Hello!

Thanks to correspondents for helping me straighten out a type size, font and darkness for the new CineSavant page. I use a new iMac screen with the scale blown up, so it looked fine to me at the smaller point size. When the web designer (I’ll use his name when I have permission) first previewed the page for me, everything looked too big. Three changes later, I think the choices made are finally nailed down.

It’s a nice launch for CineSavant. I think the changeover is going smoothly, without my losing too many readers. I spent the entire weekend writing emails, FB posts, and wrestling with HTML and wordpress. Right now the only extra content on the site is the three-part Review Index, which I like a lot — it finally reflects all of the Savant reviews, the newer ones at Trailers from Hell and World Cinema Paradise as well as the many years of posts at DVDtalk.

Onward —

Great news from The Warner Archive Collection: October tenth will be the premiere of a new Blu-ray of 1941’s The Sea Wolf, restored to its original theatrical length for the first time in over 75 years. This is the classic starring Edward G. Robinson, Ida Lupino and John Garfield. All we’ve ever seen on TV was a reissue version cut by a full fourteen minutes. Quote the WAC:

“Long thought to exist only in substandard form, Warner Bros. is proud to present this film as first released in 1941, restoring its original 100-minute running time from 35mm nitrate elements.”

Can’t argue with that, except to wish that the same fate could befall all of our film favorites. Warners keeps performing minor miracles, as if pulling rabbits out of a hat.

We can also chalk up the re-premiere of The Sea Wolf as yet another felicitous coincidence for the upcoming debut of the biography of the film’s director Michael Curtiz, by Alan K. Rode. I hope to review the book when it surfaces.

Are you a fan of Italian westerns? Are you sometimes befuddled by the confusing and sometimes incomplete info on the IMDB? I don’t expect this concern to be voiced at the United Nations, but I just learned about another online resource, a specialized Italian Western Database. Its maker has written a short article about it at the new Current Thinking on the Western page, edited by frequent Savant contributor Lee Broughton. The article about the database is brand new: Reflections on the Origins of the Spaghetti Western Database by Sebastian Haselbeck.

Among Criterion’s newly announced December discs are Alexander Payne’s painfully funny Election, and a new & improved iteration of Monterey Pop and associated concert movies.

Olive Films has some good stuff coming for October: Arthur Penn’s The Miracle Worker, Bob Rafelson’s Stay Hungry and two exotic cheapies from Republic and Monogram, The Vampire’s Ghost and Return of the Ape Man with Bela Lugosi.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Welcome to the new home of what was formerly DVD Savant, now transmogrified into CineSavant. It will still be home to more review opinionizing tilted toward film fans that want the lowdown on what’s coming on (mostly) disc-borne home video. The new entity CineSavant is a stand-alone page, and new reviews will still premiere through the kind auspices of Trailers From Hell. Note the nifty new logo by Charlie Largent. The old name and logo isn’t going away either, mainly because it’s so well known. As you can see CineSavant comes in a new more bloggy format that’s going to be a lot less work.

I’ll be reviving old features and putting up new ones as fast as I can, as independence breeds plenty of rash, half-baked ideas! Already up are full review indexes (indices?) for the 5,500 Savant reviews and articles, including the ones posted at TFH and World Cinema Paradise from the last two years. Also note that there’s a new URL and a new email address to update. Wish me luck, fellow well-wishers! Thank you kindly — and please write!

Savant’s new reviews today are:

Hello!

I haven’t read any web rants lately about the ‘death’ of disc media for home video, yet I give thanks to Michael Blanton of the Facebook Film Forum for this link to Danielle Kogan’s brief, positive web article from Courier Life’s Brooklyn Daily:  Disk connection: Film Noir Cinema still rents movies, hosts shows.  Being a Californian, ‘Leonard Street in Greenpoint’ means nothing to me, but wherever it is it sounds like the place to go.

