Don't believe the bloggers: DVD isn't dead

DVD is dead. Or so it is prematurely suggested by many Internet bloggers — even as DVDs and Blu-rays of recent theatrical films and A-list vintage titles continue to flood video-sales venues week after week.

True, these days technology changes at an amazing — some might say alarming — rate. And downloads and streaming are becoming more viable. And more and more free movie-viewing sites are popping up all over the Internet.

Yet studios continue to dust off elusive but frequently requested titles for DVD release — and there seems to be a major upswing in that trend right now.

In a column a couple of weeks ago, I wrote about Warner's new DVD-on-demand Web site for 150 vintage titles (with many more to come) and mentioned that Miramax's "Enchanted April" will finally make its way to DVD sales/rental outlets next month.

In addition, Warner continues to release to retail stores such new-to-DVD vintage titles as these, scheduled for next month:

 The '60s-'70s Western comedies "Catlow," with Yul Brynner, Richard Crenna and Leonard Nimoy, and "The Great Bank Robbery," with Zero Mostel, Kim Novak and Clint Walker (the latter on a disc with the non-Western "The Great Bank Hoax").

 The "Charles Bronson Collection," which is actually just two of his not-on-DVD '70s thrillers, "Telefon" and "St. Ives."

 And in June, Warner will release Michaelangelo Antonioni's '70s survey of '60s American counterculture, "The Zabriskie Point."

Fox/MGM is doing the same, with some new-to-DVD titles coming out next month:

 A pair of Westerns, "Young Billy Young" (1969), with Robert Mitchum and Angie Dickinson, and "The King and Four Queens" (1956), starring Clark Gable.

 The India train adventure "Northwest Frontier (1959, aka "Flame Over India"), with Lauren Bacall.

 And two military thrillers, Richard Widmark in the courtroom drama "Time Limit" (1957), and "Man Hunt" (1941), with Walter Pidgeon attempting to assassinate Hitler.

 Then there's the pricey but high-quality Criterion Collection label, which is once again dipping into the past for "Alexander Korda's Private Lives," with four of the filmmaker's hard-to-find '30s historical dramas:

 "The Private Life of Henry VIII," starring Charles Laughton; "The Rise of Catherine the Great," with Douglas Fairbanks Jr.; "The Private Life of "Don Juan," starring Douglas Fairbanks Sr.; and "Rembrandt," with Laughton, Gertrude Lawrence and Elsa Lanchester.

 Criteron also has "The Friends of Eddie Coyle" (1973), a Robert Mitchum thriller, on the cusp, as well as John Huston's quirky 1979 dark satire on Southern religion, "Wise Blood."