Picnic is director Joshua Logan's 1955 screen adaptation of the popular William Inge play. In it, William Holden (The Bridge on the River Kwai) stars as a drifter whose presence upsets the status quo in a sleepy small town, particularly with regard to young Alan Benson (Cliff Robertson, Spider-Man) and his beautiful yet frustrated girlfriend (Kim Novak, Vertigo).
Directed by John Huston (The African Queen), The Roots of Heaven finds the acclaimed filmmaker turning his attention to wildlife conservation; the film focuses on Morel (Trevor Howard, The Third Man), who begins a crusade to save the elephant in French Equitorial Africa. Under great pressure from the local government, Morel teams up with an ex-British Army Major (Errol Flynn, The Adventures of Robin Hood), an American TV commentator (Orson Welles, Citizen Kane), and a photojournalist (Eddie Albert, Dreamscape).
Twilight Time's Picnic Blu-ray presents the film in its 2.55:1 original aspect ratio with a 2.0 DTS-HD Master Audio track. The disc also has the following bonus features:
Isolated score track
Original theatrical trailer
Liner notes by Julie Kirgo
The distributor's The Roots of Heaven disc preserves the picture's 2.35:1 aspect ratio and also adds a 2.0 DTS-HD Master Audio track alongside the followiing supplements.
Isolated score track
Liner notes by Julie Kirgo
As is the standard for Twilight Time releases, both Blu-rays have limited 3,000 unit runs.
Picnic and The Roots of Heaven street on January 17th, 2012.
"The Roots Of Heaven" used to be on network TV "night at the movies" all the time, back in the 60s and 70s, but has more or less vanished ever since then. It's a marvelous film, full of quirky performances, Hustonian cynicism and wonderful location shooting. Rather politically incorrect for its time, as it suggested the corruption of many African "liberation" movements, it remains an under appreciated gem in the rough. "Picnic" has only been available in a dreadful pan and scan DVD, so this is great news for that title as well.
Early reports said these two titles were supposed to be $29.95 each, but they have them listed at $34.95 plus $4.35 shipping, making it $39.30 each. Ouch (If you got both titles, it would be $5.30, coming to a total of $70.20. Still a major "ouch.")
"Only from Screen Archives"... but it should be noted that SAE has an Amazon store. So if you prefer to use that site, they should be available there as well.
Actually, their prices are not bad considering that they only produce 3000 copies.
I would suggest buying two copies of each film, one for your personal collections and another to sell on eBay once they go out of print, at which point they'll likely go for double what they originally sold for. At that point, the discs that you keep end up being free or close to it. Take Fright Night for example. The week that it went out of print, it sold for over $100.00 on eBay. Granted, it was over the holidays, but I think we can expect the discs to sell for close to if not more than double once they are sold out.
If you're a fan of Kim Novak, highly recommend that boxset that Drewza89 mentioned. (Cheapest place online seems to be B&N right now at 50% off (22.99) before coupon, amazon is at 33% off.) Has the 3 titles that will be coming out via Twilight Time plus 2 others. For those of you who can still watch a decent quality anamorphic dvd from time to time and/or want to peruse some supplements above and beyond what will be on the blu-rays.
