Grover Crisp, who was just promoted to a Senior VP title at Sony the week prior to EMA, is in charge of asset management, film restoration and digital mastering for the Columbia and Tristar libraries. He gave the presentation on the current restoration and video mastering work. He is one of those guys, like Mastering VP Ned Price at Warner, that you want to be in charge of a studio's library. The fact that his responsibilities extend from asset protection through to the digital mastering of their titles can only be good news for home video fans. His background is in film preservation/restoration, he does his homework, and he knows what film is supposed to look like.

-Ken McAlinden, HTF

Fritz Friedman (Senior Vice President)

Grover Crisp, Senior VP Asset Management, Film Restoration

Sony divided their presentation in to two parts.

The first was a demo of BD-Live, utilizing the most recent extras on the new Men In Black BD. The first demonstration was of the BD-Live online content. I was a bit disappointed that, currently, most of the online content is download only, and consists mostly of trailers. As a PS3 owner, I found this to be not much different than the Playstation store. Hopefully, Sony will add some streaming content in the future. What I did like was that Sony has a monthly survey, asking what you like and dislike about the BD-Live experience.

Next, we were shown a demo of the MIB online trivia game. This was pretty cool, although we did about as well as the audience did during the Opening Session demo. We lost, miserably.

After the BD-Live demo, we were treated to a demonstration of some catalog titles currently undergoing the restoration process at Sony Studios. The before and after demos were exciting, and can't wait for these titles to be announced and released on BD.

This was one of the top highlights of the show.

-Todd Erwin, HTF

                                         QUICK NAVIGATION LINKS

HOME  OUR PRESENTATION ROOM  ALLUMINATION FILMWORKS 

SUMMIT ENTERTAINMENT  FOX DIGITAL COPY (PART 1) 

FOX DIGITAL COPY (PART 2)   SONY  ED BEGLEY JR. (PART ONE) 

ED BEGLEY JR. (PART 2)  THE “305” GUYS  CLASSIC TV PANEL (PART 1)

CLASSIC TV PANEL (PART 2)  CLASSIC TV PANEL (PART 3)  PANASONIC PHL

HENRY JAGLOM  DTS  PARTIES AND PEOPLE

All photos taken and used with permission from Samuel Posten.  Visit his website on

NAVESINK.NET and to see additional photos from this event be sure to check out

his flickr page.

          Rich Marty, VP of Business Development for SPHE

I especially enjoyed the presentation by Grover Crisp. The restoration demo on The Bridge On The River Kwai and the Budd Boetticher western really intrigued me. I've seen many incarnations of TBOTRK-16mm, 35mm, etc. and this looked superb. The announcement that the five Randolph Scott/Budd Boetticher/Burt Kennedy westerns are coming out was great news. These are among the best westerns ever made. This is a must buy for me and other western fans.

Frank Capra is well-known as a director of comedies. True film buffs know that Capra was also one of the best action-adventure directors of the late 1920s to mid-1930s. The upcoming box set mentioned by Grover Crisp of Submarine, Flight and Dirigible will help set the record straight. Until then, take a look at the opening reels of Lost Horizon on how Capra handled action-adventure sequences. This is another must buy for me.

I also had a chance to suggest a DVD release of The Key (1958) to Grover. This has never been released on DVD. Shot in B/W CinemaScope, directed by Carol Reed (The Third Man) and starring Sophia Loren, William Holden and Trevor Howard. This is a moody WWII romance with supernatural overtones and good naval action sequences that has gotten better with the years. Until it's released on DVD you can catch a letter-box print on TCM.

Grover's presentation was a high point of EMA for me.

-Andrew Melomet, HTF

Sony brought along a Playstation 3 and a copy of the newly released Men in Black on

Blu-ray. Sony started off by showing us the interesting BD-Live online content, which still at an early stage had some nice things to do, but can have lots of possibilities down the road. One of the things that I would like to see are commentaries or deleted scenes which may not be available at the time, that can accompany your Blu-rays. I also love the option of downloading recent or upcoming trailers in HD. There's another nice feature which gives you the option of creating a trailers folder, keeping all of your favorite trailers in one place. The other interesting option in the BD-Live, was a survey you take then sending to Sony telling them your likes/dislikes.

The Next feature on the Men in Black Blu-ray was the fun Trivia game that be done with a single person or online multi-player and the option to host a game online with numerous players. Questions range from simple questions to watching movie clips. Another feature I liked and would like to see, not just on kid friendly Blu-rays.

The last part of Sony's demonstration and best part was showing some of the movies they are doing some restoration process to. A very fascinating look at how much work they are putting into some classic/catalog movies.  I'm very happy that Sony gave us the opportunity to show us this within their BD-Live demonstration.  And I really hope they continue to show us this kind of restoration process in all of their demonstrations.

-John Steffens, HTF