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Cinema

Twilight Time Sale Recommendations – The Essentials

twilight time blu-ray shelf

Throughout the month of September, Twilight Time is offering a sale on all but its most recent titles. If you’re unfamiliar with its business model, Twilight Time wooed studios that were hesitant to allow the distribution of their catalog by third party distributors by capping the total available units of each title to 3,000. Nick Redman and Brian Jamieson began operation as Twilight Time in 2011 to tap into classic films from the back catalogs of major studios. Of their mission, Jamieson said, “Twilight Time will be serving both the collectible drive of film enthusiasts, and, in a larger sense, the cause of cinema literacy.”

Redman and Jamieson brokered their first deal of 20 catalog titles with 20th Century Fox, and Fox has long been a major supplier of essential Twilight Time releases. This led me to put my concerns about Disney’s acquisition of Fox on paper in this post from two days ago.

After the passing of Nick Redman earlier this year, fans of the label were concerned about Twilight Time’s future. Not only was he responsible for bringing the titles to Blu-ray but he also appeared on dozens of commentary tracks. The Disney deal further clouds Twilight Time’s future in the minds of fans and physical media enthusiasts. It wouldn’t be at all surprising if we never see any of Twilight’s Time Fox titles on DVD/Blu-ray again. Once these titles sell out, they’re probably gone for good. With that in mind, let’s take a look at some of the Twilight Time essentials you should consider picking up during this latest and greatest sale.

Twilight Time titles can be purchased through Screen Archives and the Twilight Time page. (Domestic shipping is slightly cheaper through Twilight Time but more titles remain available at Screen Archives.) I’ll start with my Top 11 12 Essentials (studio not considered) and focus specifically on 20th Century Fox offerings later.

 

Top 12 Twilight Time Sale Recommendations

(* denotes 20th Century Fox title)

Stormy Weather* (1943) – only available at ScreenArchives.com

A 20th Century Fox property with only limited copies available. This 1943 musical with an African-American cast is based on the life of Bill “Bojangles” Robinson and features performances from Robinson, Lena Horne, Cab Calloway and Fats Waller. Fred Astaire said that the “Jumpin’ Jive” dance sequence was the greatest movie musical number he had ever seen. Stormy Weather will make you lament Hollywood never made twenty movies just like it.

Beat the Devil (1954)

This off-kilter black comedy-adventure starring Humphrey Bogart, Peter Lorre, Robert Morley, Gina Lollobrigida, and Jennifer Jones is really just a showcase for personality. Everything goes deliciously wrong for this cast of liars, thieves and scoundrels. Long available only on tragically unwatchable prints, this Twilight Time edition restores lost footage and marks a drastic improvement over the Film Foundation Blu-ray released in 2016.

Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957)

Based on the successful Broadway play by George Axelrod, this satire starring Jayne Mansfield, Tony Randall, Joan Blondell (and many others, including a cameo from Groucho Marx), Frank Tashlin’s film skewers fan culture, advertising, and the Hollywood hype machine. Blessed with a bevy of comic talent and timing, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? is a heady movie with plenty of laugh-out-loud set pieces.

Bravados* (1958)

This underseen 20th Century Fox western stars Gregory Peck as a solemn and nearly silent rancher pursuing a gang of four outlaws that he believes murdered his wife six months earlier. Also featuring Lee Van Cleef, Henry Silva, Stephen Boyd, and Joan Collins. Director Henry King shot the film with Leon Shamroy in CinemaScope and the film makes the most of its gorgeous Mexican setting.

The Train (1964) – only available at Screen Archives

After a quick sell out during its first run, Twilight Time brought John Frankenheimer’s adventure thriller back for an encore performance. Burt Lancaster is a workaday World War II-era trainman charged with preventing a cargo-load of irreplaceable French art is not allowed to leave the country for Germany. Beautiful Jean Tournier black and white cinematography and Maurice Jarre score.

Two For the Road* (1967)

The romantic highs and lows and everything in between. Mark (Albert Finney) and Joanna (Audrey Hepburn) take annual road trips through France and the film assembles these trips non-linearly in order to tell the story of how the couple met through present day bitterness. In his commentary for the film, Stanley Donen mentioned that couples often tell him that this movie caused them to get married — but just as many say that it caused them to divorce. Bonus: Henry Mancini score and Maurice Binder title design.

Fat City (1972)

John Huston directed this naturalistic neo-noir boxing drama that might just be the American classic you’ve never seen. An alcoholic past-his-prime boxer Billy Tully (Stacy Keach) wants to get back into fighting form and spars with an up-and-coming 18-year-old kid named Ernie (Jeff Bridges). Billy puts Ernie in touch with his manager and expects the kid to rocket to stardom. Shot by Conrad L. Hall, the film’s unglamorous visuals mirror the state of its characters. This movie could easily be interpreted as a reflection of the Hollywood career of John Huston (who was also a former boxer) who, by this point in his career, had been put out to pasture by the Hollywood gatekeepers.

The Hot Rock* (1972)

A personal favorite heist comedy features 1972 Robert Redford, George Segal and Zero Mostel and was curiously not a success when it was released. Lighthearted and driven by a painfully clever William Goldman screenplay, The Hot Rock should be a considered a classic of the genre. The film boasts not just one big caper — but four(!) because the characters keep bungling the job. Director Peter Yates considered this one of hist best movies and superior to his driveaway success, Bullitt.

Theatre of Blood (1974)

Because @HouseofGlib says so. Also, I thought this was sold out and omitted it from my first list. Essential Vincent Price horror comedy that features Price as a humiliated actor seeking revenge upon the critics who failed to see his genius. Diana Rigg considers this her best film! The pure joy of watching Vincent Price merge Shakespeare and bloody Phibesian revenge is a gift that keeps on giving.

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974) – only available at Screen Archives

Sam Peckinpah at his most raw, nihilistic, poetic and unrelenting. This is another former TT sell-out title that’s been brought back because people need to see this movie. Almost universally panned at the time of its release, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia has been reassessed in recent years. A sometime piano player (Warren Oates) and his lover (Isela Vega) discover one last chance for happiness, but that happiness slips through the fingers and leaves Bennie a shell of a man, determined to make good on promises of revenge that he doesn’t know he can keep.

Melvin and Howard (1980)

Howard Hughes (Jason Robards) loses control of his motorcycle, crashes in the Nevada desert. A nobody by the name of Melvin Dummar (Paul Le Mat) stops his pickup to pee and finds a disheveled stranger lying by the side of the road. Refusing to go to the hospital that stranger accepts a ride and travel-time conversation. Melvin encourages his passenger to join him in singing a Christmas song he wrote. The stranger has Melvin sing his favorite song “Bye Bye Blackbird.” Melvin drops his charge at the Desert Inn and does not reveal his identity. Some years later, a limousine stops at Melvin’s service station and hands over a copy of Howard Hughes’ last will and testament naming Melvin a beneficiary. No one believes Melvin and soon he becomes part of a media circus. Now that I’ve told you the plot, I’ll also tell you that none of it really matters because Melvin and Howard is first and foremost a beautiful character study from Jonathan Demme. Headlined by Mary Steenburgen’s Oscar-winning performance, the film’s a surprising and understated gem of a movie.

Cutter’s Way (1981)

Let’s add some more Jeff Bridges to this list. Another movie long overdue for elevation into the status of American classic. Panned and praised at the time of its release, Cutter’s Way features standout performances from Bridges and the always reliable John Heard. Czech New Wave writer/filmmaker Ivan Passer worked along Milos Forman on films like Loves of a Blonde (1965) and The Fireman’s Ball (1967) before defecting to the U.S. The financial failings of Cutter’s Way likely derailed his post-Czech New Wave career. This subtle, cynical, character-driven masterpiece reflecting the disillusionment of the post-Vietnam era deserves better.

