DVD Review Thread

[Reply #160 on:]

I saw Van Helsing last night, or should I say this morning. I sleep so late on weekends.  Anyway it was great, not very scary, mmm perhaps just a little bit. Van Helsing is like James Bond, except he doesn’t eliminate enemies/spies from other countries, he eliminates all the legendary Monsters, like Dracula, Werewolves, Frankenstein…etc  He even gets to choose his weapons like James Bond…Ha Ha ^.^  The lady who played the princess, was the lady from Pearl harbour. She looked so different in this movie that I did not recognise her.

 

[Reply #161 on:]

*bump*

DVD Review for: 24: The Complete 1st Series.

After falling in love with the current season and the hype surrounding this show, I thought I'd give the original series a chance.

The First Complete Series is pretty lacking, as far as DVD sets go.  While the content of the episodes are absolutely positively without a doubt some of the best television ever, the rest of the DVD set fails pretty bad. Each disc contains four "hour long" episodes (45 min. w/o commercials) and a language/subtitle feature.  The final disc contains an alternate ending and a short, mostly P.R., introduction to the show via Keifer Sutherland. And that's about it, honestly. Perhaps FOX didn't trust the show enough to give any big special features (even though its huge with fans and critics). There are no behind the scenes documentaries, only one short commentary, no actor bios, not even chapter selections for episodes.

Seasons 2 and 3 have all the cool stuff you'd expect (commentaries, scene studies, deleted scenes, etc.) so I wonder why the first season has nothing. Perhaps they didn't keep track of that stuff?

Content: A++
DVD aspects: D

[Reply #162 on:]

*buuuuuuuuuuuuuuum.....p*   


13 Episodes + the The X-Files Episode, "Jump The Shark"

Show spoiler

The one where they die, noooes!   

* 3 Double-sided Discs (in slim DVD cases)
* Bonus Pilot episode is included (has a weird plot involving flying a plane into the WTC, made well before 9/11, spooky!)
* TV Spots (terrible!)
* Making of Featurette (quite good)
* Directors/Producers commentary on choice episodes (good too, they have some funny/interesting stuff to say)

Awesome series that died before its time (familiar!), I caught most of them while they played on TV here (even though they were on late) and this set has the few that I missed, and I'll watch them again and again.
The comic relief of the X-Files world in 14 45 (ish) minute episodes that take our intrepid, bungling investigators from Mission: Impossible spoofs, to dressing up in lederhosen, to tango dancing competitions.
Hilarious A+.   

[Reply #163 on:]

King Kong[/u]

Produced by “DVD Acadamy” in Korea, this is one of the only digital copies of the classic 1934 monster-rampage flick “King Kong” available for American DVD players.  I was very much the blind man at the elephant, never having seen the real thing and trying to interpolate the film from the various references to it in popular culture.  However, no monster rampage DVD collection would be complete without it.

Feature
The feature film is of surprisingly good quality considering the originals are over 70 years old.  Various artifacts seen throughout the 100 minute play time are the result of age and archaic negative printing rather than poor encoding.

Since the DVD was made in Korea, one would expect that the languages available would be Korean.  Oddly, the only two audio tracks are English and German.  Korean subtitles are available along with German and Japanese, but there are no English subtitles.  It should also be noted that there is a screen at the beginning of the film (the alleged Arabian proverb) is also auf Deutch.

Menus
All of the menus feature music from the film’s soundtrack.  The background of the main menu comprises Kong’s first encounter with Anne Darrow.  The rest of the menus are otherwise static.  The main menu is grainy and one of the typefaces used is stylized, but not in the style of the film.  The other fonts are plain and purple, changing to orange when selected.  The design of the other menus is basic and unimpressive, each featuring a posterized version of a frame of the film and a background consisting of haphazardly arranged, blandly colored, geometric shapes.  The scene selection menu is slightly better, but the bottom border looks like a silhouette of a bad science fiction city, not New York.

Extras
Many of the special features on this disk are unavailable to those who do not know how to read Korean.  The “Synopsis”, “Cast and Crew”, and “Special Effects” sections are all written in Korean.  There is also a photo gallery with several shots from the film and maybe a half dozen behind-the-scenes shots.  The disc also includes a 23-minute “Making Film,” that appears to be a made-for-TV “making of” documentary.  Most of the talking heads are film historians; perhaps the only crewmember still alive is the sound director who appears as well.

Conclusion
I expect that with the upcoming release of a re-envisioning of the movie, there will be a bigger demand for DVD copies of the original stateside, and those, I hope, will be packaged in and geared toward those who speak English.  This disk was not a bad deal for setting me back a total of 12 bucks on eBay.

5/8 Stars.

[Reply #164 on:]

You know the official non-Korean version comes out in a couple months, right?  I'm pretty stoked actually, as I've never seen the film and would like to see it in pristine condition.

Not that I've never bought bootlegs on ebay either.  I have some OT Star Wars ones.

