Guest TSMAdmin Report post Posted October 2, 2002 What’s On The Box: Get Me Out Of Here, I'm A Celebrity! What’s In The Player: Beyond The Mat "Holy crap Batman, the Joker stole all the news!" That’s how it feels, anyway. There’s literally FUCK ALL going on in the DVD world this week. Well, unless you bought the Jackie Brown DVD and found out it’s got a fucking error on it. Or if you live in the UK and you just bought the 24 boxset, in which case all fucking hell has broken loose and you’re currently boycotting Fox products. Check out the fun here. It’s a pretty slow week all round, to be fair. It was a bank holiday here on Monday, which meant a three-day weekend, and consequently an INSANE lethargy at work today. Christ knows how I managed to stay conscious all day tomorrow is gonna be hell. On the plus side, Monkey Ball 2 will be with me at the end of the week (if you think Mario is gonna last you longer than this you’re VERY much mistaken), which should allay some serious boredom and get the Cube parties off to a roll next term at college. And fuck me, I’ve nearly finished Flashback! I always thought I’d completed it on the MegaDrive (Genesis) all those years ago, but there’s all this stuff that I just don’t recognise now that I replay it. It’s just such a fucking ace game way better than most of the shit we get today it’s actually gonna be kind of sad when I finish it. Oh well. Got some nice feedback on the screenshotted review. Thanks guys it’s a work in progress, and Christ knows, it takes AGES to upload those bastards from my laptop, but I think it was worth it. I’ll probably do RoboCop next, since that review needs so much damn re-writing, and then I’ll work through all the other stuff ASAP so I can get on with writing some new reviews. Well, that’s about all the filler I can muster, so we may as well knock this on the head. Such as it is, ON WITH THE CONTENT~! WHAT’S HOT THIS WEEK A little warning aside from a couple of the big name releases, I only made it through to “H” on the release schedule. When you’re hot and tired, there’s just so many better things to do than trawl through 310 DVDs (yes, that’s how many were re/released this week) for the sake of a few cheap gags. The Reservoir Dogs 10th Anniversary Special Limited Edition ("Holy stupid lame long-winded DVD titles, Batman!") is probably number one on everybody’s shopping list, though it is a bit of a bittersweet pill to swallow. On the one hand, it’s anamorphic, and absolutely jam packed with enough extras to make your eyes bleed; on the other, it features one of the muddiest, dirtiest transfers to ever slip past quality control. At least, that’s what the release prints were like unless something fairly drastic ahs been done in the two and a half weeks since those went out, be prepared to be a little let down. To be honest, you may as well go pick up the old barebones version (that’s sure to be sitting in the bargain bin now the SE is out) as well, just so you’ve got a copy of the film that you can, you know, actually WATCH. Schoolhouse Rock is something that, as a limey, I completely missed out on. “I’m an Amendment to be, yes an Amendment to be…” is my only knowledge of this show, so I’m probably not the right person to give an opinion on it one way or the other. Most people I’ve spoken to seem to think it’s pretty cool though, so who am I to argue? The (Complete) Third Season of The Sopranos is out this week, but it’s been out here for ages so I’m not all that excited about it. Something I am excited about (in a twisted kinda way) is the Queen of The Damned DVD. Yeah yeah yeah, the film blew all kinds of knob, but vamp flicks are vamp flicks, and at least the soundtrack was cool. My girlfriend was telling me how the guy in QoTD was in the second Crow movie, and I thought she meant the guy who played Lestat. “Oh sure, he’s pretty spot-on,” I said, but it soon became apparent that she was talking about the OTHER guy, the ugly one with the receding hairline. Christ almighty, no wonder that franchise went right down the shitter. They should’ve just painted Iggy up and let him go nuts. Anyway, that’s about it for meaningful, big name new releases this week. Just FYI, The Bourne Identity that’s doing the rounds is the MINISERIES, not the recent movie. The series is a lot more faithful to the book, however, so if you’re a fan of that rather than the Hollywood version, you might want to check it out. Similarly, this week’s release of The Game (which has nothing to do with Triple H, thank God almighty) is just the same barebones re-release of the film, and not the Special Edition that’s still on the cards. I only mention because there was a while where the SE was supposed to be released August/September, and I’d hate someone to have pencilled it in on their calendar only to eat shit when they get the disc home. Fan of classic (read: camp) British Comedy might want to check out Are You Being Served?, which is available in six individual volumes, or as a complete set. Kind of along the same lines (as in, well, it was on TV) is The Miss Marple Gift Set, which I can only guess is a bunch of Agatha Christie’s best stories, although to be honest I really wasn’t all that inclined to find out. There’s a fair amount of shit this week too. I’m not just talking shit movies, I’m talking plain shit DVDs. For starters, there’s a SuperBit of Anaconda. A SUPERBIT! Holy fucking horse shit, what were they thinking. Currently the ultimate audiovisual presentation of a movie on the DVD format, and they put that piece of dick cheese on it. I just don’t get it. Well, maybe they needed the extra space to fit all of J-Lo’s fat ass on it. It’s NOT sexy, people the chick’s like Nidia, only more fucking annoying. Something else I don’t get is why the hell you’d release half of a wonderful two-disc set. I mean, the single disc versions are going for like three bucks less than the two-discers surely, people can’t be THAT hard up that