Here we are in the eighth month of 2015. Windows, with great fanfare, has just released Windows 10 with free upgrades for Windows 7 and 8 users. With smart TVs, as well as smart phones, tablets and other equally intelligent hardware, access to digital media has never been greater. We can now download practically anything if it’s available, the operative word being “available”. Anything and everything can now be stored in “the cloud”. “The cloud” is a particularly apt name for something that floats in the sky. Like anything else that takes to the skies, one has the uneasy feeling that it can float away or be shot down at any time. What, then, happens when the copyright holder decides to deny access? Personally, I’d rather buy something I can hold in my hands, store on my shelves and watch without the nagging concern that it will disappear as easily as Netflix and other such service providers withdraw films from their libraries at regular intervals.

This being the case, one wonders how long it will be before Blu-rays and DVDs go the way of vinyl and CDs, i.e. become niche items. Sure, the major studios still rush to put out their latest films as quickly after their theatrical runs as they can to capture the dwindling market, but releases of older films have become extremely sluggish. Even the once dependable Warner Archive now releases about as many DVDs in a month as it used to release in a week. Other companies hardly release anything at all. Bucking the trend, Universal has surprisingly just released three classic Paramount films on DVD, one each from the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s – An American Tragedy, Kitty and The Private War of Major Benson, but will they give us any more in the foreseeable future? Nothing has been announced.

1931’s An American Tragedy, directed by Joseph von Sternberg, was the first of two films based on Theodore Dreiser’s 1925 novel of the same name. 1951’s A Place in the Sun, directed by George Stevens, was the second.

Dreiser, who died in 1945, disliked the 1931 version and wasn’t around for the second but he probably wouldn’t have liked that one either. Both truncate his 800 page novel, leaving out the central character’s childhood which leads to his taking on low paying jobs which do not satisfy his ambitions and lead to murder. Actually the 1931 version provides more background beginning with lead Phillips Holmes’ job as a bellboy in a Kansas City hotel. Montgomery Clift in the later version is first seen as a factory supervisor, a job the character had later on. Frances Dee, like Elizabeth Taylor in the later version, is a ravishing beauty, while Sylvia Sidney, like Shelley Winters in the later version, is the plain, poor girl who winds up pregnant and drowned. Lucille LaVerne has a larger part as the protagonist’s mother than Anne Revere had in the remake. Irving Pichel is even more over-the-top than Raymond Burr was twenty years later as the bloodthirsty prosecutor trying Holmes for murder. Both films are fascinating in their own way.

1945’s Kitty from Rosamund Marshall’s best-seller was directed by Mitchell Leisen, many of whose films including Hold Back the Dawn, To Each His Own, and The Mating Season, are still sadly missing on commercial DVD in the U.S. although imports of both Hold Back the Dawn and To Each His Own can be found.

Kitty follows the misadventures of an 18th Century wench played by Paulette Goddard in what was her most famous role. Goddard, Ray Milland, Patric Knowles, Sara Allgood, Reginald Owen, Cecil Kellaway, Eric Blore and a sublime Constance Collier head the merry cast. The film was nominated for an Oscar for Art Direction.

Now that we’ve finally gotten Goddard’s Leisen on DVD, can we hope for a 100th birthday release next year of Olivia de Havilland’s Oscar-nominated Lesien Hold Back the Dawn, and her Oscar-winning Leisen To Each His Own?

1955’s The Private War of Major Benson from TV director Jerry Hopper is a rare Charlton Heston comedy in which the action star plays a loudmouthed Army officer who is assigned to the ROTC program at an academy for young boys. Julie Adams co-stars as his love interest, a psychiatrist, while child actor Tim Hovey steals the film out from under Heston, Adams and William Demarest. It was nominated for an Oscar for Best Motion Picture Story.

Giving credit where it’s due, there have been a number of stunning Blu-ray upgrades this year of classic films previously released on DVD. The standout is the restored 1776, which was produced by Jack L. Warner for Columbia in 1972 after he left Warner Bros. Proud of the film directed by Peter H. Hunt, he screened it at the Nixon White House where Richard Nixon balked at the song “Cool, Cool, Considerate Men”, parts of “Piddle, Twiddle and Resolve,” and several lines of dialogue that he found offensive to his conservative ideals, requesting that Warner have them removed from the film. Warner agreed and ordered the technicians at Columbia to make the cuts and destroy the negatives relating to the cuts. Warner, however, did not have the clout at Columbia that he did at Warner Brothers and although the cuts were made, the negatives were not destroyed. A previous DVD release restored some of them and included other cuts as extras, but everything has now been brought up to snuff and inserted back in the film where it belongs.

Other classic Blu-ray upgrades of note by month include: 1946’s The Razor’s Edge, 1981’s On Golden Pond, 1989’s My Left Foot and Henry V, and 1979’s Breaking Away in January; 1956’s Lust for Life in February; 1953’s The Bandwagon and Kiss Me Kate, and 1962’s David and Lisa in March; 1933’s 42nd Street, 1934’s Imitation of Life and its 1959 remake, 1942’s Sullivan’s Travels, 1947’s Odd Man Out, and 1993’s The Remains of the Day in April; 1952’s Limelight in May; 1939’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Ninotchka in June; and 1984’s Places in the Heart, 1985’s My Beautiful Laundrette, and 1959’s The Fabulous Baker Boys in July. All of them are looking better than ever.

This week’s new releases include The Divergent Series: Insurgent and Far From the Madding Crowd.