dolphinboy

I'm not a huge Hitchcock fan, I've watched my first 4 films of his this year and I'm in my mid-30's.

But North By Northwest was not only my personal favorite, but it's one of my favorite films now too. Eva Marie Saint.

Rear Window and Vertigo were not as great as I expected and I thought Psycho was very good.

The Birds is still waiting for me to watch it.

I really hope that these movies are sold individually, because I would gladly add Psycho and Vertigo to my collection, however they look, as long as they're anamorphic.

I'm sure I'll see more of his films in the next 6 months. I know that To Catch A Thief isn't well thought of, but I liked Rear Window the least and I really want a Grace Kelly picture in my library.

Does anyone know if it's anamorphic?

Oh, and the bonus materials that I've seen on these discs are some of the most interesting that I've seen on almost any dvd I own. They really take you back in time and you learn a great deal about the movie. I find that kind of stuff incredibly fascinating.

It was very strange to see Eva Marie Saint and Kim Novak nearly 50 years later. Women who were that beautiful shouldn't have to age.

joliom

If you like North by Northwest, Saboteur and The 39 Steps are very similiar. Also, Dial M for Murder, Spellbound, Lifeboat, and Strangers on a Train are also must-see's.

baracine

About vintage interviews... Local TV celebrity Elwy Yost (now retired) had collected, for the past 25 years, hundreds of lengthy, personal, wide-ranging interviews with most of Hollywood's golden era personalities - including Hitch and most of his stars, editors, art directors and DPs, which often turn up in edited form in various documentaries. They're called the "Elwy Yost - Saturday Night at the Movies Archives" because of the show on which they aired on TVO (TV Ontario) and still air to this day. So even the old, moribund and deceased can be accessed. [Note of interest: Elwy was so well-known in Hollywood, he had no trouble introducing his son, Graham, to the right people, when he penned his first film script, "Speed" (1994).]

baracine

In 2000, I made a special trip from Toronto to Montreal, to visit "Hitchcock and Art: Fatal Coincidences" (http://www.mbam.qc.ca/en/expositions/exposition_36.html ; http://www.absolutearts.com/artsnews.../16/27723.html ; http://www.findarticles.com/p/articl...40/ai_81258066) at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.


It was an amazing show, a collaboration between France and Canada, many years in the making, with a lavishly-illustrated 500-page catalog (still available in French from the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and in English from this source: http://www.theatrebooks.com/various_...otography.html) containing thousands of photos and essays. The exhibition in itself is worthy of a special extra DVD: It contained a full-size replica of the studio set for the motel room in Psycho (with the bathroom shower glimpsed through the open doorway) and a sculptural re-creation of the jungle gym on which the crows gathered in The Birds. Every once in a while, without warning, a fury of flapping wings would echo sharply through the gallery, causing visitors to jump out of their skins.

The multiple installations and illusions included Salvador Dali's original (unused) art from "Spellbound", a room where all of Hitchcock movies were represented by a single object under a glass case (e.g.: the key from "Notorious", the broken glasses from "The Birds", Carlotta's pendant from "Vertigo", etc.).

There were side-by-side comparisons of projected scenes from his films with original works of art from the last four centuries, a room where various scenes from Hitch films were played side by side with their probable filmic source of inspiration (e.g.: The tower scene from "Vertigo" and a similar scene from Luis Bunuel's "El", the shower scene from "Psycho" and the similar scene from "The Seventh Victim", etc.), not to mention a multimedia recreation of Hitch's stay in Québec (city) for the shooting of "I Confess". This exhibition was a monumental, not-to-be-repeated-experience. Janet Leigh was there for the opening, waxing poetic about the scope of it all and just gasping along with the rest of us.

To let this once-in-a-lifetime experience go by without memorializing it in some other form than a catalog - which doesn't convey the sense of being there - would be a crime... I'm very disappointed that Universal didn't jump at the chance to film it all, even though they obvisouly had to collaborate with the organizers for many years to put this thing together. But I'm sure enough footage from various sources exists to put a decent presentation together somehow.

Johnny Zhivago

NBNW is probably my all time favorite Hitch film... You picked a good place to start. Vertigo will require multiple viewings... The first time I watched it, I felt the same as you... Good, but not great. Several viewings later - I think it's one of Hitch's best films, and that's saying a lot with his catalog. To Catch a Thief is a good film, anything with Grace Kelly is worth watching. Yes, it's anamorphic.

xpfshost

Received my boxset from Family Video today. 2 x !! I'll definitely be ordering more from them in the future. Great price. Contrary to how I thought I'd feel about the packaging, I actually don't think it's as bad as I had imagined. Not nearly as bad as the Alien Quad tangled/12-foot foldout/glue-coming-unstuck mess. Can't wait to watch the movies to see how they look.

