The one thing I definitely want to see included on the Shining SE is the epilogue that was deleted after the film had already been released. Of course, I doubt we'll see it. I recall Jan Harlan saying something along the lines of "Stanley didn't want any of that footage seen" in response to...
I've seen the specs for the fourth season box set and once again we won't be seeing Spirit of Christmas included among the bonus features. Now I've heard that there could be some rights issues involved. But if that's the case, then why is it still possible to download the cartoon from the...
When you consider that Christmas is just around the corner, wouldn't it make sense to include the original Spirit of Christmast short as a bonus feature or easter egg? I have to imagine that the folks at Comedy Central are getting tired of all the requests for a legitimate release of this...
It looks like someone finally saved me the trouble of mentioning The Wild Bunch. But how about An American in Paris? Hell, virtually any of the Freed unit musicals would merit a special edition. And while the existing Wizard of Oz set is quite good, I would love to see what could be done...
Well, I suppose it's a good sign that the folks at MGM are still talking about a restoration of this film. I saw this little tidbit on the In70mm web site: "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" Cinerama Dome, Los Angeles, USA October 16 - 19, 2003 New 70MM print 40th anniversaries of the...
I noticed that this series is now out-of-print. I believe I ended up purchasing every one of the DVD titles, but can anyone explain why so many of the VHS titles weren't released on DVD? It seems likes there are enough films left over for a Creature double feature (Revenge of the Creature/The...
I'm fairly certain that Fantasia (1940) was the first commercially released film to feature a multichannel soundtrack (at least at limited roadshow engagements). The "FantaSound" system utilized three screen channels as well as auditorium speakers (although I'm not exactly sure whether there was...
Has anybody put together a guide to "essential" laserdiscs -- either laserdiscs of films not yet available (or unlikely to become available) on DVD or laserdiscs with exclusive content? I'm already familiar with the 12 to 5 column on DVD Angle, but there hasn't been any new columns in quite a...
Well now I'm thoroughly depressed.
I've written e-mails to both the Film Foundation and Roger Ebert regarding this, and hopefully I'll hear back from one of them.
It seems pretty clear that we need a white knight to come forward to spearhead the preservation efforts with respect to one or...
All the ads I've seen only mention four different covers for the Reservoir Dogs DVD: Mr. Pink (Steve Buscemi), Mr. White (Harvey Keitel), Mr. Blonde (Michael Madsen) and Mr. Orange (Tim Roth). But Amazon.com shows a fifth version, with Mr. Brown (Quentin Tarantino) on the cover. How rare is this...
This is ridiculous. Are we now trying to erase the Twin Towers from history? Are they going to round up all of the prints of the 1976 King Kong and destroy them? (ok that may not have been the best example, but the use of the Twin Towers is NOT the reason why this film ought to be fogotten)...
I find that a little hard to believe. I don't remember any music being particularly integral to the film. In any event, if music really IS the problem, they should simply bleep over the offending portion. What's funny is that "Spirit of Christmas" only cost a few thousand dollars to make...
Oh man, I just found out about the OOP titles this morning. Barnes & Noble.com listed Playtime as being in stock, so I ordered that. Best Buy.com was still taking orders on Mon Oncle and M. Hulot's Holiday, although it says "usually ships in 5-7 business days." I ordered those too. And I ordered...
What? No "Spirit of Christmas"? What the BLEEP BLEEP were those BLEEP BLEEP over at Warner Bros. thinking? Seriously, I think it's ridiculous that Warner couldn't have found some way to acquire the rights to this short. I saw it when it screened at Sundance and I still laugh just thinking...
No DVD-A? NO THANKS. Sony is making a big mistake here. If they had made this a universal player, I wouldn't have had to think twice. But with new universal players coming out from Marantz and Pioneer (the latter with a firewire output, no less), I'll have to pass.
I think there's another thread somewhere on using ML's in a HT set-up. The sense I got from reading that thread is that the sound quality of the ML's depends heavily on where they are placed and the size of the room. So it's possible that the Scenarios had a better "fit" with the listening room...
Faroudja has announced a new product, the Digital Cinema Source, which combines a DVD and a Native Rate Scaler in one box. It has a DVI output, but you'd want to bypass the Piano's built-in line doubler, since the Digital Cinema Source would already have scaled the video to the projector's...
I've been very impressed with Dynaudio speakers for two-channel playback and was wondering whether anybody uses them in a 5.1 or 7.1 set up. I know one Dynaudio dealer in my area and was thinking of auditioning a set-up consisting of two Contour 1.8 MK II speakers (front left and right), two...
The Paradigm web site (including the on-line catalog) still lists the following speakers in the "Active Series" -- the Active/20, the Active/40, the Active/CC and the Active/ADP. So everything but the floor standing Studio Series speakers appear to be available in active versions. Of course, the...
I received the following e-mail from James Tanner at Bryston:
I've been thinking seriously about getting the SP-1 (along with Bryston's 5 channel amplifier), but the lack of a 5.1 analogue bypass was a major sticking point. So for me this is great news.
I recently purchased a new Panasonic DVD-LA85 portable DVD-Audio/DVD-Video player on eBay for $700. This may be slightly out of your range, but I've seen it advertised for less (around $650) by some on-line dealers. However, none of these dealers had it in stock, and I needed it for a trip I...