The Future of Home Video

[domino harvey]

My ex’s conservative father had a Blu-ray player solely so he could play the Patriot. He owned no other Blu-rays or DVDs

[swo17]

I'm going to pretend you mean the lost Lubitsch film

[Drucker]

My ex’s conservative father had a Blu-ray player solely so he could play the Patriot. He owned no other Blu-rays or DVDs

Is this why they are now your ex?

[domino harvey]

That or the cheating, who can say

[TechnicolorAcid]

That or the cheating, who can say

Deepest condolences that happened to you, oh also I guess the cheating was pretty bad too. Though, and apologies if this is considered detracting, but why didn't he also own Braveheart or more to his taste I guess, We Were Soldiers. Pretty sure both of those were out before The Patriot too.

[HitchcockLang]

My ex’s conservative father had a Blu-ray player solely so he could play the Patriot. He owned no other Blu-rays or DVDs

My high school Government teacher got in trouble for showing The Patriot in class. He did not, however, get in trouble for marrying one of his students the moment she graduated.

[domino harvey]

Ha, I first watched it in “Military History” class in high school (alongside U-571 and Braveheart, among others)

[Mr Sausage]

I was also introduced to it in high school, but mainly because a sizable number of kids were grossed out by the Gibson character marrying his dead wife's sister out of the bizarre impression that this was somehow incest. This is all I remember about the film.

[Black Hat]

I have to agree with Tenia here mostly.

The other thing is, and I could be totally projecting my own problem, I think what hurts the home video business is how cinephiles tend to live in urban areas where they both lack room in their apartments and have access to repertory theaters. Most cinephiles are web savvy too so they're on the private trackers. Nor does it help that so much of what's released are poor restorations in ways where it almost feels like they're fucking with us. They don't treat us very well, do they?

It's funny when I first got into this crap I thought the appeal was in the supplements, to educate myself further, but soon I realized that one, most supplements aren't good, you're much better off doing your own research, and two, what the film looks like is 90% of it. Naively, I thought, "Of course, everything I purchase will look spectacular, what would be the point otherwise?" Boy, was I wrong. I'm not even a nerd about that shit either but, just don't insult me, you know? In fact, I'd steer away in the beginning from Warner Archive because of the lack of supplements before eventually realizing their work is what I should be giving my money to. Have they released even one poorly done restoration?

My ex’s conservative father had a Blu-ray player solely so he could play the Patriot. He owned no other Blu-rays or DVDs

hahaha, I love learning people like this actually exist, bless his soul.

[dwk]

It's funny when I first got into this crap I thought the appeal was in the supplements, to educate myself further, but soon I realized that one, most supplements aren't good, you're much better off doing your own research, and two, what the film looks like is 90% of it. Naively, I thought, "Of course, everything I purchase will look spectacular, what would be the point otherwise?" Boy, was I wrong. I'm not even a nerd about that shit either but, just don't insult me, you know? In fact, I'd steer away in the beginning from Warner Archive because of the lack of supplements before eventually realizing their work is what I should be giving my money to. Have they released even one poorly done restoration? .

I agree with you about special features, they mostly tend to be pointless or, maybe even worse, poorly done on a technical level (for example, I tried watching an interview, ported over from 88 Films, on one of Shout Factory's Jackie Chan discs and the audio was so bad that I'm not sure the interview subject was mic'd up.)

To answer the question about Warner Archive, they screwed up the color on Abel Ferrara's Body Snatchers. Their disc of The Hudsucker Proxy has a pretty bad transfer.

[therewillbeblus]

I was also introduced to it in high school, but mainly because a sizable number of kids were grossed out by the Gibson character marrying his dead wife's sister out of the bizarre impression that this was somehow incest. This is all I remember about the film.

