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coopernick wrote:Hi Nicholas,

Are you addressing Nicholas Ray? If so, he is the (long-deceased) director of Knock on any Door, the film we were primarily discussing. This page isn't a "Blogg" but a thread of contributions from various members, including myself, about Nicholas Ray. My apologies if I've misunderstood you.

coopernick wrote:However the titles you are refering to are actually Palladium Pictures releases and are not PD titles, the quality of the prints are of a high standard

If Knock on any Door is one of the releases you are referring to, then MichaelB (a professional reviewer) would appear to disagree with you in his post above, but I'll leave it to him to respond if he wishes to. I haven't seen the disc. Incidentally, MovieMail - who currently claim this is an exclusive - indicate on their website that this is an Orbit release, so maybe you should contact them if it's a Palladium product.

However the titles you are refering to are actually Palladium Pictures releases and are not PD titles, the quality of the prints are of a high standard not VHS transfers and I would be happy to send you samples if you so wish to show you...

I have no idea whether or not it's a PD title - all I have is the evidence of the DVD that I watched over the weekend. And, to be fair, the source print does appear to be in pretty decent condition.

However - and it's a pretty gargantuan however - the disc is massively compromised by one of the most inept NTSC-to-PAL standards conversions I've encountered in a long, long time (the original line structure is distractingly visible throughout, as it's been accentuated by the conversion to a different resolution, and any kind of action triggers ghosting galore that's all too visible during normal playback), and the picture is so soft that I'm afraid "VHS quality" is a pretty fair description of the overall lack of detail.

I would post frame grabs, but I'm at home and the disc is in the office - but I'll happily upload some tomorrow.

The quality of titles released are very much dependant on materials available and do appriciate that on occasions companies do not give the classics the attention they deserve before releasing them and are just interested in making a quick buck. But this is not the case in this instance.

You guys are the reason that it is always a pleasure to find classic titles and put them to market and I will ensure that Orbit and Palladium up their game in future to give you what you want.

PD is an excuse in a lot of cases to releases titles that some dont believe they have the rights to but again not in this case, a lot of the time these films do not see the light of day not because they dont have rights to release but because there is no materials to release them.

coopernick wrote:However the titles you are refering to are actually Palladium Pictures releases and are not PD titles

So, just to clarify (and sidestepping quality issues for a moment), such Palladium releases as Dancing Lady and The Prince and the Pauper (1937) are officially licensed from Warner Bros? And Knock on any Door is licensed from Sony?

By the way, HMV as well as MovieMail are listing Knock on any Door as an "exclusive" (from 16 Nov).

Although I appriciate your interest in how these titles are obtained, we are the sales representatives and are not involved in the aquisitions for our clients.

However as an man of intelegence you can appriciate that these matters are not as cut and dry and you are making it out.

I am sorry if I can't be more help

Regards

Nick

coopernick wrote:these matters are not as cut and dry and you are making it out.

Well, you seem to be clear (above) they are not PD titles and if that is the case then, as far as I'm aware, the worldwide rights are owned by Warner Bros. and Sony, who have given them official releases in other regions. But thank you for your reply, which tells me all I need to know.

I just looked at all the 'Cornerstone Media' titles on Amazon and I can say that nearly every one of them I can see is an Orbit Media title. What other labels do you distribute? If Palladium Pictures has nothing to with Orbit (and you infer that the use of the word "however") it's a bit odd that 'Orbit Media Ltd' paid for all their BBFC certificates.

DANCING LADY
KNOCK ON ANY DOOR
KISS TOMORROW GOODBYE
THE NARROW MARGIN
THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER

Well done for recovering that initial post! Although I'm the last person to defend Cornerstone Media (see above) they do at least display the logos for nine different labels, including Orbit Media, on their website. They distribute everything from Swing Club Gang Bang to Yoga and Your Back (though maybe those two complement each other). On their category search I found 24 titles under "Classic" and 988 titles under "Adult".

Many thanks to Finally for recovering the original post - I've just put it back where it belongs, and edited it out of yours.

Which of course means that anyone coming to this thread for the first time won't have a clue what we're talking about...

MichaelB wrote:anyone coming to this thread for the first time won't have a clue what we're talking about...

To return it to Nicholas Ray, how about: Knock on any door - and you'll find Orbit Media...

finally wrote:I just looked at all the 'Cornerstone Media' titles on Amazon and I can say that nearly every one of them I can see is an Orbit Media title.

You're not crazy (well, about this at least), it's in another Nic Ray thread

The someone was me, David. Scroll down here. But it says they'll be released 2010/2011, so it could still be a long wait.

