Nosferatu

Last night, my boyfriend and I decided to take advantage of my Groupon subscription for the first time and splurged on $10 tickets to an event being hosted at the Santa Clarita Performing Arts Center (which is really just a college auditorium). They ran the film Nosferatu with a live orchestra, featuring the west coast premiere of an original score. I am always down to do anything Halloween, and boyfriend had been itching me to rent the film for a long time, so this was an ideal opportunity.

So, I have to say, that the concept was quite cool. Seeing a silent film with a live orchestra can add something that watching a silent film on DVD or television just doesn’t have. If one does see a silent film in a theater, these days it is generally with a live organ or a piano, or a prerecorded track onto the film. I had high expectations going into the event because of this, and may have set myself up for failure.

The most common DVD release of the film is the Kino Lorber release, which features the typical synthesizer that they add to all of their films. Kino tends to replace title cards with a digital still they create, and while they do great work for the budget that they maintain, this would not have been an ideal form of the film to run in this vicinity. Yes—the orchestra played along with the DVD of the film, as shown on a video projector, not properly focused on the screen, and with the home video logo opening the event.

I know there are readers rolling their eyes at me, and they are entitled, but let me clarify why this is a problem. Yes, the film Nosferatu may be in the public domain, but that does not mean that a company’s restoration of the film is necessarily in the public domain. Now, we could give the Santa Clarita Performing Arts Center the benefit of the doubt that they got permission from Kino Lorber to run the DVD, but there was no mention in the program, nor in the opening and closing remarks that this was the case, which makes me speculate otherwise.

My biggest nag with this, however, was the score. Oof, that score. I never thought the day would come when I preferred a Kino Lorber synthesizer soundtrack to a live score. Let me break it down for you. A section of strings plays 8 whole notes, and a drummer bangs cacophony for another bar. A section of horns plays 8 whole notes, and a drummer bangs cacophony for another bar. All the while a therymin eerily plays over the whole score doing its own thing. I wasn’t grabbed, and I started thinking about work. And generally, if a movie experience on a Saturday night makes me think about work, it goes in the ‘not fun’ pile.

What could have made this better? A little more liveliness to the score for starters. The wonderful thing about being able to compose a new score for an old film is one can be as creative as he wants when doing so. There were so many opportunities to have an elastic moment with the music composition, and I felt that, beyond lacking a melody, all the audience got was a “BOOM” when Nosferatu showed up. Additionally, these Kino Lorber restorations were meant to be seen at home, on a tv screen. The tints that are used with the image are saturated for that kind of viewing. When they appear on a video projector in a live auditorium, they look lame. The skipping of the film frames (common for silent films released of this time as the elements are in rugged shape) would not have looked as choppy on a tv screen at home, but on a large screen in an auditorium appeared very digital, as if I was watching a slideshow.

Now, in the festive mood of the Halloween Holiday, I will say that for $10 I did not mind paying what I paid for this event. The costumes of the stoned college kids, the homely Santa Clarita crowd, and the lovely college auditorium and its cozy ambience made this an okay evening for what it was. But, I will say, the reason I am being so harsh is we did this on a groupon. There are people who paid $40 for their tickets to this event. For $40, a professional DCP could have been rented. A professional score should have been played. That is all.

The Disc Extermination

This last week, after getting my finances in order, I opted to bring the Netflix Watch Instantly plan back into my life. I had gotten rid of it about three years ago as at the time, the plan offered was less than what one would desire. The features included on the plan were very limited. I remember a friend of mine and I flipping through the films offered and having a hard time finding one that seemed remotely interesting. The films would come and go from the plan so quickly that by the time you were finally interested in watching a film, it had vanished and you had to order the disc. Films were taken from the cheapest available elements. For a film like "Charade", while the disc was a transfer from Criterion, restored in vibrant color and offered in its 1.85:1 aspect ratio, the watch instant plan was taken from the Goodtimes DVD, a crappy 1" of a crappy 16mm print that was spliced to hell, pan and scan, and had horrible video overhead on the side. Aspect ratios were completely unacceptable on other films as well. Due to a merger, a lot of the titles distributed came from Starz' catalog. So, if I wanted to watch Pulp Fiction, I would be watching it in a 1.78:1 aspect ratio as opposed to its original 2.35:1.

