought of becoming the Little Tramp again.

The surprise here is that The Tramp's New World turns out to be a post-apocalyptic fantasy, conceived before the core movies in that subgenre - the first is probably Five, made in 1951. The little tramp is initially seems the only survivor of a nuclear holocaust, similar to the "purple death" that makes Harry Belafonte think he's the last man on Earth in 1959's The World, The Flesh and The Devil. As The Tramp has nobody to talk to, this part of the story is practically a pure silent film; Agee invents the cartoonishly morbid idea of the bomb leaving the city intact but converting people and vehicles to 2-dimensional photos of themselves, freezing the moment of their death on walls and leaving them like human puddles on the street. The story goes through a number of Chaplin themes as he first discovers a baby, then a woman, and finally a split society in which logical scientist survivors impose a regimented, non-spiritual rebirth of man. Charlie takes the other, more natural direction. A wordy and unwieldy document, the treatment pauses continually for Agee to explain that he hasn't worked out some aspects of his story, and devotes two pages to the reaction of The Tramp and the woman to hearing a piece of classical music. The writing has a fine understanding of Chaplin's kind of comedy but builds to an unwieldy clash of intellectual concepts far beyond anything in Monsieur Verdoux - or Things to Come or The Fountainhead, for that matter. It's also very difficult to read.

But the book is fascinating. Agee's literary celebrity was based on a lot of good film criticism and a few outspoken essays, and it launched him into refined Hollywood company where he only partially fit in. Wranovics' research connects a lot of dots in detail and depth, linking Chaplin's falling political fortunes to his steadfast friendship with composer Hanns Eisler, whose brother was a communist. It also explains strange tangential stories, like the series of events that make Lupita Tovar, the heroine of the Spanish version of Universal's Dracula, almost directly responsible for the eventual production of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre! Thanks for reading, Glenn Erickson

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Hello again! Savant has a few days off so will be digging into a couple more of Warners Controversial Classics as well as some intriguing discs from Home Vision, Criterion, Paramount and Fox ... with a couple detours to an old TV show or two. You can tell that summer is coming ... lots of student readers are busy cramming for finals!

Thanks for the letters and the corrections ... I've gone over this week's reviews pretty carefully, so be sure and clobber me if you find gross proofreading errors - I'll deserve it. Thanks! Glenn Erickson

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"May 10 ... Thank God for the rain. Someday a real rain will wash all the garbage off the streets ..." ... my favorite quote for the new rite-of-spring holiday, Travis Bickle Day. The sun is supposed to stay out for a few days and all is mostly right with the world of DVD Savant. I broke down and bought the pricey BRITISH WAR BOX Set from Anchor Bay last week ... some fascinating war movies in there, and I'd only seen one of them.

Thanks for reading, Glenn Erickson

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The weekend calls ... five more reviews to kick around and abuse. I've been going through old reviews and correcting typos, agreement problems and hundreds more embarrassing goofs ... which I guess could be evidence that readers must like me - to slug through those problems. ("I'm good enough, I'm smart enough ...") Those Warner CONTROVERSIAL movies should be trickling in soon - can't wait to discuss what is or isn't so dangerous about each. Thanks for reading, Glenn Erickson

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Five, count 'em, 5 big reviews today, all of them interesting and a couple of hot titles in the stack as well. Savant has received some nice feedback about The Corporation and a couple of complaints about today's newsletter going out with the title "Bed Education" instead of Bad Education; sorry about that typo. Other writers are ecstatic about a DVD I didn't review, Warners' Battle of the Bulge. They cite extra scenes, a full roadshow presentation and an ultra-wide aspect ratio that properly conveys the film's Ultra Panavision shape, 2:74 to 1 or thereabouts. I also noted that Milestone's silent drama Hindle Wakes makes a couple lists of the best 100 movies ever made; I liked it a lot and want to show it to my family this summer.

Besides that, I have reviews coming of The Big Red One, Fellini's Intervista, The Plot Against Harry, Warlock (a favorite quirky Western) Summer Magic and a really sublime western, Hour of the Gun. Back on Saturday! Glenn Erickson