Region 4 DVD releases for week ending 1st August 2008

Very very little this week. A whole stack of interesting looking westerns (many with Glenn Ford) are coming out this week, but I know nothing about them. The Mummy remakes and sequels are getting another re-release but I'm only interested at this point if they blurayfie them. Below is a very scant (but interesting list).

The Mummy (1932) The original and the best, and I've never seen it. The shame. The shame. A more elaborate special edition than the last time they released all the classic Universal monster movies it seems to have all the original extras plus some new cool stuff - interested to hear Rick Baker talk about it.

Cloverfield (Blu-Ray) Some how I completely missed the (very brief) hype over this JJ Abram's production. Curious to see it though, especially in light of having now seen Diary Of The Dead, another horror apocalypse done with from a first person POV.


The Fugitive Season 1 Vol 2 Don't buy this under any circumstances. You are subtly being screwed over. They've changed much of the original source music because the studio couldn't be bothered to obtain the rights.

No Country For Old Men (Blu-Ray) Despite some bizarre and typical Coen sequences and an incredibly frustrating final scene, this is a first rate thriller that should look fantastic on Blu-Ray. As is typical for the Coens also, however, is the screwing over in the extra features department.

Region 4 DVD releases for week ending 25th July 2008

It's been a big week this week, Dark Knight, Wicked. Well, not that big?!
Another slim week on the DVD front. That's not to say that these titles aren't interesting and worthy. It's just that there's sooo feeew real quality titles. Everything is kiddie or manga-e or just plain reality tv on dvd. **Sniff**

The Doors - Perception
A nice looking box set which includes all of The Doors studio albums (remastered one presumes?) plus a whole bunch of oddities. One for the fans.

Led Zeppelin - Live At Earl's Court Vols 1 & 2
Methinks this is some cheap release and not on a par with that title a few years back (which you could probably find quite cheap now) that had several polished and shined feature length performances. But I could be wrong. Something about the cover strikes me as cheap Photoshop job.

Get Smart Seasons 1-3
Now this is more like it! The full 15 DVD bundle out locally, and although unconfirmed, I believe it does have all the Time Life extras on them. At $140 you want them to be! Assuming this is complete this is the title of the week (and one of the titles of the year).

Kurt & Courtney
I knew this was out there but have never seen it. A Nick Broomfield documentary, this looks fascinating and certainly supports certain theories.

My Life Without Me
A Sarah Polley double bill. Thank you Palace Films (even it is a re-release). This is a great film and needs to be seen by all. However, I must take a stand at a generally followed trend lately and that is to keep changing the bloody covers. I understand it might be because the market is swamped by so many variations on the one title, so it's reasonably easy to differentiate between the 2 disc version released in 06 and the 3 disc version released in 07 but man, do they do some shit covers sometimes! The above cover is NOT the cover of the Oz release where Polley is more of the lying down variety with her hand to her face.

The Sweet Hereafter
The other Sarah Polley film, another re-release and a real classic this one. Possibly Atom Egoyan's finest moment, this is an exceptional film with excellent performances from Polley and Ian Holm and a compelling, heartbreaking story. This is title of the week (if we got screwed on Get Smart) even though it has been released before as well as the fact that we don't seem to get any of the great extras (commentary, Charlie Rose Show interview etc.) on the Region 1 disc.

Region 4 DVD Releases for week ending 18 July 2008

Rock n roll, here we go (can you tell I'm in a better mood?)...
No 6 this week is Pedro Almodovar's Live Flesh. A re-release - it appears that the rights have reverted from Madman to Roadshow, hence the much less offensive cover - this is one of the few Almodovar film's I haven't seen so it is on my list. Like most Almodovar films, this appears to have no extras.
No 5 this week is The Darjeeling Limited. I would have liked to have seen this in the cinema but never got round to it. If it's as half as good as the rest of Wes Anderson's filmog then I'm there. Can't tell you if it has the sublime short film, Hotel Chevalier, that Anderson made to act as a prequel to this, but if and when Criterion get their hands on this title, I'm sure it will. How bought in highdef Criterion? Might even buy it...