Time heals all wounds, and after hearing the site had cleaned up its act, I decided to rekindle the relationship. This is true and it has been a happy week for the two of us. We have laughed, cried, talked about memories, and shared many a film or tv episode with a glass of Fresca. I was also in the minority of people whom are still opting to get discs vs. watch streaming. Statistics are showing that now that bandwidth is increasing and it is easier for titles in HD to stream flawlessly, people prefer to rent titles online instead of visiting a local video store or order discs from Netflix. Most Blockbusters have closed, and laptops don't even include a DVD-R drive anymore. We have started to move into a discless generation where everything is ordered, screened, and paid for with the touch of a button. But this does not come without its limitations.

There is so much we are missing from watching a program on stream instead of getting a disc. The restorations screened may be great, but the same options available have now become a thing of the past. For example, if you have been following my blog, you may have read how when I can, I try to watch a title with the original sound mix vs. the upmix as I don't have surround sound in my apartment and enjoy the original mix quality better. Watching a film streaming no longer gives you this option. Whatever sound mix has been chosen is the one you are forced to watch the film with. There are other limitations. Audio commentary-- gone. Making of features-- gone. Deleted scenes-- gone. Music only tracks-- gone. Trailers....well these aren't gone, you can still watch them on Youtube, but you get my point. Not to mention, there is a bit of compression that comes with these streaming videos. Studying the quality as meticulously as a reviewer like myself does now is a thing of the past. The hard meticulous work that studios put into film to video transfers is almost worthless now, as no one is buying the discs that show off the work. The studios might as well lease out the older D1 transfers of the films instead of the newer HD transfers considering the image quality won't be making much of a difference by the time the compressed video with whatever demonic video proxy being used hits your laptop, wireless DVD player, or gaming system.

To wrap this up, sure, I do recommend watching stuff streaming if you don't mind the shift in video quality. But I also encourage you to still opt for a disc from time to time to see the glory of the colors, grain, and high sound quality one gets with an uncompressed video disc. Not to mention, if you want to check out the special features, they still exist on the discs. The studios are still slapping them on DVDs and Blurays in hopes of people buying and renting them. Don't compromise for cheaper video quality if you don't want to. It may take an extra day, but your film experience will be worth it.

Signed,
The Celluloid Avenger

I encourage people to watch films streaming as the option is so much easier than waiting for the disc to arrive in the mail, dealing with skipping sections, etc.

Mixin' that Upmix!

A few months ago, a good chum lent me the Meet Me in St. Louis Bluray, which if anyone hasn't seen yet, is a definite must-- there are many debates about the quality of the transfer as compared to the quality of an original Technicolor print, but overall it is a great Hi Def video release in my opinion. I was a little sad to see that there weren't any new special features added to the release from the previous DVD a decade earlier. I was even more angry about the sound mixes however. When released on Standard Def DVD a decade earlier, the DVD offered two choices, either a restored mono track, or a 5.1 upmix. The new Bluray only offers the 5.1 upmix as an option.

Let's get technical for a minute for those who don't know what I am talking about. A film such as Meet Me in St. Louis came out in the 1940s when all films were mono, meaning that theaters only had the option of showing the film with one composite track. Even if a theater had two speakers, the same information would be passed out of the left and right speaker. With a 5.1 upmix for home viewing, the manufacturers have made it so that the sound will be passed out of 6 speakers (subwoofer included) and have the sound separated so different information is coming out of each speaker. While post production houses and studio restoration departments that work with old films claim to do this as discreetly as possible, it does still cause an issue. By altering the sound in such a fashion, the film is being tainted. Making such decisions are altering how the film was originally viewed. How is it possible for us as an industry that sets forth to release old films to new audiences to argue for this technique? I feel, personal opinion of course, that anyone who supports the upmixing of old films for home video release and then reprimands the acts of colorization or cropping a fullscreen film to widescreen is a hypocrite. The act of altering the sound in such a fashion is just as abominating in regards to what we stand for as film historians and preservationists and should be stopped.

