Last Will: DVDs: THEY'RE ARCHIVES

It ain't no secret that I collect a movie every now and then.

Its amazing to me how quickly we've gone from VHS to streaming. I was late to DVD, just like I was to CD. In the late 90's, when every one was going to disc, I was still hanging on to my tapes. I eventually made the jump. I'm no tech-geek. I was perfectly happy with the picture and sound quality of the DVD. Call me a dweeb, but I didn't see the huge quality jump everyone else was talking about when blu-ray came along.

I really didn't.

Now that 4K is here, (somehow that happened in concert with the death (or at least dying) of physical media), I actually can see the clarity difference, but it looks like it's almost too much. I mean, a movie isn't supposed to look like you're watching a super clear digital video. The footage almost reminds me of HD soap operas.

But that's what I saw as I watched Kick Ass on a 4k screen. My first real take on it. It looked like that hyper-real digital video. Where was the grain? The warmth?

Now most techlingers are gonna hassle me for that. And they're entitled. I've bitched in a previous piece on the growing tendency of boutiques to release classics on 4k only. I don't have a 4k player. They're pricy. But here we are. I'll leave it at that, I don't need to revisit, but it does require mentioning.

But people are acting like the DVD is as low in quality as they would complain about VHS when the DVD initially came out. Please. Really?

Here's an additional gripe, as if I haven't already complained enough.

They're dropping the supplementals.

As the films are being upgraded, gaining in picture and audio quality as they make the skip up from blu to 4k, they're losing the bonus materials. This hasn't escaped me. Back when DVDs were banging on the door of the home viewing public, there would generally be supplemental material included, often to the degree of requiring a second (occasionally a third, Hot Fuzz, I'm talking to you!) disc. Quite often, the distributors got so generous with the stuff that the sets would often be a necessary add to a film collection. Just look at the bonus features on the basic 2 disc DVD releases of The Abyss, Network or All the President's Men.

This was the selling point!

To be fair, sometimes blus will do this. Particularly in the case of a boutique release. The local Pittsburgh PM magazine TV segments included on the blu-ray release of Just Desserts: The Making of Creepshow are things that will probably be lost to time outside of the producers vaults. But this is becoming more and more rare.

There are filmmakers that are adamant about including supplementals on their releases. Guillermo Del Toro and Christopher Nolan are pretty forward about making it happen. It's been obvious with the releases of Del Toro's Frankenstein and Nolan's Oppeheimer, that they give a damn about viewer experience. Unfortunately, I don't think that will be the case going forward.. Streaming is a continued problem in this arena too. Many times, original studio-level films produced by the likes of Netflix are not getting physical releases.

Things can get lost to time. There are examples of famous black and white era films lost due to their age and the lack of copies printed or restored, a la London After Midnight, Hollywood, and The Mountain Eagle. The number of films being lost over the years from the silent era to the 50's is actually disturbing. Take a look at this article from The Film Foundation.

It's appalling.

In the documentary Adjust Your Tracking, the point is made that many films that saw releases during the VHS era never made the jump to DVD. This adds another layer to the growing ways that films can be lost. Then there are films that only saw poor releases on DVD, and were never released again. What happens to them?

Are streaming services the savior? What edition of the film are you seeing? Is it the right frame rate? Is it color-timed properly? Is it even the proper aspect ratio?

How long will it remain uploaded to that particular streaming service?

So, all of this has led me to believe that DVDs were an archive of sorts. Generally a damn fine version of the film itself coupled with 2.0 or 5.1 Dolby sound. Often a commentary by the filmmaker, stars or even film historians. Current or archived making-of documentaries. Interviews. Trailers and radio spots. Very often, especially in the case of special series like New Line's Infinifilm, Fox's Five Star Series, and others, materials are included that bear some sort of historical connection to the film and it's era. As they've made the jump to blu and 4k, these supplementals are generally not ported over, and rarely are new ones made, with the exception of disc companies like Criterion, Shout!, Arrow, Kino Lorber and others. However, these boutiques seem dedicated to genre films from the past, narrowing the possibilities.

Not all films being made these days get disc releases. Streaming's relationship with theatrical has caused this. It's quite disappointing. It's not a film, but a true crime is being committed in the fact that Mike Flanagan's masterful limited series Midnight Mass isn't getting a physical. Flanagan has griped about the depletion of home media himself, and perhaps that has something to do with him making the move to Amazon.

Will that resolve anything?

Not all that long ago, folks were shouting "Cut the Cord!" while dropping their cable company and jumping on board the streaming train. Just a handful of years later, everyone that creates original content to some extent has decided to create their own streaming service. Therefore the access to their in-house creations will often be only released on that channel. No one can afford every streaming service, so this whole movement is arguably narrowing the individual production's audience size due to that factor. Quite often, I forgot a movie even came out, and end up not seeing it. The zone is flooded and I can't keep up.

Let alone be a historian.

It's easy to lose things in a maelstrom.