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Greetings! The big talk here in Los Angeles this week is the news, reported on the front page of the L.A. Times (July 29) that the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is closing down its film screenings. The unfortunate wording announcing the decision says that the museum will seek sponsorship to "show films by artists". The cine élite here has interpreted this as saying that filmmakers are not artists; what I think the announcement wanted to say is that they want screenings only when tied in with exhibits elsewhere in the museum. No matter how you read it, it reminds me of the pre- Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) days when film wasn't considered art.

The problem is both a lack of publicity -- Museum screenings were hardly getting any -- and the fact that much of what's available to screen is already out on DVD. Studios aren't doing as many terrific restorations as they once did, as well -- the uncut Kiss Me Deadly that John Kirk, Alain Silver and I produced in 1997 premiered at LACMA, and got big write-ups in several magazines and newspapers.

I remember way back in 1974, when the museum re-premiered Frank Capra's uncut It's a Wonderful Life in the only way they could, by synchronizing 35mm and 16mm prints together. The event led to the rediscovery of what's become America's favorite Christmas film. LACMA was also the venue for the epochal 2001 German restoration of Metropolis. When MGM still made it their business to stay active on the festival screening circuit, restoration director John Kirk had a free hand to prep whatever LACMA wanted to show, down to the most obscure titles in the United Artists library. As MGM no longer has an in-house film department, all that is on hold for now.

The heyday for the Museum was back in the 1970s when curator Ron Haver was in charge. We'd go see Singin' in the Rain, The Searchers or Bend of the River in fantastic Technicolor studio prints, and Haver would introduce the likes of Gene Kelly and James Stewart to talk to the audience. The Museum was our first opportunity to see the entire output of directors like Fritz Lang; I remember a "devil" themed series after The Exorcist came out that gave us incredibly good double bills like Curse of the Demon & Burn Witch, Burn, and Bedazzled & Damn Yankees. They showed Hammer films and Greta Garbo silents ... and LACMA was the first time I saw Major Dundee in 35mm Panavision, in 1985. It was at the end of a 12-hour marathon of westerns I didn't want to see and I came in ready to plunk down $12 just for the one show. They let me in free.

L.A. now has The American Cinematheque (in two locations) and the New Beverly Theater, but for years the Museum did the heavy lifting when it came to top-rank film programming. I'll be sad to see it go.

UK correspondent Lee Broughton links to an interesting short film in his guest review this week, so I thought I'd repeat the link here. It's called Harpya.

I'm informed that the Sony Icons of Science Fiction: Toho disc set is on its way to me as we speak, thanks to DVDtalk's John Sinnott. I promise to check the mailbox at twenty minute intervals.

Thanks for reading, Glenn Erickson

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Greetings! News from Savant the traveler, just back from the East: Florida is hot, humid and very flat. Long jet plane trips are a drag. Spending time with relatives is delightful.

Reviews are a bit late this vacation week, but they're good ones. Besides one of the top collector discs, I've done a "Revival Screening" review of a title that should be on DVD. Cyril Endfield's disturbing noir Try and Get Me! is just too good and too important to pass up. I have it on an old (1991) VHS from Republic Home Video. Ownership may have shifted again by now (to Paramount?) but since then nobody seems to be interested in releasing RHV titles like Plunder Road. Nor the famous & entertaining Johnny Guitar, a superior Nicholas Ray film starring Joan Crawford. The way the Home Video "classic titles" market is contracting down to nearly nothing, it's not likely that we'll be seeing official releases for titles like Try and Get Me very soon. Which makes it all the more important to let people know what's being ignored. Not all movies are The African Queen .... some are better. Thanks for reading, Glenn Erickson

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Greetings! This link has made the rounds in the last week, but it's good enough to repeat here. It's Dave Berry's collection of Home Movies from the original Industrial Light and Magic shop on Valjean in the San Fernando Valley during the filming of special effects for the first Star Wars (skip the "A New Hope" baloney). I visited that shop at least twice and got to sit in on an explanation of the motion control technology from Richard Edlund, but I also knew several of the great cameramen and artists working on the film (no name-dropping here). It's good to see them so young again. I was told that ILM had as many battling egos as any film company. The impression given here is of a bunch of art school and engineering graduates mixing with young veterans of the commercial effects industry, and having a ball. Thanks for reading, Glenn Erickson.

