Category — DVDs

The Sin City DVD comes out today. If your thinking of gettting it: don’t. There’s a much better version coming soon. Robert Rodriguez talks about it here

Disney has sent out a press release announcing the new Miyazaki DVDs their releasing on February 22. They will be Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Porco Rosso and The Cat Returns, NOT Totoro.

The Cat Returns is an odd choice since while it is a Ghibli film it is not directed Miyazaki. It’s also a semi-sequel to an other Ghibli film Whisper of the Heart which they haven’t released yet.

Can you spot the difference?

It’s the new pissed look on Yoda’s and Obi Wan’s face as they realise that Vader, who murdered planets full of people, gets to look young and beautiful; while they get to look old and wear Depends for the rest of eternity.

You can see some of the other changes being made to the DVDs here and here. Most of the other changes aren’t that bad. The new Jabba looks much better as does the fixed up Rancor scene.

IGN has news on the Hellboy DVDs. Like LOTR there will be a 2 disc theatrical edition at the end of July and a 3 disc extended edition in November. The 3 disc set will have all the same features as the 2 disc but with an extra disc of features and a 15 minute longer cut of the movie. So there doesn’t seem to be any point in getting the theatrical DVD at all.

Straight Dope Staff Report: When the zombies take over, how long till the electricity fails?

In other zombie news, the original Dawn of the Dead comes out in September on DVD in a 4 disc set. It will include the original theatrical cut, a new extended cut and the european Zombie cut. Plus a disc of features.

The remake comes to DVD in October with a theatrical cut and Director’s Cut. Both will be available in WideScreen and FullScreen, makeing it 4 different versions on DVD. I can’t believe that enough people buy wide screen to make it worth the trouble of putting them out. Also the theatrical DVD includes the scenes from the director’s cut as a special feature, so why not just buy the director’s cut?

This article mentions that Peter Jackson has finished editing the Extended Edition of The Return of the King and it’s 4 hours and 10 minutes long, a full 49 minutes longer then the theatirical version.

You can take a look at The Two Towers Gift Set here. Instead of bookends like The Fellowship this one comes with a Gollum statue. I was hoping for bookends of the two towers, it seemed the obvious choice, so this is a bit disappointing for me.

I bought Ran on DVD two weeks ago. I haven’t watched it yet but I put in the DVD to take a look and was disappointed by the quality of the DVD. The video is widescreen but it’s not anamorphic (go here to read why you want DVD’s to be anamorphic). The widescreen image is not centered it’s towards the top for screen so they would have room to put the subtitles on the bottom of the screen with out them running over the picture. Then the subtitles are HARD CODED to image. Instead of using the DVDs native ability to have removable subtitles, they encoded them in to the video. This makes them hard to read as the MPEG coding blurs the text.

It turns out that their are two versions of the DVD, on old shitty version that I accidentally bought, and the new version that’s anamorphic and has a bunch of extras. FUCK!!

Yahoo! News – Indiana Jones Finally Comes to DVD

Tue May 6,12:34 AM ET

By Brett Sporich

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – The “Indiana Jones” trilogy, one of the most requested film series for the DVD format, is finally slated for worldwide release Nov. 4 as “The Adventures of Indiana Jones — The Complete DVD Movie Collection,” a box set that will include a fourth disc specifically dedicated to bonus materials.

Peter Jackson mentions that he’s add 43 minutes to The Two Towers for the extended DVD edition here. He’s says the extra footage will mostly be character moments, something I found lacking in the theatrical version.

Oh, and the overused phrase “X, Y and Z, oh my!”, used by this story’s headline makes very, very angry. Feedsite SMASH!