No 4 is yet another title that I've haven't seen but was recommended to me. Mister Lonely played at last year's MIFF and wait for it, is about a Michael Jackson impersonator that befriends a Marilyn Monroe lookalike and they go to her home in Scotland which is populated by celebrity impersonators! Oh, and Werner Herzog plays a priest in it. Nuff said.
WTF?! Another one? At number 3 is another !@#$ Evil Dead release. This is one of the most constantly rereleased titles there is. Anchor Bay have released at least 3 seperate editions in the States and 5 in the UK. It has been released previously locally by Big Sky and now Beyond purport to be releasing the 'Ultimate Edition'. Yeah, and chainsaws might fly. It appears that we are still behind the rest of the world as the extras list mirrors older releases and the most recent releases in the US and UK appear to be more comprehensive in terms of extras. Given the quality of previous transfers locally I wouldn't expect much either.

No 2 is a title which has been around a while in DVD and HD-DVD formats but I've never given it much thought. Re-released in a flash new Blu-Ray edition is DVE - Digital Video Essentials: HD Basics (that's a mouthful!) which in a nutshell lets you reconfigure your display device to its maximum HD potential via a series of onscreen tests. Probably only for the 100% certified geek.
No 1 title of the week for me is Billy Joel's The Stranger in a 30th Anniversary re-release which includes the remastered album, a second CD with a previously unreleased live show at Carnegie Hall from '77 and a DVD of performances from The Old Grey Whistle Test (gotta love that title!). Oh, and Joel is touring Oz at the end of the year (despite not having released an album for 15 years!).

For those in the know...

Region 4 DVD releases for week ending 11th July

Ugh, a very dull, slim week. Absolutely nothing worth purchasing and most of these are simply curiosities that I've scrummaged through all the Rambo dross.

Mala Noche (Directors Suite)Gus Van Sant's first film - other than that I know very little about it. A curiosity definitely, has a strong reputation.

My Spy (aka My Mom's New Boyfriend)
A direct to the shelf film? I think. There seem to be so many. And then there are film's that seem to play less than a week in theatres and are then forgotten. Directed by George Gallo (who wrote Midnight Run) it has a decent middle of the road cast, including Antonio Banderas, Meg Ryan, Colin Hanks and Selma Blair. I hope they didn't change the title because of 'Mom'?

There's Always Tomorrow (Directors Suite)I couldn't find a cover for this but above is a still - it sounds like the most interesting release of the week. A Douglas Sirk film from 1956 in stars Fred MacMurray, it seems like ripe Sirk material and something other than Double Indemnity that MacMurray could sink his teeth into. It grabbed my attention though, because it has a commentary by John Flaus and Adrian Martin. Wow! Brings back memories of the old Film Buffs Forecast days! Definitely a rental.

Run Fatboy Run
Everyone is going to rent this, other than those that will buy it so I don't need to say anything else.

Feast of Love
Yet another straight to video flick (I think?) with an A grade cast (Morgan Freeman, Greg Kinnear). Obviously there are just too many films being made. Or there are not enough cinemas? Or there are too many? Or my head's about to explode!

The Hunting Party
Another straight to video (?). I liked Richard Shepherd's The Matador so this will probably be a rental as well at some point, although it looks like a more straight forward actioner than that idiosyncratic flick.

Region 4 DVD releases for week ending 4th July 2008

Another week, another 12 gadzillion DVDs on to an unsuspecting public. I'm still seeing those freakish few that seem to show up at JB Hi-Fi and just slob all over the new releases and walk out with a stack of DVDs you could use for a house stump.

Doctor Who - The Invasion of Time
More great remastered Tom Baker Who-ness. At some point I will catch up with all this - yet another case of reliving my childhood. Loaded with a truckload of loaded extras.

