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Greetings! Thanks for "tuning in late" to the DVD Savant Coumn, where nothing much happens unless it's reported late and inaccurately. Last night on Vine Street in Hollywood restorationist and friend Mike Hyatt screened a 35mm CinemaScope answer print of his photochemical restoration of Steve Sekeley's 1963 The Day of the Triffids, the English film with Howard Keel and Nicole Maurey. This is the film that Mike has spent most of the last decade cleaning by hand, picking tens of thousands of tiny particles out of the soft emulsion of the original negative. What would have projected as a snowstorm of white flecks now looks pristine, clear, as if it were brand new.

Triffids is not in the a Public Domain, but a low-budget video release in the early 1980s gave piratical distributors the illusion that it was, and bogus flat videotapes of awful quality turned up in various libraries, even legitimate ones. Besides a 'Scope laserdisc from 1990 (cover, above) and a pirate of that transfer, the title hasn't been seen in its original color and 'Scope since who-knows-when. Because Mike's original negative hasn't faded, we can see cameraman Ted Moore's cinematography for the first time, and it's truly beautiful, with red and yellow highlights. When one character is killed by the walking plants, he's immediately struck a shade of Green. Before, I always thought the man's appearance was just a bad print.

Although technically the screening was a staff Halloween party for the Academy, Mike Hyatt invited a few guests to see the film on the Academy's big Pickford Center Linwood Dunn screen. The house was filled with friends and well-wishers who have been hearing about Mike's painstaking one-man restoration

Now Mike begins the digital restoration, cleaning up the film's title and optical sections where dirt and scratches are built-in, and have to be painted out. Mike Hyatt holds substantial rights to the picture and is hoping for an eventual DVD and Blu-ray release as well as making restored prints available for theatrical screenings.

Warners has released another stack of Turner Classic Movies Greatest Classic Films collections, highly economical four-title groupings of the best transfers of WB and MGM classics. What with the Blu-ray of North By Northwest coming out this week, the "Hitchcock Thrillers" set includes Suspicion, Strangers on a Train, The Wrong Man and I Confess, good mysteries all. The other sets are as follows: "Comedy": A Night at the Opera, Arsenic and Old Lace, Father of the Bride and The Long, Long Trailer; "Family": Lassie Come Home, Flipper, The Incredible Mr. Limpet and National Velvet; and "Holiday", with Christmas in Connecticut, A Christmas Carol, The Shop Around the Corner and It Happened on 5th Avenue.

Finally, old pal Mike Mayo told me that Thursday's Variety reported that The Berlin Film Festival will screen a new reconstruction of Fritz Lang's Metropolis on February 10. This is the miracle full-length copy found in Argentina last year. I would assume that it will be the nicely restored movie we know, with a number of fairly fuzzy 16mm inserts but I can't say that would bother me at all. Maybe next Christmas will bring that promised Blu-ray of a full-length version. Here's a link to a full article on the Berlinale 2010 Screening. Thanks for reading! Glenn Erickson

Savant's new reviews today are

Greetings!

No, Savant hasn't gone nuts ... I've uploaded five reviews today, representing eleven separate titles. This happened because some discs came in late-ish, but I still wanted the reviews to go out before street date.

This of course means that the "eight newest" reviews displayed below will be pushed down all the faster. In the absence of a better system, please check the paragraph of the newest forty or so reviews below that, to see if you've missed anything. To quote Travis Bickle, some day a new front page design will come along and wash the garbage and the filth from the streets ...

The double Disney Treasures Tins of Zorro seasons One and Two arrived, so I'll be digging into them soon ... I have fond kiddie memories of watching these with my sister, who I think had a crush on Guy Williams. Also coming, more or less out of the blue, is Universal's Claudette Colbert Collection which features a number of films I've never seen, like Bluebeard's 8th Wife, an early screenwriting success by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett. I've also been promised Blu-rays of Up and Gone with the Wind, so I'll have to start thinking up something original to say about those. You never know, Pigs might fly.

I saw a sampling of the Japanese Toho Blu-ray of the original Godzilla over the weekend, and it looks far better than Classic Media's recent Region 1 DVD. Whatever business politics prevented Classic Media from obtaining this restored version, it's a shame. Even the scratches seem lighter and the image is sharper, more stable and more detailed -- and free of weird digital processing artifacts. But too bad for us unworthy Gaijin, as the release has no English subtitles. Thanks for reading! Glenn Erickson

Savant's new reviews today are

Greetings! As Fall rolls in so do the interesting discs ... so I have four today instead of just three -- or two, as was the case in the dryer weeks of the summer. My sideways tap into the Warner Archive Collection provides a solid streak of quality older pictures, the kind that please Savant the most.

Corresondent Stefan Andersson forwards this Cinematheque Francais web article on Lola Montés, which we're still hoping for in region one (Blu-ray, please!). Reading French helps but the extensive image gallery is impressive on its own.

Matthew Rovner continues writing about his researches into radio genius / movie innovator Arch Oboloer with his Forward article A Plot Against America: A Jewish Writer's Forgotten "Future History" Of a Nazi Takeover. The piece concentrates on Oboler's radio play This Precious Freedom, which became the odd political film Strange Holiday.

Lastly, a fresh opportunity to rot your mind. Correspondent Robolly sends this link to a Polish Goat Boy cartoon. And there's plenty more where that one came from! Thanks for reading! Glenn Erickson

Savant's new reviews today are

Hello again. The news on the street is that Warners will be releasing a Blu-ray of The Music Man in February. I have Sony's review screener of the new Columbia Pictures Film Noir Classics 1 and will be posting on it soon. I don't yet have a release date for Sony's Film Noir Classics 2, which is tentatively planned to feature In a Lonely Place, Pushover, Nightfall, The Brothers Rico and City of Fear.

