Hello!

Artificial Intelligence is insidious, isn’t it? . . . AI playtime videos are beginning to proliferate.  Joe Dante  circulated this link to a page called  CineNova Universe.  Its unnamed creator describes himself as an audio-visual artist, art director and music producer; he uses AI to ‘create things that come from the human brain.’

Making fake videos that look like vintage film has come a long way from superimposing scratches.

At the moment he specializes in retro comic book adventures, in the style of old movies … with ‘exclusive characters such as “The Impossible Man” “The Gentleman” and “Roaring Star.”‘  Each of these little bursts of creativity is just a few minutes long.

From his data page we get the idea that Mr. CineNova may be a Spaniard. Take a peek, it’s pretty cute.

 

CineNova Universe 

---

 

The Warner Archive Collection has quite a treat waiting for us in July. We expect a nice handful of new Blu-ray releases each month, with perhaps one or two coveted vintage titles among them. But the WAC has just announced a big July-August disc crop, a bounty that will include a number of classic gems. They were all to land late in July, but on Wednesday it was announced that half would be delayed until August 4. All are remastered in 4K from original elements. In the realm of vintage pictures, there’s something for everyone here.

All are remastered in 4K from original elements. In the realm of vintage pictures, there’s something for everyone here.

The biggest surprise and the one we’re most eager to see is the 1935 A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the all-star Shakespeare comedy that captures a fine fairy tale magic. The older transfers hinted at how beautiful it might be, so we’re hoping that the 4K remaster will reproduce the glowing quality of all those original film stills.

 

We’re also partial to a trio of B&W mysteries, spread across three studios. They are the strained RKO noir Macao with Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell, Warners’ hardboiled Andre De Toth noir Crime Wave with Sterling Hayden, Phyllis Kirk and Charles Bronson, and MGM’s fantastic amnesia romance Random Harvest, with Ronald Colman and Greer Garson.

Colt .45 is a Technicolor Randolph Scott western. Say the name, no explanation needed.

The Keyhole and Lily Turner are pre-Code dramas directed by Michael Curtiz and William Wellman, starring Kay Francis and Ruth Chatterton.

Presenting Lily Mars is an MGM Judy Garland musical with Van Heflin and the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra.

 

We’re curious to see how the Technicolor Captain Horatio Hornblower will fare, with Gregory Peck and Virginia Mayo … we just read about designer Ken Adam’s work fixing up its real sailing ships.

The Sisters is a Bette Davis / Errol Flynn picture we haven’t seen, so it will be a curiosity.

Bonnie Scotland gives us Laurel & Hardy, a Hal Roach feature released by MGM … made with a lot of studio politics I’ll need to read more about.

And the rollout concludes with Fred Zinnemann’s The Seventh Cross, a wartime suspense thriller with Spencer Tracy that was one of the first films to contemplate the possibility of massive war crimes, an all-consuming Holocaust. The direction is brilliant, even if we think the Zinnemann picture from MGM that most merits the 4K upgrade is his The Search.

How can we review all of these?  We’ll find a way.

 

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson