Tag Archives: blu ray discs
A Disturbance In The Force
In the famous words of Obi-Wan Kenobi, “I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.” He’s right. And since Alderaan has already been destroyed, we are safe in assuming that George Lucas is messing with Star Wars yet again.
In our last podcast, we discussed some of the changes that Lucas is making to Episode I, specifically, replacing the horrible Yoda puppet with CGI. I have no problem with that because that puppet looked horrible. Absolutely horrible… I also don’t have the same feelings towards the prequel trilogy that I do for the original trilogy so it’s easier for me to let changes that actually improve the films slide. The original trilogy however has been messed with quite enough thank you. Unfortunately not all of those changes have made the movies better.
When it was announced that all six Star Wars films would be available on Blu-Ray, everyone knew that changes would be made. I think that everyone assumed that these changes would be mostly technical and not-so-secretly hoped that we’d get to see wampas in Echo Base or the sandstorm on Tatooine. Instead we get Obi-Wan Kenobi performing his rendition of the Wilhelm scream and blinking ewoks. If that’s not enough, we also get Darth Vader being further pussified.
I hate George Lucas so much right now. If anybody happens to come across him today, please punch him the back of the head for me.
Where Have All The Special Features Gone?
Next Tuesday, the biggest blockbuster of the year will make it’s triumphant DVD debut. This film also happens to be a geek-friendly movie based on one of the coolest super heroes in history. If you haven’t figured it out by now, I’m talking about The Dark Knight. This is one DVD that will be making it’s way into my collection.
I have a major gripe over the way that movie studios have been screwing people that buy DVDs over the past few years. When DVDs first started hitting the market, they were advertised as having super cool bonus features including deleted scenes, commentaries, trailers, bloopers, featuretes, etc. DVDs were a gold mine for the movie lover that enjoys useless information in documentary form. Those days are now gone, and I don’t even blame the introduction of Blu-Ray discs. I blame greedy movie stuidos that know that movie geeks will pay extra for this stuff.
The Dark Knight DVD release is a perfect example of what I’m talking about. Warner Brothers decided that there will be single-DVD releases in both widescreen and full-screen. These will have the movie. Um… OK. It wasn’t that long ago that the single-disc version would be a veritable cornucopia of extras. If you want any of those, you’ll have to upgrade to the twice as expensive two-disc DVD. This will include:
That may seem like a lot but guess what? Regular DVD player owners are getting screwed. The Blu-Ray version comes with all of the above plus the following:
My question is this: what does everyone think of how movie studios enticed us into the DVD market by offering all manner of sweetness only to move said sweetness to multi-disc versions of the film? I can understand it but I hate it. And for those of us who hate Sony and refuse to buy their products, what about giving us über versions of regular DVDs a la The Lord of the Rings? Is that really too much to ask? We used to get these things for the price of a DVD and now we don’t and that just pisses me off.