Another good "Hang on to you physical media" article

[Paul MacLean]

I didn't know this about The French Connection! Sheesh!

https://www.rte.ie/culture/2024/0119/14 ... hose-dvds/


Let's get physical - Paul Markey on why you should hold onto those DVDs

Updated / Monday, 29 Jan 2024 15:29

By Paul Markey
Writer, projectionist and cinephile

"Has anybody watched "The French Connection" recently?" somebody asked last year on a film website I frequent. "It's been censored."

A collective what-the hell-are-you-talking-about was followed by a collective what-the-actual-feck when everybody checked - and it turned out to be true. A section of a scene had been removed from the version of the Oscar winning classic available on streaming platforms in the US without telling anybody.

How is this possible? How did we get to the point where any of our favourite films could be censored and/or deleted like this? One word: digital.

Guess what? When you buy a digital copy of a film, you don’t actually own it. You are in fact simply buying access to it. Which means the service you downloaded it from can access your collection and alter (or even remove) any of the films you’ve long-ago paid for.

This is not a new phenomenon. Films regularly disappear from streaming services when their rights expire. This also applies when you "buy" the digital file. Ever play an album on Spotify and are suddenly jarred by a missing song? You check the index and find the song is now greyed out due to Spotify losing the rights. The same thing can and will happen to your digital movie collection.

In the case of The French Connection, the beginning and the end of the scene in question scene are still there, but the middle section - where several racial epithets are used to explain Popeye Doyle’s distrust of everybody, no matter what their race, has been removed quite jarringly. It isn’t the first case, either. Films as varied as Back To The Future Part II, Toy Story 2, and God's Own Country have already been altered or edited.

Disney was coy about who was responsible for re-editing Willam Friedkin’s multi-Oscar winner. The director died some months later, so it still remains a bit of a mystery.

I have the solution, but you likely won't like it: Physical media, everybody! Long after you’ve purged your VHS, DVD and maybe even Bluray collection for the flexibility and convenience of ITunes, Disney+. Netflix et al, you may want to buy them all over again. If you can find them, that is. The Blu-ray of Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer recently struggled to remain in shops due to a shortage of disc-manufacturing plants still in operation. Nolan himself has expressed great concern about what’s happening: "If you buy a 4K UHD, you buy a Blu-ray, it's on your shelf, it's yours," Nolan said. "No company is going to break into your house and take it from you and repossess it. It's yours and you own it. That's never really the case with any form of digital distribution."

It is possible future viewers could stream or download Nolan’s 'Oppie’ one day and be unaware the scene showing the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was added later by studio executives...

Another thing to remember: studios very often don't release their own films, instead licensing them out to boutique labels, who manufacture a limited number of copies. If you don’t buy the Blu-ray within months, it can go out of print and you’ll end up shelling out as much as a couple of hundred Euro on the likes of eBay for a copy.

Like many, over recent decades, I’ve got rid of about 50% of my DVDs and 95% of my VHS tapes (So. Much. Space!) What films remain have a lot of memories beyond the tactile. I still have the first video tape my dad bought me - Superman:The Movie - and the original video ‘nasty’ VHS release of The Evil Dead. I took my first ever official pay cheque to the old HMV On Henry Street in Dublin and walked out with Annie Hall. When I turned eighteen and got a credit card, the first thing I bought was an ex-rental copy of A Room With a View via mail-order (a relic of a Helena Bonham Carter-obsessed period between my Inter and Leaving certs). I kept the first DVDs I ever bought too: Clint Eastwood’s Dollar Trilogy - via mail order in the US. DVDs were generally unavailable in our part of the world at that time.

A massive explosion in VHS collecting occurred during COVID, primarily due to the massive outbreak of nostalgia that came in its wake. Big-box ex-rental tapes are what people are seeking, often to recreate the old Xtravision video shop experience at home. At the other end of the scale, in the US, still in their plastic, original release video tapes go for huge numbers: Star Wars for €3K+, Jaws for €5K+, Top Gun a whopping €8,000+. An absolutely mint version of the original rental version of "Star Wars" on VHS - i.e. the first time you could ever watch that movie at home - went for a staggering €114,000 at auction. The current record is held by Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. Sit down before you read this… the ‘Black Diamond' label limited release of that Disney film on VHS recently went for $240,000 not long ago. Not sealed or unopened, mind you, but second hand.
Anyone out there remember video shops?

Nobody wants to go back to simply having more stuff. But I am an advocate of curating the tactile and not being a slave to convenience when it comes to cinema. Because one day you could click on your digital copy of Goodfellas and wonder why Joe Pesci is shouting "Munny Funster!"

Collecting and speculating aside, Director Guillermo del Toro summed it up best: "Physical media is almost a Fahrenheit 451 (referencing Ray Bradbury's classic tale, where people memorised entire books and thus became the book they loved) level of responsibility. If you own a great 4K HD, Blu-ray, DVD etc etc of a film or films you love... you are the custodian of those films for generations to come."

The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ

[AndyDursin]

It's a Disney movie now. That's all there is to it. But like the article says -- this is the inherent issue with streaming. They can take away whatever master they currently have...replace it with something better. Or something worse. Or something edited! And you have ZERO control over it.

BTW this is the Blu-Ray that's still unedited and has the proper color timing:

https://www.amazon.com/French-Connectio ... X0EALw_wcB

The original (OOP) Blu-Ray is unedited but you don't want Fredkin's "new color timing" which he talks about here

[Monterey Jack]

I've been warning about this for at LEAST the last decade. I'll take the "clutter" and "inconvenience" of physical media over having my movies, shows and music edited without my consent to appease the most current cycle of outrage over now "problematic" elements.

[Eric Paddon]

I have NEVER taken part in streaming. I have always been adamant about owning a copy and having a physical version whether on disc or as a downloaded file that is permanently saved on my computer (mp3, mp4, iso etc.) To me there is no substitute for that.

[Monterey Jack]

Streaming has its place...for "renting" a movie or show. But if it's good enough to watch a second time, it's worth owning.

[AndyDursin]

It has a place also for hundreds of movies I own that aren't even on physical, have HD masters and look a lot better than DVD. To be fair. Like I'm done waiting forever for DONOVAN'S REEF and LIFEGUARD and THE PEREZ FAMILY to get a Blu-Ray. I'll take the best I can get and there are instances where it's streaming and not physical.

Obviously, you know me, I'm all into physical media, but I still have 1400+ movies on Vudu at this point (granted a lot where I had a gratis digital copy for review, I certainly didn't buy all of them!). There are also some movies where if I'm not viewing it often, I cleared the shelf and took the digital copy instead -- especially if the disc was an old master and/or was barebones and had no extras on it.