Several years ago, I attended a screening at a conference. I can't name the city, year, studio, or film that I saw but remember these details well and will carry them to my grave. The head restorer of the project gave a lengthy but wonderful lecture about how the film had switched studios over the years and in order to restore this 1930s film to the way it was originally scene, a title card had been found and carefully added back into the film, while taking heed to how it fit with the score's timing of opening credits. The film started and I noticed that there were several 'layers' in the soundtrack. Uneasy, I was beginning to wonder if what I was hearing was the original mono track to the film. I shrugged it off, however, as I figured that no one would go so far as to present a film and take the time to explain how a 3 second title card had been restored and then go forward to alter the soundtrack of the film. Eventually, as a tree fell in the middle of a scene, I heard the track move from the front right speaker, around the back, and swoosh to the front left speaker. Turning my head around to follow the sound and recreating an image of Reagan spinning her head in The Exorcist I said to myself "WOAH! THAT'S NOT MONO!" I was livid, to say the least. The audience present was a group of film historians and archivists. If a sound mix was to be chosen for such a screening, it should have been a restored mono.

Going back to Meet Me In St. Louis, my anger lies in the fact that an audience should be given an option to hear an original mix or a 5.1 mix, as was the case with the original DVD release of Meet Me in St. Louis. Obviously the restored mono existed, was well received by consumers, and could have easily been included as an option on the new release. By taking away the option and forcing us to listen to the new upmix, we as consumers are being treated like children who must be taught to be grateful for what is presented to us. It is as if I went to an ice cream parlor, knew that chocolate and vanilla were available, was given chocolate instead of vanilla when I wanted the latter, and when I asked why had a finger shaken at me and was told, 'you get what you get, and you don't get upset'.

I am sure that the upmix for this film sounded beautiful, I am not arguing that-- although I will always question the integrity of it. More frustration lies in the fact that I couldn't hear it. Who buys old films on DVD and Bluray? Let's look at our demographic. Yes, there are film scholars who have a prestigious home theater setup with a sound system that can interpret the channel separation of such an upmix. But that is only a percentage of the demographic. Many home viewers are like myself. They have two speakers on their television or attached to a receiver that take this upmix and cast it out as a 2 channel Lt/Rt fold down. It is obvious that the people who headed this restoration did not keep us in mind and QC the Lt/Rt fold down of this upmix. If they had, there is no way they would have released it. Not only do the levels jump from incredibly quiet to booming loud, but the levels of M&E overtook the dialogue in several instances.

Before a side is taken on upmixing or not, one more argument should be presented. Altering sound has been a part of home video for a long time, and I know this. Before we were tinkering with upmixing, sound would be compressed before it was released on television and VHS so that the louder levels wouldn't contrast as much with the quieter ones as they would in a theater setting. So if tampering with sound has been a part of releasing these films to the home market as a staple, does this give restorers the right to upmix since the sound would have been tampered anyway? Food for thought.

Signed,
The Celluloid Avenger

Heavenly Bodies and it's not so heavenly rights acquisition history

Tonight, my partner is coming back from work, and I have a special evening planned for us. A meal of oven grilled kabobs, and a screening of the oh so tawdry film, Heavenly Bodies (1984). Heavenly Bodies is a campy cult classic about an aerobics studio that is in danger of being shut down by a larger competitor. In order to keep its studio space, an aerobics-off is chosen...last man standing from the representing competitor gets to keep the studio space to use for their business. Here's a beautiful dance number featuring the music of Bonnie Pointer:

I wish I had this film on an official DVD. Luckily, the DVD I made came from a pristine VHS that had hardly been touched since its issue in 1985, as released by Key Video. The VHS has an incredible Hi-Fi track, as well as mono, so although the DVD is pan and scan, the analog quality from the VHS does not ruin the viewing experience. Still, seeing it in its original aspect ratio and digitally mastered (in 1985, VHS weren't even digitally mastered yet, and this probably came from a 1" source) would make Heavenly Bodies more Heavenly!!!

I wanted to do a quick writeup on this issue because it is one that affected me regularly when I was working at the Sundance Institute. Many people are under the assumption that because a film was once released by a large studio or has been put out on home video that the film is archived and safe. Luckily, this film has seen a Turner Classic Movies broadcast in widescreen, which means that the elements of the film are probably still around, and that a decent master on a newer format must exist somewhere, but that isn't the case for a lot of films.

