Clint Eastwood: 35 Films, 35 Years at Warner Bros

[milk114]

per av club 34 Eastwood films (plus 1 documentary) on 19 discs. Per the link, there's 30 DVD titles available. Wonder what the other 4 are?

[swo17]

The set will actually include 34 films (plus a documentary by Richard Schickel) spread across 19 discs, for the surprisingly reasonable list price of $179.98.

Couldn't they just cram avi files of all 35 films onto one dual-layered data DVD-R? This seems like a missed opportunity.

[Murdoch]

This must be Warners' answer to the CC Kurosawa box.

[aox]

The set will actually include 34 films (plus a documentary by Richard Schickel) spread across 19 discs, for the surprisingly reasonable list price of $179.98.

Couldn't they just cram avi files of all 35 films onto one dual-layered data DVD-R? This seems like a missed opportunity.

elitist.

that level of quality would be fine for many of the people here and it should be for you too.

[mfunk9786]

Though to be fair, Warner is usually quite good at getting a high quality picture out of an encode fit for a DVD5. If I cared about this set, I wouldn't be too concerned about the 19 disc thing.

[domino harvey]

Almost surely flippers

[mfunk9786]

I've gotten decreasingly upset about flippers over the years, to the point that I'm now unsure why I ever got so worked up about them. If you keep your discs put away safely, it's not like they're at any higher risk of scratching.

[swo17]

elitist.

that level of quality would be fine for many of the people here and it should be for you too.

I'm not an elitist. I just only have one-half of an inch of shelf space left in my whole entire house.

[domino harvey]

I've gotten decreasingly upset about flippers over the years, to the point that I'm now unsure why I ever got so worked up about them. If you keep your discs put away safely, it's not like they're at any higher risk of scratching.

I am stlll agin'em. It doesn't take that much effort to either throw in another disc or make the existing disc double-layer

[Tom Hagen]

I've come to admire Eastwood's recent work, but seriously, 35 titles? How many of these movies are going to involve chimpanzees or narratives about aging/retired cops on their last cases?

[godardslave]

Or narratives about aging/retired chimpanzees on their last cases?

[domino harvey]

I knew it was time to hang it up. Detective work had come to be like a naked banana-- it lacked appeal.

[godardslave]

that picture is strangely appropriate for a Clint Eastwood box set thread. O:)

[mikkelmark]

elitist.

that level of quality would be fine for many of the people here and it should be for you too.

I'm not an elitist. I just only have one-half of an inch of shelf space left in my whole entire house.

Did you just quote your avatar by coincidence swo?

About the 2 movies on 1 disc: I'm not that worried, I guess it depends on the lenght of the movies. For example, on the newly released Sam Fuller Collection most of the discs are DVD5, and it looks fine, but those are also rather short.

On a side note: How come either dvds or blu-rays are almost never filled up capacity wise? I've been transferring some of my DVDs into a harddisk, to save space in my room, and found that most of the ISO's fills an average of about 5 GB. Also some blu-rays are less than 25 GB. Is it a big hazzle for the companies to compress to movies to a less degree?

[tenia]

On a side note: How come either dvds or blu-rays are almost never filled up capacity wise? I've been transferring some of my DVDs into a harddisk, to save space in my room, and found that most of the ISO's fills an average of about 5 GB. Also some blu-rays are less than 25 GB. Is it a big hazzle for the companies to compress to movies to a less degree?

I'm amazed. Most of the DVDs I own are filled up to 7.5Go. And most Criterions are nowadays.
I own some of the Carlotta's Oshima movies : 90 minutes long + a little 5 minutes analysis + the 3 minutes trailer, only one mono track and one sub track : the DVDs are 7Go.

[domino harvey]

Oh hey this comes out next Tuesday:

1. Where Eagles Dare, 1968
2. Kelly's Heroes, 1970
3. Dirty Harry, 1971
4. Magnum Force, 1973
5. The Enforcer, 1975
6. The Outlaw Josey Wales, 1976
7. The Gauntlet, 1977
8. Every Which Way but Loose, 1978
9. Bronco Billy, 1980
10. Any Which Way You Can, 1980
11. Honkytonk Man, 1982
12. Firefox, 1982,
13. Sudden Impact, 1983
14. City Heat, 1984
15. Tightrope, 1984
16. Pale Rider, 1985
17. Heartbreak Ridge, 1986
18. Bird, 1988
19. The Dead Pool, 1988
20. Pink Cadillac, 1989
21. White Hunter, Black Heart, 1990
22. The Rookie, 1990
23. Unforgiven, 1992
24. A Perfect World, 1993
25. The Bridges of Madison County, 1995
26. Absolute Power, 1997
27. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, 1997
28. True Crime, 1999
29. Space Cowboys, 2000
30. Blood Work, 2002
31. Mystic River, 2003
32. Million Dollar Baby, 2004
33. Letters from Iwo Jima, 2006
34. Gran Torino, 2008
35. The Eastwood Factor. 2009

On 19 discs, 16 of which are double-sided

[Adam]

And #35 is a Richard Schickel ("hack hack") doc on Eastwood.

