Olive Films

Quote from Paula

Roughrider, you must be very busy these days updating your website.

Yes indeed, Paula. Olive Films kept me busy updating last night!

I can only blame you <g>.

I know it sounds crazy, but I just bought The Searchers HD DVD. I'm into the format a little late to say the least. But a player and a few boxes of films (still shrink-wrapped) cost about $2 per title.

Just another crazy film buff.

THE SUN SHINES BRIGHT!

NO WAY! This is the one that Pappy wanted so badly to see and no one could find a copy for him. This, Wagon Master and one other were his three favorites as to actually accomplishing what he wanted to! HOORAY!
Thanks Paula, Keith

Well, Paula, I prefer to think that it was Son's agent's fault. Really too bad Ben wasn't in more Ford films. Too bad that Pappy didn't realize what his little tirade was going to cause in someone like Son. He lost Henry Fonda for years......but in the end, Hank remembered the good parts about Pappy and came back to the fold. Am into Son's book, but I will email the rest so as not to stray off topic. KEITH

Quote from Paula

From what I've read, John Ford wanted to hire Ben Johnson for a role in The Sun Shines Bright (I presume the John Russell one), ready to forget about that fracas on the set of Rio Grande.

But -- there are two different stories about why Ben was not in the film.

Version 1 (This is in Harry Carey, Jr.'s Company of Heroes) -- Unfortunately unbeknownst to Ben, who would have loved to work with Ford again, his agent demanded too much money and Ford hung up the phone and didn't hire Ben again until Cheyenne Autumn in 1964.

Version 2 -- Ben had taken 1953 off from movie-making to pursue the roping world championship (which he did win) and when Ford called about The Sun Shines Bright, Ben told him he couldn't make it, he had to be at a rodeo on the reporting date for the movie. Ford said, well, if he had somewhere more important to be, never mind, and .. Cheyenne Autumn 1964.

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I've read and heard a lot about The Sun Shines Bright, and have always wanted to see it. Looks like now's my chance!

Sorry if this is the wrong area for this question. I have contacted Olive films directly, but as yet they have not got back to me. So out of desperation I hope someone can help me, is The Quiet Man region free or is it, as I fear region locked. I have been looking forward to this release for ages, so if you can help a very anxious Scotsman I would really appreciate it. Thank you.

Quote from Paula

Olive Films answered this question on their Facebook page on January 7:

Olive Films Region A for BD, Region 1 for DVD

This was brought up before, so I'm a little confused.

My Oppo BDP-93 Blu-ray player is region-free. However, unlike DVD, for Blu-ray I have to manually set the region through the remote. If I set it to region B and try to play, for instance, the US Criterion version of Stagecoach, the player warns me the disc itself is locked to region A. It won't play.

With the player still in region B mode, all of the Olive Blu-rays play fine.

If I remember correctly, Dooley in the UK said the Olive Blu-rays played fine in his region B player.

The DVDBeaver reviews, of course, say the Olive BDs are verfied as region A on the Momitsu player. This matches what Olive says.

But why would my player say they're region-free?

Dooley, if you're chiming in, could you or someone else please verify your results.

There must be many people in the non-region A world that have purchased Olive's Blu-rays.

Olive's DVDs are definitely locked to region 1.

Wikipedia states, "Unlike DVD region codes, Blu-ray region codes are verified only by the player software, not by the optical drive's firmware."

Because of this statement, maybe that's why my hardware-modified Blu-ray player interprets the region coding differently?

Other people need to chime in on this, since I think The Quiet Man Blu-ray will prove to be very popular internationally. But if it's truly locked to region A then some people will have to take other avenues.

There is a thread on hometheaterforum.com about the Blu-ray region-coding of The Quiet Man.

<http://www.hometheaterforum.co…an-bd-release-01-22-13/60>

This is a quote from one user:

"It may be Region A locked because some other recent Olive BRDs have been. But don't go by what DVD Beaver says because according to him every Olive BRD is locked - and most of them are not."

Another user writes:

"I get most Olive releases and live in B land. They have all been A locked for a few months now."

I'm sure the above thread will get more posts since the Blu-ray is trickling to users in the mail.

I'll post my results in a few days.

I suspect Olive may have changed its Blu-ray authoring workflow to make region-coding more concrete and robust across various players. DVD region-coding is a no-brainer, whereas Blu-ray region-coding is more complicated it seems, very much dependent on the player's firmware. But done correctly, there should be no reason for variances among players.

Look at Rio Grande, for example. The site blu-ray.com says it's region-free, yet others say it's region A.

I really believe Olive Films has suffered growing pains with its Blu-ray authoring software and region-coding.

I did some more tests with the John Wayne titles released previous to 2013 by Olive Films.

Using AnyDVD HD and the software players WinDVD and TotalMedia Theatre, all show the same results as my Oppo Blu-ray player: they're region-free.

Attached are some Blu-ray grabs of the errors produced by The Longest Day (Fox), North to Alaska (Soul Media), and Stagecoach (Criterion) when the region codes are set incorrectly.

No such errors with the Olive titles with John Wayne previous to 2013.

The post-2012 titles may be a different story, though.

the oregon trail. Is this definetley the Duke version that we all want to see? Does anybody Know for sure?

If Olive Films' allusions are correct, we should see The Oregon Trail soon.

I tested the latest batch of Blu-rays from Olive for region-coding: The Quiet Man, Frontier Horizon, King of the Pecos, and The New Frontier are definitely locked to Region A.

The pre-2013 John Wayne titles from Olive are region-free.

Even though all the artwork says Frontier Horizon, the actual discs (DVD and BD) show the film's original title in the credits, New Frontier. Like Republic Pictures, who renamed New Frontier (1939) to Frontier Horizon for television to avoid confusion with The New Frontier (1935), Olive Films has essentially done the same, except with artwork.

The Quiet Man BD has a funny, minor flaw: the single English-language audio track is reported as Polish. Someone didn't put in the correct language ID during authoring.

Thanks for all the technical updates.

I have also copied the posts relating to the movie
John Ford- The Sun Shine's Bright
to that thread