Heavenly Bodies was produced by several independent companies, Playboy Enterprises for one, and was originally released in Canada. MGM/UA released the film theatrically in 1985, and the home video distribution rights, as I mentioned, were handled by Key Video. Key Video is no longer around, and the theatrical rights to films not made by large studios usually run out over time. When I was at Sundance, dealing with this on a daily basis was the most difficult part of my job. I would call filmmakers, asking them for information on their films that ran in the festival. They would tell me the same story every time. A studio handled the theatrical rights for a few years, another studio handled the video rights, and both contracts had expired. After expiration, they never contacted the filmmaker to tell them where the elements were or bothered to tell them how much was owed to the lab that was storing the film elements. The lab refused to return the elements to the filmmaker unless the lab storage fee was paid, and threatened to destroy the elements to the film. These weren't films that were all that old either, many of them were 15-20 years old and were remembered by large audiences-- some even got DVD releases and were now falling apart in a lab. Other times, the filmmaker would hold the original elements in an environment that was not ideal for the film, such as rental storage or in a New England basement. In many ways this was the big shock to me about the film archive world. Physically saving the elements wasn't the hardest part. Going through the negotiations to start the process was much more difficult.

Sadly, unless the rights of Heavenly Bodies are renewed with the same or another distribution company, it may never hit DVD, and this is the truth for many films. Far too much has been lost because of the negligence of filmmakers, studios, and labs-- not knowing where things are, who owes who money, or not caring whether the film survives beyond a rare VHS at a video store that never threw it away. Lucky for Heavenly Bodies, there is a huge cult following and prints are still circulating at vintage theaters such as the Cinefamily and Nuart. It is time that we as an industry remember that there are still so many films that need to be given access to audiences. Audiences do not need to see another restoration of Casablanca or Citizen Kane...keeping the current home video releases in print will suffice. Films like Heavenly Bodies do not need a 5.1 upmix and a meticulous restoration for Bluray. They just need to have a barebones transfer that looks slightly better than their VHS counterparts and put on an accessible format so that the lovers of that film, no matter how large or small, can share its memories. When we as a society decided that film archiving was important, we carried a motto that sharing the culture and history of a specific time and space needed to be attended to in regards to the moving image form. As I hear that some films have gotten their 4th or 5th DVD release in the last 15 years and films like this have been brushed aside because they are not guaranteed to make the same profit, I worry that our motto as a field has begun to vanish. I ask you, who wouldn't want to rent or buy this charming gem?

Signed,

The Celluloid Avenger

In flight entertainment

Last night, I was stuck at O'Hare International Airport for 5 hours. It was by far the most awful airport experience I have had. The airport shut down for four hours prior to my arriving there and all flights were delayed, cancelled, overbooked, you name it. Being a person who doesn't drink, it was charming to at first be surrounded by angry people, then by angry drunks. As people were dealing with hangovers and still not boarding planes, they became a little more calm and discussions broke out. Somehow, my field of profession came into the mix and a group of us started talking about in-flight entertainment. A suit who travels for a living mentioned that by 2015, all aircrafts should have the feature of purchasable cable TV stations (via satellite of course) with personal screens on the seat in front of you. All I can think is that it is about time this happened.

Films on airlines have been around since the 1920s, and the technologies have constantly been changing. While previously, 16mm prints were used (my personal print of Sweet Charity is an airline print-- letterbox with the titles flipped so that it could be projected from the rear of the screen), by the 1970s, 1" tapes were being used instead, with the open reel tapes running above the passengers heads. God bless cassette formats such as Umatic and eventually VHS, which made the in-flight entertainment portion of a flight much easier on the flight attendants, who also had to schlop out drinks and peanuts to the greedy customers while rocking back and forth in the air.

I remember being a child and watching many films on planes. Previous to television screens that dropped down in the aisles, there was one huge screen in the middle row of the plane that ran everything. A flight to Europe would start with your instructional video on how to be a good airline passenger, followed by the BBC news, a feature or two, a couple sitcoms, and finally a set of cartoons for the kids on the plane before ending with an instructional video on filling out the customs card. There were very few times the films weren't edited for content, which made watching a film like Scent of a Woman nearly impossible. As years have passed, I understand from friends at the studios that the films have been time crunched as well. I find this a little odd of course, as a film won't be run on any flights unless they are 4 hours or longer. Why bother time compressing a 2 hour film on a 4 hour flight? Lame.

