Bertolucci

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The last major film personally produced by Jack L. Warner at the studio that still carries his and his brothers’ names — it was released after the last surviving Warner soldA the lotA to Seven Arts — “Camelot” carries a special resonance for Hollywood buffs, in addition to the original Broadway musical being permanently linked with the brief, shining presidency of John F. Kennedy in the public’s mind.

A commercial and critical disappointment when it was released in 1967, Joshua Logan’s adaptation — recently newly upgraded to a great-looking Blu-ray special edition — now seems at least as appealing as George Cukor’s “My Fair Lady,” the other Lerner and Lowe stage musical produced by J.L. that won Oscar Best Picture’s award three years earlier (the Blu-ray of that one, from longtime owner CBS, looks horrendous).

Logan’s movie took its lumps at the time for replacing the stage Arthur and Guinevere, Richard Burton and Julie Andrews, with Richard Harris and Vanessa Redgrave. But 45 years out, that seems more like a wise choice — and Redgrave has had an enduring off-screen relationship and marriage with Franco Nero, the Italian actor who replaced the bilious Robert Goulet as Lancelot.

Unlike Warners’ 2003 DVD release that amped up the colors, the Blu-ray more faithfully reproduces the original earth-toned pallette of this melancholy romance, superbly carried by the vocals of Harris (who, let us not forget, had a huge pop hit with “MacArthur Park.”

The soundtrack of the three-hour roadshow version sounds great, and there’s a bonus CD with four songs bound into the 36-page Blu-ray book. In addition to features ported over from the DVD, there’s a new 30-minute featurette (in HD) and a commentary track by Stephen Farber.

Continuing to catch up with recent releases, here are some other notable titles that have received Blu-ray upgrades:

“1900” (1977) — Paramount has decided to license Bernardo Bertolucci’s epic covering the turbulent first 45 years of the 20th Century in Italy in a fantastic-looking HD transfer to Olive Films. A seriously great-looking film shot by Vittorio Storaro, this saga of two families has a heavyweight cast including Robert DeNiro, Gerard Depardieu, Donald Sutherland, Burt Lancaster, Dominique Sanda, Alida Valli and Sterling Hayden. Cut to four hours for U.S. release, the Blu-ray presents the full five-hour cut with an English-language track — the Italian actors are dubbed. The making-of featurettes from Paramount’s 2006 release aren’t carried over, but there is a 51-minute 2002 documentary on Bertolucci’s career.

“Buck Privates” (1941) — Abbott and Costello’s first vehicle, a huge hit (grossing $4 million on a reported budget of $180,000) that helped them supplant Deanna Durbin as the studio’s top attraction, looks surprisingly terrific in one of Universal’s official 100th Anniversary restorations, a Blu-ray/DVD combo pack packaged in book format. Like many of their early films, this is a World War II musical, and the big attraction here is The Andrews Sisters singing “Boogie-Woogie Bugle Boy” and “Apple Blossom Time.” When she isn’t being romanced by Lee Bowman and Alan Curtis, USO girl Jane Frazee warbles “I Wish You Were Here.” Bud and Lou join Shemp Howard, among others, for “When Private Brown Becomes A Captain.”

“To Catch a Thief” (1955) — I’ve said it many times before, but films shot in VistaVision and Technicolor make for the most mouth-watering Blu-ray classics.It’s hard to say what looks better — Cary Grant, Grace Kelly or the French Rivera — in this sharp, superlative rendition of Hitchcock’s frothy crime thriller. Copious extras are carried over from the out-of-print Centennial Collection DVD — a line that was discontinued well before Paramount’s actual 100th anniversary this year.

“A Trip to the Moon” (1902) — George Melies’ famous 15-minute short — painstakingly and beautifully restored from a crumbling hand-colored print discovered in Spain in the 1993 and the showpiece of last year’s “Hugo” — gets a spectacular Blu-ray release from Flicker Alley. Besides this seminal Jules Verne knockoff with impressive 110-year-old effects, the limited-edition DVD/Blu-ray combo set includes a fascinating feature-length documentary on the film and its restoration.

“Fort Apache” (1948) — The first part of John Ford’s “cavalry trilogy” (with John Wayne, Henry Fonda and Shirley Temple) gets the best-looking Blu-ray I’ve seen derived from a black-and-white RKO feature from this era. Blacks are crisp and there’s enough of a grain patina to give a film-like experience.