More Essentials

(If I missed any of your essentials make sure to add them in the comments or holler at me @007hertzrumble)

The Snake Pit (1948)
Don’t Bother to Knock (1952)
Inferno (1953)
Our Man in Havana (1959)
Warlock (1959)
Hound of the Baskervilles (1959) – Screen Archives only
Underworld U.S.A. (1961)
The World of Henry Orient (1964)
The Chase (1966)
The Detective (1968)
Pretty Poison (1968)
Model Shop (1969)
Bananas (1971)
Short Night of Glass Dolls (1971)
Rollerball (1975)
The Front (1976)
The Big Fix (1978) – never before released on DVD
Chilly Scenes of Winter (1979)
Zelig (1983)
Black Widow (1987)
Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993)
Devil in a Blue Dress (1995)

Tune in tomorrow when I’ll highlight some 20th Century Fox titles that might warrant extra consideration.

Categories
Cinema Double Features

Double Feature Theater: Mismatched 1990s Vol. III

double feature theater 1990s

Between my feature on the Netflix DVD blog and my Mismatched 1990s post on here a couple weeks ago, I’ve made 12 double feature connections, touting 24 different movies from the decade that brought us Zubaz, Parker Lewis, and weaponized slap bracelets. I don’t know how many people are actually enjoying this series (and this play-at-home exercise) but I know creating this list has provided me with so much idle-time fun I’m determined to make this a regular series on the bl-g even if no one seems to be reading it. (And I have the analytics to back that up!) Listen, some people do the crossword; I pair movies that don’t look like they belong together. (But they do!)

Today I’ll bring you four more pairings from my ever-growing list. Tweet me your beautifully mismatched pairings at @007hertzrumble and I’ll keep on churning out words that inspire, well, someone to watch double features of which few (any?) programmers would approve.

 

matinee irma vep double feature

Matinee (Joe Dante, 1993) & Irma Vep (Oliver Assayas, 1996)

The Creators of Waking Fever Dreams Double

I wanted desperately to include Matinee in one of these pairings, but I stumbled when selecting its mate. I first scribbled in the entomologically-related Arachnophobia. Between insects and John Goodman, the match seemed all too obvious. What we really needed was a movie that borrowed Joe Dante’s brand of wry self-awareness and also offered another kind of peek into the movie business. I scanned my DVDs, a pink spine leapt from the shelf almost immediately. At last I had my Matinee match in Olivier Assayas’ Irma Vep.

In Matinee, John Goodman’s Lawrence Woolsey directly recalls William Castle and Joe Dante has projected a spiritual facsimile of the 1950s — the moviegoing culture, the popular science fiction films, the nuclear fears. From these familiars, Dante spins a universally relatable story about the loss of personal and cultural innocence.

Assayas’ movie depicts a washed-up, passionless director named René Vidal who’s remaking Les Vampires, the classic French silent serial, without any real purpose behind the chore. Played by actor Jean-Pierre Léaud (Antoine Doinel in many Truffaut classics), Vidal’s clearly meant to be a disillusioned holdover from the New Wave. He hires iconic Hong Kong action star Maggie Cheung because he liked The Heroic Trio and supposes she’d look good in a cat suit. (Poor Vidal is crushed to learn that all of Maggie’s stunts were performed by a double.) It’s raw, winking and at times knowingly listless — Assayas uses the form itself to satirize the dysfunction of the French film business.

Both movies take a look at a culture through the lens of cinema, blending cinema myth with historical references and popular culture. These are two movies I wish I could experience again for the first time and in playing them together I think I just might be possible.

