Indications of Incoming Indicator Entertainments

[Forrest Taft]

Does Indicator still license Columbia titles? The four films Blake Edwards did for Columbia in the 80s would make an enticing box-set, and seems to me the kind of thing Indicator could put out. I don't think any of these have been released on blu-ray anywhere. They could of course also throw in the two Tristar pictures he made with Bruce Willis, as I assume all of these are owned by Sony now.

[rapta]

Does Indicator still license Columbia titles? The four films Blake Edwards did for Columbia in the 80s would make an enticing box-set, and seems to me the kind of thing Indicator could put out. I don't think any of these have been released on blu-ray anywhere. They could of course also throw in the two Tristar pictures he made with Bruce Willis, as I assume all of these are owned by Sony now.

Sony-Columbia are the main studio Indicator work with, since some of the core team actually worked for Sony Pictures UK in the past. I expect they've considered a lot of Columbia titles and a lot of the gaps will be from them, just waiting on new scans/restorations or producing certain extras.

I assume you mean The Man Who Loved Women, Micki & Maude, A Fine Mess, and That's Life! (as well as Blind Date and Sunset)? Most of those aren't generally the kind of thing Indicator would be interested in, other than perhaps Micki & Maude if they were looking to do a Dudley Moore title (or decided to look into under-appreciated Bruce Willis work, ). I suggested they could look into a double-bill of Stir Crazy and See No Evil, Hear No Evil in the past, which was quickly shot down as nowhere the kind of thing Indicator would be looking at acquiring (I argued names like Poitier and Hiller, and obviously Pryor and Wilder, would be plenty of talking points), so I assume even Blake Edwards comedies would be the same case (unless they just did one or two).

Of course I could be wrong! Obviously they did Edwards' Experiment in Terror before but that was a completely different style of film. I don't know how well other Edwards titles have done in for other boutiques either (thinking of Eureka's releases of Operation Petticoat and The Party). I reckon they'd sooner look into Jerry Lewis if they fancied doing these kind of comedies. Or if we're talking 80's Columbia in particular, I'd imagine they'd more likely consider something less obviously out-and-out comedy, like Peggy Sue Got Married, or even School Daze (which is basically a musical).

[Calvin]

I'd take a set of Edwards' collaborations with Richard Quine (though I'd sooner take a set just focused on Quine)

[Forrest Taft]

I assume you mean The Man Who Loved Women, Micki & Maude, A Fine Mess, and That's Life! (as well as Blind Date and Sunset)?

Yeah, those are the ones I was thinking of, lazy of me not to include the titles in my post. Warner Archive have been so good at putting out the Edwards-stuff they own, but these Columbia titles are still MIA on blu-ray, and I cant think of anyone else who'd do it. If they do a print run of 2000, and I buy one copy, that leaves only 1999 copies they have to sell, seems like a no-brainer to me.

What you write seems reasonable to me though, maybe they're just not interested in something like this.

I do like the idead of a Quine/Edwards set! Indicator already included Drive a Crooked Road in the first noir set, but there's close to half a dozen other collaborations. I'd forgotten how many movies they did together.

[senseabove]

The newsletter clue is for Remember the Night:

Spoiler

[Finch]

I bought Universal's disc four months ago. You are all welcome.

[rapta]

Very happy about the Leisen! Wondered if we might get more after Arrow's Hold Back the Dawn but went quiet after that so assumed it was a one-off. Had an inkling either MoC or Indicator might oblige eventually...I wonder if they have more than one? Certainly several Indicator could release if they so wished, enough for a couple of box sets in fact. Hollywood Classics have listings for Death Takes a Holiday, Hands Across the Table, Easy Living, Midnight, Arise My Love, No Time for Love, To Each His Own, Golden Earrings, and No Man of Her Own (the last one being Paramount, the rest Universal), and Park Circus have The Lady is Willing (Sony) and Frenchman's Creek (Universal).

Another good idea would be a 'Preston Sturges at Paramount, 1935-1944' set (similar in concept to the Fuller one), featuring his own films The Great McGinty, Christmas in July, Hail the Conquering Hero, and The Great Moment (and maybe Sullivan's Travels if Arrow's license has expired; or The Miracle of Morgan's Creek if they can wrestle it from Paramount), but with some of his earlier credits as screenwriter included too; The Good Fairy (Wyler), Easy Living (Leisen), Never Say Die (Nugent), and Remember the Night (Leisen) would be suitable. Perhaps a bit ambitious at this point, but I'd personally love to see that kind of thing. I suppose the only thing possibly acting against such an idea is that it'd likely have to be Region B locked since Kino Lorber have released most of those in the US in recent years. Anyway, that'd be an amazing Christmas present to all of us if it were to happen!

[swo17]

Remember Arrow said they'd have done all the Sturges themselves if Sullivan had sold better

[Finch]

Midnight is so overdue for a Blu-Ray; hopefully that is coming soon as well.

[JakeStewart]

Remember Arrow said they'd have done all the Sturges themselves if Sullivan had sold better

What’s wrong with those Brits?