“Chinatown” (1974) — Roman Polanski’s neo noir classic is another high-def upgrade from Paramount’s defunct Centennial Collection line. The film looks great, and the copious extras carried over include a Robert Towne-David Fincher commentary track, as well as an illuminating feature-length documentary on the movie’s historical background.

“A Streetcar Named Desire” (1951) Alex North’s jazzy score is brilliantly represented in this upgrade of Elia Kazan’s taboo-busting adaptation of the Tennesee Williams play, which also highlights Harry Stradling Sr.’s shadowy black-and-white cinematography.

“Pillow Talk” (1959) Another landmark film and another of Universal’s official 100th anniversary restorations. The color levels, which had faded notably for this Eastmancolor title, have been pumped up for its Blu-ray debut — sometimes to garish levels, especially in the many split-screen scenes. Still, it’s hard not to like the first of the Doris Day-Rock Hudson comedies, especially when wolfish Hudson (who was gay in real life) pretends to be gay so Day can “cure” him.

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The Warner Archive CollectionA it taking pre-ordersA forA King Vidor’s “Billy the Kid” (1930), starring Johnny Mack Brown in the title role, Wallace Beery and KayA (“Madam Satan”) Johnson.A Also scheduled for June 5 is WAC’s third volume of Monogram westerns — eight of ‘em made between 1943 and 1951, and all starring Brown.

The TCM Vault CollectionA continues dipping into the Universal catalogue for “The 1930s Rareties Collection,” which offers the very welcome DVD debuts of Eddie Cline’s “Million Dollar Legs” (1932)A starring W.C. Fields and Jack Oakie; Raoul Walsh’s “Artists and Models” (1937) with Jack Benny and Ida Lupino; and Henry Hathaway’s “Souls at Sea” (1937) starring Gary Cooper and George Raft. Rounding out the set is Leo McCarey’s 1934 Mae West vehicle “Belle of the Yukon,” briefly available on DVD from Image back before the end of the last century.

Also due on Aug. 7, from Olive Films, are the Blu-ray debuts of Nicholas Ray’s never-on-DVD “Johnny Guitar” (1954) starring Joan Crawford, Sterling Hayden and Mercedes McCambridge, as well as an upgrade for John Ford’s “Rio Grande” (1950), the first teaming of John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara.

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Back in February, Google (GOOG) announced an experimental program to build and test-run high-speed broadband in select communities around the country. Once the company lays down the pipe, between 50,000 and 500,000 people will have what Google calls competitively priced access to Internet connections that will deliver information at one gigabit per second. When Google announced that cities would be free to pitch themselves as candidates for the project, hundreds of communities sent videos and promotional packages, applying to be part of the plan.

There’s still no word on which cities will make the cut, but Google has set up a new Web site to update the applicants and the public at large on the project’s latest phase. Dubbed “Google Fiber for Communities,” the site will create an opportunity for Americans to “learn more about fiber networks and keep up-to-date on our project.” “We hope this site helps to keep the conversation going,” wrote project manager Minnie Ingersoll.

Of course, the new site’s real purpose is to get people to pressure politicians to advance Google’s broadband agenda. And to its credit, Google makes no bones about this. The most prominent feature on Google’s new fiber site is a fat blue widget titled, “take action now,” which directs you to a page filled with advice on how to lobby government agencies from Congress to the local zoning board, pushing for new laws requiring the installation of broadband conduits during major road reconstructions.

Google has occasionally stumbled on public relations lately, but this is a real doozy of an idea. Civic leaders who want to find out how their city’s doing in the race to be part of the Google fiber project will come here and be directed to a chance to lobby for Google’s larger broadband scheme. Clever.

And, as PC World writer Jeff Bertolucci points out, let’s face it: Google is right. No one in the private sector is going to lay all that pipe and apply for permits to disrupt the lives of thousands of people unless there’s a pretty clear pathway to quick profits, and that’s just not going to happen. Only the government can make this sort of long-term investment. “Not only must the feds spearhead a national fiber campaign, but they’ve also got to take concrete steps to make it happen,” Bertolucci writes. “Legislation requiring conduit installation in federal transportation projects is a good start, and U.S. businesses should join Google in supporting it.”

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