I haven’t been keeping tabs on the number of DVD reports I’ve filed in the last fifteen years and seven months, but lo and behold, this is the 800th edition.

When I started this weekly column in April 2007, DVDs had been on the market for ten years while Blu-rays, which had been available for less than a year, were still struggling for their share of the marketplace. Nine years later, the first 4K UHD Blu-ray releases entered the fray. Home video collectors couldn’t have been happier with all the available choices. Then things changed.

In the last few years, streaming overtook the physical collecting of movies. Now you can watch movies on Amazon Prime, HBO Max, Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Apple TV+, and a myriad of other services. You can own a digital copy of some films that are available on DVD or Blu-ray, but like the films available for streaming, that availability is at the whim of the provider. Films stored in the cloud can be zapped as easily as a film on a streaming service can disappear. The only way to guarantee that you will have access to your favorite films when you want them is to own a physical copy.

If you have an existing film library, great. Hold onto it. If you want to build on it, though, gone are the days in the not so distant past when all you had to do was wait, your favorite movie will show up sooner or later.

Most film companies and even some streamers like Amazon Prime and HBO Max, regularly make their streamers available after they’ve run their course with the service. Others like Netflix and Disney+ release some, but not all. Apple TV+, as far as I can tell, has yet to release any of its streamers on DVD or Blu-ray.

Not only are many new films bypassing home video releases, DVD and Blu-ray providers are also skimping on their release of older films.

Disney now owns the 20th Century-Fox library, so don’t expect to see new releases of All About Eve, The Grapes of Wrath. How Green Was My Valley, The King and I, or The Sound of Music anytime soon.

Warner Bros. owns the old MGM library as well as the Warner Bros. and RKO libraries and has been doing a great job of releasing films from that vast combined library, but with new ownership running a tighter ship, releases have slowed down considerably. This month they have released just two films on Blu-ray, Rouben Mamoulian’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Tod Browning’s Mark of the Vampire.

Mamoulian’s 1931 version of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, featuring Fredric March’s Oscar-winning performance, is the definitive version and should be in every collector’s home library. Browning’s Mark of the Vampire from 1936 is OK, but it was released on DVD on a double-bill with Browning’s superior The Devil-Doll from the same year. Why was the lesser film the one that got the Blu-ray upgrade?

Warner Bros. will release an 80th Anniversary 4K UHD Blu-ray upgrade of the beloved classic, Casablanca, in November. Beyond that, only time will tell.

Both Criterion and Kino Lorber are still doing an excellent job of releasing films on Blu-ray and 4K UHD. Criterion has last year’s multiple award-winner The Power of the Dog, a rare home video release from Netflix, coming out on 4K UHD in November. Kino Lorber has a slew of new releases from various studios.

New from Kino Lorber in 4K UHD are superb editions of Brian DePalma’s 1980 film, Dressed to Kill; Bryan Singer’s 1995 film, The Usual Suspects; Ben Stiller’s 2008 film, Tropic Thunder; and Martin McDonagh’s 2008 film, In Bruges. The latter is the first pairing of Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson in a film by McDonagh who directed them in the current Oscar contender, The Banshees of Inisherin.

New from Kono Lorber on Blu-ray are 1956’s The Rainmaker, 1958’s Lonelyhearts, and 1962’s The Counterfeit Traitor.

This marks the first appearance of Vincent J. Donehue’s film of Nathaniel West’s Lonelyhearts on home video since the days of VHS. Montgomery Clift had one of his best lesser-known roles as the aspiring reporter stuck answering letters to his newspaper’s Miss Lonelyhearts column. Robert Ryan was at his rotten best as his sadistic editor, Myrna Loy had one of her best if limited latter day roles as Ryan’s alcoholic wife, Dolores Hart played Clift’s wholesome girlfriend, and Maureen Stapleton, in her film debut, played a pathetic woman in a loveless marriage. Stapleton received the first of her four Oscar nominations for her performance.

Previously released on Blu-ray in non-U.S. import versions, both Joseph Anthony’s The Rainmaker and George Seaton’s The Counterfeit Traitor have gorgeous new transfers courtesy of Paramount. They both feature audio commentary from Julie Kirgo, best known as the film historian who wrote the liner notes for almost all the Twilight Time releases of the last decade.

Burt Lancaster plays the conman and Katharine Hepburn the old maid who clash and fall in love in The Rainmaker in roles played on Broadway by Darren McGavin and Geraldine Page. Hepburn was twenty years too old for her part, but it didn’t stop her from receiving her third Oscar nomination in six years for playing one of Hollywood’s great spinster roles following 1951’s The African Queen and Summertime. Lancaster’s performance was a warmup for his Oscar-winning conman, Elmer Gantry, four years later.

Kino Lorber’s The Counterfeit Traitor has a better transfer than Imprint’s recently released Blu-ray but lacks the biography of star William Holden that was part of Imprint’s release.

Starting next week, a new format and a new logo. I will be reviewing films on streaming as well as the occasional DVD, Blu-ray, or 4K UHD release. The column will undergo a name change from DVD Report to Home Viewing with Peter.