Warner Brothers: CHRISTMAS in Connecticut

[rockysds]

Christmas in Connecticut on blu-ray November 14th.

[domino harvey]

Literally just said "What the fuck" outloud. It's a cute little film but how in the world is this movie on Warners' radar for Blu-ray upgrade (and not even via the Archives)?!

[rockysds]

See first word of my previous post.

[Werewolf by Night]

TCM has been pushing this hard as some kind of beloved Christmas classic for the last few years. I don't get it either. It's not even the best Barbara Stanwyck Christmas-centered movie.

[domino harvey]

TCM has been pushing this hard as some kind of beloved Christmas classic for the last few years. I don't get it either. It's not even the best Barbara Stanwyck Christmas-centered movie.

It's got be at least the third best by my count

[Drucker]

Dear lord that cover is awful.

[Jeff]

See first word of my previous post.

And I guess only because "Christmas" actually is in the title. The movie is fine, but The Shop Around the Corner would be a million times more welcome.

[domino harvey]

Sorry Jeff, that's an actual Christmas classic

[captveg]

A Christmas Carol (1938) is also coming the same day.

Marketing people who make these decisions probably do consider films with Christmas in the title as more likely to be picked up by a random consumer from a themed end isle, and sadly I bet they are right. Its the little, annoying things that keep the business going...

[domino harvey]

They're basically cherry-picking from the two Holiday Favorites boxed sets, but my favorites from those boxes don't have "Christmas" in the title so I guess we'll never see them (and Holiday Affair looks like garbage on the DVD so it's sadly probably not HD ready anyways)

[swo17]

This gives me hope for my origin of Tupperware spec script called Christmas up the Christmas Christmas Christmas Christmas in Christmas Land.

[domino harvey]

People will just be disappointed when they discover most of the movie is set at Easter with only the coda taking place on Christmas Eve. That's still enough Christmas content to get TCM to show it at 845AM for the next thirty years

[captveg]

That's about the same Christmas quota as Its a Wonderful Life, and that's worked for decades now.

[sir_luke]

One of my Warner Christmas DVD collections includes The Singing Nun. Still trying to figure that one out.

[Gregory]

It's worth pointing out that WHV just released Ball of Fire (another Stanwyck film, vastly cleverer and more unique than Christmas in Connecticut) after the MGM disc had gone OOP, but still only on DVD. WHV's bean counters are seriously ignorant if they don't think that their customer base has serious interest in names like Gary Cooper, Howard Hawks, and Billy Wilder, and Gene Krupa in addition to Stanwyck.
I have no problem with them releasing this one on Blu (though I don't see why they had to make the cover so much worse than the one they already had for the DVD), but I wish they would stop assuming that the market for classic movies doesn't know enough about the actual movies to be interested in a film like Ball of Fire as well.

[movielocke]

TCM has been pushing this hard as some kind of beloved Christmas classic for the last few years. I don't get it either. It's not even the best Barbara Stanwyck Christmas-centered movie.

It's got be at least the third best by my count

Remember the Night is clearly the best of them.

[felipe]

I have no problem with them releasing this one on Blu (though I don't see why they had to make the cover so much worse than the one they already had for the DVD), but I wish they would stop assuming that the market for classic movies doesn't know enough about the actual movies to be interested in a film like Ball of Fire as well.

They probably have sales figures for their previous releases, so they don't really need to rely on assuming. We do.

[domino harvey]

I doubt they have MGM figures on Ball of Fire sales from the years before they had vested interest in it

[felipe]

But Warner has figures for their own releases (including screwball comedies, Stanwyck and Cooper films, etc), so they should know what titles, genres and stars usually sell more.

[Gregory]

If Criterion can make money releasing Blu-rays of films like Design for Living and To Be or Not to Be, not to mention more obscure old comedies released by Olive, then WHV should be able to do likewise with the same types of films, if they wanted to bother.
Also, I don't think Warner has any sales figures for how well screwball comedies or Stanwyck films sell on Blu-ray because they haven't released even one, have they? (The only Gary Coooper Blu-ray they've done that I can recall is Wings, which features him only in a supporting role.) Yet it's safe to assume that many films in these categories sold well enough on DVD to justify upgrades. They haven't even released any of their Cary Grant comedies on Blu-ray yet (letting Olive make , and some of those are undoubtedly popular. Years into the new format, and they haven't even done Ninotchka yet (Garbo is rumored to be getting at least one Blu-ray release from Warner in 2015, so we'll see, but even if so, it's funny that it's taken them so long). And what do they do with extremely popular films like Philadelphia Story, Arsenic and Old Lace, and Bringing Up Baby? Put out new DVD editions with new cover art. And they try largely keep trying to sell people the same films year after year with repeated editions on the same format, especially DVDs with endless cheap sets like "TCM Greatest Classic Films Collections" and "TCM Greatest Classic Legends Collections."

[Drucker]

Actually Paramount released Wings, I believe before their distribution agreement.