The Silver Screen Oasis

I just found out that THE GREAT FLAMARION (1945, Erich Von Stroheim) is now available on DVD.

I saw this late last year on TCM and really enjoyed it, and here, the DVD has slipped onto shelves without me noticing it because I apparently can't read all of Amazon's 300, 500, 800, 1200 releases-per-week with enough patience. Actually, it's because they don't let me do an Award-Year Sort!

And no site does. Most of them have DVD-Release-Date sort but, hey, I'm already looking at "Week of Feb 11th" - why would I want Feb 11 releases re-sorted by Feb 11th?!! Du-uh. Most of these DVDs include the film's actual release date - which I call "Award Year" to avoid confusion of Movie Release vs. DVD Release dates. But none of the sites I've found lets me do a DVD Sort by the film's Award or release Date. I'd always look at Oldest Films first and probably wouldn't pay attention to anything since 1990. (Maybe that's why these sites don't allow this kind of sort!!)

In early 2007, my long-favored New Release List website went under (lack of interest). It listed a nice, doubled-space Title & Year & Main Actor(s) on a single line, easy to read, "100 per page" meant I could quickly scroll thru a fairly comprehensive list for North American DVD releases.

Since they've died, however, I'm stuck with Amazon's "few to a page with big photos wasting more and more screen space". Eighty pages. 170 pages. 344 pages. Yeah, right - like ANYONE scrolls thru those!

Anyone found a more comprehensive site that offers better use of screen-space with perhaps a better Sorting option than "price" and "most popular"?

It probably doesn't fit your tough standard of "a more comprehensive site that offers better use of screen-space with perhaps a better Sorting option than 'price' and 'most popular'", but it is discerning, informative, and easy.

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/release-calendar.htm

If you're looking for new releases of classic films, I found this website recently:

http://www.classicflix.com/index.php

They also have it at Movies unlimited for $10.00
Here:http://www.moviesunlimited.com/musite/p ... sku=D62976

Bill (vallo)

DVD Beaver lists a dozen or so out of the 300, 500, 800 or even 1200 weekly releases (like in March). Maybe they will list everything I could possibly want, but the small number listed never gives me the idea that they've covered all titles.

Then again, maybe they have.

AnnH's suggested site has exactly the Sort Mechanism I'm hoping for (THANK YOU! FINALLY some programmer turned that index into a public one) so this will be interesting to compare to DVDBeaver's lists.

Thanks for these, and I hope others can be posted, too.

AnnH's ClassicFlix site is pretty interesting. It seems to have a fairly comprehensive list of films in the Upcoming Releases section. The New Releases are undated so it's not clear what their date-range is for "new releases". Some sites keep DVDs on their New Release lists for years!

ClassicFlix is also a Netflix wanna-be - a mail-order rental site - for those that are interested in that, and for me, they offer decent prices for DVD purchases. Their titles list doesn't seem to match Blockbusters (which often has more titles than Amazon, but sometimes less availability) and the only user-comments I've seen about ClassicFlix has been "good but slow", particularly in the processing of Returns, which is how Blockbuster's received it's "throttling" reputation.

You may want to check out Facets Multimedia. You can't manipulate its lists (in fact, the list of what is available for rental or purchase is not user-friendly), BUT you can sign up for a weekly email newsletter about what is being released and available at Facets. If you join (ever so slightly more than NetFlix -- but it's going to a not-for-profit), the rental deal is the same as NetFlix PLUS VHS copies are available of many films not on DVD (there is a shipping charge for those, I believe).

And the site has lots of reading material & links.

http://www.facets.org/asticat

FACETS doesn't have 'sortable' lists, but at least I can snag it and paste it into something where I can manipulate the data. This is an interesting concept - I'll have to read more about it.

Ollie, have you tried DVD Aficionado? They have a new, improved search function that lets you search up to four fields at one time. So if you wanted to see, for instance, western films directed by Anthony Mann to be released by MGM/Fox on June 11, 2008, you can enter all that info and have your answer in seconds. You can browse titles by theatrical release year, DVD release date, studio, director, language, price range, and other attributes. Another feature lets you browse past and future DVD releases week by week. You can even shop and compare prices at several of the major DVD shopping sites, which includes direct links to those sites.

It's also a great place to organize your DVD collection and post it for all the world to see. You can see my DVD collection at http://coffeedan.dvdaf.com.

That's

www.DVDAF.com

and it too is impressive. Another good one to explore!

Ann Harding wrote:If you're looking for new releases of classic films, I found this website recently:

http://www.classicflix.com/index.php

Thank you, Ann! That site was a nice help. I didn't know The Major and the Minor was being released April 22! Yippee!

ClassicFlix appears to be pretty interesting. In researching (comparing) DVD Aficionado to Amazon for this week, DVD AF has a hundred-odd new releases while Amazon has 300-odd but I couldn't find any useful exclusions - "all the good ones" are there. It looks like DVD AF doesn't list all the Nintendo-minded quasi-neo-pseudo 'toons DVDs, nor the soft-core DVDs Gone Wild types, which makes up a blitheringly huge volume of every weeks' new releases on Amazon.

There are about 1000 classic films that I "really need" for my collection that aren't on DVD, and they could put out 100 a week and I'd be done in a couple of months, but nooooooo-!