Hello!

The most welcome Blu-ray news in a while comes from The Disney Movie Club … which is finally offering Richard Fleischer’s 1954 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea on Blu-ray. The release date is June 18 … for members only. A friend or two belong to the Club, but I don’t know if they like it… It doesn’t seem to be a forced subscription thing, exactly, but the text on their introductory offer has some Beagle Boy pitfalls, so beware.

Seven years ago at the AMIA’s REEL THING presentation, we saw a glorious restoration of 20,000 Leagues remastered at 2.55:1, with the ‘CinemaScope Mumps’ shots corrected by using extra image ‘real estate’ tucked beneath the soundtrack area. I have the restoration on my DVR from Turner Classic Movies, but that is of course compressed, so am excited about getting this long-AWOL Jules Verne wonder-movie. I swiped the inspiring image above from a Video Watchdog post by Tim Lucas.

Kino Lorber has announced two very good westerns for Region A: UA’s Day of the Outlaw, directed by André de Toth, with Robert Ryan, Burl Ives, Tina Louise and Venetia Stevenson, and Universal-International’s Man Without a Star, directed by King Vidor, with Kirk Douglas, Jeanne Crain, Claire Trevor, Richard Boone and William Campbell. CineSavant offers an easy guide to telling them apart: Outlaw = B&W and snow.  Star = Color and barbed wire.

The image above with Jeanne Crain has the rustic, outdoorsy pioneer flavor that I decided best represented these fine ’50s westerns.

And finally, a formatting gripe. Ads on CineSavant review pages are supposed to be displayed on the top and on the sides, but for the last few days they’ve suddenly popped up in the text of my reviews, 4 and 5 per article. Not cool, speaketh Savant. I’m told they’re working on a fix … but hasn’t this already happened before?  Sorry for the inconvenience. At least they’re not porn ads, which back on the DVDtalk page kicked in once or twice, and the webmaster wanted to know why I was concerned.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson