im not one of the ultras who thinks every film should be on dvd. it'd be nice, sure.
Turner Classic Movies online says that of the 162,984 films listed in its database (based on the authoritative AFI Catalog), only 5,980 (3.67 percent) are available on home video.
well, ok. what percentage of novels published since 1895 do we think are available in book form?
i'm going to go right ahead and guess it's not much higher.
and then: how many tv shows, even tv dramas, are available? if we're talking about the mass of films vs the mass of tv shows, there really isn't a massive difference in quality.
it's obviously bad if the big studios are not releasing *any* catalogue stuff, as DK seems to be saying they're doing. i hadn't noticed, but maybe less is coming out than a few years ago. i still feel i have a lot to be getting on with.
what really matters is that it is properly maintained in some capacity and can be made available -- like (again) the vast majority of books.
― Patriarchy Oppression Machine (history mayne), Thursday, 7 January 2010 20:55 (fourteen years ago) link
big difference w/books is that there were usu. more of the printed, and they're in second-hand shops, not warehouses/private collections/junkheaps
― Herodcare for the Unborn (J0hn D.), Thursday, 7 January 2010 21:00 (fourteen years ago) link
trudat. and a book is more hard-wearing than a dvd/videotape and isn't prey to technological obsolescence. but nonetheless thousands if not millions of them are destroyed every year. and there are still pretty rare ones, i'd have thought, if we're talking about the whole past century.
― Patriarchy Oppression Machine (history mayne), Thursday, 7 January 2010 21:01 (fourteen years ago) link
this is a good opportunity for academic institutions to step in
― Player is killed, but they are resurrected, and the 45 Revolver glow gold (dyao), Friday, January 8, 2010 3:00 AM (10 hours ago) Bookmark
the archives themselves seem pretty sound, so far as i can tell. question is ease of access, etc. in the UK it's improving. but using the book comparison, there really very few libraries (four or five iirc) here that have literally EVERYTHING. (and even they don't always!)
― Patriarchy Oppression Machine (history mayne), Friday, 8 January 2010 13:58 (fourteen years ago) link
lots of movie sharing sites are preserving/circulating otherwise unavailable movies - sometimes, as in the case of Rivette's Out One, site members are even, collectively, writing new subtitles for them!
― Ward Fowler, Friday, 8 January 2010 14:02 (fourteen years ago) link
Yeah in the wake of several ace torrent sites, a lot of what Kehr's article seemed a bit passé to me (although he did mention said sites).
― Kevin John Bozelka, Friday, 8 January 2010 19:08 (fourteen years ago) link