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Greetings! A few points of interest for this weekend:

Writer Herbert Shadrack of the magazine Cinema Retro has let us know that someone has posted and added English subtitles to a fine seven-part German-language documentary on YouTube: Peter Lorre : Displaced Person. The show is about Lorre's ambition to write and direct and his bad luck with the interesting German film Der Verlorene (1951).

The fact that NASA degaussed the original custom format high resolution Apollo 11 video from the moon has made the rounds by now, but here's NPR's take on the sad state of affairs. NASA is promoting a Lowry restoration of the blurry images we've already seen, and I think it's a publicity dodge to divert discussion away from archival incompetence. From what I can see, the improvement on the B&W footage isn't all that significant. Let's see, it's mankind's most impressive achievement of the 20th century, and nobody took care of the original video?

Aitam Bar-Sagi steers us to a Euronews website that teases us with one of the rediscovered Metropolis scenes found last year in Argentina. The film is finally back in Germany and being worked on. The partial scene is brief, but looks pretty good -- Rotwang pulls back the drapes to show the statue of Hel, his deceased wife.

Thanks for reading -- will be back with a couple of more reviews on Tuesday ... Glenn Erickson

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A slow news day, so Savant will take this opportunity to indulge in some shameless self-promotion (SSP). The page you're looking at is an independently edited & content- managed item run by yours truly, and hosted by DVDtalk. The format was more or less lifted from an old website called the DVD Resource Page that ceased functioning late in 2000. Savant is not very blog-like; I prefer to call it an on-line column. These opening remarks twice a week are technically the "column", but they're very informal. The Savant page has good intentions, but I have been caught in goofs. At this particular moment, the "reported" African Queen release has been on and off several times and rumored to be destined for DVD or Blu-ray or both. I've reported it both ways incorrectly and have sworn off further "news" on the matter.

DVD Savant has been operating for about twelve years, never taking a break of more than a few days or so. That means that its archives are now just short of 3,000 reviews and articles, mostly written by me with a goodly selection of R2 releases covered by Lee Broughton of the U.K.. Relatively new reviews float in a paragraph near the bottom of this, the main page. The full list is easily browsed via links on the main page and at the bottom of every review, but a quick way to find a particular review is to just Google "DVD Savant" followed by the title or name you're looking for. One of the benefits of high web visibility is relatively easy access through most of the search engines.

I also do my best to keep up the Savant Wish List, which is now in its third year. It's a general resource of what Savant readers want to see on disc, and what's actually coming. As the market for library releases seems to be contracting, perhaps it should be re-titled "The Idealist's Wish List" but for now it still seems to be functioning well.

As always, a great deal of DVD Savant is not the site but the busy Email correspondence maintained with hundreds of readers. That's been Savant's real reward -- I never knew I possessed a Social Gene, but apparently it's there. As always, thanks for the notes, opinions, corrections, job offers, occasional praise and irate criticism. Savant will continue to uphold journalistic integrity (typos, poor syntax) in the finest tradition of The Internet.

(Mottos under consideration for the DVD Savant Shield of Arms: Edit Free Or Die!, and Subsist! Persevere! Evolve!)

Oh, I forgot. There is one hot link I want to steer you to. John McElwee's fascinating Greenbriar Picture Show's latest page (July 12) features a fine story on the exhibition of the movie Shane. But scroll down a bit to July 7 and you'll see some fantastic coverage of the 1956 reissue of King Kong and its marquee-to-marquee competition with the import upstart Godzilla, King of the Monsters. The article includes large scans of both film's premiere newspaper ads in Los Angeles. Great stuff!

-- Thanks for reading, Glenn Erickson

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Hello again -- only two reviews today but several nice links to steer you to:

Favorite director Joe Dante attended the Edinburgh Film Festival last week, and I've been waiting for David Cairns' promised interview with him. It's now up and accessible at a website called The Auteurs. The review is excellent, as I had expected. Cairns never ceases to impress me, and I find myself frequently linking to his informative, funny (and irreverent) movie blog Shadowplay. I receive compliments just for the link suggestion, which I consider proof that my personal contribution to this cockeyed caravan amounts to something after all!

Mr. Dante sent a link directing our attention to a site called Retro Comedy, which features a page called The 15 Creepiest Vintage Ads of all Time (see illustration above). I agree!

