Old Movie Buffs

[winifreid]

I assume some of you might be old movie buffs, or at least knowlegeable about DVD and movies. I was wondering two things: Why haven't any of the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers' movies been released on DVD? I know a couple have been in France only, but why not here? Are they still copyrighted? The other thing has to do with any old musical: were any of them recorded in stereo?
Make that three things. How do they go from film to DVD? Are there good and not so good ways of doing it, explaining why some old film DVDs look washed out?
Thanks

Finally, I'd like to compliment the staff/creators of this forum. I have found it the most informative and easiest to use forum I have encountered. The layout is compact, but highly intuative.
Thanks for that, as well.

[housepig]

Why haven't any of the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers' movies been released on DVD? I know a couple have been in France only, but why not here? Are they still copyrighted?

yes, they are most likely still under copyright. for whatever reason, the copyright owners haven't released them domestically, could be for many reasons - waiting for "the right time", or they are putting together a super-bonus extra-laden version, or it's taking longer than they thought to do needed restoration.

Make that three things. How do they go from film to DVD? Are there good and not so good ways of doing it, explaining why some old film DVDs look washed out?

they go from film to dvd using industrial film scanners. and like anything, you can do a good thorough job and spend time cleaning up all the imperfections, or you can do a quick and dirty. The availability and condition of originals comes into play as well - for example, the extra footage in the non-US cut of The Wicker Man look like hell compared to the rest of the film, because the original negatives are buried under a U.K. highway somewhere - the studio closed, and stuff got sent to a landfill.

[flaninacupboard]

in the early days of DVD a lot of places (over here at least) just used whatever master they had laying around. my copy of bladerunner isn't very good, there's obvious rolloff and the left side of the picture is all wavy and messy where it's obviously come off analogue tape