What else has come in? There's the Severin Blu-ray of Eagles Over London from Enzo G. Castellari, an Anchor Bay Christmas Blu-ray called Nothing Like the Holidays and Criterion's Wings of Desire and Howard's End, both Blu-rays as well. Warner Archive Collection selections will continue -- I can sneak in an early good word for the two-part Lorimar TV movie Jack the Ripper with Michael Caine.

Dick Dinman has four (count 'em, 4) programs on the new The Wizard of Oz Blu-ray release up on the web from his popular WMPGFM radio show DVD Classics Corner On the Air. Available post-broadcast on the web are:

The Yellow Brick Road in Blu (Part One), featuring Oz documentarian John Fricke's discussion of wild making-of stories about the 1939 film;
The Yellow Brick Road in Blu (Part Two), continuing with John Fricke;
The Yellow Brick Road in Blu (Part Three), featuring Warner Home Video executive George Feltenstein on the restoration;
and Oz and Ends, a second Feltenstein interview show that spills the name of another classic slated for Blu-ray release -- in 2011.

Thanks for reading! Glenn Erickson

Savant's new reviews today are

Greetings! Good news from Criterion in January ... when they'll be coming out with Blu-rays of 8 ½, Che and a three-disc set of Rossellini's War Trilogy with restored versions of Rome Open City, Paisan and Germany Year Zero. As these great pictures have always been seen in truly ragged copies, this disc will be much anticipated.

I received several emails about my review of Contact; apparently my gripes on the picture are shared by some of my readers. I've been doing my best to temper my political opinions in the reviews, so this is encouraging -- I'm still saying what I want to say.

An outfit called Ignite is claiming that they've fully restored the 1963 version of Day of the Triffids without specifically saying how they plan to exploit it -- perhaps this page on the Ignite website is to snag distributors? I'll look into this, as the brief description given of the restoration process resembles the one I've been reporting on -- and been frustrated by -- for the last four years!

Finally, I've secured a Blu-ray screener of the classic Patrick McGoohan The Prisoner miniseries, and will have a review up before street date. Thanks for reading! Glenn Erickson

Savant's new reviews today are

Greetings! People seem to like Saturday's review of the Blu-ray for Hardware; just up on Youtube is a new disc montage-promo featuring input from Lemmy of Motörhead, one of the musical contributors to the movie.

Reader Mark has told me that the new Snow White Blu-ray has some hidden extras I didn't find: HD transfers of antecedent Disney Cartoons, some in Technicolor. To reach them, do this:

1. When the Disc 2 menu comes up, select Bonus Features.
2. Select Backstage Disney.
3. Select Hyperion Studios.
4. When the Hyperion documentary starts playing, press the Next Chapter button on your remote (>>|).
5. You'll come to a photo of the studio with a menu bar at the bottom. This is probably as far as you got before and wound up going in circles by pressing the left or right arrow. What they don't make clear is that you have to press the DOWN arrow to get to the Index option. Select that.
6. The Hyperion Studio Index will come up. Use the down arrow to see the submenus under each of the topics. For example, "Steamboat Willie" can be found if you move the down arrow to Sound Stage; "Flowers and Trees" is under Ink and Paint, etc.

Thanks Mark!

Criterion's latest picture puzzle clue seems to indicate that Federico Fellini's Otto e mezzo will be coming back in Blu-ray.

From The Digital Bits comes news that restoration work is in progress on the great Delmer Daves / Gary Cooper / Maria Schell The Hanging Tree. a really wonderful western. If true this is great news; the movie merits a theatrical mini-release. I'd been told that the Cooper estate and Warners had at one point not come to terms about footing the bill for a needed restoration; but this looks like the matter has been resolved. Maybe "the Lost Lady" will be "found" in a year or two. Thanks for reading! Glenn Erickson

Savant's new reviews today are

Greetings! Let's start with an odd but worthy site called The Unsung Joe , a scrupulously researched page about bit players we see but rarely identify. The always entertaining Shadowplay website tipped me off to a terrific September 14 Unsung Joe entry about bit-player actress Jody Gilbert and her unheralded, courageous refusal to cooperate with the HUAC investigators. Ms. Gilbert was one of only two or three industry people to treat the entertainment witch-hunt tribunal with the utter contempt it deserved> The transcript of her testimony makes for great reading.

Just for fun, Gary Teetzel steers us to an instant existentialist German classic concocted from an episode of Quickdraw McGraw, with an audio track from a very famous Fritz Lang film. It's the warped brainchild of writer & all-round talent Merrill Markoe: Merrill Markoe presents: Quickdraw Noir.

My review of Warners' Karloff-Lugosi Horror Classics won't be up here at Savant for a few days, but you can bop over to TCM.com to check it out now. Among other minor surprises, it details something I spotted a long time ago in a screening of the RKO movie You'll Find Out: a scene that uses as set dressing rare animation models from Willis O'Brien's aborted Creation project. The same scene also shows very clear views of two of the notorious spider models from the famous lost "spider pit" sequence from King Kong.

New discs from the Warner Archive Collection have been announced; I'm hoping to review Berlin Express, Experiment Perilous (both Jacques Tourneur), The Subject was Roses and the very good Lorimar miniseries Jack the Ripper with Michael Caine. I understand that upcoming titles will include Rancho Notorious (Fritz Lang), Gabriel over the White House (Gregory La Cava) and several politically controversial WW2 era shows: Confessions of a Nazi Spy, Mission to Moscow, The Mortal Storm and The Master Race. Thanks for reading! Glenn Erickson