[Reply #165 on:]

The O.C. Second Season

Well if you don't like The O.C. in the first place then the second season probably won't convince you either. For those who are into that sort of stuff I thought the first half of the season was very funny and fast moving but towards the second half they seem to be repeating patterns from season one which isn't really much fun at all. But the most annoying thing I think is that the UK DVD has lost all the extras (apart from one commentary). So the box set only contains 6 DVDs whereas in the US it contains 7. I think that's pretty appalling but it's FOX so what would you expect.


content: A
DVD extras: F(ail) of the UK version. US has lots of extras

[Reply #166 on:]

View from the Top (2003)

I have seen this movie three times and I love it every time. I'm not sure why so many people didn't like it. Perhaps it wasn't "blockbuster" enough for them or perhaps because there is no nudity. I love the hair and the costumes; Gwyneth Palthrow is very lovely in the movie. I wouldn’t mind see it again, it’s very delightful and enjoyable to watch.

A-

[Reply #167 on:]

Max and Paddy Road To Nowhere

The DVD is brilliant and I especially love the deleted scenes:

Show spoiler

Paddy caught Max pleasuring himself on the toilet
and the one where the girls spike Paddy’s drink and he frozed.

The outtakes were really funny as well. The only disappointing thing about the DVD is that Peter Kay and Patrick McGuiness are not featured on the commentary.

----------------

[Reply #168 on:]

The commentaries are a huge disappointment, they feature different random celebrities:

Ep1: Colin Murray & Edith Bowman from Radio 1
Ep2: Shaun Ryder & Bez from Happy Mondays
Ep3: Vernon Kay & Tess Daly
Ep4: Ditto
Ep5: Keith Harris & Orville
Ep6: Stuart Maconie & Stuart Hall

[Reply #169 on:]

Lost: The complete first season

The first season of "Lost" comes on seven Buena Vista-produced discs in a fold-out box covered by a plastic sleeve.   Each of the discs, minus the bonus disc, bears the likeness of one of the 14 major castaways, and the set comes with a guide book that describes each of the episodes that are on each of the discs.  I don't like the fact that I have to uncoil the entire thing to get to disk seven, and the double-stacking of the disks on each page is a space-saving pet peeve, but it's a slick-looking package all around.

Feature
As it is when broadcast, the frames are 1.78:1 widescreen.  The picture quality of the episodes is absolutely fantastic.  I imagine Lost is filmed digitally, which would make the jump to DVD super smooth.  Sound quality is awesome.  It really let's every bit of the monster's roar and every nuance of the soundtrack come through in a big way.

Menus
You might not expect to see fully-animated and soundtracked menus on a DVD set costing only $36, and you'd be half right.  The main menus are fully-animated using looping footage from the show.  The sub menus are soundtracked, but are static images.  Episodes don't get their own indivdual menus, so chapter selection has to be done with the 'seek' button.  Fortunately, the chapters are well-placed.  One of them usually begins right after the opening titles, and I think they're generally aligned to commercial breaks.

Extras
Only a few of the episodes have commentaries, which is a bit disappointing.  Usually the commentaries include two of the "filmmakers" and a cast member.  They're pretty cool to listen to.  Several times during the commentary they'll just zone out and watch the show, but they do offer a lot of insight into the making of Lost.

The bonus feature disc is chock-full of goodies including Jimmy Kimmel's expedition to the set (pretty funny), a blooper reel (very funny), and several documentary shorts outlining the creation and production of the show (very intriguing).  One of the documentaries is a recording of an audience-asks-the-panel thing the cast and producers did at some crazy television museum, which was really funny.  The ensemble is quite an entertaining group.  One exchange of note went something like this...
Audience member: ...my mom's favorite is Josh [Holloway]...
Jorge Garcia (Hurley): He's my mom's favorite too.
Everyone laughs.
Jorge: Seriously, I called home during production and I was like, "Yeah mom, I can't tell you who, but one of the characters on the show dies."  And she was like, "Not Sawyer!"

Conclusion
Serious Lostphiles will buy this set no matter how good or crappy I say it is, so casual and moderate Lostphiles take heed.  If you have missed any significant part of the first season I highly recommend this set.  If you have not seen the first season in sequence I highly recommend this set.  If you have $36 that you're not going to blow on booze, hookers, or your retirement fund I highly recommend this set.

7.5/8 stars.

[Reply #170 on:]

Batman Begins
Yaysey!
Tim Burtons has moved to number 2 on my list of Batmans (the list being three long, with this one and Tim Burtons Batman and it's sequel being next, not sequels, they don't exist)

If you haven't seen the movie, buy it and get the special features for FREE! 

Special Features:
Some very nice documentaries about how they adapted a story from the comics, made stuff for the film, including the Tumbler, an actual, factual working Batmobile, OMGOMG GIMME!
Others are set designs and the batsuit design.
There's character info hidden among the comic  book style menus too.

Another tells how Christiam Bale prepared for the role, fight training and putting on too much weight after being nearly anorexic for The Machinist (Fatman!).

One more thing, Christopher Nolan is one of the most boring directors I've ever seen or heard.

A