We Are DVDs If You Please

Warner Home Video just had their annual chat with Home Theater Forum about their upcoming DVD release plans. Some of the titles planned -- some for this year, some for the approaching high-def Nirvana -- include:

- A Film Noir box, volume 3, including Lady in the Lake, "one nifty Mitchum RKO film, and an MGM film you might not expect." I'm going to guess that the Mitchum/RKO film will be Otto Preminger's Angel Face; a possible guess for the MGM title might be Vincente Minnelli's Undercurrent, but if I'm wrong, you didn't hear it from me. There'll also be a fourth noir box next year.
- Speaking of Minnelli, his great non-musical films are slowly starting to trickle out to the public; Some Came Running will be part of a Frank Sinatra box, and Home From the Hill will be part of a Robert Mitchum box set. There may also be a Glenn Ford box that would include The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (aka "The One Where Ingrid Thulin's Voice is Dubbed by Angela Lansbury").
- A number of silent movies including Greed, The Wind, The Big Parade and The Crowd, and a second Lon Chaney collection.
- 2007 will bring "a promotion with lots of fun films that have been long ignored on home video and deserve a release" -- that is, titles that were never released on VHS or DVD and aren't as well-known to the public as they should be. Among the titles mentioned are Queen of Outer Space and the greatest women-in-prison movie ever, Caged.
- The Bowery Boys films were supposed to be released in chronological order, but may be delayed or released out of order because some of the early titles are in poor shape.
- After Robert Redford "expressed his pleasure" over the new special edition of All the President's Men, Redford will be participating in special editions of Jeremiah Johnson and the eternally relevant The Candidate ("this country cannot house its houseless or feed its foodless").
- Crossing Delancey is a "heavily requested" movie that will be released sometime within the next 12 months. I never realized this movie had that kind of fan base, though I recall that it's a favourite of my mother's, and she's known for shaping public taste.
- Other actors who will get boxed sets devoted to them include James Cagney, Errol Flynn (volume 2, with more of the non-swashbucklers like the boxing biopic Gentleman Jim), and Paul Newman.