Mental As Anything - Live In Concert At The Basement (DTS)
Yet another Aussie music DVD. Yet another 80s band back from the dead. But I like the Mentals - at least their earlier more ironic material such as Nips Are Getting Bigger. Once again, Shock have nicely included a couple of extras.

Sherlock Holmes (1984) - Vol. 3: Collector's Edition
Man, Shock seem to release a gigantuous amount of material each month. But this is more essential stuff - Jeremy Brett is possibly my favorite Holmes - I haven't seen this since it was first broadcast back in the mid eighties. You shouldn't t really call it a Collector's Edition though, no extras to speak of. Still, valuable stuff.

The Twilight Zone - The Original Series: Seasons 4 & 5 - Collector's Edition
One of the releases of the week for mine. But for shame, Shock (do you detect a thread here), for shame - NTSC? I'd just gotten used to so many NTSC releases in PAL land, when I actually started to see the difference in quality between NTSC and PAL. I'll just wait for the hi-def version! Yeah, right.

Harry And The Hendersons /In The Mouth Of Madness
I bundle these two together as they are examples of local distributor's (Universal and Reel respectively) where they are not including special features available in other regions (a common complaint, check out DVD Compare for as definitive a comparison as you will probably get). Harry Region 1 includes a director's commentary, deleted scenes and featurettes. Madness Region 1 includes a director's commentary - in this case it's a different distributor so I'll give them some leeway, and then take that leeway away as the frickin' film isn't even widescreen. For shame, Carpenter creates compelling widescreen images and he just gets screwed over big time in Australia (Assault On Precinct 13 being another example).

Get Smart - Season 1
Not 100% confirmed, but it appears that all of the award winning special features from the award winningly overpriced Time Life sets are going to be completely missing from the local retail releases. I'm not feeling so well...

Zodiac - Director's Cut (Blu-Ray)
Ahhh, that's better. The release of the week is alphabetically also the last. One of the best films of last year, given the best possible treatment in the best possible format. What more could you want? It's also slightly more reasonably priced than some Blu-Ray and I'm sure you could pick it up in one of those 2 for 1 sales!

Any time a man dies in war, he dies too soon.

It breaks my heart it really does. Another day, another obituary. Major Garland Briggs has passed on to the White Lodge. Don Davis is a really tremendous American actor who, for some strange reason, I will fondly remember as the John West fisherman ("It's a chinook salmon), plus of course, Major Briggs from Twin Peaks ("Garland? Judy Garland?") and Scully's dad in The X-Files.

Davis was a captain in the army stationed in Korea in the seventies so it's appropriate that he often played authority figures of one kind or another:

Air Force - 2
Army - 6 (I'm including Stargate SG-1 here)
Clergy - 3 (he played a reverand in an episode of The West Wing and the film Needful Things and a cardinal (!) in The Sixth Day)
Detective - 3
Law - 5 (He played a Senator in several episodes of The Dead Zone and a judge in an episode of LA Law)
Mayor - 1
Medical - 8 (including a doctor in episodes of Twilight Zone and an episode of Wiseguy)
Navy - 2
Police - 10 (including a sheriff in Wes Craven's Nightmare Cafe and a Chief in Broken Badges)
Principal - 2 (including the recent film, Woodshop)
Prison Warden or Guard - 5 (he played a warden in Knots Landing!
Probation Officer - 1 (in the film Hero or Accidental Hero as it is sometimes called overseas)

He played both a general and a detective in seperate episodes of the reincarnated The Outer Limits. He played different characters in different episodes of 21 Jump Street including a principal and a prison warden and he played a judge and a prison guard in seperate episodes of Jump Street's sister (or is that brother?) show, Booker.

He also appeared in episodes of tv shows such as The Chris Isaak Show, Highlander and had memorable appearances in films such A League Of Their Own, Best In Show and the Look Who's Talking movies. His first credited appearance was in Joanie Loves Cachi!

