Step Right Up and Behold the Mighty Silver Discus of Untold Powers!
Monday, October 6, 2003I love it when I’m looking at the back of a DVD that is a clearly a bare-bones, movie-only feature-poor release. Invariably the studio will try to market the movie as LOADED WITH SPECIAL FEATURES!
Why, it’s practically bursting with supplementary material!
But, of course, after careful examination, the aforementioned “special features” usually turn out to be an exciting combination of COLLECTABLE BOOKLET! and INTERACTIVE MENUS!
Holy shit, I’m really getting my money’s worth here! I will surely experience CRITTERS 3 the way the director always intended—WITH 2.0 STEREO SOUND! and SPANISH SUBTITLES!
What I love even more is that every single title on DVD is either a Collector’s Edition, a Special Edition, a Platinum Edition, or—if we’re really lucky—a Special Collector’s Platinum Edition!
NOW WITH SPECIAL KEEP-SAKE PACKAGING!
I haven’t seen such blatant hype over selling a product since I was swindled into a buying a bottle of Cousin Horatio’s Medicinal Snake Oil at the county fair.
But I couldn’t help myself. It was only $39.95 and it came in what I was told was a collectable bottle that clearly stated: NOW IN LIQUID FORM FOR A LIMITED TIME ONLY.
Hell, I couldn’t NOT buy it.
Ryan says:
Consider this.
To buy the soundtrack for Chicago will run you 16-20 bucks (depends how gullable/thrifty you can be). The dvd will cost you no more than twnety five bucks (again taking thrift and stupidity into account).
For, at the most, five dollars more, you get in addition to the music, the movie and whatever extras or goodies therein.
So something is wrong with this picture. While the movie industry learned it’s lesson well with the vhs platform (beta surrenders) the music industry has learned nothing from any of it’s previous media, whether vinyl, 8track, tape or cd.
Pricing pricing pricing! Not dependancey on a storage medium.
As a side note (as if this entire post wasn’t) I believe the decline in cd sales has only one determining factor. Baby boomers have finished replacing their music collection.
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Zombie Claire says:
I’m all about the INTERACTIVE MENUs!
Stephanie says:
Ohhhhhh thank you for just making my day! This entry is hilarious. I’m glad I’m not the only one who wonders how Pauly Shore’s Biodome was chosen to be a “Limited Release Box Set Platinum Special Collectors Editon With Twenty-Eight Hours of Additional Footage.”
fink says:
Forget the interactive menus, have you ever used a DVD with “Chapter Selection”? It means you can instantly start watching the movie at your favourite part.
I just bought the Terminator DVD boxset for the fifth time. This one has 345 hours of extras including previously unseen footage of Arnold picking fluff out of his bellybutton when he isnt piching bums or squeezing the boobs of the females on set. What a character!
This new special edition platinum collectors collectors collectors edition also has a 150 minute documentary on how they got Edward Furlong to sound less whiny using the newest (at the time, of course) 3D modelling and sound editing technology. There are split-screen comparisons showcasing the difference in his whininess.
I almost can’t wait until they release the new Terminator movie on DVD so I can get the new box set that includes 3 with the other 2. I can only hope we get the set painters comments on how not downloading movies meant he got a job painting dog pee stains on the animal hospitals floors for those scenes.
fink says:
All sarcasm aside, the best special feature is a really good commentary track. A track that gives insight into the vision/thought process behind the the movie and also gives up little tidbits of info on how the movie was made (for that Cliff Claven inside all of us).
Some good ones to look out for are :
Any Farrelly Brothers movie.
Quentin Tarantino (he only wrote this movie) on True Romance.
Sam Mendes on Road to Perdition.
Coppola on Godfather 1,2 AND 3.
The pop ups on BTTF trilogy.
Just to name a few.
To me, a good commentary track and some deleted scenes are the best additonal features.
Vampyre Jenny says:
The post mortem featurette on the “Crimson Rivers” DVD beats any other commentary or special feature, hands down!
I have yet to see another DVD commentary where the actors, editors, writers and director POINT OUT the film’s flaws/failings and openly mock the film.
ryan says:
Allright, allright. I understand your anger with some. However, I think I can assume that we’ve both seen enough dvd’s to know that they are putting as much as is available onto the DVD. Even if it sucks.
But this is the one thing that seperates the music from the movie industry if you ask me. The movie industry is trying.
I mentioned CD’s already, but CD’s aren’t the only medium that is compromised by business practices. Look at video games. There are some pretty horrible games and they all cost 70-80 bucks!!?! What happened to Matrix Reloaded again? Perhaps you’ll remember this one. The worst game flop of all time. I had this game. Words cannot describe the pain.
My guess is the bad dvd extras come from production houses that don’t take the dvd into account when they are making the film. Other wise they’d have more scene depiction and commentary than just one “best boy to the key grip’s” home movie footage of 30 minutes. But the effort is there to scrounge together every last inch of possible extra that could be conjured. This (believe it or not) is still a good thing. Because it shows they are responding to consumer demand.
Robot Johnny says:
Oh absolutely… my only complaint is that some DVD packaging tries to pawn off “chapter selection” and “interactive menus” as special features.
I’m amazed at how close DVD and CD prices are considering that the production of a movie involved much more money, time, artists, musicians, actors, craftsmen, technicians, marketing, etc… If I walk into HMV I’m surprised at how many CDs actually cost more than the average DVD.
VampyreJenny says:
Don’t you see, that’s THEIR EVIL PLAN! Soon, we’ll have to replace our CD collections with DVD-Audio because DVD-Audio will be “better quality”, cheaper AND offer “special features”.
That reminds me, when are they going to release ZOO-TV on DVD?