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A question for drdoros regarding "Village of Dreams". Your new website states that there are less than 50 copies remaining of the DVD. Does this mean that it is going out of print? Have you lost the rights to this film or are there plans to come out with a new release (possibly blu) later on? Thanks.

telamonides wrote:A question for drdoros regarding "Village of Dreams". Your new website states that there are less than 50 copies remaining of the DVD. Does this mean that it is going out of print? Have you lost the rights to this film or are there plans to come out with a new release (possibly blu) later on? Thanks.

We have retained the rights through the production company but we are not sure what will happen when we run out of DVDs. When we received our DVDs back from Image we found that many of our titles have gone out-of-print or were about to. We're still struggling with the backlog while we come up with new titles as well.

It most likely be reprinted, but not for a while. And I'm sorry to say, no BluRay is planned for the future.

Listed as "Coming Soon" on their website, the three disc set (DVD or Blu-ray!!!) Rags and Riches: The Mary Pickford Collection.

Disc 1. The Poor Little Rich Girl. 1917. 75 mins. Director: Maurice Tourneur. Music composed and conducted by Philip Carli, performed by the Flower City Society Orchestra. Also: commentary by film historian Scott Eyman and a home movie from Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbank’s legendary Hollywood home, Pickfair.

Disc 2. The Hoodlum. 1919. 92 mins. Director: Sidney A. Franklin. Orchestral Score by Bonnie Ruth Janofsky, performed by the Rouse Philharmonic, conducted by Hugh Munro Neely. Also: Mary Pickford in Ramona (1910. 17 mins.)

Disc 3. Sparrows. 1926. 90 mins. Director: William Beaudine. Score by Jeffrey Silverman, performed by the Rouse Philharmonic, conducted by Hugh Munro Neely. Restored by the Library of Congress. Also, an original 1926 trailer, the “Angel” outtakes and commentary by film historians Jeffrey Vance and Tony Maietta.

Also in the works is Shirley Clarke's The Connection (seems to be DVD only) and Samuel Beckett's Film (DVD and Blu-ray).

What A Disgrace wrote: Also in the works is Shirley Clarke's The Connection (seems to be DVD only) and Samuel Beckett's Film (DVD and Blu-ray).

Thanks for checking out our website! Plans for the Shirley Clarke films including THE CONNECTION, ORNETTE and PORTRAIT OF JASON are not finalized yet. We're just opening the first (THE CONNECTION) on May 4th so I haven't even begun to think of the discs yet. We do have 2K masters of the first two and PoJ is being restored this year with us.

As for FILM, that's also a long term plan. The restoration will be playing next year with a companion film being edited right now.

As for Mary Pickford -- the test discs are in but it might take a month to approve them and then we'll set the release date. We have a lot going on this month!

And I should mention that although I haven't gotten all six square yards of mulch down, today is the last day of Milestone's Spring sale. Along with the 20% off for most of the title, we're giving an additional 10% off if you put in the coupon code SPRING!

Dennis

That Mary Pickford set sounds fantastic, can't wait!

Wow, Pickford on Blu! Great work!

P.S. I noticed you reissued The Adventures of Prince Achmed a few months ago (with pretty snazzy cover art!). Will we ever see a Blu-ray?

Maurice Tourneur in HD!

It will be nice to see SPARROWS brought up to speed... More than any other Pickford title, features some beautiful imagery that was obviously labored very carefully over by the SUNRISE team of Struss and Rosher.

Yes, I watched quite a few Pickford features a couple of years ago and Sparrows was my favorite. More than in any other film of hers, the imagery and atmosphere of it is nightmarish at times, both in the "baby farm" and in the swamp, where Pickford did take after take for the escape sequence with dangerous alligators lurking right underneath her (no trick photography there!). But practically the whole film takes place in a dark, stinking, menacing place, which places Pickford's persona into a kind of Dickensian setting.

Great to see the Shirley Clarke films get wider circulation too, but I have the three mentioned and wonder if The Cool World could be licensed from Zipporah, cleaned up, and released as well. I used to inquire with Zippoah if they were ever going to make it available on DVD-R, and they told me on a couple occasions that they were planning to do some restoration first, but it seems like whatever plans they had never amounted to anything. Wiseman's treatment of the film in his role of producer/distributor was pretty infamous, and it would help if now he'd do whatever is necessary to finally allow us to see The Cool World (and not on a $400 VHS).

Okay, to answer all the questions. Yes, we're very excited about bringing out Pickford titles. They will not look perfect -- very little DSR was done by the Pickford Institute -- but the image is very, very sharp and clear. It was a philosophical as well as financial decision. And the full orchestral scores are fantastic. I just put up the original Sparrows trailer on our Milestone website that takes a bit of the score from the feature.

I'd love to get the Cool World and spent four years talking to Fred and Zipporah about it. I'm very sad we didn't get it but never say never. And you may have copies of the three films from other sources, but they are like carbon copies to the original. Everything before was from used prints or dupes of used prints. Ours will all be from original negatives or fine grains taken to 2K with some great cleanup work. You can't really tell by the trailer we put up of THE CONNECTION but it's some of the best work we've done. And Robert Frost turns out to be a very good documentary and we'll be working off UCLA and the Academy's restoration of that.

Add to that Clarke's outtakes, home movies (some going back to her appearance in the 1920s Deal, NJ baby parade), personal papers, scripts, contracts, and anything she breathed on, there will be fantastic documentation.

And the first drafts of THE CONNECTION poster we got a couple hours ago is a work of art in itself!

Dennis

drdoros wrote:And the first drafts of THE CONNECTION poster we got a couple hours ago is a work of art in itself!

J. Hoberman on The Connection.

and here's Andrew O'Hehir on The Connection

Sorry to intrude on this, but is there any chance of Pontecorvo's The Wide Blue Road getting put back into print/ rereleased?

knives wrote:Sorry to intrude on this, but is there any chance of Pontecorvo's The Wide Blue Road getting put back into print/ rereleased?

There's still a few left for sale on our website. I don't know when we will be reprinting.

Dennis

Thanks for the info.

Just received an e-mail...

Available ONLY for Customers and
Subscribers to Milestone’s Newsletter!

Rags & Riches: Mary Pickford Collection is now shipping 4 months early from Milestone.

The blu is $44 including international shipping

perkizitore wrote:The blu is $44 including international shipping

Just ordered the blu set,I think the price is quite reasonable as there's three full length films.I just hope it's region free(I'm region B locked)otherwise some of you must take it off my hands...

Since RRP is $40, I will be able to get it for less than $30 shipped to the UK on release date from Amazon Marketplace sellers.

JPJ wrote:

perkizitore wrote:The blu is $44 including international shipping

Just ordered the blu set,I think the price is quite reasonable as there's three full length films.I just hope it's region free(I'm region B locked)otherwise some of you must take it off my hands...

We own worldwide rights, so no worries -- they're all region free.

DD

Thanks DD,set already shipped yesterday.Sparrows finally!

Milestone's shipping is lightning fast,I'm in Finland and already received a Mary Pickford collection blu earlier this week,Amazon packages usually take 2-3 weeks to arrive.
I just briefly sampled each film and these all look quite good,the most anticipated title for many,Sparrows,seems to be a little softer than the other two.I'm not the"golden eye" so of course it's still perfectly watchable.Going to watch the film for the first time tonight!

There are few films I would be prouder to help restore than this one. An absolutely amazing, essential film.