Saw it in theatres when I was 11 and never again - even at that age I thought it was stupid. I remember the shot of Gibson sliding under the horse and impaling it in order to get his opponent on a level playing field, as it was exhaustively linked with the film's advertisement. Only later did it resonate that framing the movie's climactic action maneuver as killing an innocent animal in between a man and his egocentric mission -unironically, and using the American flag as the weapon no less- was unconsciously commenting on the folly of American nationalism as a rationale to mask selfish, reactionary emotional motives without recognizing the casualties required to achieve

[soundchaser]

Also a guy gets his head shot clean off with a cannon!

(I, too, have not seen the film since high school.)

[The Curious Sofa]

It's funny when I first got into this crap I thought the appeal was in the supplements, to educate myself further, but soon I realized that one, most supplements aren't good, you're much better off doing your own research, and two, what the film looks like is 90% of it. Naively, I thought, "Of course, everything I purchase will look spectacular, what would be the point otherwise?" Boy, was I wrong. I'm not even a nerd about that shit either but, just don't insult me, you know? In fact, I'd steer away in the beginning from Warner Archive because of the lack of supplements before eventually realizing their work is what I should be giving my money to. Have they released even one poorly done restoration?

There are some dodgy restorations and transfers out there, but as someone who became a cinephile in the 70s, I'm still blown away by how amazing many old movies look on Blu-ray. I haven't even made the leap to UHD. The prints at repertory cinemas, were I got much of my film education, usually we're in deplorable shape, scratched, faded often with bits missing. The only alternative was what happened to be on TV and PQ then was nothing to get excited about. The first home video format, VHS, looked hideous too but with DVD there was a major leap in quality and it first became normal that I could watch movies unmolested by pan&scan. At a time when a 33 inch screen was considered big, they looked pretty good. Compèred to the past, I think of the Blu-ray era as a golden age for film restoration and home viewing and as a format it has continued to improve. Collecting discs has been one of my biggest joys over the last couple of decades and I still get a thrill out of a good restoration of an old movie and i'm still bewildered by the new streaming age. Here in Germany it's not even possible to access many older movies not dubbed into German on Amazon Prime and some other streamers.

I too agree with tenia, I first saw this article linked to on the other site, and a lot of people there are in total denial over the decline of physical media and are treating this poorly argued piece of writing as proof that they were right.For one thing, I don't think comparison with vinyl are apt, music appeals to more people than film and most people just don't care about owing films. They look what's new on Netflix and thats it.

I don't just feel bleak about physical media, I feel bleak about film in general and the appreciation of old films in particular. There has been a trend among younger people not to watch films older than a decade for a while and now I know people in their 20s and younger, who won't watch movies at all. I know a 23 year old who will watch youtube reviews of movies for entertainment but he won't watch the actual films and he told me that's common among his friends.

[beamish14]

Ha, I first watched it in “Military History” class in high school (alongside U-571 and Braveheart, among others)

We went on a class field trip by foot to see Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbor. Our instructor forced us to sit through the entirety of the 12+ minutes of credits, too.

As a teacher myself now, I truly don’t understand what English and government teachers were doing by screening movies like J.F.K., Wall Street, and Local Hero beyond revealing their ineptitude with lesson planning

[hearthesilence]

I was lucky with my teachers. The French teachers always picked out great films, and a history teacher screened The Unbearable Lightness of Being - he was obligated to "skip" through the sex scenes which he did hilariously by fast forwarding through them. During one shot where we could clearly see a guy drop his pants in front of Tereza and bare his ass to the camera, the class cracked up, prompting him to say "he's just getting his temperature taken."

I go to the theater all the time, but the main reason I've continued building up my library is because it's very possible I'll eventually move somewhere that is too far from the city. That is, close enough to commute everyday, but far enough where I'll probably head home rather than stay in Manhattan and catch an 8 or 9pm screening. I do realize that, aside from the year and half that I severely curtailed my trips to the theater due to the pandemic, I spend far more time at repertory screenings than watching any of these titles, which firmly backs up Black Hat's observation. I know at least one diehard cinephile who does NOT have a Blu-ray player because he goes to screenings all the time, pretty much every single day, and if he ends up watching something at home, it's some rare film he's downloaded or streamed that isn't available to buy anyway.

