Flicker Alley

[Donald Brown]

Thank you for your recent order of the 3-disc Blu-ray set of THE MACK SENNETT COLLECTION, VOL. ONE. Due to unexpected production delays, we have had to move back the release date to August 12. We apologize for the inconvenience and truly appreciate your patience in our getting this exciting collection to you. Your pre-ordered Blu-ray will now be shipped on or before August 12.

If you have also pre-ordered our upcoming CHAPLIN'S MUTUAL COMEDIES box set, that is still on schedule to ship out on or before July 29.

If you would prefer to cancel your order, please reach out to us directly and we will be able to offer you a refund. Again, we are truly sorry about this unfortunate delay. Rest assured that we are working as hard as we can to create and ship this collection to you as fast as possible.

Thanks again for your patience.

Sincerely,
The Flicker Alley Team

[What A Disgrace]

As Flicker Alley doesn't send shipping confirmation, if I remember correctly, has anybody received either Chaplin Mutuals or the Keystone set?

[fdm]

Another week to go yet...

[captveg]

Release date is today...

[fdm]

Release date is today...

Maybe via Flicker Alley, but every online website I looked at (Deep Discount, Amazon, B&N...) says next week.

[EddieLarkin]

I received an email from Flicker Alley a few hours ago saying my sets will have been sent today at the latest, but possibly as early as last week. I'm in the UK though so will be getting them after others regardless.

[porquenegar]

Both my sets arrived in yesterday's mail. Currently enjoying Disc 1 of the Mutuals.

[domino harvey]

Two new Cinerama titles coming in November: Cinerama Search for Paradise and Cinerama Seven Wonders of the World

[DeprongMori]

DVDtalk has the first review up that I've seen for the new Chaplin's Mutual Comedies set.

http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/64604/ch ... -comedies/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[tenia]

Blu-ray.com has just published their review of the Chaplin Mutual set.

[What A Disgrace]

The Mutual set is fantastic, but the Sennett set is *mighty* and easily one of the greatest boxed sets that will be released this year. Its an absolute steal at the price its being offered for; if it were a DVD set it would easily be five DVDs and retail for $100 or so. I hope the pricing structure continues with the next Sennett collection, the Arbuckle set and the Avant Garde set.

[EddieLarkin]

Paul Gierucki has said that whilst a Mack Sennett Volume 2 is in the works, Volumes 3 and onwards are possible only if these first two sell well. So get buying folks! The average length of these shorts is 20 minutes, rather than one reelers or half reelers as I initially thought they might be (two of them are features!). So yes, for $40 it's an absolute steal (FA's current price). International buyers should be aware FA are customs friendly too.

[Ashirg]

I totally agree. Got both sets last week and skipped through the Mutuals set, but can't get enough of Sennett collection - most of the shorts have good commentaries.

[captveg]

Did my part and bought them both. Now to get around to watching them...

[tenia]

So yes, for $40 it's an absolute steal (FA's current price). International buyers should be aware FA are customs friendly too.

Extremely interesting info ! Thanks a lot, Eddie.

[Tuco]

Beyond the Sennett set being such a good deal...Holy Smokes! The evolution of slapstick before our very eyes. Essential for those interested in the history of film, also good for a lot of belly laughs. Allegedly, Harold Lloyd thought Ford Sterling was the funniest man in movies; I beg to differ, but he certainly shines in these films. Also, the outrageous stunts! Was anyone killed? Amazing stuff.

[RobertB]

Just came back from a screening of Gance´s j'accuse. It was a 2K scan from Lobster and Flicker Alley based on the 2008 restoration. English intertitles, unless where they are artistic. This seems ready for a blu-ray release. The old dvd looks like it's out of print. How many more silent-film gems does Flicker have that they can release without warning?

[JSC]

Just finished watching the Chaplin Mutuals. The restorations were absolutely fantastic!
One complaint...the cheap looking digital opening credits which looked like someone
just slapped them together on Avid or Final Cut Pro and stuck them in before each
film (they didn't even bother to use a suitable font!). Even re-release prints of the
Mutuals had perfectly decent titles they could've utilized.

