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!