My real sore point is that he was cut (along with many other cast members) from the Twin Peaks film, Fire Walk With Me. David Lynch is considered an astute reader of people, often casting just from a photograph. Don Davis in interviews (check out the various Twin Peaks DVDs) come across exactly like Major Briggs - stout, generous and very much spiritual. It would be wonderful if Mr Lynch finally got around to mastering and releasing all of that missing footage from Fire Walk With Me - it would be a tremendous tribute to Don Davis.

God bless Stan Winston

The Terminator was one of the first 'adult' films I ever saw - maybe that's why it's still one of my favorite films of all. Prior to that it had been all Disney, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Richie Rich comics. I think the closest I'd come previously was the beans scene in Blazing Saddles. I remember my friends going to see A Nightmare On Elm Street and The Terminator at the cinema in '84 and I couldn't bring myself to see them - not into horror films at the time (my first horror film at the cinema was Elm Street 2 and involved a mad crush to get into the cinema and then people proceeded to throw the chair cushions around the Hoyts Midcity cinema. Never before and never again have I witnessed that).

So The Terminator was the first adult film I saw, on rental Very Hard to See tape in '85 on a Radio Rentals VCR (from memory!). The film must have caused certain brian cells to implode and others to open to the delights of sex and violence which would cause me for the next 5+ years to become obsessive about film, special effects, specifically makeup special effects.

No not obsessive enough to join the industry (although I did once do a convincing knife stab to scare my sister and a very impressive Darth Maul makeup) but obsessive enough to have exercise books (just not obsessive enough to be any kind of John Doe, Se7en character). You see, I kept seeing the same effects people's names over and over on all of the delightful treasures that I treated like 'the precious' from the local 'Mom and Pop' video stores (God, I miss them!). Titles like Friday The 13th, The Fury, American Werewolf In London, The Thing. Names like Rick Baker, Dick Smith, Rob Bottin, Tom Savini, Stan Winston. So what I would do is catalog all of these people and their films and years (kinda like my own early primative IMDB). So for example Rob Bottin worked on The Thing (1982) (and I'm so glad I've since found other people who were doing similar things when they were young).

Since The Terminator in all its glory hit me like a semi, Stan Winston was one of those people that I kept my eyes on over the next few years. You can see below that the effects work does not compare to modern special effects but you've got to understand that this stuff was fairly cutting edge at the time, plus Terminator had a paltry budget compared to other films of the time ($6.5m cf with Return Of The Jedi's $30m+).


That's a puppet head above in that memorable scene where Arnie performs some surgery on himself, tidying up a wound on his arm and pulling his eyeball out! Ouch! I would watch this scene over and over and over the years, studying it, looking at when James Cameron would cut back and forth between Arnie and the puppet. With DVD (and especially Blu-Ray) you can now clearly see which is which and even see the fine lines where prosthetics makeup has been applied. But that doesn't not make it cool.

Stan Winston started his career on television, specialising in old age makeups for Gargoyles (1972; which he won an Emmy), The Autobiograpy Of Miss Pittman (1974; for which he won an Emmy with Rick Baker) and Roots (1977). Part of my workflow when I was cataloging these effects artists was to tape late night movies on television. Channel Nine was probably the best at the time (you barely get any late night movies on free to air now) and I managed to catch classics such as Gargoyles and one of Rob Bottin's early efforts, Humanoids From The Deep.

Winston's first big budget Hollywood film was the failed Diana Ross vechile The Wiz (1978) which he possibly did because he had a previous relationship with Ross, working on her makeup on a television special the year before (which won him another Emmy). For the hardcore fans, he also contributed the wookie family costumes for the legendary Star Wars Christmas Special in 1978. He then had a brief period where he worked on some ultra-violent, low budget horrors such as The Exterminator, The Hand, Dead & Buried and Parasite. He also produced some quality character work in the underrated Heartbeeps (1981; see below, can we have a special edition DVD of this please Blue Underground?) and this film, surprisingly, would be an early example of Winston's ability to create characters and not just special effects. Heartbeeps also earned Stan Winston his first Oscar nomination. Around the same time he also contributed an mechanical alien dog effect for The Thing when Rob Bottin had pretty much collapsed from exhaustion.