On the  Warner Archive Collection’s Facebook page  appeared this well-written rebuttal to rumors that a new restoration of Howard Hawks’  The Thing From Another World  is on the way. I’m not sure it’s possible to link to an individual FB post, so I’ve copied it here, until I’m told to take it down. Is a new disc in the works? The answer is that it ain’t so, in no uncertain terms:

Looking back at the Wade Williams HTF post that started it all, a close reading convinces me that the post may have been a mistake, that it’s a repeat of a post from 2003: The ‘ten years ago’ reference makes sense with that timing, as does Wade’s reference to a new DVD coming out. I just thought I would undo whatever harm I’d done by passing on the ‘news’ of a new restoration … several readers were enthused enough to write in minutes after I’d posted last Tuesday.

And finally, critic-filmmaker David Cairns takes an amusing look at Tobe Hooper’s  Lifeforce  today (9/16), over at his  Shadowplay  page. David writes on a different plane of film criticism entirely.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Savant’s new reviews today are:

Hello!

Gary Teetzel links us to the world today, starting with two Metropolis– themed items. A Smithsonian Magazine article by Matt Novak from 2012 takes a look at a vintage explanation of the film’s effects: 1927 Magazine Looks at Metropolis, ‘A Movie Based On Science’. Then, in Wired Magazine from the same year, Geeta Dyal displays another rare item: Recovered 1927 Metropolis Film Program Goes Behind the Scenes of a Sci-Fi Masterpiece. My only comment is about the method used to create the ‘electric bolts’ in the machine room — the article implies that they were shot live on the set, like a foreground miniature, when they were double-exposed at a later time. Just a detail. The second document was for years the main source of technical info on the film, so it’s nice that it was so carefully written.

Film collector Wade Williams, over at the Home Theater Forum, is saying that he’s contributed a film source to a Warners restoration of the long version of Howard Hawks’ The Thing From Another World, a show long in need of a visual reupholstering job. When the show plays on TCM now, the long-version scenes drop to a low-quality 16mm source. It would be nice if a smart new restoration were indeed on the way, but Williams’ note mostly clouds the issue. He says he loaned his print to WB ten years ago, and recently as three years ago I was told that WB still lacked decent elements with which to ‘fix’ the movie — a collector’s print might or might not be good enough, and WB has pretty high standards. When Williams says the film is ‘newly restored,’ is he saying that something new and unannounced has happened? Only when Warners issues a confirmation will we know.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Savant’s new reviews today are:

Hello!

Partly inspired by John Kirk’s efforts twenty years ago to locate a missing musical number called ‘Coffee Break’, Joe Baltake takes on the larger issues behind the show How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, both on stage and film. It is indeed a favorite, partly because the writer-director David Swift befriended me back at MGM. Baltake’s September 4 entry at The Passionate Moviegoer is the one to read, but I will put in a plug for my short piece that stirred the pot on this issue back in 1998: Wanted: The Missing ‘Coffee Break’ Scene.

A great article by Beth Daniels over at Smithsonian.com caught my fancy — it’s How Bullwinkle Taught Kids Sophisticated Political Satire. That’s Bullwinkle J. Moose, I’ll remind you. Thanks to Edward Sullivan, who gave me the tip for this item. Unlike Savant, author Daniels was too young to see The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle when it was new. Since we kids in 1960 hadn’t a clue about many of the show’s cultural and political references, she must really have been confused ten years later, when kids had no way of knowing what a big deal Hula Hoops were.

Actually, I only think it was Edward that sent me this link … Edward Sullivan has been sending me meaningful and useful notes and links forever. I checked, and since he started in 2005, there have been 571 emails from Ed, all of them with something really valuable enclosed. I up ‘n’ blab that information in this way because I’m against the Facebook idea of a rolling obituary, where we only find out who the good guys were, famous or just friends, after they’re gone. So thanks, again Ed.

And, as Gary Teetzel reminds me, the holidays are just around the corner, and you know, I never felt it was a bad idea to, you know, suggest little gift ideas when they arise! Gary found the ideal item, and now we just have to figure out the price. A part of my completely non-binding ‘gift suggestion’ today appears in the photo above. Assuming the link still works, you can see all of it at this Bonham’s Auction Page link. Hey, thanks in advance! I won’t ask for new car until next year.

Thanks for reading — Glenn Erickson

Savant’s new reviews today are: