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LATEST REVIEWS
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ARCHIVED NEWS - 22nd TO 28th MARCH 2004 27th March 2004 Contrary to the posters that are all over London (and presumably elsewhere) The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was not released on DVD on March the 22nd. The film will actually come out on Monday. No-one seems to have reviewed the UK two-disc set yet, though, so I've given it a spin. You can read the review by clicking on the sleeve image, left, or by clicking here. There's a very irritating problem with the main documentary on the second disc, which, hopefully, Entertainment in Video will have corrected for the copies that will be in the shops next week (perhaps that's what caused the week's delay?) Here are the sleeve images for Carlton's Escape To Athena and The Eagle Has Landed discs, which were featured in the News entry for march the 25th (below).
25th March 2004
Revelation's DVD will include footage not shown on ITV, production notes written by the award-winning author, and an exclusive video interview with Gallagher. RRP is £15.99.
The 1976 film The Eagle Has Landed, which was based on Jack Higgins' best-seller about a German plot to kidnap Winston Churchill, will be presented on a two-disc set, featuring an extended, 145 minute version of the film, along with interviews with stars Michael Caine, Donald Sutherland and director John Sturges. The second disc will feature the 131 minute theatrical version of the film, with Dolby Digital 5.1 audio and an anamorphic transfer. Other bonus features include the theatrical trailer, ATV Today location report, Film Night location report, biographies, film notes and stills gallery. The disc will apparently also offer the original mono audio mix. RRP is £12.99 1979's Escape To Athena, about Hitler's plan to loot a Greek island, will also get a new anamorphic transfer, and will have mono audio. Bonus features include the theatrical trailer, a location report and cast and crew interviews. (The leading cast members were Roger Moore, David Niven, Telly Savalas and Claudia Cardinale). RRP is £12.99. Carlton are also releasing Ken Annakin's little-seen 1957 film Across The Bridge, which was based on a short story by Graham Greene. The film, which stars Rod Steiger, is about a crooked businessman who flees to Mexico, murders a fellow train passenger, and steals their identity. Bernard Lee plays the cop on his trail. The film will be presented in anamorphic widescreen format, with mono audio. RRP is £9.99. Release date is June the 21st.
The film will be presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen, with a choice of DTS and Dolby Digital 5.1 audio tracks. The RRP is £19.99. 24th March 2004
Pathé Distribution will release the acclaimed romantic period drama Girl With A Pearl Earring on DVD on May the 31st. The film, which stars Colin Firth and Scarlett Johansson as Johannes Vermeer and his muse Griet, will be presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen format, with Dolby Digital 5.1 audio. Bonus features include Director's and Writers commentary tracks, a Making of... featurette, an Anatomy of a Scene featurette (24m), seven deleted scenes with Director's commentary (The Vermeer's Visit, I Didn't Ask For Blue, Plague 1, So Soon, Plague 2, Plague 3, and As I First Saw You) and the UK theatrical trailer. RRP is £19.99.
We've listed Fox's two-disc special edition of There's
Something More About Mary in the
Incoming
page for some weeks, but now more details and a sleeve image are
available. It's titled There's Something More About Mary,
presumably to con people into thinking it's a sequel. According to
Play.com the disc will feature two commentary tracks; fourteen scenes with
seamless branching (25m); Getting Behind Mary featurette (45m);
Backstory: There's Something About Mary featurette; Comedy Central
featurette; Best Fights: Ben Stiller and Puffy The Dog
featurette; Frank and Beans conversation with W.Earl Brown;
Touchdown interview; Harland Williams interview; Puffy, Boobs and
Balls featurette; outtakes; Build Me Up karaoke; Every Day
Should Be A Holiday music video; theatrical trailer; Easter Egg and a
stills gallery. RRP is £19.99. The
Here are the sleeve images for Girl With A Pearl Earring and There's Something (More) About Mary.
