The new Universal Backlot titles all feature exceptional transfers considering their age and the bitrate limitations of DVD. Absent any supplements, the movies turn out to be the best "special feature" you can ask for. I've included some screen captures from the three pictures that aren't Lonely Are The Brave, which I've spent enough focus on for the time being. The bulk of the shots will be from Trail of the Lonesome Pine.
There's been a lot more attention on Trail of the Lonesome Pine's lush Technicolor transfer, but Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves is nothing to sneeze at either.
I'm glad they didn't replace "thieves" with "insurgent terrorists." Bullet dodged. Also, the Mongols held Baghdad for ten years, and we're pulling out after six? How dare the USA look like a bunch of quitters!
This is one of my favorite screen captures of the lot, from Beau Geste. I already put it in the Digital Roundup for last week, but it's too good not to re-run. The stark, clean desert landscapes look great in this 4-year-old, necessarily grainy transfer. It was previously only found in the Gary Cooper Collection, which, as I said in this past week's Roundup, is a better value dollar for dollar than the standalone disc. It includes the same transfer on a dual-layer DVD and four more Cooper-starring movies.
How many of those extras would be CGI cutouts today?
Very nice woodcarving work.
I think I counted about ten trees they did this to for the credits. Here's to the ecological mores of the past!
This is still true to some degree in some areas...
...wait a minute, didn't Candidate Obama get in trouble for saying something just like this? Obviously, this movie was palling around with terrorists before it became cool again.
The kid in this shot is the young version of Fonda's character. Strangely enough, the kid seems more natural at handling a rifle than his grown-up counterpart.
Fred Stone plays "scared of technology" so well in this scene, I must admit that he made me giggle.
The few seconds of this pan constitute one of the best examples of how great of a transfer Universal got out of this 73-year-old film.
There's a shot of this same place caked in snow that made me wonder if they left the location there and shot in winter or used some sort of alternative. So much of this movie left me with unanswered trivial questions that I wish there were some sort of Turner Classic Movies-style retrospective featurette for it.