Waiting for DVDs...

Yet another discussion has sprung up in the Remember WENN newsgroup about writing to American Movie Classics, this time about perhaps releasing the series on DVD, since it seems all hope for a finale is lost. Many of us have the series on video, others forgot to tape it or have only partial collections.

I'm one of the former, but am seeing the need for those DVDs more every day. After spending the morning ill, I came downstairs this afternoon to rest on the sofa. Watched Bob Hope's My Favorite Brunette, then, remembering a favorite video, sat down to watch a special called Life Goes to War: Hollywood and the Homefront, which is a marvelous overview of the World War II era narrated by Johnny Carson, with bits of newsreels, films, training film bloopers, scenes of movie stars at the canteens and on war bond drives, footage of ordinary people doing their bit. The tape was already compromised by having been taped off a UHF station that was slightly snowy; now after 20 years it is still viewable, but there are a couple of signs of deterioration. My copy of Disney's The Horse Without a Head, which proceeds this special and which was actually taped a few years later, is in worse shape due to our bad cable reception at the time I recorded it. Since this is one of my favorite films, I'm worried about losing it completely.

Certainly wish things like Horse and this Life special were on DVD. They are much too precious to lose.

And so is Remember WENN, the best series to come out of the 1990s, and one of the best television comedies of all time.

(One bright note: Part of Life Goes to War is a segment devoted to the Walt Disney studios contribution to the war effort: Disney's goodwill trip to South America, the film Saludos Amigos, clips of various Disney wartime cartoons and the film Victory Through Air Power, which hasn't been seen since the 1940s. This year Disney will be releasing a new package of "Disney Treasures" which is to include a DVD called "Wartime Disney" which will include Victory Through Air Power and other WWII films [presumably the infamous "Der Fuerher's Face," too, and perhaps "The New Spirit," in which Donald Duck encourages people to pay their income taxes]. That will be a welcome acquisition here!)

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 7:53:00 PM

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