DVD Savant, Glenn Erickson's Review Column at DVD Talk

Good morning! As nothing has changed at DVDtalk, I still cannot upload new reviews to the DVD Savant pages. I've forwarded some reviews to a different location, DVDtalk's internal review database, to keep from falling too far behind. When Savant is back up again (?) I'll announce them a second time and move them back here where they belong. This is a bit confusing, but here are the links:

Milestone's very worthy The Exiles, a semi-docu of an alternate, underclass "American Graffiti" subculture in Los Angeles of 1957;

Buster Keaton's incomparable The General, now on Blu-ray;

The 1998 Godzilla Blu-ray, which compared to 2012 is a timeless classic; and

Gillian Armstrong's My Brilliant Career in Blu-ray -- it introduced Sam Neil and Judy Davis to American audiences.

And don't forget the TCM review of The Universal Cult Horror Collection.

I've gotten a lot of notes from readers offering to complain to DVDtalk about the situation; thanks but I don't see that as a good idea. I'm also not really free to discuss the nature of the problem, and I don't have the whole picture, anyway. At this point I'm convinced that DVDtalk's position is sincere. But thanks for the concern.

Elsewhere, I just heard the news that the new, full-length restoration of Metropolis is to be given its North American Premiere at the TCM Classic Film Festival to be held concurrently at Grauman's Chinese Theater and the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood, this coming April. I think I'm going to try and catch that one.

I have more news but just keeping track of my finished but un-launched reviews is rather complicated right now ... thanks for keeping an eye on "DVD Savant, the Incredible Shrinking Review Page".

Glenn E.

Thursday November 19, 2009

Well, I don't know where things are with DVD Savant, exactleeee. A manager at the host site told me he'd have me connected again on Tuesday; when nothing happened yesterday I wrote back. Haven't received an answer yet. I'll write everybody again this morning and see what happens -- I don't think there's much else I can do at the moment. Thanks for all the notes expressing interest. If you'd like to read my review of the Universal Cult Horror Collection, it's up at this link at TCM. I know some readers (I hope I still have a few) were waiting for that one. Cheers ... ? Glenn E.

Tuesday November 17, 2009

Well, tomorrow it will be a solid week of no Savant updates; after 11 years of being prompt and punctual with my reviews this feels very disturbing. I promised the distributors of The Exiles, a really important independent release deserving of exceptional treatment, that their review would be up today -- it was supposed to go up last Saturday.

DVDtalk's site maintenance people have been very attentive and helpful in the past, so I've waited until today to try to contact one of them personally. Maybe he can take a second from putting out programming fires elsewhere, to reconnect DVD Savant to the web. Glenn.

Monday November 16, 2009

Hopefully DVDtalk will put DVD Savant back live today. In general the site maintenance here is excellent and we've never been down this long before. I have reviews ready for The Exiles, Confessions of a Nazi Spy and a Blu-ray of the 1998 Godzilla. Thank you. -- Glenn

Saturday November 14, 2009

Hello -- ! I have reviews ready today but our host site DVDtalk has been experiencing some problems, which include an inability for me to upload any reviews at the moment. I'll check back several times today to see if I can update the site. -- Glenn.