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Cronenfly wrote:I know it was mentioned earlier in this thread, but I think that it bears repeating that A New Leaf is definitely a title Criterion should be pursuing.

Absolutely yes. I was the one who asked Turell about A NEW LEAF. For all we know Paramount won't give it up, but I think May would make a crucial addition to Criterion. Her status as one of the greatest and most important female American directors of the 20th century seems undeniable to me, and I think her stature will only grow. This Hoberman piece from last year -- in which he wrote May deserves to be considered alongside Woody Allen and Scorsese -- was a nice start in that direction.

(Wrong thread for this comment, but Criterion should pick up THE HEARTBREAK KID from Fox while they're at it. The Anchor Bay edition went out of print.)

jaredsap wrote:(Wrong thread for this comment, but Criterion should pick up THE HEARTBREAK KID from Fox while they're at it. The Anchor Bay edition went out of print.)

I strongly suspect they want it back for a tie-in with the new remake. Criterion won't have a chance.

What you guys think about a shot at Children of a Lesser God?

Cinephrenic wrote:What you guys think about a shot at Children of a Lesser God?

I'm trying to figure out if this is a joke or not.

Narshty wrote:

jaredsap wrote:(Wrong thread for this comment, but Criterion should pick up THE HEARTBREAK KID from Fox while they're at it. The Anchor Bay edition went out of print.)

I strongly suspect they want it back for a tie-in with the new remake. Criterion won't have a chance.

With the poor box-office the remake brought in, are you still sure about that?

flyonthewall2983 wrote:

Narshty wrote:

jaredsap wrote: but Criterion should pick up THE HEARTBREAK KID from Fox while they're at it.

I strongly suspect they want it back for a tie-in with the new remake. Criterion won't have a chance.

With the poor box-office the remake brought in, are you still sure about that?

The box office value of a film went out with the 8-track. Wait for DVD sales.

Fair enough.

I'm dying to see "Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains" on Criterion. It's an amazingly prescient film about two teen girls (played by Laura Dern and Diane Lane) from the Pacific Northwest who start a punk band. About two years ago, a documentary on it was completed and then mysteriosuly shelved, so maybe Criteron could use that.

The Elegant Dandy Fop wrote:

Cinephrenic wrote:I keep forgetting that everything Paramount released prior to 1949 is controlled by Universal. In which, is ok. Since Criterion has worked with them as well.

Yeah, I forgot too.

I thought this for well nigh forever too but member Derek Estes states just a week or so ago to me that this doesn't include films from the silent era. He didn't indicate what the date cutoff was (if there was one, or it was a simple flat out "To hell with the silents, keep the fucking things we don't wanta hafta write a purchase order for another 25 fire extinguishers furchrissake"), but it sounds believable. The releases on VHS-- the Sternbergs for example-- were as I recall released in Paramount boxes not Universal. Whereas stuff like EMPRESS or the shamefully ignored on dvd ISLAND OF LOST SOULS, when released on vhs, were absolutely packaged as Universal tapes. So I'm inclined to believe Derek.

Sorry Steve! (He'll know what I mean.)

Universal simply didn't want the silents (remember that this was for TV showing in the 50s), so the buyout was for talkies only. The one exception was THE FOUR FEATHERS; it was mistakenly included in the deal since it includes a sync score.

beamish13 wrote:I'm dying to see "Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains" on Criterion. It's an amazingly prescient film about two teen girls (played by Laura Dern and Diane Lane) from the Pacific Northwest who start a punk band. About two years ago, a documentary on it was completed and then mysteriosuly shelved, so maybe Criteron could use that.

Oh shit, why had I never thought of this? Yes, Criterion definitely needs to put this out. If they got White Dog, then this (also never officially released either theatrically or on home video) is surely up for grabs. I saw this on VH1 the one time they aired it like 8 or 9 years ago and I loved it. The folks at Criterion who acquired Border Radio should probably be big fans of this film. Man, yes, this needs to happen. Speaking of '80s punk movies, who owns the rights to Decline of Western Civilization? I could see music rights being a disaster but it made it to VHS at least.

