Warner Archive Instant Now on iPad

At long last, you can get Warner Archive's streaming channel on iPad. Sign up here for a free two-week trial, then go get the app. It's been available on Roku, and having the account allows access on either device. The library is continually growing, and includes loads of things in HD that aren't yet on Blu-ray. The app is Airplay-capable for AppleTV users.

Archival #1: MADAM SATAN (1930)

Welcome to a new regular feature dedicated to under-recognized movies that deserve more attention. Whether brought back into print by Manufacture-On-Demand (MOD) services like the Warner Archive Collection or bootstrapped and/or Kickstartered by obsessed entrepreneurial cinephiles, attention must be paid. These are the more obscure, the less-replayed, and those long absent from repertory cinema. Subsequent installments will cover everything from individual movies to TV shows, and multi-movie collections to blessed occasional Blu-rays.

l. to r. Bob (Reginald Denny), wife Angela (Kay Johnson), Bob's pal Jimmy (Roland Young)

This (unfortunately) obscure Cecil B. DeMille picture is one of my favorite discoveries from my college days. My "Dance in the Movies" professor showed it to us not just for the electricity-themed, spark-plugs-and-current song and dance number. The real fireworks are the gender politics and (dare I say it?) what we would today call cosplay. Quite notably, the three credited screenwriters are all women, and as much as feminism existed in the early 1930's, this Pre-Code, dark-musical-comedy-disaster movie was as feminist as motion pictures got. Even though the next still frame features a gun, "dark" is relative to the musical comedies of the 1930's.

the best friend, the wife, and the mistress…and a gun

Scorned wife Angela (Of Human Bondage's Kay Johnson) turns marital deception around on her philandering husband Bob (Rebecca's Reginald Denny). Demure, sweet, and unassuming otherwise, she eventually takes on a costumed persona who goes by only Madam Satan: an exotic "French" woman full of spice and sin, burning to take a naughty man back to "hell" with her.

miniature work par excelence

By design, her husband finds "Madam Satan" completely irresistible and loses interest in his brassy mistress (Animal Crackers' Lillian Roth). The husband's best friend (Philadelphia Story's Roland Young) gets tangled up in the whole affair doubly, since the climax of the movie occurs at a party he throws on a fancy-schmancy zeppelin. The poster shows parachutes and an exploding zeppelin, so I'll leave it at saying the actors all do their own stunts.

DeMille is best-known and best-remembered for large-scale epics, and the climactic party on a zeppelin here does not disappoint. Elaborate costumes, a bizarre and decadent tribute to technology in the form of dance, and the bacchanalia of the party itself is an interesting antecedent to the golden calf rave in The Ten Commandments.

I don't care how they accomplish the majority of CG shots in the modern day, but boy am I fascinated by how they pull something like this off.

Titular star Kay Johnson had a much shorter career than one would hope (she's magnificent here), but in case you weren't aware, she also happened to be the mother of the great James Cromwell. Lillian Roth underwent the early 1900's version of today's booze-fueled tabloid starlet meltdown, complete with eight marriages. She would eventually become the first celebrity to publicly associate herself with Alcoholics Anonymous, something she deserves as much credit for doing as she does getting herself clean.

Pre-Code movies in general haven't had the best of luck seeing disc or streaming release anywhere other than WB, and especially Warner Archive (who have recently restarted the magnificent Forbidden Hollywood series). There was a VHS, but I don't think Madam Satan ever hit laserdisc, let alone DVD before WAC released it at the end of this past July.

Early talkies have a charm all their own, but this one has more than the average share of surprises and delights. You can buy Madam Satan on DVD for $16.95 by clicking/tapping here or the image below, or try a 2-week free trial of the Warner Archive Instant service and watch it in SD on their site or in HD on a Roku set-top box. Their HD-supporting, AirPlay-enabled iPad app launches soon, too.

Archival is a recurring feature that shines a spotlight on more obscure catalog content, much of which has rarely (if ever) been available to own on home video. 

OOP Watch: Warner Archive Adds...Out of Print Paramount!