In addition to The Terminator, 1984 also saw Winston team with the godfather of Special Makeup, Dick Smith and Rick Baker to produce the sequence in John Carpenter's Starman (1984) where the alien grows from a baby into Jeff Bridges. It would be his working relationship with James Cameron on The Terminator, however, that would rise his star in that niche industry in Hollywood. They would next work together on Aliens (1986) and although the alien design had already been done by H.R. Giger in the late seventies, Winston would add to that with the frighteningly credible puppeteering of the Queen Alien. Aliens culminates with that great scene where the Queen Alien literally rips the android Bishop in two (see below) and would earn Winston his first Oscar (for Special Effects).


Winston also did the clever headless effects in Robert Zemeckis' episode of Amazing Stories, Go To The Head Of The Class where Chritopher Lloyd spends much of the running time carrying his head around! By now, Winston was starting to gain a reputation for creating these frightening monsters, these characters that through their design, manufacture and puppeteering, seemed truly alive. In 1987, Winston created another of his memorable monsters, the Predator. Unlike many of his previous creations, this would be a man in a suit, Kevin Peter Hall (who also played Harry in Harry & The Hendersons, see below).

Winston also gained a dream job around this time working on The Monster Squad (1987) which gave him the opportunity to breath new life into the classic Universal monsters, Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolfman, the Creature (From The Black Lagoon) and the Mummy. Winston turned to directing around this time, making the atmospheric horror film Pumpkinhead (1988). Beloved by the hardcore fans, it contains a great scary looking monster and some great cinematography.



In 1990, Winston contributed to the inevitable Predator sequel as well as directing his second film, the little seen A Gnome Called Gnorm (also known as Underworld). Winston forged his second important artist-director relationship that year also, creating the titular character of Edward Scissorhands for Tim Burton. Employing much more subtle makeup and character design, it was a true collaborative process between Burton, Winston and actor Johnny Depp.

Winston would push his studio to the limits and also contribute to paving the way for the future of motion picture special effects with his next. Returning to work with James Cameron once again, Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) would feature not only Arnold Schwarzenegger returning as the unstoppable killer cyborg (and which meant for Stan Winston Studios more Arnie makeups and puppets, see below) but a new character, a liquid metal killer called the T-1000. For this character, Winston would work in conjunction with Industrial Light and Magic to create scenes where prosthetics and on-set mechanical puppets would integrate and cut seamlessly with computer graphics. As a result, Winston won two Oscars, for both Makeup and Visual Effects.

Winston's third, and possibly most important relationship with a director was forged in 1993 when he was tagged to create the live action dinosaurs for Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park, again working with ILM and sealing the fate of the special effects industry to an ongoing obsession with computer graphics special effects. Luckily, Winston would roll with this and survive (much like the T-Rex from Jurassic Park below), rather than lay over and die like the real dinosaurs.

Winston, along with James Cameron and former ILM boss Scott Ross formed Digital Domain, a digital special effects company in 1993 and there maiden voyage was the Tom Cruise vechile Interview With A Vampire (1994). As previously, Winston's work seamlessly integrated with computer graphics as Cruise falls over and dies morphing into a vampire corpse (see below).



Winston would spend the next fifteen years continuing to work with Burton, on Batman Returns (1992) and also Big Fish (2003), with Cameron on T2 3D (1996), Spielberg on The Lost World (1997), AI (2001, see below) and Jurassic Park III. He continued to work on monster movies, such as The Relic (1997) and Lake Placid (1999) as well as character work on films such as Small Soldiers (1998) and even returning to makeup gigs on Pearl Harbor (2001), Constantine (2005) and Tideland (2005). In recent years, Stan Winston Studios had branched out into direct to video productions, comic books and toys and Winston also helped bring Wrong Turn (2003) to the screen.



Winston was gearing up for the new Terminator film after having worked on one of the biggest successes so far this year, Iron Man (see below) when he passed away this past weekend of multiple myeloma cancer. Along with effects artists such as Rick Baker and Rob Bottin, Winston shepherded a new era of special makeup effects moving away from the traditional old age makeup and character makeup of Dick Smith, combining traditional prosthetic makeups with puppeteering and mechanical creations and then working alongside computer graphics companies to ensure that the disparate effects work matched up, creating magical wonders the likes of which we may never see again. I salute you Stan Winston and all of your remarkable achievements!

PS. Go to this link to see the calibre of people who have been paying respect to Mr. Winston

What's hotter than hell?

How to clean a house while non weight bearing

It's not that easy let tell you. I deciced on the bad stuff today and the easier stuff tomorrow. Worst of all are the floors. There's something truly depressing about a dirty floor. Smudge, fluff, cobwebs you name it - you can't, or at least I can't really operate, think about other things, have any energy to spin around the house floor on my head a la Homer Simpson.

The vacum just seemed like too much effort to me. It feels like to much effort even when I'm 100% weight bearing (it's the left leg). My mechanical get around devices are two very worn crutches that get regular anti-bacterial cleanses and a manual wheelchair (ie. it's not a Stephen Hawking model).

And I discovered the other day I had a broom! How excited was I. The dude that rebuilt my pergola in one day (impressive) asked for a broom the other day and I was like, a broom? Do I have one? Yes I do! Wow!

So out came the broom and I sorta kinda trundled around the hard floors of my smallish abode part using the wheelchair wheels and part just using my good foot to push myself around. I did a real good job. Although I avoided some rooms that would have been just to hard to navigate. So that really left the main room/kitchen. Then used a towelie thing to smush it into the bin. First one down. Now there are some unsightly stains on the kitchen floor. It's funny how the kitchen ends up being the dirtiest in the house, we spend so much time there. All the yucky food stuffs on the floor. Eww. So out came the generic cleaning product and some more towelettes. This was harder as I decided to go back to the crutches for this - it's just too hard to bend down in the wheelchair. That kinda worked although there's still some smudges there.

Next the carpets. Avoiding the vacum once again I settled on the crutches and a plastic bag. I went around and like a council cleaner with one of those prods I went around picking up bits of fluff and god knows what else off the carpets into the bag. Bag into bin. Not bad. On the way I discovered a few unsightly stains so out came the next generic carpet cleaning product. And then I thought to myself that's probably enough for the day. My Pearl Jam t-shirt was starting to sweat and smell I thought. Besides, I need to go away now and finish up my short film. Very close now.

The Voice Of Kubrick

It's weird how you can create in your mind how someone speaks even though you may know what they look like but have never actually heard them speak before. It's kinda the same when you speak with someone on the phone regularly and then meet them in person - they never look like the way you've imagined them. We've imposed on to them a visual representation based solely on their voice - kinda like a pre-cog from Minority Report but a lot less interesting.

I've been plowing my way through all of the featurettes et al on some of the recently released Kubrick titles. I can say I gone through most of The Shining (save the pre-existing Making Of that Kubrick's daughter Vivian made), parts of A Clockwork Orange (but not the film and commentary) and most of the featurettes of 2001: A Space Odyssey (due to its length I always have to plan ahead a scheduled afternoon for this film, Sunday arvo is good - you can just let it wash over you). Haven't bought the others yet (Eyes Wide Shut, Full Metal Jacket) but based on these titles will definitely pick the rest up. While all of the produced featurettes are all very good, the best extra I've come across so far is an audio only interview with Kubrick from 1966.

(Some context here, I was hit by a car last December and have just come out of my second operation where the surgeon replaced the nail in my tibea. So I have some time to kill at this point while dealing with the pain of having staples in my leg for a second time.)

It's weird. I didn't really read closely the description of this when I switched the interview on the other day to listen to it. I started to listen to it and got confused. That wasn't Stanley Kubrick talking. I then assumed it was a re-enactment of an interview and settled down to listen to it. But the more and more I listened I realised that it was Kubrick. The brilliance and arrogance of the man was unmistakable. But it didn't sound like him. Not at all. He sounded like... Jeff Goldblum!