One very unique experience I remember is flying Midwest Express back from Los Angeles to Milwaukee with my mom and sister. My mom was generous enough to pay the ridiculous charge (I think it was $7 or so) to let my sister and I watch a film on a portable player. Midwest Express had smaller planes at the time and could not hold the projection system needed for in-flight entertainment. So, one could order a portable player, which came with an attached Hi-8 tape machine, and watch a film on your meal tray on the seat in front of you. We of course rented Sister Act. It's PG and has nuns singing if you're not familiar:

My sister wanted to watch Straight Talk, but I was the youngest, so I got to decide. The flight attendant was so condescending when she gave us the machine. "To start the film, hit this big triangle. It's the play button. When the movie is finished, hit the square. It's the stop button. Then let me know and I'll take care of the rest for you, okay?" Please woman, I was 8 and my sister was 10. We were pretty familiar with home video systems at that age. At the end of the film, there is this huge number which my sister and I love. So when it finished my sister simply said 'let's watch it again' and rewound the tape. I was getting so nervous and started shouting 'No! You're going to get us in trouble!' She didn't care, and of course we didn't, but just goes to show you how I was the good seed and she was the deviant one.

Jumping back to last night though, the film was The Lego Movie, and I was surprised to see that the only 'modified from its original version' disclaimer that ran before the film was that it had been 'formatted to fit this screen', meaning it was going to be shown at 1.33:1 instead of 2.35:1. I figured I could stomach this. Well, the film was awful. I don't know who writes children films these days, but they're definitely not professional writers, and this was a good example of that. I ended up tuning out after 35 minutes. My interest peaked at a certain moment though, when the captain had to pause the film to let us know we were entering some turbulence. The film paused digitally, as if the source was a DVD. I bring this up because almost exactly one year ago to date, my mom and and I took a trip to Hawaii and saw an equally terrible film-- The Great and Powerful Oz. I had already seen the shoddy film in theaters, and while it was way too long, I didn't see why the film had a disclaimer that it had been edited for time and content, beyond reformatting for fullscreen. When the pilot paused that film, the format was a VHS. I remember distinctly seeing an analog pause and the heads eating away at this poor VHS tape of the film as he made the announcement and then hitting play again. This was the same type of plane, by the way, a Boeing 757. So, either VHS have been done away with in the last year on airplanes, as they should because the tapes we saw were in horrible condition from every time someone hit pause to make an announcement, or there are only some flights that are capable of showing DVD.

Nonetheless, it is so wonderful to hear that pretty soon there will be NO set programming for in-flight entertainment. I think it is wonderful that people can choose what they want to watch and flip through channels to catch a Nick at Nite Cheers marathon or something on Turner Classic Movies while waiting to go visit their grandmother in Utah, or wherever the heck they're headed. There is one downside though, which none of us have considered. Flying back from Milwaukee to Los Angeles on such a flight that offered the cable tv channels, I tuned in to see a Comedy Central roast, as it was a late night flight and TV-MA programs tend to run at these weening hours. I was enjoying myself immensely, watching something that was highly immature and offensive, but when I came back to my seat after going to the little passenger's room, I noticed that there were a few munchkins, ages 12 and under, tuning into this same adult program. Mom and Dad were either not on the flight or seated far away, and could not monitor what their child was watching. So while we once, as a whole audience of passengers had to, and still on some flights do, watch films censored for the minor eyes and ears of the flight, the new 'cable tv' option is opening a new world of inappropriate television for young'ns...all they have to do is get booked on a flight, and a standup comic can explain the birds and bees to them in a way their human growth and development classes missed!

Signed,
The Celluloid Avenger

Bouncin' Back to Bollywood: Hum Aapke Hain Koun

It was a snowy February Sunday night in 1995 in Brookfield, WI. My usual bedtime was 9pm, but on this very special night, my mom let me go with her to a very special screening: a film that had been buzzing all over the Bollywood gossip magazines: Hum Aapke Hain Koun. An hour later than scheduled, the lights dimmed, and the loud sold-out crowd cheered in delight as the following title sequence hit the screen:

This was actually what we saw. There are a few logos that are supposed to come before this title sequence, but the print we saw had traveled all over the US, and had come to us incredibly worn, starting with the logos cut, and this number incredibly scratched. Still, green emulsion lines dancing and all, it was a night to remember. Hum Aapke Hain Koun was considered a landmark film in Bollywood for so many reasons. I particularly can take or leave the film today, but do applaud its reverence because of what it did for the Bollywood industry. To see its deterioration over the last 20 years in different releases and to see that it has been beautifully restored in HD and released on home video makes my heart smile, even if I don't agree with it being a particularly good film.

