Is Everything Really Available?

Film Wanting to revisit cinema's back catalogue but not knowing where to start, I decided to pluck a month out from the past and try to watch everything released. Entirely unrandomly I chose September 1993, at the start of my undergraduate degree, which I remember vividly for seeing The Fugitive and Sleepless in Seattle on successive weeks at the start of the year.

The simplest way to unearth what will have been released around that time is to pull out that month's Sight and Sound Magazine (dated for October).  Sure enough, there are Sleepless and The Fugitive, plus The Firm which I remember watching with some school friends as the last get together before going away.  I know, I had friends at school.  Can you imagine?

Apart from those the only other film I saw at the time was Like Water For Chocolate, a moment which I mentioned during the prehistory of this blog in the geocities days (but not until the following February if this letter home is any guide).  Along with Farewell My Concubine, Chocolate is the film I credit with leading my towards exploring cinema outside the mainstream.

All of which preamble leads us to the reason for being here, which is as a follow up to the Disney+ post the other day.  It's all very well for Disney to make huge sections of its archive available to watch at the touch of a button, but what about other film studios and distributors.  How much of their old content is easily accessible?

Here then are all the films listed in the review section of that old Sight and Sound and if they're available as part of a subscription, rental streaming or a physical copy from Amazon.  Like Sight and Sound, I'm working on the basis that if it's available on Amazon, even if its from abroad it counts.

Anchoress (1993)
Rental: BFI Player, Apple
Physical: DVD

Blood In Blood Out (1992)
Physical: DVD

Blue (1993)
Physical: DVD

Careful (1992)
Physical: DVD (R1)

Like Water For Chocolate (1991)
Rental: Amazon, Apple, Rokuten
Physical: BD, DVD, VHS

The Crush (1993)
Rental: Amazon, Microsoft, Chili
Physical: BD, DVD (Both R1)

Dirty Weekend (1992)
Physical: VHS

The Firm (1993)
Subscription: NowTV, Amazon Starz
Rental: Amazon, Google, Apple, Chili, Youtube, Microsoft
Physical: BD, DVD

The Fugitive (1993)
Subscription: Netflix
Rental: Amazon, Google, Rokuten, Microsoft
Physical: BD, DVD

Hard Boiled (1992)
Physical: BD, DVD

Laws of Gravity (1992)
Physical: DVD

The Night We Never Met (1993)
Rental: Amazon
Physical: DVD

The Punk (1993)
N/A

Raining Stones (1993)
Rental: BFI, Google, Apple, Youtube
Physical: BD, DVD

Rising Sun (1993)
Subscription: Now
Rental: Google, Apple, Youtube, Microsoft
Physical: BD, DVD

Sleepless in Seattle (1993)
Subscription: Now, Sky Go
Physical: BD, DVD

Stepping Razor - Red X (1992)
N/A

This Boy's Life (1993)
Subscription: Amazon Prime
Rental: Apple, TalkTalk
Physical: BD, DVD *

What's Love Got To Do With It (1993)
Rental: Google, Apple, Youtube, Microsoft
Physical: DVD

The Wedding Banquet (1993)
Rental: Google, Youtube, Microsoft
Physical: DVD

The Young Americans (1993)
Physical: BD, DVD

The picture is slightly rosier than I was expecting, although it probably helps that this was a really good month for film and relatively recent.

There are some anomalies.  A few of the physical copies above are for international releases of titles which are out of print here or were never released at all, especially on BD (A Boy's Life, Sleepless) which also means they're quite expensive to purchase.  It's also frankly weird that Hard Boiled isn't available for streaming rental or on one of the subscription services (at least the ones listed by JustWatch).

It's also true that only five of the titles are available on subscription services, those which would have been the wide multiplex releases that month which have arguably retained their currency due to having a star who will notionally still open films or are simply just evergreens.  But unlike a music streaming service they're also not all in one place.  Now, Netflix and Amazon Prime all have separate deals with different studios.

Just for fun, I ran this list through Cinema Paradiso which has retained everything its ever purchased including out of print titles.  Here are the films which are available on there:

Anchoress (1993)
Blood In Blood Out (1992)
Blue (1993)
Like Water For Chocolate (1991)
Dirty Weekend (1992)
The Firm (1993)
The Fugitive (1993)
Hard Boiled (1992)
The Night We Never Met (1993)
Raining Stones (1993)
Rising Sun (1993)
Sleepless in Seattle (1993)
This Boy's Life (1993)
What's Love Got To Do With It (1993)
The Wedding Banquet (1993)
The Young Americans (1993)

If that isn't an advert for DVDs by post ... (here's the inevitable link to the invite page).

Unlocking The Disney Vault.

Film Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo are still continuing with their Radio 5 show despite the lock-down. During Friday's programme, Simon read out a listener email from someone who was watching their way through all of Disney's theatrical releases in order. Mark indicated what a challenge this was and then was surprised to discover that this was relatively easy outside of the duration because the whole lot is available on Disney+.

He's surprised? I'm flabbergasted. Back when in 2012-2014 when I attempted the same project, the process was much, much harder for the reasons outlined in the video above. For decades, Disney maximized their profits by running something called the vault system in which they would only release films theatrically, on VHS, DVD or BD for a very limited time, sometimes just a few months, until they'd be taken off the shelves and disappear for another five to ten years.

The upshot of which meant I had to gather the titles from a number of sources and in some cases not at all because of the asking price on eBay or Amazon. The DVD of Beauty and the Beast was so rare, I had it at the top of my Lovefilm watchlist for over six months and it still wasn't sent. Eventually it was rereleased on BD, for a limited time thanks to the 3D version turning up, costing a small fortune. Oliver and Company simply wasn't available on DVD so I ended up spending over a tenner on a shonky VHS copy.

Now there they all are in pristine HD prints on Disney+. Almost. Make Mine Music is missing although that has been censored for various reasons over the years, notably gunplay in the opening segment, so it could have been left out for content reasons.   But everything else is there, the so-called "package" films right through to the years and years of quest narratives, right up to Ralph Breaks The Internet with Frozen II appearing the UK in the next couple of months (it's already on the US version).  Wow.

Something which the above video also highlights is now Disney pioneered the double-dip.  Having released a bunch of titles as vanillas, they quite quickly brought them out again in various packages with special features and often with different extras with each new release.  Remarkably Disney+ has an extras section which includes many of these features including extended documentaries, deleted scenes and songs and a singalong versions.

That's also true across the database.  The Star Wars films have deleted scenes which as far as I can remember have never been available on shiny-disc and not been seen in public in full since the Behind The Magic CD-Rom.  The MCU titles have the One Shots in these extras sections along with director's commentaries as their own streams (notably Endgame).  Avatar has a child friendly dub.   It's quite addictive just bringing up titles to see what's hidden in there and to puzzle as to the choices.

So this is one of the few occasions when it's possible to say that yes, everything is available.  How this business model will sustain itself going forward is anyone's guess.  The shift from scarcity to the exact opposite and for a much smaller price to the consumer, an annual subscription costing the same as three new blu-ray releases seems like an incredible risk.  But with the home sale market dwindling, perhaps eventually this will the only way for some people to see these old films.