 

pump up the volume buffy the vampire slayer double feature

Pump Up the Volume (Allan Moyle, 1990) & Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Fran Rubel Kuzui, 1992)

Teenage Activism! Double

Mark, an introverted, insightful teenager played by Christian Slater, broadcasts pirate radio from the basement of his parents’ house. He spins a Leonard Cohen theme song and uses his outsider status as a platform to spout rhetoric about what ails his American society. He’s angsty and he knows it. When another student commits suicide, “Hard Harry” uses his soapbox to tell others to do something about their sadness — teens will be teens, however, and wave of self-flagellation breaks out in the community. The institution wrongly accuses “Hard Harry” — so what is Mark to do? It’s a potent, but still rough-gem-type performance from Christian Slater who’s in the midst of finding his footing as a leading man after Heathers and Gleaming the Cube.

Like a dagger through the heart, Buffy came to me instantly as a mirror-image to Slater’s recluse. Buffy’s a super rich, super cool, super cute high school senior with her whole pristine life ahead of her when Donald Sutherland interrupts her utopia to tell her that she’s actually a “Chosen One” destined to, like, ohmigod, kill vampires and stuff. It’s almost a miracle that Buffy became a hit TV series considering this big screen outing that feels like a rough first draft (studio meddling crippled Joss Whedon’s screenplay) — but that’s not to say that the film doesn’t have some something to offer for the second half of this double feature. Though imperfect, Buffy the Vampire Slayer gifts us a few Whedon zingers, a delicious Paul Reubens performance, and peak Kristy Swanson, another talented actress that suffered because she was probably too pretty to get a decent script (though I’d argue that The Chase deserves some love). Swanson does what she can with the material, but she’s given the impossible task of being a total ditz and an empowered female ass-kicker at the same time. As a midnight-type movie, however, Buffy serves up a fun, but flawed capper on an evening of cinema.

The inverse connections between Slater’s Mark and Swanson’s Buffy give us plenty upon which to chew. Two young stars, both the same age, finding their way in Hollywood — Slater getting meaty material that gives his charisma room to play while Swanson’s forced to play rigid stereotypes.

 

demon knight airheads double feature

Demon Knight (Ernest Dickerson, 1995) & Airheads (Michael Lehmann, 1994)

Under Siege (with a Red Herring!) Double

I know I say I’m proud of many of these pairings, but I’m really excited about pairing the first theatrical Tales From the Crypt feature with this beautifully dumb comedy about a band that takes a radio station hostage because they want people to hear their demo tape.

In Demon Knight, Frank (William Sadler) guards a sacred key that can arbitrarily unlock unspeakable evil. The charming, but also demonic Billy Zane wants the key to initiate the Apocalypse. Tired of running from the forces of evil for 90-some years, Frank holes up in a boarding house in New Mexico and with the help of the quirky townsfolk and makes his final stand. Despite an excellent cast of supporting players featuring Jada Pinkett, CCH Pounder, Dick Miller, Charles Fleischer, and Thomas Hayden Church — the movie’s owned by a bonkers Billy Zane as “the Collector” who waffles between smarm, charm, slapstick and downright menace at the flip of a switch.

What do you get when a band called The Lone Rangers (Brendan Fraser, Adam Sandler and Steve Buscemi) takes over a radio station with water pistols and demand that their demo go out over the airwaves? (But how are you alone if there’s three of you?) Airheads, in its own way, represents a film about a group of freedom fighters resisting the man. The stakes aren’t apocalyptic, the comedic tone goes broad — and maybe I shouldn’t enjoy this movie, but goddammit I do — and I will watch it whenever I come across it on the tele. Take a gander at the supporting players: Michael Richards, Michael McKean, Judd Nelson, Joe Mantegna, David Arquette, Chris Farley, Reginald E. Cathey and Ernie Hudson. Even Harold Ramis has a cameo. The movie features of-the-moment pop references (Kurt Loder!) and plenty of lazy narrative. The item around which the movie revolves is just the band’s demo tape and not the literal key to the world’s existence — but I can’t help but feel joy just thinking about placing these movies back to back.

in the company of men bound double feature

In the Company of Men (Neil LaBute, 1997) & Bound (Lana & Lilly Wachowski, 1996)

The Dudes Get What’s Coming to Them Double

Start with Neil LaBute’s black comedy about retro-sexism invading the modern world and conclude with the Wachowski’s neo-Noir, slapstick, erotic thriller about two lesbians screwing over gangster named Caesar (Joe Pantoliano).

