Warner Archive Collection

I love old movies. I've been watching them since I was a child (and the films that were new then are, I guess, old now). When I speak of old movies, though, I typically am referring to black and white films primarily from the thirties and forties. When AMC first came along on cable (it was different then, and commercial free, and has been usurped as Old-Movie Fan heaven by TCM) I watched it almost every night, amazed at all the great films I'd never seen. Losing myself for a couple of hours in those monochrome images was like getting lost in a wonderful novel, and I never could understand the rejection of those films by so many (especially younger) people. Even my own mother would often (not always) complain if a film was "some old black and white thing" (her most outrageous comment, though, came during my sharing of Charlie Chaplin's City Lights, when she said "this movie wouldn't be too bad if they colorized it and added sound").

Now, I love to have in my own collection of DVDs the films I love best, the ones I watch over and over (no one else in my family has any such concept of "favorite movie"; if they've seen it, they don't want to see it again, unless they've forgotten it, that is). But, there are some movies that are impossible to find. Either they're out of print or were never issued on DVD in the first place. Now, however, there is the Warner Archive Collection, providing on demand bare bones DVDs of many of the films in their vaults. It would be nice if every studio offered a similar service, as some obscure films just aren't made available. I've got my eye on The Adventures of Mark Twain , a 1944 biopic of the great American writer, played in the film by Fredric March. I saw it too many years ago, but I only saw it that one time. I'd like to own it on DVD, and now I can!

h/t to out of step