Finally, friend and webcast interviewer Dick Dinman has posted an entire series of interviews around the new Blu-ray release of The Diary of Anne Frank:

Anne Frank Part One : Dick Dinman's guest is star Millie Perkins.

Anne Frank Part Two : Guest star Diane Baker.

Anne Frank Part Three : Dick Dinman interviews Anne Frank associate producer and second unit director George Stevens Jr..

Also, Dick offers a personal remembrance entitled Saying Goodbye to Karl Malden, which contains a terrific inerview with the noted actor.

By the way, we just passed the 40th Anniversary of the premiere of Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch. -- Thanks for reading! Glenn Erickson

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Greetings! The new online issue of The Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies is up. Besides interesting articles on Sheridan Le Fanu and Bill Gaines and its usual excellent book reviews, the Journal features a decidedly un-usual Freudian-political essay on "The Possibilities and Futilities of Cuban Horror": ¡Yo Soy Godzilla! by Rafael Miguel Montes. Good reading!

In case you haven't seen it, I've amended my review of Sony's Blu-ray of The Deep with two interesting reader responses. One of them answers my pharmaceutical question about the shelf-life of liquid morphine stored in ampoules -- an issue that renders the film's entire premise absurd!

Let me ask a selfish, personal question aimed at recipients of the MGM HD Hi-Def cable channel: How clean is your "reception"? Here on Time-Warner in L.A., I rarely get through a single movie without multiple interruptions, breakup that could originate at the source, in a satellite relay or at my local office. For all I know, it could be hamsters munching on the cable underneath my house. Anyway, if everyone else is getting perfect service, I'll know to complain!

And finally, see it while you can -- somebody has recycled Bruno Ganz as Hitler, but this time talking about ... get ready for it ... Michael Jackson: Hitler finds out Michael Jackson has died.

Thanks for reading, Glenn Erickson

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Hello, and a happy Independence Day to all and sundry! I'm now informed that The African Queen is again on the release schedule for the Fall, along with It's a Wonderful Life (November 3, Paramount, Blu-ray) and Deep Impact (September 15, Paramount, Blu-ray), A Walk in the Sun (August 25, Kit Parker) and Husbands (August 18, Sony).

Forced to make a choice, the Blu-rays I'm most excited about are Coraline (July 21 Universal Blu-ray), Watchmen (July 21, Warners), Repulsion (July 28, Criterion), Playtime (August 18, Criterion), Duplicity (August 25, Universal), M*A*S*H (September 1, Fox), Gojira (September 22, Genius Products) and Stop Making Sense (Oct 13, Palm Pictures).

Sony takes the lead on the most desirable standard def releases: Icons of Sci Fi Toho: The H-Man, Battle in Outer Space, Mothra (August 18, Sony); Sam Fuller: The Crimson Kimono, Underworld U.S.A, Scandal Sheet (September 29, Sony), Karloff and Lugosi Horror Classics: Frankenstein 1970, The Walking Dead, You'll Find Out, Zombies on Broadway (October 6, Warners); Film Noir 1: The Sniper, The Big Heat, Five Against the House, The Lineup, Murder by Contract Film Noir 2: In a Lonely Place, Pushover, Nightfall, The Brothers Rico, City of Fear (both November 3 Sony) and Esther Williams 2: Thrill of a Romance, This Time For Keeps, Fiesta, Pagan Love Song, Million Dollar Mermaid, Easy to Love (October 6, Warners). So there's plenty to look forward to this year, my previous whining aside.

Finally, friend and writer Jeremy Arnold saw a new restoration of G.W. Pabst's Pandora's Box in downtown L.A. last Friday at a Last Remaining Seats screening, and offered this report:

"I've never seen it look that good. Looked like it was shot yesterday. They did a complex digital restoration using three prints from three different archives, which were all struck decades apart, and used computer technology to make the shading and grading match. It looked fluid and clean. No negative or original material exists, so many imperfections that were photographically embedded in the images had to be digitally removed and cleaned up. This was the first U.S. screening. Hugh Hefner funded the entire restoration and got a big credit. And was there."

That sounds like good news - Criterion's excellent DVD looked good, but with that wonderful film there's always room for improvement.

Thanks for reading, Glenn Erickson