From AICN, A company called CustomFlix is digitizing thousands of films from the National Film Archives. The original digital masters will be given back to the Archive in case something catastrophic happens to the film originals and you'll be able to purchase these films on Amazon for $19.99 a pop.
What I love about this, actually, isn't the film titles... I don't think they've released those titles yet, just said they'll be public domain (ie the rights have expired over the years and they don't belong to anybody) titles that have been hard to find on any format. What I love about this is they're taking all the Universal and United newsreels that played in theaters from 1920-1967 and putting them to disc.
If you don't know what a newsreel it, it's kind of a weekly recap of the big news that used to play in theaters. As a film collector, I've seen a couple and even own a few in 16 and 35mm. During WW2 you'd get all the latest news (US Storms Normandy Beach! Nazis Invade Poland! Etc) about the war.
Those fascinate me. I love these things. I'm going to have to check out some of them and see how much info actually made the DVDs. There seem to be a dozen or so on Amazon right now, from the 40s to the 60s.
This is a great idea. Apparently, if you visit the Archives in Washington DC you can view and even make copies of these yourself, but this program is there to give everybody in the nation (and I guess the world now) a chance to own them. I can't wait to hear more about this program.
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