Danny Burk wrote:Universal simply didn't want the silents (remember that this was for TV showing in the 50s), so the buyout was for talkies only. The one exception was THE FOUR FEATHERS; it was mistakenly included in the deal since it includes a sync score.

I suspected as much, since Universal doesn't even touch their own PHANTOM or HUNCHBACK which they coulda made at least a few extra mil for over the past decade... and financed a small ongoing silents operation that could've earned them some props in the academic community.

Now as well as in the past-- even versus their own hugely rich library going back prior to 1913's TRAFFIC IN SOULS, running up to the hugely neglected THE LAST WARNING-- Universal are like the Antisilent. 666 furluciferssakes.

mikeohhh wrote:Speaking of '80s punk movies, who owns the rights to Decline of Western Civilization? I could see music rights being a disaster but it made it to VHS at least.

Penelope Spheeris owns the rights to the entire trilogy

HerrSchreck wrote:I suspected as much, since Universal doesn't even touch their own PHANTOM or HUNCHBACK which they coulda made at least a few extra mil for over the past decade... and financed a small ongoing silents operation that could've earned them some props in the academic community.

U only has material on very few of their silents (having trashed them all in the late 40s)...MAN WHO LAUGHS comes to mind, and they only have the same chopped up silent version of the '29 PHANTOM rerelease that's been floating around for years (35mm). They have nothing on HUNCHBACK or LAST WARNING unless it's a 16mm "Show at Home" print, which is where all extant copies of both titles come from. The original 1925 PHANTOM only survives in Show at Home prints too.

BTW, the new HUNCHBACK is from 16mm (Show at Home), not 35mm as some sources indicated. Jack Theakston confirmed it on another forum. Other than a few fragments, the film doesn't exist in 35mm. If it weren't for the 16mm Show at Home prints (struck directly from camera negs from mid-20s to mid-30s), there would be far less of U's silent output surviving than we even have now. The old Show at Home catalogues teasingly list THE CHINESE PARROT as being available...either no prints survived (or were sold?), or one could possibly still be lurking in an attic somewhere. (Hopefully not in Tacoma with FOUR DEVILS...)

beamish13 wrote:

mikeohhh wrote:Speaking of '80s punk movies, who owns the rights to Decline of Western Civilization? I could see music rights being a disaster but it made it to VHS at least.

Penelope Spheeris owns the rights to the entire trilogy

I only see the trilogy coming out on a label like Shout Factory that has experience in tackling and clearing prohibitively expensive music rights issues (ie. Freaks & Greeks). I'd love to see it in the Criterion Collection but I wonder how much the music rights are scaring away any DVD label from licensing and releasing it.

Danny Burk wrote:

HerrSchreck wrote:I suspected as much, since Universal doesn't even touch their own PHANTOM or HUNCHBACK which they coulda made at least a few extra mil for over the past decade... and financed a small ongoing silents operation that could've earned them some props in the academic community.

U only has material on very few of their silents (having trashed them all in the late 40s)...MAN WHO LAUGHS comes to mind, and they only have the same chopped up silent version of the '29 PHANTOM rerelease that's been floating around for years (35mm). They have nothing on HUNCHBACK or LAST WARNING unless it's a 16mm "Show at Home" print, which is where all extant copies of both titles come from. The original 1925 PHANTOM only survives in Show at Home prints too.

BTW, the new HUNCHBACK is from 16mm (Show at Home), not 35mm as some sources indicated. Jack Theakston confirmed it on another forum. Other than a few fragments, the film doesn't exist in 35mm. If it weren't for the 16mm Show at Home prints (struck directly from camera negs from mid-20s to mid-30s), there would be far less of U's silent output surviving than we even have now. The old Show at Home catalogues teasingly list THE CHINESE PARROT as being available...either no prints survived (or were sold?), or one could possibly still be lurking in an attic somewhere. (Hopefully not in Tacoma with FOUR DEVILS...)