In an under-the-radar tweet among many others today, Warner Archive teased the best thing to result from WB Home Entertainment distributing the Paramount library: OOP DVD titles from Paramount are being re-released by Warner Archive Collection. I've embedded the "Oops"...or "OOPs", rather, video below, but here's the full list of titles revealed in the video, all of which routinely run for between $30-80 on the secondary market:

• The Naked Jungle
• The Miracle of Morgan's Creek
• Jonathan Livingston Seagull
• Hello Down There
• Brother Sun Sister Moon
• The Brotherhood
• The Molly Maguires
• Back to the Beach
• Lifeguard
• Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy
• White Dawn
• Anything Goes (1956)
• The Family Jewels

Warner Archive has confirmed to me directly that all previously-available extras will be preserved on these new releases.

Could this mean that more...many  more OOP Paramount titles might soon escape?

Out of Print Watch tracks titles going in and out of print on physical disc, an event which either makes it much easier or drastically harder to find the movies you love at a reasonable (or any ) price.

Tsujihara and "Forward-Thinking" at WB

Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes has been rightfully shoring up support last week behind new Warner Bros. CEO Kevin Tsujihara, who was elevated from being chief of the studio's home entertainment division. According to George Feltenstein in last week's episode of Screen Time, Tsujihara is the reason that Warner Archive exists in the first place.

Just yesterday, in a separate piece form Home Media Magazine, Tsujihara consolidated and reorganized roles within home entertainment such that video games fall under the same umbrella as movies and TV, and that they also support DC Entertainment in some vague manner. Huh.

In the same breath, Tsujihara created a new Chief Digital Officer position to be held by Thomas Gewecke:

Gewecke, previously president, Warner Bros. Digital Distribution, is responsible for driving the studio’s worldwide digital growth and managing its global business strategy. He will further be charged with coordinating the company’s various digital distribution strategies across all current and emerging digital exhibition platforms, including direct-to-consumer, business development and Flixster groups. SVOD and TVOD functions will continue to be managed by the television and home entertainment groups. Gewecke also reports directly to Tsujihara.

“The digital revolution continues to change every aspect of the way we do business, and this strategic realignment will help us address those changes to better deliver our world-class content to the widest array of consumers across the globe,” Tsujihara said in a statement.

Bold, smart moves. "Flixster" is code for "Ultraviolet", a digital locker "solution" that needs some solutions of its own.

Warner Archive DVD of Liberace's SINCERELY YOURS on 26 May

Technically, this should bear an enormous "EXCLUSIVE!" tag in the headline, since Warner Archive's George Feltenstein just announced this publicly for the first time on the latest episode of Screen Time (which will post by Wednesday).

Just in time for the premiere of Steven Soderbergh's Michael Douglas-starring Liberace biopic Behind the Candelabra on HBO, Warner Archive is putting 1955's Sincerely Yours on DVD for the first time. It was Liberace's one big starring turn, and it flopped big-time. 

Here's a clip from the opening, from TCM's website:

Watch for it to pop on their store three weeks from today if you want the full Liberace Experience.

Netflix Instant Loses Nearly 2000 Titles Today

My friend Christina Warren over at Mashable has it wrong that all of these expiring movies are going to Warner Archive Instant...since none of the expiring titles were WB to begin with. I'm surprised she had never heard of WAI, too.

Part of Reed Hastings' statement on letting their Viacom deal lapse was saying that, more broadly, Netflix is letting go of non-exclusive content.

If Warner is putting more of their deep cut stuff on WAI, then it would theoretically be Netflix's choice in a future when they start dropping WB titles, and not greedy, evil Warners yanking away the content.

Update on 2013-05-02 01:36 by Moises Chiullan

When I posted this, I didn't realize how crazily this whole thing had spread. Makes me hate the internet.

I'm more angry than I was earlier about this particular paragraph that Christina wrote, which has yet to be amended, corrected, or retracted:

So why are these titles leaving Netflix? Licensing. The titles belong to Warner Bros., MGM and Universal and will soon only be accessible through the Warner Archive Instant service — a service I didn't even know existed. For $10 a month you can get a selection of streaming films only slightly better than what Redbox Instant offers.

The "WB/Uni/MGM titles will go to Warner Archive Instant"? Completely untrue. Her assessment of WAI's selection following a soft-launch as being "only slightly better than what Redbox Instant offers"? That's her opinion, but I would point out that this snark toward WAI is undeserved, especially from an entertainment journalist who writes for one of the most-read sites on the web who didn't so much as notice that a major studio launched a streaming service almost exactly one month ago.