Hammer99

Just got mine a few minutes ago, haven't had a chance to watch any yet but I really like the packaging, very classy set...especially when compared to that big-ass Val Lewton cardboard box (now sitting in my trash can), WTF was Warners thinking?

dx23

Is anybody having the same problem with the Alfred hitchcock Presents Season 1 as this reviewer?

Quake1028

Good lord I hope not . My set is on the way from DDD. The minute I get it, it will be in the player, so I will let you all know. I have a Panny CP72, and RCA player and a DVD-ROM drive on the computer, so I pray it works on one of those at least.

b.n.

I just played the first episode without a 'hitch', so far so good. However these are DVD 18's and I did have to take my first copy of Casino back when it froze half way through.
However it seems rather odd for the reviewer to give the series a poor video rating just because he got a bad disc.

gutwrencher

Damn....hope it's just isolated cases and very few of them. Mine won't arrive until later in the week.

ctyankee

Baracine:

Thanks for that. I heard it was a very interesting show but didn't see it myself. I wasn't aware that there was an English book version of the show.

darkside

Universal is building themselves quite a track record for bad discs. One bad disc is not a big deal, but all of Universal's recent DVD-18 releases have given many DVD players issues. I agree with lowering the score if many people buying the sets will have playback issues.

Quake1028

Even with the so-so reviews on the set, I still can't wait to get it for Christmas. I only have 2 of the titles in the set (RW and Vertigo), and this is by far the most cost efficient way to get all of the others.

Al Padrino

Still unhappy about the Casino fiasco, my heart sank reading the review. I just went through the episode he mentioned and no problems. Of course, with my luck, something will pop up later. I guess that just means I have to watch all of the episodes in a short period, which is fine by me. One thing I noted was the inclusion of a paper slip to promote other titles. Is this a good idea when it means it'll be rubbing up against a DVD 18?

My only gripe with the set itself is the absence of chapter stops. Fitting for a show where the creator detested commercial breaks, but it's still nice to have chapters on any TV set.

joliom

As far as the Masterpiece Collection, which films had docs or other extras moved over to the bonus disc? Can someone provide a breakdown of what stuff is now on the bonus disc instead of on the individual DVD's?

b.n.

I don't have a problem with the reviewer placing this release in the "Skip It" categary due to poor reliability. However the "Video" rating refers to the quality of the transfer, not reliability of the disk, two totally different things.
I find the video quality good considering the age of this series (3 out of 5).
Certainly not up to the recent Twilight Zone - Definitive series, (there are blemishes here and there), but based on an early review I was expecting something worse.

JayHM

Picture and audio are out of sync on the new Shadow of a Doubt disc. I'd say picture appears to be about three or four frames early. This is very noticable, for example on the shot of Joseph Cotten knocking over the glass during the dinner table conversation at 27:31. It's also noticable on all the dialogue. A very obvious example is at 31:59, when young Charlie says "I brought you water."

Was the old disc also out of sync, or is this a new issue?

KimberlySayWhat

Am I overlooking something or is there no episode selection? I put disc #1 with intention on watching "Breakdown" first, so I go to the episode index but if you click on them, you only get a summary of the episode; it doesn't play the episode and besides, ony the first four episodes are listed with a screen still beside them. Is mine defected, or like I said, am I overlooking something? Surely the set wouldn't exclude an episode selection option altogether would it? I'm just going around in circles on my menu and it's driving me crazy. Please someone help me. Thanks.

KimberlySayWhat

Nevermind. I swear I messed around with it on and off for about an hour. After I posted the message above, I sat down to work with it some more and figured it out right away. I must have been frustrated and need to settle down a bit.

Al Padrino

Anyone not digging the episode summaries? It's good to have the basic plot on there, but some reveal a few twists that lead to the culmination of the episodes. That kills some of the suspsense for those seeing these for the first time.

Also, anyone think the audio is particularly low on some of the episodes? I had to turn the volume up to ridiculous levels on some and even then, it was tough to decipher.

joliom

Bump.

tommyp007

ok, so after reading all this, I'm still not clear. Are all the movies anamorphic, where possible? If so, I'm all over it. If not, not so hot.

PatrickMcCart

Yes, all of the films are anamorphic except for the Academy Ratio films (Saboteur, Shadow of a Doubt, and Rope).

scrimshaw

I just finished watching this and I also noticed a sync problem. To be honest though, it only bothered me at the begining of the film. I guess I just became engrossed in the story. I don't have my old dvd to compare it to. I thought I read somewhere that there are audio sync problems with some of the other films in the set.