This still doesn't excuse the neglect of present and near-present management regimes within the studio at least making some effort to those silent/early sound titles which have extant materials. Kino and Shepard seem to be the only guys doing anything with what's left laying around.

We've all heard how one of the post-silent era regimes at Universal pulped their own silent library to extract the precious metals in the nitrate.. or something to that effect. But elements still do exist in their library. After developing their relationship w Universal, and getting out THE MAN WHO LAUGHS, the Wyler silents/early sound feautures & doc (originally slated for BEN HUR I seem to remember), plus the early Paramount Mamoulians APPLAUSE & LOVE ME, Bret Wood had this to say about the potential future about their relationship w Universal viz mining silents from their lib:

Q: Any more Conrad Veidt films coming from Kino?

A: If The Man Who Laughs does really well, we might release The Last Performance and The Last Warning [directed by Paul Leni], so you get a little bit more Veidt and a little bit more Leni. But because those films are so little known, we thought it would be stronger to come out with The Man Who Laughs, which is better known, in hopes that it does well and that it would encourage us to release more suspense-oriented Universal silents.

on the subject of working w Uni, and their treatment of their silents, he admitted:

A: Yes, it's my understanding that they didn't maintain their films very well at all, and a lot of key Universal films survived in the format of Show-at-Home prints, which were 16mm prints marketed to collectors and hobbyists. The 35mm elements are long gone for films like The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Von Stroheim's The Merry-Go-Round.

I've had a look at a print (I actually have a badly degenrated ntsc tape of it) of WARNING and it looks positively sublime. My suspicion was this was one those few silents film that managed to escape the recycling glut at that juncture when the pulping occured. This doesn't mean that exhibitions of clean show at homes of this film don't regularly make the rounds (from Eastman House, for ex.)

I have no doubt there are more buried treasure in their vaults that we don't know about-- in addition to WARNING-- because U simply doesn't give a drop of a shit.

Q: Why hasn't The Man Who Laughs been released on video before?

A: It's a long story, mainly having to do with the difficulty of an independent video distributor getting access to studio films. A studio like Universal doesn't see a lot of value in releasing older films like The Man Who Laughs, because in their dollars and cents viewpoint, it's small potatoes. But for a small company like Kino, it's a great release. It's something that we have been wanting to do for a long time. This is how it happened. A long time ago we picked up a documentary about William Wyler called Directed by William Wyler, and we didn't have anything to release it with; it's hard to release a one-hour documentary on a filmmaker by itself. As a favor, Catherine Wyler, William Wyler's daughter, asked Universal to give us two or three films to release with the documentary. That's how we got Counsellor-at-Law, The Good Fairy, and The Love Trap [all directed by Wyler and released on DVD by Kino]. Suddenly we had a relationship with Universal, which was a godsend. We asked them if they'd be interested in continuing the relationship, and they said yes, and The Man Who Laughs was the film film on our list. The next movies on our list are Applause and Love Me Tonight [available November 25]. We're finishing up the DVDs of those two right now. We hope to delve very deeply into Universal's vaults and release a lot of other films like this that have never been out on home video before.

[...]

Q: This sounds like a wonderful new relationship, because up to now Universal has been slow in releasing their old films, especially silents, on DVD. Not counting their classic monster movies, of course.

SO as I said-- there's more in there. There's definitely more in there besides the sound PHANTOM reissue, MAN WHO LAUGHS and a few odds & ends. I don't buy that it's an empty library in a million years. So let's hope that somehow, somewhere, somebody gets to get into that library and find out the full scope of what fucking Universal is sitting on.