Most importantly, if you're going to say "all this stuff is going to this other service", at least attribute a source. Where did this info drop out of the sky? I'd love to know.

Shame on Ars Technica likewise for rallying more torches and pitchforks, heaping culpability on WB without doing any due diligence of their own.

Also worth noting...the "2000" titles are expiring throughout the month of May, not all at once on this day of "Streamageddon". Here's InstantWatcher's dynamically-loading list of titles soon-to-expire.

Southern California Public Radio made an italicised partial correction at the bottom of this post. Author Mike Roe cries tears for the James Bond movies Netflix had disappearing, but this has happened before.

Someone just find me this magic list of "hundreds of Warner Bros. movies" that have allegedly been greedily snatched away, and I swear I'll shut up.

10 Days In, Warner Archive Instant Adds More Titles

To those who criticized the limited initial selection of titles, this doesn't look like a bad first update, huh?

Warner Archive Instant Begins Closed Beta Today

I dropped cable years ago, and now I finally have something like what I've wanted for a long time: a monthly subscription "instant channel" roughly equivalent to Turner Classic Movies.

Launching in closed Beta, Warner Archive Instant is a new Roku streaming channel that features a rotating selection of SD and HD content from the Warner Brothers back catalogue.

I've tried to get more info out of WB to no avail. They're clammed up tight for the moment.

Titles range from the super-obscure and cult to genre classics to amazing movies from some of the cinema's great directors. A limited quantity of TV show episodes are in the beta too, and knowing the loads of shows released by Warner Archive on DVD, there's an absurd wealth of content there on top of the thousands of movies they have.

The titles included in the Beta are not final, but, I'd assume they are at least representative of the minimum quantity of titles available for the service when it launches at what will hopefully be a sub-$10 monthly fee or the equivalent.

Warner Archive oversees over 5000 titles, including ones previously released on DVD that went out of print. The new Instant channel adds ones that I'd consider major Warner back-catalogue stuff (The Music Man, for example).

I'm thrilled this is finally a reality. Warner Archive has done an extraordinary job of breaking down the wall between a studio/content provider and their audience over the last few years, better than any other studio of their relative scale. Where others have been tepid about MoD DVD at all, preferring to sell to middleman retailers wholesale, or only just gearing up, Warner has really gone for it, and they're listening to customer feedback. I'm sure that's the case with this new iteration of the Archive Collection.

I don't have any non-public details, but there's a library of 157 feature films, 2 made-for-TV movies, and episodes from 7 TV shows in the current public-facing listing. I've listed everything further down, including calling out which titles are in HD. I transcribed all of this manually, so if reposting, please link back rather than simply copy/pasting everything. I hate that I have to say that, but welcome to the world of blogging.

When Warner Archive Instant is opened up to the public, you can bet I'll let you know.

Before we get to the full list, here are a pile of highlights (among loads of great titles) with brief commentary:

A Face in the Crowd [HD]
America, America
Elia Kazan is one of the great filmmakers, and these two are criminally under-seen and under-appreciated. Face in the Crowd features a career-best performance form Andy Griffith.

The Alphabet Murders
Worth watching for the novelty of Tony Randall as Hercule Poirot, but fun and entertaining on top of that.

Auntie Mame [HD]
Mame
Both of these adaptations of the musical theatre classic were impossible to find for some time before Archive started pressing DVDs. I never felt like owning them, but occasionally wanted to be able to watch them. Mame is Lucille Ball's final film performance.

The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms [HD]
A nuclear blast awakens a giant dinosaur that wreaks all sorts of havoc in this movie that features creature effects by Ray Harryhausen and which is based on a short story by Ray Bradbury. If you even just kinda like monster movies and have never seen this, make it a top priority. Godzilla would come out in Japan the following year, and they...share some DNA. This movie's success drove Godzilla into actually getting made. I can't believe I can finally watch this monster movie classic in HD, when previous DVD releases have all been pretty much lousy in the picture department.

The Beast With Five Fingers
One among many great, sinister Peter Lorre performances is on display in this movie where a famous pianist dies...and his hand returns for revenge. This movie has never been on DVD, and only recently because available for SD streaming on Amazon. I'd buy it if Archive did a Blu-ray. I'd help them find people to interview for the extras.