23rd March 2004
Disc six contains the bulk of the set's bonus features: It's titled Season 7 Overview - Buffy: Full Circle (36m) on the menu screen, but this featurette is actually called Full Circle: Buffy's Final Season on screen. This is the customary summary of the season. It includes contributions from many of the key behind the scenes crew members, including lesser-spotted Executive Story Editor Rebecca Rand Kirshner, writer Drew Goddard and Story Editor Drew Z. Greenberg. Cast members contributing include Alyson Hannigan (yay!), James Marsters, Michelle Trachtenberg, Tom Lenk and D.B. Woodside. Sarah Michelle Gellar is, as usual, conspicuous by her absence. Buffy Wraps (5m) is footage from the show's wrap party, featuring interviews with Joss Whedon, Marti Noxon and many of the cast members, including some from the show's earlier seasons. It seems that Sarah Michelle Gellar's invitation got lost in the post. Outtakes (4m) is a fun collection of goofy moments and fluffed lines. You'll get to see dancing uber-vamps, Nicholas Brendon having a sneeze attack, and a bit more of the Troika as gods. No Sarah Michelle Gellar was harmed during the making of this segment. Generation S (8m) focuses on the Potentials, and includes interviews with Felicia Day (Vi), Iyari Limon (Kennedy), Indigo (Rona) and Sarah Hagan (Amanda). Ms Gellar did not require a limo to take her to the set the day this was filmed. The Last Sundown (9m) is "Joss Whedon's look back at his ten favourite episodes in the Buffy mythology and his thoughts on bringing the acclaimed series to life and to a close". Sarah's Make-up Supervisor took the day off. Easter Egg (1m) accessible from the Featurettes menu - The Gift montage.
A few new menu shots, and two photo's from the Outtakes section, are available here. (The previous page of menu images is still available, here).
There have been a few interesting things certificated at the BBFC in the last week or so. The original version of Leatherface - Texas Chainsaw Massacre III, previously rejected outright by the Board in May 1990, has been re-submitted and finally cleared (it will appear alongside the cut version in a two-disc edition from Entertainment in Video on April the 19th).
Deleted scenes, a featurette and an Easter Egg, totalling 17'20", for Catherine Hardwicke's acclaimed Thirteen have been submitted by Universal. Two trailers, a twenty-two minute Making of... and Perform Jane Mansfield and I'm Blue (6m) were submitted in support of Kill Bill - Volume 1, along with the teaser trailer for Kill Bill Volume 2. Finally, Columbia has cleared a four-minute promotional Exclusive Sneak Peek featurette for Spider-Man 2 and seven featurettes destined for the Spider-Man Director's Edition DVD. The featurettes total thirty-two minutes worth of material, broken down like this:
00:02:17:01 | WORLD UNITY
FESTIVAL 22nd March 2004
I've Ceri is away, so the only new updates to the Incoming and Offers pages have been the odd tweak here and there. If anyone has anything worth reporting, email me, or pop over to the High Street forum at Roobarb's DVD Forum. There are two new competitions starting today, where you could win a copy of Network's terrific The Sweeney - The Complete Second Series DVD box set, which is released today. Click on the Sweeney banner, above, or here to go to the competition page. The other competition breaks new ground here at Zeta Minor: it's our first international competition, courtesy of Australian label Umbrella! Some of you may know Umbrella from their Department S and The Saint box sets, and their superior release of The Prisoner. They've also released several ITV sitcoms on DVD that aren't available in the UK, and today add seven more discs to their Best of British collection, including Bless This House, Man About The House and Father Dear Father. The discs are multi-region, and PAL, so there's no problem playing them in the UK. You could win a set of the new discs by entering the competition, which you'll find by clicking on the banner, above, or here. The competition page includes links to a couple of Australian retailers, in case you'd like to order any of the new titles. Previous News entries can viewed be by following this link. |
Revelation
will release Stephen Gallagher's telefantasy thriller series Oktober
on May the 24th. The series is about a teacher (played by Drop The
Dead Donkey star Steven Tompkinson) who gatecrashes a
pharmaceutical company conference to get close to a woman he's fallen in
love with, only to find himself implicated in a wide-reaching conspiracy
involving an experimental mind-altering drug. The series, which was shot
in England, France and Switzerland, was originally shown by ITV in April
1998.
Two
action-packed 70s World War II movies will be released as Special Editions
by Carlton Visual Entertainment on June the 21st. 
Stuck
on You, the latest movie from the Farrelly
Brothers (whose 1998 film There's Something About Mary was featured
in yesterday's news, below), will be released on DVD on May the 3rd. The
film, about conjoined twins, played by Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear, will
be supported by a commentary track by the Brothers, eight deleted scenes
(14m), three making of... featurettes (It's Funny: The Farrelly Formula,
Stuck Together - Bringing Stuck on You To The Screen and Making
It Stick - The Make-Up Effects of Stuck On You), a blooper reel "and
many more laugh-a-minute extras" (now you know why I rarely quote press
releases verbatim). The disc will also feature Inside Look Behind The
Scenes featurettes on forthcoming theatrical releases Alien Versus
Predator and Dodgeball. 
Umbrella
Entertainment will release Minder - The Complete Second Series on
May the 19th. The set will include thirteen uncut episodes, featuring the
original advert bumpers. Bonus materials include
And
so it ends. I now have a copy of the sixth and final disc of the Season 7
Buffy The Vampire Slayer set, and can now provide more details
about the set's bonus materials.