Nothing to do with me. Why don't you just ask Robert?

David Shepard

anuary 25, 2008 DVD of the Week: Past Perfect Historical importance and giddy wonder converge in “Saved From the Flames: 54 Rare and Restored Films 1896-1944” (Flicker Alley), a wide-ranging three-disk anthology of short films. The works, ranging from primordial fictions and early documentaries to p...

Greetings. I’m back (for the last time on this thread) to respond to a couple of queries posted since Friday evening. Film preservation has changed a great deal in the past few years. The previous approach was to copy nitrate film to triacetate (safety) film which was thought as stable as high quali...

It has been a real pleasure being with you this week. I appreciate your interest -- and your patience with my long-winded posts! CoffeeDan asked about censorship. If a film survives in one copy only, basically it has to be taken as found. Of course most films were designed to avoid censor cuts as mu...

Greetings, and thanks for keeping this discussion going. I'll post Friday or Saturday if there are posts tomorrow that ask for a reply. "Miss Goddess," I see that STRAIGHT SHOOTING is on VHS from Movies Unlimited. AFI exchanged a negative with long-defunct Radim Films, perhaps they sold so...

Thanks for your various posts! To "Gagman 66", wish lists are nice. I have mine too. That and about $3.75 will get you a latte at Starbucks. I even have the DVD of THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, but had forgotten about it when writing. But rather than pine for the Paramount films you cannot present...

Hello! Let me respond to the queries that came up today. "Ann Harding" asked about the Paramount silents. They are still owned by Paramount -- Universal did not buy them. Paramount has entertained approaches from several people interested in exploiting them, but so far they have refused al...

Thanks for your enthusiastic posts. To try and respond to most of what you've raised: I believe it is only a hoax/rumour that FOUR DEVILS has been found. Mary Duncan's daughter, who was a good friend, told me the story about her mother borrowing the studio file copy and throwing it away after she ha...

This is David S writing, and it is a pleasure to be with you this week. (I have a long contract to write today, but would much rather be writing this , so I'll begin now rather than wait for more posts to accumulate). Jon asks about frustrations in my work. There are very few; so many films await at...

A Flicker Alley release from Lobster Films and Blackhawk Films, with 54 rare and restored short films from the nitrate era organized into thematic groups -- films we've been trying for years to find an excuse to share with fellow enthuiasts. There's a descriptive summary of the collection here: http...