Cinemascope

Just wish they could come up with some extra features. Many people were disappointed with the first volume of the DVD set because it didn't have any extras.

Well, if TCM hasn't shown the movie the it is probably because they haven't been able to get the rights to it. Whether or not MPI thinks it would benefit, or whether they tried to strike a deal and couldn't come up with an arrangement that was mutually satisfactory, is something that we really don't know. VHS and laserdiscs are far from being a "non-issue", many people continue to collect, sell, buy, and trade those movies that have not yet been released on DVD.

My favorites would be Jean Arthur and Myrna Loy. :x

I wish they'd release Love on the Run and Strange Cargo, too!

Danny, I forgot to thank you for posting all the smilies! Thanks a lot you're awesome! :x

Yeah I think it was still rare for big stars to make cameos like that in movies, although that would change by the mid-50's with Around the World in 80 Days.

MGM heaven is where it's at -- and we're getting a lil' bitty taste of it in March with Gene Kelly as SOTM!

Well yeah but in the meantime we can just record them off TCM... if and when they release a double set or something it'll be worth checking out!

It's a good set, but the colors in All the Gang's Here are pretty disappointing for a Technicolor movie. I turned the color all the way up and it still didn't look quite natural. Reds were too strong and yellows very pale. All the color schemes seemed out of whack -- very different from usual Technicolor movies. (I watched it right after Coney Island, another Technicolor musical from Fox from 1943). Ironically there is a Busby Berkeley documentary in that same DVD which shows a few clips of the movie, in FULL Technicolor glory -- and those clips look 100 times better than the movie itself.

Did you take out Carmen Miranda and "Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat"? I just watched The Gang's All Here jus the other night, isn't that the one with all the dancers and the giant bananas? Is chorus choreography not enough to qualify as a "dance number"?

And what does Paramount have to do with it?? Paramount released the movie theatrically back in '64 but doesn't own the rights anymore. That's why the DVD (like the VHS and laserdisc before it) is being released by MPI Home Video.

The part in question has *always* been blacked out. Yup, ever since the movie was first made. I found evidence to this fact when looking at some of the documentaries included in the DVD of The Professionals where Claudia Cardinale explains that she didn't want to appear nude and wore something underneath her shirt to make sure the director couldn't show that part in the movie...

That's an awesome list, shearerchic. You just made me wish I could edit a montage of all of those numbers put together!

Well, as it happens Becket had been mentioned a lot of times over the last 10 years or so as one of the most prominent pictures from the 60's that had not been released on DVD. And you'd think they would have released it on DVD much earlier, too, especially since they had the rights, but that didn't happen, either.

Several theories have been made... according to imdb.com, they include: # The title might refer to Hamlet's line "I am but mad north-northwest," where he tries to convince people of his sanity. The airline that they travel on (westbound) is called "Northwest (Orient) Airlines."

Well, yeah, he went on to bigger and better, and we can all be grateful to Clint and Sergio for all the good times!

So who has the video rights to Johnny Guitar, anyway?

Good list. They've also already announced they'll rescue Royal Wedding from PD hell. I'd hope they could also release Yolanda and the Thief, it's one of the most exotic Technicolor musicals MGM ever released.

You're right, The Stunt Man would be an awesome "cult" picture to show!

I just try not to think too much about those things when I watch movies filmed in cities I've lived... we all go in there expecting a little bit of fantasy and, truth be told, sometimes I wish a simple tour of the city was as impressive as it looks in the movies!

It's highly unlikely they wouldn't have thought of a movie that received so many Oscar nominations, wouldn't you say? I'm pretty sure they looked at all movies that have received multiple nominations before putting together the schedule for "31 Days of Oscar." Not only that, but Becket has been in the movie news lately, due to the theatrical re-release. If we were talking about something relatively obscure like the Mexican Spitfire series, then I might think maybe they haven't thought about it recently. But Becket is too recent, too prominent (due to the theatrical re-releases) and too much in people's memories (due to the recent nomination of Peter O'Toole) for it to simply have been forgotten.

Awesome photos, mongo!

Well I still think you might mean 3-strip Technicolor, as it's the main difference between the color movies of the Golden Era and those made today... Otherwise it's still the same principle -- very much like a 35mm still camera, except that movie cameras capture a series of "photos" which when projected quickly one after another give the illusion of movement.

You may find answers to these questions in the wikipedia entry for "Technicolor" -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technicolor Not sure if there's anything in there that could be disputed by film scholars, but it does seem to be a good general explanation. And I'm not sure if you mean quality, so much as the intense colors associated with 3-strip Technicolor.

I don't think they can "come to their senses" if the rights just aren't available for whatever reason. They did just embark on a worldwide search so they could recover the 6 lost RKO titles... and I don't see any reason they wouldn't show Becket if they could get the rights. MPI Home Video has really not acted like they wanted the movie to be seen much, releasing it on DVD only 9 years into the format's existance, and now that it's starting to become replaced by high-definition DVDS.