Sunday night, my husband and I were reorganizing our linen closet, which contains not only linen but all our CDs and a box of my old videotapes. It was pointed out that I don’t watch the videotapes anymore and perhaps I should get rid of at least a few of them. I pointed out that some of those movies are not on DVD yet, and what if I had some sort of emergency where I needed to see part of Quality Street? So we made an Amazon wish list of all the movies I had on videotape — except the ones that aren’t on Amazon because there are no plans for DVD — and I prioritized them to indicate which I would really like to own on DVD (Persuasion), and which I would probably just want to rent sometime and watch again (Stranger Than Paradise, which costs more on Criterion DVD than it probably cost to make).
We got to Midnight, Easy Living and The Major and the Minor and I read out the titles to my husband to look up on Amazon, although I noted it was futile because who knows when those movies might ever get to be on DVD.
April 22, 2008, as it turns out. I was stunned. Midnight is getting a DVD release! I wondered if someone might remember it, since it’s supposedly being remade (please let the remake be a victim of the writers’ strike, please please). And the other two movies will be released too, all as part of something called the Universal Classics Collection. No details are available yet on extras and so forth, and I suspect the DVDs might be bare-bones, but I don’t care because I would just like to see the movies. All I want is a pretty good transfer — all three videotapes were taped from AMC or TCM in the distant past, so a DVD can only be an improvement.
The thing about these three movies is that I don’t think any of them are especially great, but they’re charming Thirties/early Forties light comedies with witty dialogue, wonderful actresses in the lead roles, and familiar, funny supporting character actors. More details about the movies are after the jump, in case you have no idea what I’m talking about.
Now, can we have A Foreign Affair next? That’s the comedy I really want to see on DVD, and my videotape is barely watchable. It was one of the few videotapes I didn’t throw/give away on Sunday, but I’d like to toss that TCM-recorded, noisy tape in the trash by the end of 2008. I’d also like to cross it off the still-populated 20 Gaps on DVD list, which incidentally I’ve updated with the info about the three upcoming DVDs.