Prop or Wings?

    That age-old question — Prop or Wings? — looks like it might finally be answered for DVD owners. Some wonderfully encouraging news concerning the A Matter of Life & Death (aka Stairway to Heaven [1946]), a classic produced by The Archers and starring David Niven and Kim Hunter, was posted yesterday at The Digital Bits:

It took two years to get access to original source material at the British Film Institute, but restoration on this title is now complete and a high definition transfer has been done. The film has been added to Columbia’s schedule for release. It is still a minimum of four months away, though, as Columbia adheres to a policy of only making specific information available for titles it expects to release within three to four months.

    A remastered print of this wonderful movie was exhibited several years ago, in 1995; presented by Martin Scorsese. A home video release seemed inevitable — preferably via the Criterion Collection, who’d done such an excellent job with Powell/Pressburger\’s The Red Shoes and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. So it’s exciting news to hear that a DVD might finally be released. (I actually bought the PAL DVD just because I got tired of waiting [before I even had a PAL converter]. The Carlton disc has brief extras, but it certainly looks better than my ancient VHS archive [taped off Canadian TV] and it’s a pleasure to see the movie again anyway.)
    Steve Crook is the webmaster of an excellent Powell/Pressburger site (they being the men who founded The Archers and together made AMOLAD and many other beautiful and groundbreaking films). By remarkable coincidence, he recently informed us that there is talk of a remake! I’m sure what surprises me more: that someone thinks there’s money to be made in remaking a movie that not enough people have heard of to begin with, or, that they believe such a perfect movie can be improved upon. Nevertheless, this was the e-mail Mr Crook received, two days ago:

Hi, my name is Roy Lee. I was the producer of the U.S. remake of THE RING. I am wondering if you have any information on how I can obtain the remake rights for Matter of Life and Death. Do you know who owns them?
Thanks,
Roy Lee

Since it appears Roy Lee‘s only credit is a remake of Japanese movie, I really think he needs to work on an original idea before he starts tampering with one of my favorites.
    (Images to follow, as soon as I remember how to get my Sony DVD drive to play a PAL disc…)