I listened to all of it in one session (quite often these stupid DVD producers create these featurettes without consideration for loo breaks) beaming (can you imagine me beaming? Probably not) as Kubrick talked about schooling (or lack thereof), working for Look, playing chess, putting together money and equipment for his first film and then working his way up with The Killing, Paths Of Glory, Spartacus, Lolita, Dr. Strangelove to the then current production of 2001. The guy had an arrogance that was breathtakingly intelligent and a memory like a diamond - despite a lack of education he sounds like he educated himself primarily through reading, a lot of reading. It's a bloody fascinating listen and I recommend the 2001 DVD (or Blu-Ray as the case may be) if you are a fan and have never heard the interview. It's not really much of a recommendation as I guess if you are a fan you are already have the damned thing! And of course, a quick scour of the internet reveals that the interview is fairly easily available via 'other means', so either (a) I'm not as big a fan as I'd like to admit or (b) I'm just ignorant (maybe both).

So why didn't I think it was Kubrick speaking? I came to the realisation that I don't think I'd ever heard him speak before! Most of my impressions of Kubrick are via stills. The Shining has that great behind the scenes footage but I can't recall now if you ever hear Kubrick speak? And what other footage/interviews are there? I suddenly realised that I didn't think I'd ever heard him speak before! Of course, I could be wrong, I probably am wrong, but even if I am, there probably isn't a glut of material out there - the guy was basically Obi-Wan Kenobi on Tattoinee in his isolation and rarely gave interviews.

But I can't shake the feeling out of my head of a Kubrick biopic with Goldblum? Nahhhhh........



Postscript: Having now (re)watched Vivian Kubrick's doco Making Of The Shining, Kubrick does speak in it, quite a bit actually. But his voice has changed some what (thank god) so I don't feel too bad...

Well folks, mornin'. I've got some really exciting news for you this morning. I've heard weard from my sources that work is completed on the mammoth restoration of Rebekal Rubikshtein's epic "Glory be the Flikalbenam's" (1922). Our very own Richard Herrickson has been coordinating this project for over the past twenty years. Originally lined up for VHS, then for laserdisc, and then for DVD, it will be out June 13th in a glorious 2 Blu-Ray set that, apparently, really does justify that ridiculous amount of work. Due to the continued advances in home video technology the goal posts were moved every time they came close to releasing a definitive release. This set, the culmination of all those years of work, this expected to break sales records.
Released day and date will be the DVD, but according to MGV's co-chairman of home video, Mark Perskat, "the blu-ray will be the one to get. In addition to the 1080p picture quality and all those special features there will be some exclusive HD content from ringtones to wallpapers and text messaging". Unfortunately, we only have a preliminary list of the DVD special features, but what a list it is: the film has been remixed in Dolby Ex-Max 10.1 and DTS Lessmore 10.1, along with the original 1.0 mono track. On the left analog track we have a commentary with historian Charles Chimpananzi along with the original best boy grip on the film, Stumpy Miller! On the right analog track we have filmmakers Kevin Smith, Robert Rodriguez, Joss Whedon, Joe Dante, Quentin Tarantino, Trey Parker, Peter Bogdanovich as well as scholars Roger Ebert and Marian Keane as they all get together and watch the film over a few pints. In addition, there is also an audience participation track from the sold-out screening at the Pillbergery Pub. On disc 2 there are no less than 50 featurettes than run no more than an annoying 18 minutes each and have no Play All option. Five hours of deleted scenes have been unearthed that will really test your patience if you can even be bothered, and even the footage from an aborted attempt by Rubikshtein a year earlier. Still galleries, trailer galleries and marketing galleries round out the extras. RRP will be $599.99.

Mass marketing

They just don't make 'em like they used to...

Tent

When someone said they loved you they lied
Someone said it to me and I cried
Spousal abuse is no laughing matter
Trust and I didn't want to catch her

I'm going to go now
Crawl up inside of myself