I almost don’t want to explain these movies to anyone that hasn’t seen them. LaBute’s film showcases men at their worst — I once assumed to the point of caricature, but now, unfortunately, I know these assholes exist. Aaron Eckhardt (as Chad) and Matt Malloy (as Howard) play their roles straight. Chad’s oppressive misogyny defines and motivates his entire character in the film. The language is at once searing, funny, and reprehensible. I’ve discussed this film with people (both men and women) who couldn’t endure the film because they couldn’t enjoy the satire behind the delivery. While I understand that perspective — LaBute punishes these characters, both the initiator and the idle onlooker.

But if LaBute’s punishment doesn’t feel severe enough, enter Lana and Lilly Wachowski’s Bound — a movie about two creative, independent, funny, passionate women (Gina Gershon and Jennifer Tilly at the height of their powers) who take it upon themselves to punish the wicked… and take their money. Walking out of the theater in 1996 after seeing Bound I declared it an instant classic. I’ve never reconsidered that statement. It’s one of the ten best movies of the 90s because it twists genre convention into something new and inimitable. In his review Roger Ebert compared it to the Marx Brothers, The Last Seduction, Blood Simple and the best of Woody Allen all in the same sentence. If you haven’t seen Bound, you’re probably scratching your head, but he’s not wrong. Loving Bound is oh so right and the punishment they dish out feels like the appropriate consequences for the men in In the Company of Men.

 

Categories
Cinema

20th Century Fox, Disney and the Future of “Home Video”

20th century fox

When Disney purchased 20th Century Fox it acquired not only its intellectual property and in-production franchises, but also Fox’s film and television archive. I know that sounds obvious, but most coverage of the merger focuses on Disney’s stranglehold on the theatrical box office and who owns what superhero. You know, the “important” shit. (Pardon my expletive, but this post needs some fucking language.) Putting it mildly, Fox has been around for a very long time and made a lot of goddamn wonderful movies.

Pre 20th century fox
The Fox Film logo – before the merger with Twentieth Century.

A Brief History of 20th Century Fox

Hungarian-born newsboy turned mogul William Fox formed Fox Film Corporation on February 1, 1915 as the successor to his earlier projects, the Greater New York Film Rental Company and Box Office Attractions Film Company. Fox helped initiate the movie business’s move from New York to Hollywood in 1917 when he set up West Coast production facilities because the climate was more hospitable for filmmaking. In 1926 he bought the patents for the Movietone sound system – the sound-on-film method for recording synchronized picture and sound on the same strip of film. F.W. Murnau’s Sunrise (1927) became the first film released with Movietone. The film included music and sound effects and a few unsynchronized words. When the stock market crashed in 1929, the near bankrupt William Fox was stripped of his film empire and Fox Film and its more than 500 theaters went into receivership.

Created in 1933 by Joseph Schenck (former president of United Artists) and Darryl F. Zanuck (former studio executive and producer at Warner Bros.), Twentieth Century Pictures was an independent production company that distributed through United Artists and leased studio space at Samuel Goldwyn Studios. After a failure to merge with United Artists in 1934 (blame Mary Pickford), Schenck and Zanuck turned their attentions to failing Fox Studios. A hostile takeover later, 20th Century-Fox was born in 1935.

20th century fox logo

Among the studio’s first contracted stars were Tyrone Power, Carmen Miranda, Don Ameche, Henry Fonda, Gene Tierney, Betty Grable, and perhaps most importantly, Shirley Temple – the child actress who shepherded the young studio through the Great Depression.