[DeprongMori]

Just started watching the Chaplin Mutuals. While the restoration is great, I'm really hating the steelbook packaging. Very awkward to open and way too fat. Moved the BluRays to the center so I don't feel like I'm breaking the case every time to get the disks out. It's still a pain to get the booklet out. I'm rather new to the world of steelbook cases, so I'm guessing this is a pretty typical 5-disc set steelbook package? Wishing it was just a 2-disk Blu-only. For as much as people complained about the Criterion dual-format, Criterion did a much nicer job with all of their dual-format packaging.

Hoping the Mack Sennett Vol 1 packaging is better. It sounds like an amazing collection. Any comments?

[EddieLarkin]

Hoping the Mack Sennett Vol 1 packaging is better.

It's packaged using the new 3 disc Scavano amaray cases that Criterion switched to before dumping dual format.

[DeprongMori]

(My apologies for the formatting here. I can hack raw HTML on a standard web page to format things, but that doesn't seem to work here.)

I've been watching the new Chaplin Mutuals and am appalled by the use of modern fonts for the titles and intertitles. I'm wondering whether the films were accidentally released with working placeholders for the titles and intertitles, as David Shepard who worked on the restoration is publicly claiming in an Amazon review

I am one of the several people who worked on this project. The intertitles (captions) are exact replicas in typography and design, including the logo and film title, of the original 1916-1917 titles.

I'm not sure he saw what was actually released when he made that statement.

(From http://www.amazon.com/review/RF5MYL2RDY ... ayforum-20)

Yet every film in this set has exactly the same modern font as every other, and in the example of "The Rink", which appears on the Criterion release of "Modern Times" as an extra (and which David Shepard is also credited with restoring), on the Criterion the title and intertitles seem to be the originals of the period, and which the Flicker Alley release bears utterly no resemblance to. What is going on here?

Title card from "The Rink" on "Modern Times" Criterion release.

(Sourced from http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/dvdcompar ... ntimes.htm)

Note: The cast credits and intertitles on the Criterion "The Rink" are very much in keeping with this more ornate style as well, as you can see in this unrestored video that uses the same fonts as the Criterion. (https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x97l1 ... shortfilms

I haven't checked the Criterion release of "The Immigrant" (which appears as an extra on the Blu of "Au Revoir Les Enfants"), but I suspect it will be the same situation.

Here's another example, an intertitle from an unknown release of the film "The Fireman", which is in the same style as the "The Rink" as found on Criterion.

(Found at https://dcairns.wordpress.com/2009/12/20/)

Compare to this intertitle from the Flicker Alley "Easy Street".
http://images2.static-bluray.com/review ... _large.jpg
(I wish I could find a screen shot of the Flicker Alley title cards to show against "The Rink" above)

I am very confused by David Shepard's comments in the Amazon thread. Are the title cards in the Criterion release from a much later version of the film, or is Shepard in error here, or did the films slip out from Flicker Alley unfinished with placeholders?

In any case, I find the modern fonts very distracting from the film experience and am rather shocked they went out this way on such a high profile project as this.

[DeprongMori]

BTW, here's the title card from "The Immigrant" as found on the Criterion BluRay release of "Au Revoir Les Enfants". The Flicker Alley title card bears to resemblance to it whatsoever.



(Sourced from http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/dvdreview ... review.htm)

[DeprongMori]

For those interested in the Chaplin Mutuals title/intertitles issue, I received a further explanation on Amazon from David Shepard which clears things up.

The intertitles in the new Flicker Alley set are exact reproductions of the original 1916-1917 titles. After Mutual folded in 1919, the intertitles bearing its trade mark were replaced in all of the films, and they were replaced once again in the mid-1920s. That third set of intertitles is the one people tend to think of as originals, and is the one we copied at Blackhawk in 1974, but we were incorrect. What you see now is, in fact, correct as of the first release of the films.

We never found even one example of an original 1916-1917 main title for a Chaplin Mutual. The ones in period style that you saw on the Criterion DVDs were designed by me in 1974 and are purely conjectural, although they are nice. Archival restoration practices have come a long way in the past forty years and it is now more or less set in stone that if you cannot authenticate, you do not fake. As this set is produced with the cooperation of many official archives, we are following current standards (and have no choice in the matter).

David Shepard

[manicsounds]

Is there a reason why the 2 upcoming Cinerama titles are $10 more expensive than the previous ones?

[L.A.]

The Mack Sennett Collection, Vol. One in The New York Times.