Blow-Up [HD]
Michaelangelo Antonioni's classic from the 60's available in HD for the first time. Brian De Palma remade this as the equally masterful Blow-Out in the 80's. If you've never watched an Antonioi movie, this is an exceptional place to start.

Dames [HD]
Footlight Parade [HD]
These represent 2/5ths of one of my favorite Warner DVD releases, the Busby Berkeley Collection, and in HD no less.

Disorderlies
If you've never been blessed to see this "The Fat Boys" classic, it's a nice reminder of enjoyable trash from the 80's (and I mean that in the sweetest way possible).

Doc Savage: Man of Bronze
Legendary producer George Pal's last produced film find pulp hero Doc Savage and his five Amazing Adventurers team up to solve the disappearance of Doc's dad. It was supposed to be a franchise starter, and it's crying shame that it wasn't. This has always been a favorite blind recommendation to friends loading up on DVDs in a sale. It's fun and kid-friendly, too.

Finian's Rainbow [HD]
The Music Man [HD]
I'm more stunned that The Music Man is in here in HD due its broader popularity, but Finian's Rainbow, on top of some other musicals, make this pretty great just for the musical category of stuff thus far.

Freaks [HD]
Tod Browing's freakshow horror classic that stars actual sideshow performers...and in HD.

Freebie and the Bean
This movie is tremendously racist, hilarious, fun, and a perfect artifact of 70's American cinema. "The Bean" refers to co-lead Alan Arkin...who plays a Mexican-American. I've said this about a couple of others, but make this one of the first five you watch. Edgar Wright re-discovered this movie for so many during one of his Wright Stuff movie marathons in L.A. Bless you, you brilliant English bastard.

The Divorcee [HD]
A Free Soul [HD]
Night Nurse [HD]
Red Headed Woman [HD]
Four excellent pre-Production Code, pre-Ratings System movies, one of which features Clark Gable as a nasty dude. Saucy, salacious stuff previously available in SD on the Forbidden Hollywood collections.

Soylent Green [HD]
Hope that no one ruins Soylent Green for you before you find out what Soylent Green actually is in the movie.

Storm Warning
Ronald Reagan fights the Klan. 

Tarzan And The Amazons
Tarzan And The Huntress
Tarzan And The Leopard Woman
Tarzan And The Mermaids
Tarzan Triumphs
Tarzan's Desert Mystery
Six Johnny Weismuller classic Tarzan pictures, all in one place.

Time After Time
HG Wells (Malcolm McDowell) chases Jack the Ripper into the future year of...1979!

The Valley of Gwangi [HD]
A cowboy goes after glory and gold, trying to capture a Tyrannosaurus Rex so he can sell it to a Mexican circus. Another Harryhausen-powered stop motion creature movie.

Now for the current complete listing:

TV Shows (Multiple Episodes each)

77 Sunset Strip: Years 2-6
Adventures of Superman (Eps 1-13)
Hawaiian Eye: Years 1-4
Cheyenne (Season 1)
Gilligan's Island (Eps 1-13)
Jericho (Season 1)
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (Eps 1-29)

Made-for-TV Movies

Cosa Nostra: An Arch Enemy of the FBI
Planet Earth

Features (157, with over 70 in HD)