For the next 83 years, 20th Century-Fox (the hyphen was dropped in the 80s when Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation acquired the studio) was one of the “Big Six” American film studios. That’s a lot of movies. That’s a lot of history. And now Disney owns it all. Once everyone gets over the fact that Marvel has the X-Men back (mock cheer), there’s going to be a reckoning and a seismic shift in the way we’re allowed to consume media.

The Future of Fox Repertory Screenings

Disney has long held a policy to restrict the screening of its films by first-run or commercial discount cinemas. After the acquisition of 20th Century Fox, the Little Theatre in Rochester, NY was informed that their screening of Fight Club would no longer take place as scheduled. As expected, the Disney no-exhibition policy has been applied to Fox’s expansive catalog as well – the exception being the midnight-mainstay The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

rocky horror 20th century fox

It’s not exactly that clear cut, however. Disney places theaters into two categories: “repertory” or “commercial.” Commercial theaters can screen Disney’s first-run features, but can’t play catalog titles. If the theater has “repertory” designation it can play old movies, but not first-run. Disney did not consult anyone about these designations. Successful appeals have been made, but as many programmers have pointed out, it’s not realistic to designate theaters as either one or the other. Many independent theaters that program repertory must balance their programming to stay afloat by running first-run features. No other major studio has such a policy — and this will undoubtedly cripple the available titles for many small-town locally-owned theaters.

And How This Applies to Home Video

While repertory theaters flounder in the dark, trying to navigate the obstacle course placed in front of them – home video consumers also sense the coming of a chilly winter where Disney expands their “vault” to include any number of Fox catalog titles.

Disney launches its brand new streaming service Disney+ on December 11. For $7 a month, subscribers can access almost everything the company creates. In addition to its Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar and classic animation, the service will offer a significant number of original shows and movies. Jeff Goldblum’s show about whatever, The Mandalorian, and She-Hulk (and dozens of other Marvel properties) have been buzzy members of the lineup. With the addition of Fox, you’ll also see all 30 seasons of The Simpsons, for example, alongside the integration of classic Fox programming like The Sound of Music. Disney has also promised the “reimagining” of Fox franchises “for a new generation” is also in the works. (They’ve threatened a Home Alone reboot.)

Most everyone has made the logical assumption that Disney+ represents the next step in home viewership. The future of physical media is imperiled. Most statistics show that sales of physical media has fallen off a table during the last five years. Citing decreased sales at big box stores like Best Buy (not that they care about anything but selling big ticket items anymore) the numbers show that consumer spending has dropped from $10.3 billion in 2014 to $5.8 billion in 2018. Overall consumer spending, however, increased due to investments in streaming services like Netflix and Hulu. (Subscribe to the Criterion Channel, btw.)

niche blu-ray distributors

For the time being, however, studios are still releasing physical media and niche distributors like Kino (I highlighted the Kino Studio Classics line a couple years ago), Twilight Time, Arrow, Criterion are still pumping out discs. Prognosticators have been predicting the demise of DVD for years, but many of us are still on the front lines of this war, attempting to ensure that we’re allowed to own movies, in our home, for the foreseeable future. And that idea of ownership is going to become a crucial part of this new digital future.

If Disney attempts to force everything it owns onto this streaming service, logically they’re going to want to restrict repeat home viewership outside this paywall. If the only way to see these films is through a streaming platform, its in their best interest to make sure that you’re reliant upon this service to view your favorite Disney (and Fox films). Why would they go through the trouble of marketing and releasing a physical disc when they can curate a captive audience already mindlessly flipping through options for the next piece of digital chaff. The allure of pushing a button and queuing up unlimited entertainment sounds wonderful. The history of film at your fingertips! But that will never, ever, ever, ever be the case and it’s time that we, as a film community, broadcast the inherent fallacy of “everything available all the time” to the widest possible audience.

