2009 Dream DVDs

[angharad76]

Every year, the studios release the same films again and again on DVD. (Do we really need another release of Lilo and Stitch?) Every year, I wish that films that haven't been released before will come out. Last year, I was delighted when The Major and the Minor and Easy Living, even if they were done with little care and few extras. This month, we

Comments

I don't know how I missed this post.

[wwolfe]

I managed to tape "Light in the Piazza" a few years ago when it was shown in a pristine letter-boxed print on TCM. I'd never seen it, but my old boss had always raved about it, so I bought it sight unseen, as it were. Very enjoyable movie, with a lovely performance from Olivia.

I love your description of "Margie." It makes me want to see the movie.

I'd add "History Is Made at Night," among many others. On the plus side, the Borzage/Murnau box set at least goes some distance in bringing a criminally overlooked director back in the public eye.

I guess anything from Paramount in the 1930s is marooned on the shelf at Universal, which bought the rights years ago, and then proceeded to drop the whole bundle down Orwell's memory hole. Inexplicable and frustrating. I wonder if I'll live long enough to see a "Mitchell Leisen in the Thirties" box set come out. That would be a honey of a set.

Re: I don't know how I missed this post.

[angharad76]

I'm doing a series of these.

You can sometimes find copies of Margie on ebay. I haven't seen it on tv in the last five or so years.

At least Midnight and Easy Living were released on DVD last year, Hands across the Table is available in a Carole Lombard set, and Death Takes a Holiday can be found as one of the special features on one of the editions of Meet Joe Black.

I would like to see a Mitchell Leisen in the 1940s box set with Remember the Night, Kitty, Hold Back the Dawn, Golden Earrings, and most importantly To Each His Own!!!!!!!

I also wouldn't mind No Man of Her Own from 1950 squeezed in there somewhere.

Re: I don't know how I missed this post.

[wwolfe]

Plus, "The Mating Season" from 1951. (No one ever got John Lund like Leisen.) Not to mention the one episode of "The Twilight Zone" he directed, "The 16 Millimeter Shrine" (1959) with Ida Lupino playing the Gloria Swanson role in a vestpocket version of "Sunset Boulevard." So you actually could have a decent Fifties set, too.

And, lastly, I was watching a Cecil B. DeMille silent movie called "The Godless Girl" on TCM a few Sundays back, when I noticed that Leisen was the art director. He was billed as "James Mitchell Leisen," and I have to admit it gave me a little thrill when I realized who it was.

Re: I don't know how I missed this post.

[angharad76]

Except for Billy Wilder and A Foreign Affair. I know that the movie was the ladies' show, but Lund held his own there.

I've never seen an episode of The Twilight Zone. Leisen did three episodes. Maybe I'll check them out, but The Twilight Zone never seemed appealing to me.

Leisen was great with interiors. The only pre-directorial work of his I've seen, though, is The Sign of the Cross.