The synopsis of the film is quite simple. Two wealthy Hindu families arrange a marriage between a boy and a girl, and in the process of the lavish traditional Indian wedding, followed by the wife becoming 'expectant', the bride and grooms siblings fall in love, keeping their coy feelings from the family. When tragedy strikes (the bride, finding the two are in love, joyously runs down a flight of stairs, trips into a concussion and dies in a coma), their love is jeopardized as her sister must now marry the bride's widow to care for her nephew instead of marrying the man she loves. Full of over-the-top humor, 14 songs, and incredibly cheesy dialogue, the film may not hold up as well as it did when it hit screens in 1994. But at the time, it was a saving grace for an industry that was starting to fall apart.

Still chugging out roughly 900 films a year, India's film market had a new focus...it seems that all films I remember of this era were romantic-drama-action-comedy-musicals that involved drug lords, cops, scorned love by family members, and a rape scene thrown in for good measure. I kid you not, while kissing on the lips was not seen for another year in Raja Hindustani, a staged rape scene happened more times than it needed to. Hum Aapke Hain Koun (HAHK) decided to be different. It broke box office records selling out for weeks in advanced on a simple story about love and family. If it weren't for this film, so many other classics that followed (Dilwale Dulhuniya Le Jayenge, Dil To Pagal Hain, and Rangeela, to name a few) wouldn't have been made, even in an industry that did release so many titles at a time.

There are three main versions of this film, to date. The first release, not remembered by most, had only 10 songs in it, and ran about 20 minutes shorter than the most common version. A groundbreaking marketing technique, Rajshri films waited until attendance had started to tamper down, and rereleased the film with 4 new songs: "Chocolate, Lime Juice", a reprise to "Diktana, Diktana", "Mujse Jodha Hokar", and "Lo Chali Main", the latter before the climactic coma inducing stair fall. This was the version I remember seeing in theaters as the film traveled around the US, running roughly 3 hrs and 5 min. Beautifully restored, here is the "Chocolate, Lime Juice" number, courtesy of Youtube:

Alas, there is one more version of this film that ran roughly 3 hrs and 20 minutes. For a long time, a person had two choices when purchasing the film. There was the first release, which cut the four numbers I mentioned above, and this long version that was almost unbearable to watch. Included were a number of extra short scenes that had nothing to do with the plot and were obviously put back into the film to market it for perhaps a third release, or one for home video or television broadcasts. Most annoying in this version was the alternation of "Ye Mausum Ka Jadoo". In the first and second versions of the film, the last shot of the number involved Madhuri Dixit ringing a bell at a temple and Salman Khan attempting to do the same but flubbing the process. They both sit to pray as the last line of the song is overheard, before the intermission card appears before the screen. The print we saw which toured the US did not have the original intermission card, being such a worn shabby print, but an inappropriate replacement title card, where a dramatic lightning bolt struck the frame and the word 'intermission' shot out at the audience. I remember my mom, sister, and I being a little disturbed by this. The third extended cut of the film featured a closeup of Madhuri looking on at Salman Khan while the song is heard in the background at a picnic, followed by a full scene at the temple, done a la An Affair to Remember. This was the first addition of scenes in the third version. The majority of them happen in the second act of the film, which is a shame because most people will admit that the second half of the film is what makes it drag.

The film became a landmark in a bad way, too. Video Sound, Asian Video, and Eros Video handled the official international video releases of Bollywood films in their respective territories. These releases weren't without flaws, of course. There would be commercial breaks in the official video releases and the transfers were low quality telecine transfers, usually matted from 2.35 to 1.85, but still of watchable quality and widescreen to a certain degree, nonetheless. When HAHK hit screens and became such a blockbuster, nobody wanted to pay for the rights to officially release the film on video before the crowd was ready to see it, and pirated videos in the US were born. These were common in India already, but a foreign idea to international audiences. It became clear that people were okay with renting pan and scan videos with numbers and sequences cut, advertisements flying across the bottom third of the screen, or films taped at private screenings in theaters with whatever sound was booming in the theater that would hit the camera microphone. It was a pleasure to see the film without the commercial breaks that official video releases had at the time, but this was the only advantage. Most films would, months later, get an official release, but a new precedence was set. A film would be released in India, a bootleg from a theater would hit the home video market, a home video from Pakistan with advertisements on the bottom of the screen would follow, and lastly, sometimes up to a year later, the official release would come out. Thankfully, this film was released in 1994 and the Bollywood industry started going to DVD around 1998, at which point everything was of a better quality. At that point, even the bootleg DVDs were better looking than the VHS releases that came out from the official distributors.