DVR'd Party Girl from TCM the other night and finally caught up with it yesterday. It's not quite Johnny Guitar or anything, but it had enough of the usual Ray virtues for a fun night in. Stuff like Guys and Dolls and Some Like It Hot must have instilled some expectation in me that '30s gangsters in '50s movies are all buffoonish, lunkheaded comic relief, because I was actually surprised at how violent and scary Lee J. Cobb and John Ireland & co. were here, particularly

Spoiler

all that business with the acid, as well as the scene of Cobb beating the guy with the silver pool cue, which seems to have inspired some similar business in '87 Untouchables).

Biggest shock of the movie comes early on, though, when

Spoiler

Cyd Charisse discovers her roommate's body in the bloody tub! I actually jumped at this a bit; I can only imagine how this played on a giant screen to a 1958 audience unaccustomed to extremes in cinematic gruesomeness.

It's kind of a violent, shocking movie in general, with more "BOO!"s than I'm used to from films of this era. It must have seemed to be in very bad taste at the time.

Charisse's two dance numbers were swell, though they felt sort of shoehorned in - "Cyd Charisse is here, I guess we may as well let her dance for a scene or two." They certainly weren't important to the story in and of themselves, and I didn't get the sense that they expressed anything about the character or made any kind of hay about the movie's theme or anything. But, eh, as obligatory scenes go, not bad.

It's general stylistic stuff that seems to have stuck with me more than the plot, though. It was fun to see the usual sprawling use of the wide format; even for a movie with so many interior scenes of just two people talking, Ray found inventive ways to move the actors around the frame. Charisse's outrageously red costumes were great as well (especially near the end when she was on the train "to the coast", where you'd think she wouldn't want to be noticed!). I love the '50s color palette, and it seems like Ray did as well; again, I can only imagine what this looked like when first projected from a new print in a large format.

I may pick up the Warner Archives disc of this if it's not a total disaster. Is it at least a measurable improvement over the VHS copies that are likely floating around in junk shops across the US?

There's a (French? Spanish? I can't remember, it's in storage) R2 release that is surely the exact same master, only on a real DVD. Get it instead

Knock On Any Door is coming out March 29 in R2 =D>

domino harvey wrote:Knock On Any Door is coming out March 29 in R2 =D>

Assuming you mean the one listed at Amazon UK, it looks like the same edition that's been discussed for half of this thread.

Oops, I didn't realize it had been delayed so heavily

It hasn't been delayed, I've seen it in HMV for about a month now. I don't think I'm going to get it though.

So I finished my biblical marathon with King of Kings today and I thought it had its share of interesting choices. I liked how Ray handled the Salome subplot, playing up the sexual undertones of Wilde's play even if Hollywood would never have let the audience see her take it to its conclusion by laying a wet one on Robert Ryan's decapitated head! The film has a skeptic's focus, which generally works, but I did resent the way Ray set up the Last Supper as a proto-Manson Family cult meeting. Jeffrey Hunter is mostly creepy as Jesus but Rip Torn is pretty much the perfect Judas. Loved the shot with the camera attached to the crucifix!

NYTimes article on Ray.

an unfinished experimental movie, “We Can’t Go Home Again,” to which Ray devoted the last years of his life.
...
Now a new finished print of the film is being prepared by Ray’s widow, Susan, for a premiere at the Venice International Film Festival next year to celebrate the centenary of her husband’s birth.

Lemmy Caution wrote:NYTimes article on Ray.

an unfinished experimental movie, “We Can’t Go Home Again,” to which Ray devoted the last years of his life.
...
Now a new finished print of the film is being prepared by Ray’s widow, Susan, for a premiere at the Venice International Film Festival next year to celebrate the centenary of her husband’s birth.

Damn, that's exciting!

I don't know much about Susan Ray- should we be worried that this is exploitation, or confident she was acting with respect for his memory?

I think we should just assume that the bitch will exploit her wonderful, perfect, genius dead husband, like all women do.

montgomery wrote:I think we should just assume that the bitch will exploit her wonderful, perfect, genius dead husband, like all women do.

Uh... it's more that I get sort of wary when someone else finishes a dead person's work? Not real clear on where the misogyny is there.

edit: I should clarify, I'm not worried because she's a woman, or because of some idea that she was a Great Man's wife and therefore a leech or whatever, that would be stupid. Just wary after the history of sort of weird rumors about rights issues with family estates like Chaplin and Welles, and wondering if anyone knew if there was anything like that here.

Sorry, my response was needlessly aggressive, but I do think the premise of your question was vaguely misogynistic, or at least cynical. I would just assume that she has the best of intentions; it was her husband after all. And though you may not know much about her, she seems sincere and intelligent in the article - not the Anna Nicole Smith type. Of course, who the hell really knows? Whether the finished product is great or horrible, and whether it's her fault or not, we can never really know - but there's no reason to assume, based on the article, that she's exploiting him. (I've seen her interviewed on Criterion discs, and she's also in Lightning Over Water, and she does not seem to be an evil, manipulative spouse. I don't know, maybe she hated his guts, but I won't assume anything bad unless and until there's a reason).