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DVD Talk review for Lost and Found: American Treasures from the New Zealand Film Archive, a DVD set that includes the John Ford film Upstream and most of an early writer and co-director credit for Alfred Hitchcock in the form of The White Shadow.

colinr0380 wrote:DVD Talk review for Lost and Found: American Treasures from the New Zealand Film Archive, a DVD set that includes the John Ford film Upstream and most of an early writer and co-director credit for Alfred Hitchcock in the form of The White Shadow.

I unreservedly recommend this set - I love these random grab-bags, and the high points of this are higher than on many similar discs.

Really all of the American Treasures sets are worth getting. The set's going for only $22 right now.

Beaver on the above.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but the highlight, and film to make it a necessary purchase, of the new Treasure's set is a Norman Taurog short called Andy's Stump Speech which features one of the most impressive stunts I've ever seen. I honestly don't get how they did it even with a train demolishing the actors.

knives wrote:I can't believe I'm saying this, but the highlight, and film to make it a necessary purchase, of the new Treasure's set is a Norman Taurog short called Andy's Stump Speech which features one of the most impressive stunts I've ever seen. I honestly don't get how they did it even with a train demolishing the actors.

Having now seen all of this content courtesy of TCM, I was impressed by Ford's UPSTREAM but found the Hitchcock-assisted THE WHITE SHADOW to be quite dull (although the double-exposure shots looked really good and I imagine the missing material would have been the most interesting). Everything else is certainly worth a look and I agree that ANDY'S STUMP SPEECH is a real highlight with its surreal parade of gags. As to that train stunt...

Spoiler

Only the carriage driver is a real person; the Gump family have been replaced by posed dummies. The horse has already been detached from the carriage so the stunt man portraying the driver only has to jump from the front of the carriage at the right time. It's still a risky stunt, all the same.

10/14/14

The China Syndrome (1979)

1/12/16

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1990) BD

What A Disgrace wrote: Tue Dec 27, 2011 2:31 am Treasures VI: Next Wave Avant Garde

Its terribly disappointing that this set never materialized; and that the whole Treasures Series appears to be dead - with all of the sets OOP and fetching absurd prices. I assume this was a victim of Image Entertainment's disintegration, along with, well, that whole financial crisis and government program cuts.

At least the times were great while they lasted; though I'll mourn not being able to own the first two volumes for a reasonable price.

I know that many shorts included in these sets have resurfaced in various ways from private companies, but these eclectic and wonderfully curated sets with those books still deserve to live on.

I miss the Treasures series too, but at least some of the films that were in these sets (and some that weren't) are freely available online in the NFPF's Screening Room - including all 50 titles from the first volume with notes.

I've long wondered what happened to Treasures VI, because it was announced in 2011 that production on the set had begun, and then in 2014 (about a year after the Treasures from the New Zealand Archive set came out) an NFPF press release claimed that they were "now completing production" on the avant-garde set. Completely maddening to see work and resources put into such a tantalizing release only to have it end up in permanent limbo.

Jonathan S wrote: Wed Jan 23, 2019 3:46 pmI miss the Treasures series too, but at least some of the films that were in these sets (and some that weren't) are freely available online in the NFPF's Screening Room - including all 50 titles from the first volume with notes.

Thanks for highlighting this! There are so many great films included on the sets, but the one that I would highlight the most from that very first Treasures From Film Archives edition would be Rose Hobart. It might just be the scenes of the reflected moon and romantic yearning set to music but I remember thinking about it a bit when I later saw the Kenneth Anger film Rabbit's Moon.

Jonathan S wrote: Wed Jan 23, 2019 3:46 pm I miss the Treasures series too, but at least some of the films that were in these sets (and some that weren't) are freely available online in the NFPF's Screening Room - including all 50 titles from the first volume with notes.

Fantastic! Thank you for posting this, I'll just have to see what I can do about tracking down the second volume's contents - between the website / youtube / etc. Also great to finally be able to watch more of those films that were brought over from New Zealand.

Also noticed that The Field Guide to Sponsored Films + The Film Preservation Guide are both freely available on their site as PDFs. Though they seem to have lost most all of their funding, at least they're still fulfilling their mission.

Hopefully they can get another grant from somewhere and complete production on Volume VI and future volumes. That or just team up with a private company to pick up the slack. I have to wonder how many of the Treasures New Zealand discs were pressed; as it must have been somewhat popular to go OOP so quickly (that or it was Image / RLJ's fault).

That BFI parliamentary constituency project needs to be resurrected too (or at the very least, more sets like Here's a Health to the Barley Mow). Are there any other country's archives that have similarly released a series of sets with eclectically curated representations of their film heritage? (more oddball films like these, rather than "Polish Masterpieces", etc)