[rapta]

Remember Arrow said they'd have done all the Sturges themselves if Sullivan had sold better

That's Arrow though, and that was 8 years ago. They didn't do a box set or any follow-ups, so were riding on just the one title. That's not so much Indicator's style...I don't see why a Sturges set would sell any less than Fuller, von Sternberg, or even Ford. Criterion's Sturges titles will have helped garner him more fans, for starters.

[Finch]

The Sternberg set (which I pre-ordered back in the day) took a long time to sell out and the Ford set is still in print. Of the three mentioned, only the Fuller (and the Boetticher western set) sold out at a decent pace. I'd welcome a Sturges set as much as everybody else and buy it instantly though, and maybe his screwball comedies sell faster than Sternberg and Ford have (Hawks's Twentieth Century did very well so there's hope). If it's a set, it'd be more likely to be just however many films he did for one specific studio instead of a mix, as nice as that would be for us customers (but a potential nightmare for Indicator logistically).

[rapta]

The Sternberg set (which I pre-ordered back in the day) took a long time to sell out and the Ford set is still in print. Of the three mentioned, only the Fuller (and the Boetticher western set) sold out at a decent pace. I'd welcome a Sturges set as much as everybody else and buy it instantly though, and maybe his screwball comedies sell faster than Sternberg and Ford have (Hawks's Twentieth Century did very well so there's hope). If it's a set, it'd be more likely to be just however many films he did for one specific studio instead of a mix, as nice as that would be for us customers (but a potential nightmare for Indicator logistically).

Luckily, every film he directed from 1940 to 1944 was for Paramount, which would make things simpler in that respect (and Easy Living, Never Say Die and Remember the Night were also Paramount; only The Good Fairy was for Universal). And like I said, the rights for all of those titles are with Universal now (so basically all his 1940-1944 films except The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, which is still with Paramount). Fingers crossed...I'd just be happy with four or five Sturges-directed films but anything else would be a bonus!

[MichaelB]

The Sternberg set (which I pre-ordered back in the day) took a long time to sell out and the Ford set is still in print. Of the three mentioned, only the Fuller (and the Boetticher western set) sold out at a decent pace.

For the record...

Boetticher: 22 months
Sternberg: 28 months
Fuller: 36 months

[swo17]

And that explains why we keep getting more Boetticher

[What A Disgrace]

With Eureka! releasing the Police Story trilogy on 4K on September 26 - their first 4K release - that leaves a space of 21 days in which Indicator can beat them to the punch.I was rather expecting The Swimmer to be the title that would do it, since it has a 4K master and is a well regarded enough cult title to gather interest, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

[andyli]

They didn't even explicitly acknowledge that they are using the 4k master for The Swimmer. Or is there a problem with calling it 4k that they are reluctant to identify?

[tenia]

Grindhouse calls it on the backcover of their 2014 release a "new digital restoration created from 4K scans". I would suppose that if it was a 4K restoration, it would be called so and now phrased as "something something from 4K scans", so it's likely only the scans actually were in 4K, but the restoration was performed at a lower resolution.

[Finch]

For the record...

Boetticher: 22 months
Sternberg: 28 months
Fuller: 36 months

Thanks for setting me straight. I'd gotten the release dates of the Fuller and Sternberg mixed up and genuinely thought the Fuller had come after the latter.

[MichaelB]

Probably also worth noting that Boetticher and Fuller were region-free and Sternberg was region-locked (and of course with an existing Criterion edition covering Region A).

[Maltic]

The Fuller set didn't have the same feel of being a "definitive" boxset, whereas the Boetticher one had a handful of his most popular/acclaimed movies, so in that sense I guess it's apples and oranges.

[Drucker]

The Fuller set didn't have the same feel of being a "definitive" boxset, whereas the Boetticher one had a handful of his most popular/acclaimed movies, so in that sense I guess it's apples and oranges.

Indeed. They had also been hyping the thing up for a year and people were anticipating it.

[MichaelB]

Indeed. They had also been hyping the thing up for a year and people were anticipating it.

I assume "for a year" is a figure of speech rather than a precise recollection, but the gap between the publication of the teaser pic and the eventual release was in fact less than four months (early February to late May 2018).

[Drucker]

Indeed a figure of speech. But additionally I believe there were posts on social media (perhaps from Nick Wrigley illustrating artwork he was working on?) that pre-dated the official teaser if we're being reallytechnical, though my memory could be faulty! (he appears to have deleted all of his tweets so I can't pull up evidence of this)

[rapta]

Indeed a figure of speech. But additionally I believe there were posts on social media (perhaps from Nick Wrigley illustrating artwork he was working on?) that pre-dated the official teaser if we're being reallytechnical, though my memory could be faulty! (he appears to have deleted all of his tweets so I can't pull up evidence of this)

I think the rumours started due to people asking about specific titles when Indicator were in their first couple of years of releases and at least one was confirmed (IIRC, Gideon's Day), which lead to speculation of a 'Ford at Columbia' box set. Turned out to be true!