[therewillbeblus]

Hardly a novel experience, but we watched Do the Right Thing in high school, and an all-white class from a privileged community spent the rest of the week evaluating whether or not Mookie did the right thing ad nauseam with zero self-consciousness issued to our vantage point

[TechnicolorAcid]

Hardly a novel experience, but we watched Do the Right Thing in high school, and an all-white class from a privileged community spent the rest of the week evaluating whether or not Mookie did the right thing ad nauseam with zero self-consciousness issued to our vantage point

I think it’s odd that there’s always a debate on if Mookie did the right thing amongst white people. Spike Lee himself said that no black person ever asked him, only white people. In my opinion he did do the right thing, it was the merging of Malcolm and Martin’s ideals on securing justice. Justice was achieved by any means necessary (in this case burning down Sal’s shop) but it was done through non violent means, no one during that fire was hurt (I mean Raheem was killed but that was before the fire). It’s such a stupid topic to try and hold for discussion, why not discuss literally anything else that’s in the movie that actually deserves it.
Also I had a similar experience when watching the 2 Monster on Maple Streets to compare and contrast and I forgot exactly why but I felt really happy hearing some of my classmates’ agree that the original was better, which believe me, was a rare thing to hear in my school.

[therewillbeblus]

I think that quote from Lee has been explored with a little more nuance here and elsewhere - it's not that the discussion question is insignificant, but that a privileged group obliviously analyzing it to death, without ever turning inward to recognize perhaps-uncomfortable limitations inherent in that group's perspective capacity, has its own implications

[colinr0380]

I'm trying to remember my experiences with films in school in the mid 1990s in the North of England - we got Gandhi in History class but other than that there was little else (though I managed to cajole the History teacher into letting me spend lunch hours watching through all the back episodes of The World At War). In English class we got the BBC productions of Julius Caesar (and for some reason I remember seeing the BBC version of A Midsummer Nights Dream too, which I think was put on as a special screening for students), and I have vivid memories of for some reason them playing the 1981 version of Clash of the Titans to the class one day.

(Though I most fondly remember on my Summer 1995 school trip to France to visit the Caen Peace Museum and the various English, German and American war cemeteries that a screening on the ferry across the English Channel was the first time I got to see Speed! It is bizarre now that film is considered such a classic to remember back to halfway through the film that the same History teacher wandered past and said "you don't like this kind of thing, do you?" at me. I could only blush at being revealed as such an uncultivated swine who would enjoy an action movie, but would be much more forthright about enjoying it now, especially in an era of actually unrelated to real life in any fashion superhero blockbusters. Although I also remember when back home wanting to show the film to my parents so we rented it out and I remember them initially finding it more and more hilarious during the opening credit sequence about the lack of 'star names' in the film: "Kee-nu Reeves? Sandra Bullock? Who the hell's Dennis Hopper?!?", but the quality of the film itself soon overcame that for them)

And whilst this never officially got screened in my German GCSE class, the BBC was screening the long six episode mini-series version of Das Boot in a primetime 7 p.m. slot throughout October-November 1995 and that became a big reference point for the students in the class. Or at least amongst the boys who, despite it being subtitled and tucked away on BBC2, had all watched it! I think we learned more German from that series than from the actual teacher who, in a bizarre chain of events had a nervous breakdown mid-way through the course and was replaced at short notice by the French (and an actual, properly imported, French person at that!) teacher subbed in from the classroom next door at short notice, but who knew about as much German as the rest of us!

[tenia]

The other thing is, and I could be totally projecting my own problem, I think what hurts the home video business is how cinephiles tend to live in urban areas where they both lack room in their apartments and have access to repertory theaters.

