The Real Tasmanian Devil

Another bit of DVD news: Warner Brothers will release an Errol Flynn collection on April 12, consisting of three Korngold-scored period films, Captain Blood, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex and The Sea Hawk, two Westerns, Dodge City and They Died With Their Boots On, and a new disc-length documentary on Flynn.

I don't know yet whether to spring for the whole thing or just get one or two -- The Sea Hawk is the class of the bunch, and if Olivia DeHavilland had been in it, it would be even better than Robin Hood -- but WB is to be commended for their strategy of marketing older movies: release a bunch of movies that have something in common (a genre, a star), some well-known and others less so, and make them available separately or in an inexpensive boxed set. This encourages people who would normally just get the better-known titles to get the whole box, and discover some good older movies that might not sell great on their own. The best example of this was last year's film noir box, which was such a big hit that Fox is doing its own film noir set.

Someone will tell me that I shouldn't even be talking about buying any DVDs until High Definition comes in. I don't want to talk about it. My Dad has enough Quadrophonic LPs for me to know that not everything catches on.