This DVD collection of Something New, the second in a series of three Nell Shipman discs, updates Boise State University’s previous offerings that were available on VHS. On review, this edition comes up short when compared to the Milestone edition noted above. While it has been remastered for DVD release, this edition appears to utilize the same videotape masters prepared for the Boise State VHS release from 1992, as is evidenced by the right-hand ghosting of sharply constrasting picture elements such as intertitle letters, which is characteristic of analog videotape. The source print, which contains all of the print flaws noted in the Milestone edition, was likely the color-toned 35mm nitrate positive held by the UCLA Film and Television Archive.

The film is accompanied by a music score performed on piano by Craig Purdy.

This BSU edition adds supplementary items that are not part of the Milestone DVD edition noted above: an interview with Jack Benny’s daughter, Joan, and a one-reel advertising film, The Maxwell Yank in Hell’s Half-Acre (1918), that may well have been the inspiration for Something New (ironic, isn’t it?). In The Maxwell Yank, a filmmaker gears up a brand-new Maxwell automobile and takes it for an extended spin in the wilds of southern California. Viewers familiar with Something New will see several shots that are similar to those in the Shipman film: the Maxwell driving through the California desert and over large rocky formations. Jack Benny was, of course, associated for many years with the old Maxwell automobile, which was given its radio life by voice talent Mel Blanc. Also included is an introduction by Nell’s granddaughter Nina Shipman and Gary Lacher, the Oregon collector who recovered the only known nitrate print of A Bear, a Boy and a Dog, the 1921 rerelease version of Saturday Off (1920).

This Region 0 NTSC DVD edition is . . .