they’d really feel the need to only buy half of a fucking set? And if they’re only getting half of it, shouldn’t they only be charged, y’know, HALF, instead of some measly three-dollar discount? At any rate, if you’re really that desperate, there are “Single Disc Editions” of Big Trouble In Little China, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Fight Club, Final Fantasy, and a shitload more previously awesome sets out this week. Just to piss me off even more, there’s a bunch of fullscreen releases this week too, with everything from Tom Hanks’ Big to Dr Dolittle 1 & 2. Fuck this for a game of chess. One final brief, shining light before I got bored of scrolling up and down the release list was Don’t Try This At Home The Steve-O Video. Well, I’ve got all the CKYs and Jackasses on VCD, so I may as well pick this up too. There’s a great website somewhere online that sells ALL of the Jackass crew’s old videos. Steve-Os got about three or four different videos, there’s some Johnny Knoxville stuff, as well as the CKYs and Bam’s other skateboarding tapes. Shit, I can’t remember where it is. I think there’s a link to it at Ryan Dunn’s website, but I’m not sure. I’ll try and find out for next week. Daddy of The Week: Well, LOOOONG before I got to H and gave up, I came across plenty of shit. Attack of The Giant Leeches, The Erotic Time Machine, The Indestructible Man even the great Bela Lugosi strikes from the grave with The Gorilla. Then there's Dan Curtis’ Dracula (which, oddly, doesn’t sound half as cool as “Bram Stoker’s Dracula”) and The Excel Saga (which may or may not be about the exploits of spreadsheets). But to be honest, with ANA-FUCKING-CONDA getting a SuperBit release, everything else just pales in comparison. Ben Affleck has fallen so very far in my estimation. I DREAM OF TEEVEE Some nice TV content heading to US shores this year and next, and it’s looking like more and more shows are going to get DVDed now that studios finally seem to realise that there’s the demand from us, the little people. See buying all those barebones copies of Babylon 5 DID pay off after all. Huh? HUH?!? On October 15th, you’ll be able to pick up the entire 22-episode first season run of Law and Order in a six-disc set loaded with (as yet to be confirmed) extras. The set will run a cool hundred bucks, but I’m not so begrudging of a price tag like that for such a high quality show, six discs, and twenty-two full-length episodes. Especially with the exchange rate the way it is… Baretta is a show that rings no bells with me, but hell, what do I know. Nonetheless, Baretta: Season One will feature all 13 episodes on a three-disc set, while The Best of Baretta contains the very rare pilot episode and two episodes featuring Sammy Davis Jr. tunes. Both street on October 29th for forty bucks and twenty bucks respectively. Also on the way in the not-too-distant future are the long-awaited Battlestar Galactica (which will first see a MONSTER Region 4 release), Sliders, Quantum Leap, Earth: Final Conflict, Dragnet, Emergency, Magnum P.I. (Yes! Yes! Yes!) and The Rockford Files. I still have to wonder where the hell Cheers and Due South might be, but hey, I have faith (and soon Tom Selleck). Thanks to The Times and IGN. SHITE HAWK DOWN Sorry, in-joke. It’s sad that this is actually the ONLY other news item of genuine interest, but it’s a Ridley Scott thing so hey, I can at least go off on a tangent about Blade Runner to make out like I’m at least interested. Um, so, Blade Runner. It was really... good. With the, you know, robots and stuff. And that girl was hot too, once she let her hair down. I think I’m going to learn origami now, just so I can leave tin foil unicorns lying around in people’s houses so they’ll think they’re replicants and start shitting themselves. And Christ, what the hell happened to Rutger Hauer? He used to be so badass. Split Second was fucking ace (well, except that the baddie was a little… “inspired”), and I seem to remember Wanted Dead Or Alive being good hell, even the Guiness adverts were great. So where the hell is he now? “I want more life, father!” That shit was HARD if I was a director, I’d cast him in everything I made just to have him around to say all the cool lines. Anyway, Black Hawk Down. Well, some specs have arisen from the upcoming two-disc International Special Edition of the movie, which will be followed next year in the US by a THREE-DISC Special Edition with even more stuff. Crazy. As it stands now though, features for the two-discer include the anamorphic/5.1 double whammy, Ridley Scott and Jerry Bruckheimer commentary (now THAT should be interesting), audio commentary with author Mrk Bowden and Screenwriter Ken Nolan (I love these tracks where they get the original writer and the screenwriter together to talk it out), and ANOTHER commentary with Task Force Ranger veterans. Wow. Then there’s ‘The Essence of War’ making-of documentary, ‘Designing Mogadishu’ featurette, production and design archive, “Ridleygrams”, photo galleries and a Jerry Bruckheimer photo album, six deleted scenes, a narrated opening and alternate ending (um, sorry run that by me again?) all with optional commentary. So, um, yeah. How ‘bout that Gladiator? Many thanks to The Bits. Well, mercifully, that’s over and done with. Jesus God, there better be something going on next week or I’m just going to go ahead and make up my own damn news. “The original Star Wars Trilogy has been released in a nine-disc Supreme Edition, with the original theatrical releases on one disc, George Lucas’ recent Special Editions on the second, and a third disc full of extras, including no less than thirty minutes of deleted scenes per film.” Yeah, that’d be SWEET. Anyway, time to bail. Sorry it wasn’t more action-packed, but hey don’t blame the messanger. Until next week: “YOU CAN CALL ME JACK, OR GO JACK OFF.” “JACK SHIT IS WHAT YOU ARE~!” Jay Spree Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
