Notes on box sets

So I reviewed Marriage on the Rocks yesterday and pointed out that I had picked it up as part of a five-film Frank Sinatra box set. I should also note that I haven't really reviewed the box sets themselves: are they packaged well, are there extras, and so on.

As for the Frank Sinatra set, I was mildly surprised that there were no extras on Marriage on the Rocks other than the trailer for the movie. Contrast this with some of the Warner Home Video sets of older movies, like the ones on the Gangster collection where I've been going through the shorts on an irregular basis. The other thing that was interesting is that the subtitles are in English, French, and... Portuguese. Not Spanish. I could understand English, Spanish, and Portuguese without French if the set were designed for the Latin American market, but Portuguese without Spanish? Not that I need those language subtitles when watching a movie; I just found it interesting. The packaging, however, is good, with each DVD in its own case.

Another box set I haven't talked about that I bought last year was this four-film set from Fox. One case, which isn't necessarily noteworthy since other box sets I've picked up have had that. However, there's only one hub, with all four DVDs on it, something I find irritating. I popped in the Leave Her to Heaven disc, and found subtitles in English and Spanish only (relatively reasonable), and some special features, including a commentary, trailers for several old movies, and a newsreel of stars attending the premier, which I found interesting. Here, for example, is Roddy McDowell (who had made several films at Fox) with Jane Powell?! She was at MGM, I think, I didn't know she and Roddy were a thing:



On the bright side, William Eythe attended, so I finally got the pronunciation of his name, which rhymes with "scythe" and not "lathe". There's also a comparison of the old print with a restoration print, although I don't know that I'd notice much of a difference if I didn't have the two side by side. I don't have a nice enough TV to notice the difference.