[domino harvey]

And on June 1, a couple Clint Eastwood Blu-ray Boxes:

On May 31, veteran actor and director Clint Eastwood will turn 80. To celebrate it, the following day Warner Home Video will release a slew of Eastwood movies on Blu-ray, including two box sets: the ten-film Clint Eastwood Collection, and the Essential Eastwood: Director's Collection. WHV is also releasing two more Eastwood double features (Where Eagles Dare / Kelly's Heroes and The Enforcer / Sudden Impact) and three individual Blu-rays (Absolute Power, Heartbreak Ridge and The Rookie). Finally, Eastwood's latest movie, Invictus, is also expected around that time, although it hasn't been officially announced yet.

The titles included in the Clint Eastwood Collection are: Absolute Power, Dirty Harry, Gran Torino, Kelly's Heroes, Letters from Iwo Jima, Million Dollar Baby, Mystic River, The Rookie, Unforgiven and Where Eagles Dare.

The Essential Eastwood: Director's Collection, in turn, consists of Letters from Iwo Jima, Million Dollar Baby, Mystic River and Unforgiven.

[Duncan Hopper]

And #35 is a Richard Schickel ("hack hack") doc on Eastwood.

Being a big fan of Dirty Harry, I was excited about it finally getting an audio commentary on the recent bluray. Boy was I disappointed. Clint 'expert' Richard Schickel's commentary was extremely poor, I came away knowing exactly nothing new about the film at all.

A crushing disappointment.

[Adam]

Richard Schickel is now (was he always) a self-aggrandizing middle-brow bitter reviewer. Apparently they had a panel of film reviewers at UCLA a couple of weeks ago and Schickel took over the panel talking about how it's a waste of time to go into film reviewing...

When we were doing the Save Film at LACMA thing last year, a meeting was set up between the LACMA people and the Save Film at LACMA people. Schickel invited himself to the meeting, (he called the Save Film organizer, she declined his attendance, but he showed up anyway ). He then proceeded to take over the discussion for a while about how the film program at LACMA was poor, attendance was bad, how it's just a bunch of old people attending, etc. And all he wanted to do was push for a Clint Eastwood series, I presume so that he could get his doc screened.

Hope that doesn't come off as too strong.

[Finch]

A Blu-Ray of The Bridges of Madison County would be welcome; it's not quite as good as Unforgiven and A Perfect World but still a fine film in my opinion and I've been considering for some time whether to get the DVD now or give it another 6 months just in case it comes out in 1080p.

[kawest]

When we were doing the Save Film at LACMA thing last year, a meeting was set up between the LACMA people and the Save Film at LACMA people. Schickel invited himself to the meeting, (he called the Save Film organizer, she declined his attendance, but he showed up anyway ). He then proceeded to take over the discussion for a while about how the film program at LACMA was poor, attendance was bad, how it's just a bunch of old people attending, etc. And all he wanted to do was push for a Clint Eastwood series, I presume so that he could get his doc screened.

This is sadly true. I was at that meeting and Schickel just rambled about how maybe this "MTV Generation" can't, you know, follow a movie with dialogue--a supposition one of the trustees agreed with.

Another Schickel obfuscation: maybe more people would come to LACMA (already the best-attended rep venue in LA) if there were only more celebrity guests ... like Clint Eastwood. Of course, the drastic cutbacks that program has suffered account for the declining number of guest appearances. As if Ian Birnie had never thought to invite guest filmmakers...

By the by, the UCLA incident Adam mentions is recounted in more depth here. Essential reading.

[The Elegant Dandy Fop]

You're just adding to the list of why I can't stand Schickel! I went to the day when Scorsese showed up at LACMA to speak about film preservation and the importance of saving rare cinema and playing it in museums and then saw that LACMA's next programmed consisted all of Eastwood films you can easily rent anywhere on DVD, I was shocked! I have nothing against Eastwood and like a lot of his films, but considering the easy availability of his movies, it seems ridiculous to play them. It's moves like that that don't promote cinematic arts in Los Angeles and lead to the LACMA's lack of money.

[hearthesilence]

Totally missed this, but Warner's new CEO (and former the head of Discovery, blech) David Zaslav blasted Warner execs for allowing Eastwood to make Cry Macho. When he asked why, they said he had delivered the studio a lot of hits over many years, and that he always delivers on-time, never goes over budget, never spends that much, etc. and he basically shot back with "We don't owe anyone any favors. It's not 'show friends,' it's 'show business'" which feels like a really shitty sign of things to come. It's pretty much the opposite of Mo Ostin's artist-friendly philosophy - the long-time head of Warner's music label recently passed away, and it was noted that not only was he able to draw a lot of talent with that reputation, but he managed to guide WB past CBS/Columbia as the most successful label in the business.

[bottlesofsmoke]

Well, I guess Christopher Nolan got out at the right time!

Seems like there's nothing but bad signs coming from WB these days. I really wonder what the big studio landscape will look like in ten years, places willing to put money behind non-franchises and blockbusters seem to be dwindling.

Maybe I'm just being alarmist, but the idea that the WB, RKO, and MGM film catalogues could go the way of Fox has crossed my mind more than once when reading about what's been going on at WB.