36 Hours [HD]
The Ace of Hearts
Across the Pacific [HD]
Action in the North Atlantic
Adventures of Don Juan
Advise and Consent
The Alphabet Murders
The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse [HD]
America, America [HD]
The Americanization of Emily [HD]
Armored Car Robbery [HD]
Auntie Mame [HD]
Baby Doll [HD]
Baby Face [HD]
Back to Bataan [HD]
Bad Day at Black Rock
The Bad Seed (1956) [HD]
Bataan
Battle Cry
The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms [HD]
The Beast With Five Fingers
Bells Are Ringing
Best Foot Forward
The Best House in London
The Big Cube
The Big Stampede
Billy Rose's Jumbo [HD]
Black Legion [HD]
The Black Scorpion [HD]
Blonde Crazy
Blow-Up [HD]
Born Reckless
The Bride Came C.O.D.
Brother Orchid [HD]
Caged
The Cameraman
Cat People [HD]
Chamber of Horrors
The Charge at Feather River
The Charge of the Light Brigade [HD]
Clash by Night
The Clock
Colt .45
Cornered
The Courtship of Eddie's Father
The Curse Of Frankenstein [HD]
Dames [HD]
The Damned Don't Cry [HD]
Dark Passage [HD]
Day for Night [HD]
Death in Venice [HD]
Deception [HD]
Decoy [HD]
Desperate Journey [HD]
The Devil Doll
The Devil's Brother [HD]
Die Laughing
Disorderlies
The Divorcee [HD]
Doberman Gang
Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze
Doctor X
A Face in the Crowd [HD]
A Fan's Notes
The Fearless Vampire Killers [HD]
Fighting Frontier
Finian's Rainbow [HD]
Flying Leathernecks
Footlight Parade [HD]
Freaks [HD]
A Free Soul [HD]
Freebie and the Bean
Fury
George Washington Slept Here
The Great Lie [HD]
Gun Crazy [HD]
Gun Law Justice
The Hill [HD]
Horror Of Dracula [HD]
Hot Rods to Hell [HD]
In This Our Life [HD]
The Invisible Boy
Isle of the Dead
It!
It's a Great Feeling
Lady Killer [HD]
Love in the Afternoon
The Loved One [HD]
Lust for Life [HD]
Mad Love
Madame Bovary
Mame
The Man From Monterey
Mark of the Vampire [HD]
Marked Woman [HD]
The Mask Of Fu Manchu [HD]
The Mayor of Hell [HD]
Merrill's Marauders [HD]
Mexican Spitfire
Midnight Mary [HD]
Moon Zero Two
Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1941) [HD]
Mr. Skeffington [HD]
The Mummy (1959) [HD]
The Music Man [HD]
Night Nurse [HD]
Norman, Is That You?
Objective, Burma
One on One
Our Dancing Daughters
The Pirate
Planet Earth
The Prince And The Showgirl
Private Parts (1972) [HD]
The Purchase Price [HD]
Queen Of Outer Space
Razorback
Red Headed Woman [HD]
Ride Him, Cowboy
The Ritz [HD]
Run of the Arrow
San Quentin [HD]
Satellite in the Sky
The Scarlet Letter
The Sheltering Sky [HD]
Somewhere in Sonora
Soylent Green [HD]
Stage Fright [HD]
The Star [HD]
Storm Warning
Tarzan And The Amazons
Tarzan And The Huntress
Tarzan And The Leopard Woman
Tarzan And The Mermaids
Tarzan Triumphs
Tarzan's Desert Mystery
Taste the Blood of Dracula [HD]
The Telegraph Trail
The Temptress
Texas Lawmen
They Live by Night
Time After Time
To Kill a Man [HD]
Torch Song [HD]
The Ultimate Warrior [HD]
Until The End Of The World [HD]
The Valley of Gwangi [HD]
Violence [HD]
Wagon Master [HD]
West Point
Where the Boys Are
Where the Spies Are
Wild Boys Of The Road [HD]
World Without End
Zero Hour [HD]

Daily Grab 48: In For the Kill

A Holmes kick gave way to finally giving a good look at Sidney Lumet's excellent film adapted from Ira Levin's Deathtrap. One of the two hardest choices I've had as a stage actor was having to turn down the role of Clifford Anderson (the Christopher Reeve part) in lieu of doing an obscure David Mamet play called The Water Engine.

Deathtrap is only available on Blu-ray thanks to the great people at Warner Archive, who have started doing limited-batch Blu-rays like this and Gypsy (1962). The Hudsucker Proxy is coming soon from them on Blu-ray as well.

George O'Hanlon and Joe McDoakes: The Original Hard-Luck Kid

George O'Hanlon is an actor you'd know by his voice more than his face.

Three words: Meet George Jetson.

In this week's Screen Time 17, my guest is Andrea Romano. Andrea has been working in voiceover direction (and previously casting) since the 1980's, and a significant portion of our discussion centers around the great Mr. O'Hanlon, with whom she worked on the 1980's revival of The Jetsons.

Warner Archive has collected all 63 of the Joe McDoakes shorts on DVD, clocking in at 650 minutes of content. Here's the one I found on YouTube, "So You Want to Be a Detective":

I grew up trying to imitate the voices of guys like O'Hanlon, and his comedic timing formed so much of my formative study of acting. Cartoons were the radio theatre of my generation and so many others before and since.