Back to Back to the Future

I ended up breaking down and buying Back to the Future yet again, this time on BluRay, and again it is all-three-or-nothing packaging, which makes good business sense. But I was bummed to see that the Eric Stoltz versions of scenes are not available as their own special feature. All you get is just what you saw in the youtube clips from the Documentary. Chances are those were not from fans but from the studio itself, the unspoken implication that there was more to see. There is, but they only gave us what fit into the making-of. Interesting, but not worth buying these movies yet again.

I'm not a booster of BluRay either. I was fine with my regular DVDs. It's clearer, but it isn't like I have a huge screen. It's just my laptop. I guess I can keep my first-release DVDs for loaning out. I actually forgot the trouble those had been. I had bought those ones hot off the shelf only to find out later that BTTF Part 2 and 3 had flawed Widescreen releases. The cropping was off. I asked HMV about my complaint and sure enough they produced a copy of a flier they received from Universal asking customers to MAIL IN discs 2 and 3 to the Canadian office of Univeral and the corrected masking versions would be mailed to us. I went through that process rather than just throw up my hands and get the full-frame versions (like the VHS of BTTF) which would actually be more accurate to what was filmed because it actually WAS true full frame (not pan-and-scan) with more picture information at the top and bottom of the TV image. Yet it was a few years ago and I guess I've taken that box on my shelf for granted. I imagine if someone bought all three movies widescreen from that DVD debut there was a good chance they would end up buying the misalligned versions. Maybe those are worth more now.

Another pet peeve is that this DVD set introduces a new way to hold the DVDs inside the case. Instead of the center hole having a use now there are three points around the side that are pinning it in and they are extremely irritating. I guarantee that either popping a disc in or out will result in little dents around the edge. People want to be gentle with their DVDs especially when the set with tax comes to $54 you would never talk yourself into if you didn't have a stupid credit card. I am thinking of making history for taking DVDs back with the complaint being stupid, cumbersome packaging which threatens to harm the friggin' discs. Maybe someone else will boast of a knack for popping those things out. I haven't mastered it and hope never to see this type again.

I think I'll do without any new DVDs until THe Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman threaten my bank account before Christmas.

Blog of the Blogervilles

I was at the Public Library returning something and there on a cart were a handful of DVDs I either hadn't seen or hadn't seen in a long time so I snatched them up.
The rule of thumb here is that the movie I'm least enthused about will be the one that I get fined for because it will be returned late. It might seem like I really like the movie, refusing to let it go back to the indifferent hands of random strangers. But nope - it is probably boring and a chore to watch. If you ask me do I like Roman Polanski movies I'll say of course. That's the prescribed knee-jerk reaction of anyone who insists on calling himself a movie-director (which is what I do because, well, I do make films and at age 40 I'm not sure I can pull off "film student" anymore). Tess was the movie I grabbed. Very happy to see it for free. But I must be right under the wire if I hope to avoid a fine. Turns out it's about people who might buy or sell the name of their family for the sake of status - not subject matter that has me rivited. Then there is a rolling around scene which today we would call - or post-feminist and retro-feminist bloggers would call - a rape scene. Of course the blogs would then be referenced as a source of hard news by an actual paper columnist kind of the way Matt Drudge got the "scoop" and led the journalist profession down the tubes of Lewinskigate a million years ago. I must have watched at least half an hour of Tess by now. Nastasia Kinski is pretty enough and there's nothing wrong with the directing of course. But the movie has inspired me to fill out my tax forms.

P.s. Okay, almost made it throught the whole film. Played it on WinDVD at 1.5 X speed. Somehow it played like a more recent, less plodding, movie - despite still having characters that made me impatient. They all need a slap in the head. The last time I had to play a movie at high speed like this (where you can still hear the audio) was Gerry by Gus Van Sant - a movie about being lost in the desert, which feels about as much fun as being lost in a desert.