Planet of the Apes
Planet of the Apes, also coincidentally a 20th Century Fox property.

The Future of Ownership

While many celebrate these developments, I can’t help but equate the ultimate outcome of the streaming war with the ending of Planet of the Apes when Charlton Heston storms the beach, spots the sunken Statue of Liberty and recognizes that humanity has destroyed itself. Embracing this streaming future also means you no longer own anything. Disney and all the other potential streaming platforms want you to pay in perpetuity for the right to view these movies – movies we once owned on Betamax, VHS, CED, Laserdisc, DVD, Blu-ray, 4K and viewed for free whenever the hell we wanted.

What is a lover of all movies to do about this? Classic film has already been rendered a second class citizen. Netflix, for example, has dispatched most movies on its service made before 2010 in favor of its own original programming — some of which has pushed TV into new and inspired directions. That said, this generation that relies on streaming for 99% of its viewing will just not watch classic film because it’s not available at the touch of a button.

Buying physical copies of movies has become conscientious objection. Every time we buy a Blu-ray we’re making a statement that physical media matters, that owning and curating a collection of movies matter. It’s an interesting development, really, considering that only a little more than 30 years ago people thought they’d won the jackpot by being able to buy Top Gun on VHS for $14.95. What’s really happening is that studios have found a way to put that genie back in the bottle. They want to regain control over their properties – something they lost when they opened up their libraries and found themselves surprised that consumers actually wanted to own the movies they’d deemed largely without value. They proceeded to inefficiently milk that home video teet for decades as they fought format wars, modified movies “to fit your screen,” and released the same films over and over and over again while other wonderful properties gathered dust (but that’s a complaint for an entirely different tirade).

top gun vhs
Sorry, Disney. Maverick’s gives his flybys to Paramount.

Many of us have come to the conclusion that we should purchase 20th Century Fox catalog titles while we still can. For example, the aforementioned niche distributor Twilight Time has had a long relationship with Fox – releasing dozens of titles on Blu-ray that have never otherwise seen the light of day. It’s no stretch of the imagination to assume that the tide of titles supplied to them will soon run dry (if it hasn’t already) as Disney gathers up its belongings and refuses to let anyone else play with them. Twilight Time wooed studios with their business model of releasing only 3,000 units of any title supplied to them, after which distribution reverted back to the original company. The cap on the number of units made wary studios a little more comfortable about loaning out their properties. Listen to the Pure Cinema Podcast episode focusing on Twilight Time for a more in-depth conversation about the label.

Buy 20th Century Fox Now or Forever Hold Your Peace

Twilight Time has just started a big sale during the month of September with many of its 20th Century Fox titles included. (I’ll highlight a number of recommended titles in a future post.) We should all be worried that these more obscure catalog titles will disappear forever once the 3,000 discs produced by Twilight Time have been sold. For a company as large as Disney, it would be wasted dollars bringing these to their streaming service since the financial gain from these films would be immaterial. If you want them, buy them now. You’ll regret it when they’re gone for good.

My Twilight Time shelfie.

It’s important to note that we don’t know any of this for sure – but we don’t *know* largely in the same way that we don’t know that it will necessarily be sunny in Los Angeles at some point next month. We’re staring at the future and it’s okay to want to be a part of it, but if you’re not also making sure that you’re gathering your essentials for the coming upheaval of man by a faction of hyper-intellectual apes, you also can’t say you didn’t see this coming.

Also, it should be noted that supporting physical media and allowing streaming services to supplement your viewing regimen is not sleeping with the enemy. You’re also not a heathen for choosing either side of the divide. I know many people who just don’t care — who think that whatever entertainment pops up on Netflix or Amazon Prime is good enough. I — like many of you — don’t want just “good enough.” I want access to all of the movies I love — and the potential to view all the movies I’ve yet to experience. We should all want this.