I’ve been hearing from vintage movie fans who are over the moon about Warner’s release of 150 long-awaited titles in its new DVD on demand program, Warner Archive. The website is still crawling because all the un-anticipated traffic, as I’ve been reporting here for the last couple of days. But the New York Times’ Brooks Barnes dismissed the offerings as “obscure and offeat” in a short item yesterday in the print edition. Was this because he was scooped by The Wall Street Journal, USA Today and Variety yesterday? Just asking, Brooks. I was blindsided (unintentionally, I’m assured) too, but I didn’t downplay the importance of a major and inventive new approach to the way studios handle catalogue titles that may not justify a 20,000-copy print run for a regular commercial release but are still much sought-after (Sony announced a similar program last year, but it has yet to materialize). Sure, these are not top-of-the-line titles from the 6,800-title vault at Warners, which has been more aggressive than any other studio about getting its pre-1980’s titles (including many that Brooks would call obscurities) out to the public. But I’m sure The Times’ movie critics, and especially the paper’s erudite DVD reviewer, Dave Kehr would not be so disdainful of a collection that includes works by such auteurs as Frank Borzage, Budd Boetticher and Kehr’s fave Delmar Daves, plus many more sought-after-works. I don’t think the only (and quite good) film version of Noel Coward’s most famous play “Private Lives” is either obscure or offbeat, even if it dates from 1931. The only copy I’ve been able to get of the full 150-title list is in Excel, so I haven’t been able to post. But the good folks at ClassicFlix have spent the time transcribing this copy-protected
of 115 pre-1970 titles from Warner Archive. This site, which is sort of a Netflix for films of that era, announced it has ordered all 115 titles and will make them available for rental begining sometime next week. Warner, incidentally, has revealed it will make the titles available for sale by other retailers like Amazon (and, presumably, TCM’s site run by Movies Unlimited) after a 90-day period of exclusivity at the new
website.