My first attempt at a TSM DVD Review

[Guest Wild Italiano]

Beauty and the Beast

 

Any good?

[Guest evenflowDDT]

I only skimmed the review, but for the third version of the film...what does it mean "work in progress" version? Is it all animatics/sketches?

[Guest Wild Italiano]

With fully animated bits here and there. Of course, the entire audio track is there as well.

[Guest Mole]

Good job, and it was Silence that won Best Picture.

[Guest DVD Spree]

Good stuff, dude.

 

I'm not a huge Disney freak, so I wasn't really into reading about the flick itself, but you've got a good style that's fun to read. And shit, it just gets me all wet to see writers who properly italicise film names when they use them.

 

The only thing I'd say - and this is a really picky thing - is maybe fiddle with teh formatting a tiny bit. I'd ditch the "Section A" parts and just have them as "The Movie", "THe Extras" etc.. And it might be worth adding an extra line break <br> after each section to separate new paragraphs from different sections of the review. It's cool to state outright that you're not interested in picture or sound quality, but on the other hand, I've been told that one of the greatest failings of certain Disney Platinum discs is their sacrificing imgae quality in favour of all the extras/alternate versions, so it's something that might be worth commenting on.

 

But yeah, overall, strong stuff - welcome to Pop Culture!

[Guest evenflowDDT]

I'd ditch the "Section A" parts and just have them as "The Movie", "THe Extras" etc.. And it might be worth adding an extra line break <br> after each section to separate new paragraphs from different sections of the review. It's cool to state outright that you're not interested in picture or sound quality, but on the other hand, I've been told that one of the greatest failings of certain Disney Platinum discs is their sacrificing imgae quality in favour of all the extras/alternate versions, so it's something that might be worth commenting on.

 

But yeah, overall, strong stuff - welcome to Pop Culture!

I agree with Spree on getting rid of "Section A" - when I was first doing DVD reviews (and will continue once finals are over, I swear!) I was worried that format might not make me "stand out", but truth be told, there are tons of DVD reviewers on the 'net, so outside of your community you're not likely to stand out anyway unless you review unusual titles or have a very strong writing style (which I'd like to say we at TSM have, but to be honest I really don't read too many other DVD review sites outside of my cult niche so I can't give a fair comparison). I'm not sure if this is why you're doing it with the "Section A" or not but it seems extraneous.

 

While I want to agree with Spree on the not mentioning image/sound quality as well, I can see where you're coming from as well D'Italiano. One of the reasons there's barely a paragraph in my reviews on image/sound quality (besides the fact that since many of my films are old and sourced from the last, faded print available, little is expected of them anyway) is because I don't have a "model system" (I use either my laptop or my old 22" mono TV) I wouldn't be able to notice any of the (often subtle, I don't care how heavily it's advertised) differences between transfers (even at times with still-shots, a la the recent T2 Extreme Edition, I can't notice a difference). Also, arguably, since D'Italiano is going to be doing mainly Disney films, this isn't as much an issue, because a vast majority of the Disney audience will be parents and kids who just care about the film, not any image/sound issues (and maybe not even special features...as a special features junkie though, I sure hope not! ), although to counter that, I doubt any such "intended audience" individuals inhabit TSM.

 

But I definitely agree with Polk's last bit...welcome to Pop Culture! The problem with such quality reviewers as us is we're definitely of the quality over quantity department - meaning what, two reviews a month max? I think that's the most I've ever cranked out