An apparently restored DCP of Peter Bogdanovich‘s Paper Moon was shown at last April’s TCM Classic Film Festival. I didn’t catch it but old films never play this festival unless they’ve been restored or spiffed up for high-def distribution. And yet there’s been no announcement about a Paper Moon Bluray since. (You can at least rent or buy an HDX version on Vudu.com.) Hollywood Reporter critic Todd McCarthy caught the TCM screening and called Bogdanovich’s direction “so, so strong [with] deep focus photography so sharp it literally quickens the pulse,” summoning comparisons to Orson Welles and late ’30s John Ford. “I liked it markedly better than I did at the time [of release]. Ben Mankiewicz said something I didn’t know at the beginning, [which is] that it was originally supposed to be John Huston directing Paul Newman and Newman’s daughter, [but] that fell apart.”

“Paper Moon doesn’t come off as a homage to earlier beloved directors and styles (as Bogdanovich’s What’s Up, Doc? did, and his The Last Picture Show to a smaller extent). No, it achieves something quite different: a period piece that uses generic conventions only when they apply, so that we see the Depression through the eyes of characters who are allowed to be individuals. Whatever Addie and Moses do in this movie, we have the feeling it’s because they want to (or have to) and not that the ghost of some 1930s screenwriter is prompting them.” — from Roger Ebert‘s initial review.