You take your good news where you find it!
The good news is director John Ford's tribute to his ancestral home of Ireland is coming to Blue Ray on January 22, 2013.
This is how Amazon.com describes it:
Newly re-mastered in HD from a 4K SCAN of the ORIGINAL NEGATIVE. John Ford's The Quiet Man celebrates one of Hollywood's most romantic and enduring epics. The first American feature to be filmed in Ireland's picturesque countryside. Ford richly imbued this masterpiece with his love of Ireland and its people. Sean Thornton (John Wayne) in an American boxer who swears off fighting after he accidentally kills an opponent in the ring. Returning to the Irish town of his youth, he purchases the home of his birth and finds happiness when he falls in love with the fiery Mary Kate (Maureen O'Hara). But her insistence that Sean conduct his courtship in a proper Irish manner with matchmaker Barry Fitzgerald along for the ride as "chaperone" is but one obstacle to their future happiness: the other is her brother (Victor McLaglen), who spitefully refuses to give his consent to their marriage, or to honor the tradition of paying a dowry to the husband. Sean could care less about dowries, he would've punched out the bullying McLaglen long ago if he hadn't sworn off fighting. But when Mary Kate accuses him of being a coward and walks out on him, Sean is finally ready to take matters into his own hands, the resulting fistfight erupts into the longest brawl ever filmed, followed by one of the most memorable reconciliations in movie history! The Quiet Man won a total of two Academy Awardsr including Best Director (Ford) and Best Cinematography and received five more nomination including Best Picture, Best Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor (McLaglen).To pre-order go here:
http://www.amazon.com/Quiet-Man-Blu-ray-Barry-Fitzgerald/dp/B009YX8LO6/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1352346922&sr=1-1&keywords=quiet+man
I own it on regular DVD and the picture is very bad. It's almost better on my purchased VHS tape. However, in addition to issuing it out on Blu ray, it has been restored . The link below outlines the process:
http://www.directedbyjohnford.com/blog/general/olive-films-confirms-remastered-quiet-man-coming-to-blu-ray/
Some quotes:
Although original elements of The Quiet Man were restored by UCLA in the 1980s, the resulting DVD transfers have been less than stellar,
a 3-strip Technicolor film like The Quiet Man needs special care. We’ve done a 4K scan off the original negative from the studio’s archives but that’s just the beginning. There’s a very complicated re- mastering process that needs to be done for a Technicolor film like this and we want to get it right.I first saw this movie as a kid in the early 1950 in the back seat of my folks car at a drive-in. I can still hear my dad's laugh at the beginning of the big fight scene between The Duke and Victor McLaglen.