Well, I hope they are indeed sitting on some other stuff, although the two that I mentioned are the only ones I know for a fact that they have in 35mm. Plus LOVE TRAP, which I forgot about, although it probably didn't get dumped because it's a part-talkie. Like you, I'd really love to know what else is there that may be unknown outside of the studio. AFAIK, LAST WARNING doesn't exist anywhere in 35mm, and all I've seen on LAST PERFORMANCE is a hideous, near-unwatchable dupe from a Show at Home. Sounds like it's time for another inquiry to Kino

Back in my 16mm days, I used to have Show at Home prints of THE CHARLATAN and THE UNTAMEABLE. Both were gorgeous amber originals. I assume they remained in such good shape because, unlike titles such as PHANTOM and HUNCHBACK, there wasn't much call for them. John Hampton (founder of the Silent Movie Theatre) had quite a few originals of rare titles, which are now at UCLA.

Hey man, welcome to the board. Always good to have a guy around here who's passionate and knows what the fuck he's talking about on silent film. So much of this rich period has been lost we need as many seriousminded dudes around as we can get. And hell-- you may be right. The interview doesn't definitively mean that Uni has a 35 on WARNING. Some of those 16's taken from negs in the old days are completely sublime, and may be what Bret meant. But they seriously seem to try to stick to 35's for their silent dvd's (vhs another story, particularly things like Ince and lesser known Griffiths like the excellent ISNT LIFE WONDERFUL), but anythings possible.

So, cheers to you signor Burk!

HerrSchreck wrote:Hey man, welcome to the board. Always good to have a guy around here who's passionate and knows what the fuck he's talking about on silent film. So much of this rich period has been lost we need as many seriousminded dudes around as we can get. And hell-- you may be right. The interview doesn't definitively mean that Uni has a 35 on WARNING. Some of those 16's taken from negs in the old days are completely sublime, and may be what Bret meant. But they seriously seem to try to stick to 35's for their silent dvd's (vhs another story, particularly things like Ince and lesser known Griffiths like the excellent ISNT LIFE WONDERFUL), but anythings possible.

So, cheers to you signor Burk!

Thanks, glad I found this board awhile ago. I've been lurking for a month or two and finally got around to adding some posts myself. Good to find some like-minded individuals here. And BTW, you have a PM

Donald Cammell's "White of the Eye" would be a cool, eclectic choice for Criterion.

I'd kill to see 1985's "Better Off Dead" in the CC. It's got a huge cult following, is wholly unique, and it's DVD release from Paramount is just awful (bad transfer, no special features; even the cover is a godawful Photoshop job). I'd love to hear a Savage Steve Holland commentary on it.

In regards to the Decline films, Penelope Spheeris has supposedly been working on DVD releases for a few years (she mentioned this on Henry Rollins' talk show) and will be self-releasing them.

In regards to Ladies & Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains, I've always heard that the reason it hasn't seen a legit release is that no negatives or any sort of original elements exist and they would have to remaster it off of VHS. Of course, that might just be a rumor - haven't there been theatrical showings within the last few years?

patrick wrote:In regards to Ladies & Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains, I've always heard that the reason it hasn't seen a legit release is that no negatives or any sort of original elements exist and they would have to remaster it off of VHS. Of course, that might just be a rumor - haven't there been theatrical showings within the last few years?

Yeah, it's clearly false. STAINS was just screened in LA last year.

With Criterion releasing some Paramount titles on DVD, I wish that they would consider Roger Vadim's BLOOD AND ROSES, which would look splendid in widescreen. The only video release of that title has been a poor quality SLP (6 hour speed) VHS on the Paramount/Gateway label.

Jobla wrote:With Criterion releasing some Paramount titles on DVD, I wish that they would consider Roger Vadim's BLOOD AND ROSES, which would look splendid in widescreen. The only video release of that title has been a poor quality SLP (6 hour speed) VHS on the Paramount/Gateway label.

DAMN! That's right - Paramount own Blood and Roses! The Italian/French version is longer, too. Interesting recommendation. Cheers!