Every time this film got a video release, it seemed more worn out. The sound would get grainier and more muffled, the colors would be more faded, and there would be more pesky splices. I am so thrilled that the familiar hybrid version of the film is now released in HD, so all can see its splendor and glory. Looking back, I can say that while I don't care for the film as much as I did when I was 10, I do still feel that it should be preserved and treasured in that it holds an important part in Hindi film history. Now, let's work on getting a 20th anniversary rerelease theatrically!

Signed,

The Celluloid Avenger

Home Video Snobbery

In 1977, 20th Century Fox leased a series of titles to be released on VHS (a new format) through a company called the Magnetic Video Corporation. One of the titles released was the Marilyn Monroe gem Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. The following is a 30 second clip from the opening of that release, courtesy of Youtube:

Take a look at what happens 20 seconds in. There is an evil splice on the print followed by a flutter in the transfer machine, all within the first few seconds of the opening logo. I point this out for a couple reasons. First of all, a bluray today costs roughly $20-30 and with that, consumers expect a pristine transfer and a large amount of special features. For the first decade of VHS, tapes cost a bit more. I haven't found a source on how much this one specifically cost, but I do know that Dumbo cost roughly $79 in 1980 and Gone With the Wind cost $89.95 in 1985, according to a Today Show clip promoting the video release. By the time these two releases came out, home video transfer had improved a bit, but there was still a long way to go.

This leads me to my second point to this article. Last night, I was watching a DVD of Libeled Lady (1936), as released by Turner in 2005. By all means, this was a decent release-- crisp mono sound, great contrast, sharp focus, and yet, I found myself being a horrible cynic while watching the whole film. At the end of a reel, there were a series of scratches and cue marks from the source print, but I found an internal voice nagging that they were present, even though beyond this, a thick emulsion line on the right, and a few base scratches, the source print was in impeccable condition. Truth be told, we are lucky that a DVD release of such a film is still on the market.

When did we, as a film history field, become so cynical? I can't play martyr because I am just as guilty of it as everyone else. I read the reviews on www.dvdbeaver.com and www.bluray.com and pay attention to what they say before picking up a disc. I nag about how little grain is in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre HD transfer, or how blue Desk Set and The King & I look, but there was a time when I wasn't like this, when I was happy to see a film on home video at all!

For those people of a younger generation, there were a lot of films released on VHS that have not made it to DVD, and the quality wasn't always as good as it is now. Online streaming wasn't an option, and we had only a few means: local video stores, and public libraries. While rereleases may have occurred on VHS tapes, if you were renting them from local vendors, you took what they had. If it was a 10 year old tape or a 20 year old one, you, as my friend would say to his kids 'get what you get and you don't get upset.' I remember renting the Streisand version of A Star Is Born on VHS and, beyond being a worn tape from 1980 chock full of dropout lines, there were splicy sections. This wasn't released by a public domain company like Good Times Home Video, either. This came from Warner Bros. Home Video! This isn't an issue that disappeared with time, when it came to VHS necessarily. When Republic Home Video released Father Goose (1964) on VHS in 1994, the cover noted that it was from the original 35mm negative. I slapped it on a few years ago. The scratches take over the film like confetti, and I remember paying a lot for this item. Keep in mind, this was only 3 years before the DVD started hitting stores.

So, really, when I see people complaining about color temperature, grain, and a little sound distortion, all of which I am also guilty of, I have to remind them, and myself, to give the home video distributors a break. When we rented films on VHS back in the day, we knew we weren't watching the film. We were watching a reference of the film. We used our imaginations to fill in the anomalies so we could picture what the film was supposed to look like. Any step in the right direction should be applauded, but personally, I would rather see more rare films come out than see yet another restoration of Gone with the Wind or The Wizard of Oz, trying to emulate that 'perfect image'.

Signed,

The Celluloid Avenger