Olive Films

[swo17]

It's a new label, Olive Signature. First (re)releases are High Noon and Johnny Guitar

So basically, all of their better titles--the ones I felt compelled to buy before--I'm going to have to buy those all over again now, aren't I?

[domino harvey]

It's a new label, Olive Signature. First (re)releases are High Noon and Johnny Guitar

So basically, all of their better titles--the ones I felt compelled to buy before--I'm going to have to buy those all over again now, aren't I?

I guess you could always sneak them out of your local Barnes and Noble via the enormous pockets of your JNCOs

[FrauBlucher]

It's a new label, Olive Signature. First (re)releases are High Noon and Johnny Guitar

So basically, all of their better titles--the ones I felt compelled to buy before--I'm going to have to buy those all over again now, aren't I?

That's a silly question.

[Drucker]

This board hates High Noon right? I tried watching From Here to Eternity and kinda sorta loathed it, so I held off on buying High Noon despite its classic status. Is this the right call?

[domino harvey]

I don't like it, but it's one of those films you should at least see for yourself. But watch it on a double feature with Silver Lode for the proper Goofus/Gallant experience

[swo17]

Like I did here

For what it's worth, I liked High Noon a lot when I had only seen like 100 movies.

[Ribs]

Also, it's 80 minutes long, which at least makes it a bit less stale than a lot of the other Oscar nominees from that period (which was the context I viewed it in, anyway). I don't like it or Eternity very much but I'm a fan of Zinneman's later The Nun's Story and A Man for all Seasons. He's the kind of director that kind of defies auteurism and is just a fairly functional director that sometimes raises his game based on the material given.

[domino harvey]

Swo's line about High Noon ruining modern cinema is a reference to my earlier claim to that effect due to its editing choices in the finale's fight sequence. Of course, I'm now perversely curious to watch the special feature touting the editing! (Assuming it's not just a port of something from the original Lionsgate special edition, which I never bothered to upgrade)

[domino harvey]

Zinnemann made a few good films-- Oklahoma, A Hatful of Rain, the Nun's Story-- but a lot of his best-known and well-rewarded by the Academy flicks are inexplicably bland or worse

[swo17]

Don't forget Act of Violence, one of the greatest of all noirs.

[knives]

Behold a Pale Horse is also surprisingly good as is some of his shorts.

[criterionsnob]

Of course this happened. I've been holding off on buying Johnny Guitar since it was released, hoping there'd be a better transfer. And I just bought it this morning from the Olive DeepDiscount sale. Maybe I can still cancel it. Still, good news!

[Gregory]

Funny that they're launching this new label with High Noon and Johnny Guitar, considering that Jeffrey Kaufmann in his Bluray.com review of the latter pointed out four years ago,

Is Olive Films, as one character in Johnny Guitar put it, "on the fence" about the horrors of Communism? How else to explain the dual releases of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, a film some insist is a thinly veiled examination of an encroaching Red Menace, and now Johnny Guitar, another film with a widely discussed supposed subtext, albeit in this case one which is purportedly anti-McCarthy. Of course, I jest, and it's to Olive Films' credit that they're bringing two iconic fifties films out on Blu-ray

And the same can be said about High Noon, as many understood it as an anti-HUAC work, by Carl Foreman, who was called before HUAC while writing the film and became a casualty of the blacklist, leading Stanley Kramer to remove Foreman's producer credit. Yet Dwight Eisenhower named it his favorite film, and there have been various readings of the film that see it as right-wing in any number of ways, including comparing it to things like the Bush Doctrine, with the Bush administration as the lone gunmen carrying out "preemptive war," while "Old Europe" represents the cowering or passive townspeople.
For me, the execution of the story is just okay, and the most interesting way of looking at it is as a work by Foreman rather than Zinneman (or Kramer).

[matrixschmatrix]

The Red Menace take on Bory Snatchers never made that much sense to me- it has a lot in common with any number of Twiight Zones about the terrors of conformism, and seems too generally paranoiac to be tied down to such a dull reading. I'd buy it for Them!, but not for Invasion.

[Zaki]

Super, just add subs and this is some of the best news to come out of American labels this year.

Any indication of subtitling included in the new Olive Signature releases? With a Criterion SRP you can definitely expect that.

[domino harvey]

They're both subtitled

[Zaki]

Excellent. Thanks, domino.

[Rayon Vert]

Johnny Guitar is now 1.66 by the way, so may be worth holding onto the first release too if you want both ARs

I looked this up and it seems like 1.66 was the original ratio. That's definitely worth the double-dip for me.

[Ashirg]

What other titles are definitely going to be included in Olive Signature line? I guess, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Quiet Man and Rio Grande would be early contenders.

[andyli]

If Olive's first two titles set standard for the upcoming releases, wouldn't the availability of 4K masters be the determning factor? I doubt Olive has much say as to which titles receive 4K scans first; instead, they will have to rely on what has already been restored (by other entities), such as Macbeth and The Quiet Man... One thing is for sure: they won't be able to churn out Signature titles at that crazy speed several years ago unless they seriously lower the standard.

[Drucker]

What other titles are definitely going to be included in Olive Signature line? I guess, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Quiet Man and Rio Grande would be early contenders.

Quiet Man already was released from a 4k restoration. However, the encode was subpar.

[solaris72]

Yeah I wonder if they might do a new encode on The Quiet Man and bundle it with that doc they released and the rest of the special features from the old DVD. Would double dip if it had all that.

[FrauBlucher]

The pre-orders are up for High Noon and Johnny Guitar. Currently listed at $39.99.

Btw... I saw the 4K restoration of Johnny Guitar when it screened at the Film Forum and it looked amazing. If the encode is done properly, there should be no reason for this not to look spectacular.

[MongooseCmr]

This board hates High Noon right? I tried watching From Here to Eternity and kinda sorta loathed it, so I held off on buying High Noon despite its classic status. Is this the right call?

I really liked it up until the climax, which seemed so tonally misplaced that it sort of ruins everything that came before. I can't think of another film that exists only for it's final act and then botches it.

[chatterjees]

I own both the titles, but I will eventually upgrade to the signature edition. MoC releases also seems possible, they do have a deal with Paramount. In that case, I will go for MoC. I love both the westerns, especially High Noon. It's in my top 10 classic American Western. I hope that they are also thinking about signature editions for some of their war film releases like Sands of Iwo Jima. That one definitely deserves a better treatment.