It's not just you : every single specialised discussion board I'm active on has a topic "I'm out of space, any advice ?" That's why I'm regularly half-jokingly (but half only) advocating to indie labels about avoiding any bigger-than-required packagings : that's how they ensure we keep some space to buy more of their stuff !

It's funny when I first got into this crap I thought the appeal was in the supplements, to educate myself further, but soon I realized that one, most supplements aren't good, you're much better off doing your own research, and two, what the film looks like is 90% of it.

I keep seeing people popping up here and there crapping on new releases because they don't have 3 hrs of extras, ranting about the good ol' times of double DVDs releases and stuff. I watched almost ALL of these extras, because that was the time where I had time for this instead of, you know, watching another movie : I don't regret these. Especially the Warner ones. They were anecdotical fluff pieces most of the time, waayyyy over-stretched extras that would clock at 2hrs and feel like they should be 20 minutes at best. Nobody should regret these.

As for restorations, well, obviously I'm biased when it comes to these, but as I always sum it up : if I didn't care about the technical quality of the presentation, I'd have stick with DVD, but no, so I'm not paying extra for those Blu-rays for no reason. So yeah, I'm not going to pay this extra for a crappy recycled 25 years old transfer.
And actually : nobody should.
And well, too bad for those movies that people'll have to skip. It's ok, there are way too many good movies much better treated to watch instead anyway. So everybody should do this.
And indie labels allowing studios to live off rightholdings on movies they remastered 25 years ago and haven't done a single work also should skip those. They're a waste of their ressources, time and money, and make them co-responsible of the "insults" thrown at cine-technophiles.

music appeals to more people than film and most people just don't care about owing films. They look what's new on Netflix and thats it.

In some ways, it probably does at you might more easily find people actively following singers they like, but even then, it's quite likely most people don't have an active listening either. They just put the music on as some background, and be fed whatever is trending on Spotify.

[FrauBlucher]

It's funny when I first got into this crap I thought the appeal was in the supplements, to educate myself further, but soon I realized that one, most supplements aren't good, you're much better off doing your own research

Agreed. As much as I love Criterion I feel like there is so much supplement redundancy on the discs, from the interviews to the documentaries to the commentaries to the booklet essays the repetition is a bit annoying and useless

My own anecdote about physical media. A co-worker of mine who is 50 yrs old was shocked that I still collect discs. Also, he didn't know that Netflix was still sending out discs. I will say that his tastes are very pedestrian and he didn't even know who David Lynch was. He is a big fan of all the streaming series, which I'm sure is the vast majority of the public

My ex’s conservative father had a Blu-ray player solely so he could play the Patriot. He owned no other Blu-rays or DVDs

Any thought of playing a practical joke? Say, something, oh like slipping Salo into the The Patriot bluray case

[domino harvey]

All I’ll say is that I once tried to find common ground by talking with him about how many great Hollywood films are fundamentally conservative and he stopped me and told me that liberals have no concept of conservative ideology and I didn’t try to connect again. This was before Trump too, so I can only imagine what horrors he’s up to now. He did give me a very large book about the Vietnam war that somehow argued that we won, but sadly I left it, unread, behind after the breakup so I can’t tell you how (and as a liberal, I couldn’t anyways, I guess?)

[The Curious Sofa]

In some ways, it probably does at you might more easily find people actively following singers they like, but even then, it's quite likely most people don't have an active listening either. They just put the music on as some background, and be fed whatever is trending on Spotify.

I wasn't suggesting that all people are heavily into music, but more people are into music than into film, so is there a larger amount of more dedicated fans to support a niche product like vinyl.

[beamish14]

He did give me a very large book about the Vietnam war that somehow argued that we won, but sadly I left it, unread, behind after the breakup so I can’t tell you how

“We didn’t lose Vietnam!”

[FrauBlucher]

Christopher Nolan talks about "trying to translate the photography and sound [in #Oppenheimer]...for a version that you can buy and own at home and put on a shelf so no evil streaming service can come and steal it from you."