8th July 2005

Warner Home Video will celebrate what would have been Greta Garbo's 100th birthday (on September the 18th), with a box set containing six classic Garbo films, all new to DVD. The set will be released on September the 19th.

 The Greta Garbo Signature Collection box set will include Anna Christie (1930, in both its English and German versions - they were filmed simultaneously), Mata Hari (1931), Queen Christina (1933), Anna Karenina (1935), George Cukor's Camille (1936), and Ninotchka (1939). Bonus features include trailers for most of the films; the 1921 silent version of Camille (featuring Alla Nazimova and Rudolph Valentino); and a trailer for the remake of Ninotchka, Silk Stockings. RRP for the set is £49.99.

Warner Home Video will also release two films from the TCM Archives, under the title Garbo Silents: Flesh and the Devil (1927) and The Mysterious Lady (1928).

The Flesh and the Devil disc will feature Settling The Score, a featurette about the TCM Young Film Composers competition (they score for silent movies, including the two TCM Garbo films); commentary by Garbo author Barry Paris; and an alternate ending. The Mysterious Lady will feature a commentary track by film historians Tony Maietta and Jeffrey Vance; the surviving nine-minute extract from The Divine Woman; and photo montages from Garbo's silent years at MGM. The Garbo Silents discs have an RRP of £15.99 each.

Warner Home Video has formerly announced the release of Wonder Woman - The Complete Second Season and The Dukes of Hazzard - The Complete Second Season for September the 26th, a week later than some sources have been reporting.

The Dukes of Hazzard - The Complete Second Season will be a four-disc set featuring twenty-three episodes. The set will also feature some bonus material: screen tests; Welcome to Dukefest and Dukefest: The Event; The Charge of the General Lees, The Show Down, The Stunt Show, and Music and Memories featurettes; and an Easter Egg (Where's Daisy?)  The RRP is £39.99

The Wonder Woman - The Complete Second Season set will also be a four-disc set. In addition to the season two episodes, the disc will also feature a documentary. Revolutionizing a Classic: From Comic Book to Television, featuring contributions from Lynda Carter, producer Douglas S. Cramer, and legendary artist Alex Ross. The RRP is £39.99.

The twenty-five episodes that make up the third series of Dallas will be featured in the Dallas - The Complete Third Season, including the famous season finale, which raised the question "Who shot JR?" The five-disc set will also include a featurette, Who Shot JR?, which explores the series' use of the cliff-hanger ending, and details the lengths the producers went to to keep the ending a secret. The set also features commentary on two episodes, A House Divided and Sue Ellen's Choice, by cast members Linda Gray and Patrick Duffy. The RRP is £39.99.

The first twenty-two episodes of WB drama series One Tree Hill will be featured in the One Tree Hill - The Complete First Season box set, which will be released on September the 5th, just after the second series makes its debut on T4.

The set features the pilot episode, and bonus materials that include forty-eight minutes of unaired scenes; an unaired Gavin DeGraw music performance with an introduction by the show's creators; One Tree Hill Diaries (a home movie look at location shooting in Wilmington); Creating One Tree Hill - A Winning Team (a behind-the-scenes look, with cast and crew members); four audio commentaries on three episodes. The RRP is £59.99.

Finally, in what's suddenly become a very busy month for Warner Home Video, September the 19th will see the release of Hustle - Complete Season Two. The two-disc set will feature six fifty-minute episodes, and a thirty minute featurette, The Big Finish - The Making of Episode Six. The RRP is £29.99. Hopefully someone will remember to include the recent Dead Ringers Hustle sketch on the third season set.

Sleeve art? You got it...

4th July 2005

Happy Independence Day!

Universal will release Sidney Pollack's fine thriller The Interpreter on August the 15th. The film, which stars Nicole Kidman as a United Nations interpreter who inadvertently overhears a death threat against the head of an African state, and Sean Penn, as the government agent assigned to investigate, will be presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen ratio, with Dolby Digital 5.1 audio.

The film is supplemented by extensive bonus materials, including deleted scenes (2m); an alternate ending (3m); audio commentary by Sydney Pollack; A Day In The Life of Real Interpreters featurette (8m); Sydney Pollack at Work: From Concept to Cutting Room (10m); Pan and Scan vs Widescreen comparison (5m - this is Pollack's first Panavision film since he switched to 1.85:1 for Out of Africa); The Ultimate Movie Set: The United Nations featurette (8m). It also contains trailers for Pride and Prejudice and The Bourne Identity Special Edition. The RRP is £19.99.

Warner Home Video is releasing a box set featuring three films from This Is Spinal Tap satirist Christopher Guest on September the 19th. The aptly-named Christopher Guest Box Set will include three great comedies: Waiting For Guffman (making its long-overdue UK DVD debut). Best in Show and A Mighty Wind (currently an HMV exclusive). Presumably the Best in Show and A Mighty Wind discs will match the existing DVDs (with their extensive extras), but the press release doesn't mention anything about these, or the extras that are on the US Waiting For Guffman disc. The set will have an RRP of £29.99.

Warner Home Video will release a seven-disc box set titled The Complete Thin Man Collection on September the 19th, featuring all six films in the classic series, about two debonair detectives, Nick and Nora Charles (played by William Powell and Myrna Loy).

Each disc in the set will feature bonus materials:

The Thin Man (1934) - The Thin Man Trailer Gallery

After The Thin Man (1936) - Robert Benchley comedy short, How To Be A Detective; The Early Bird and The Worm featurette; trailer

Another Thin Man (1939) - Musical short Love on Tap; The Bookworm MGM cartoon; trailer

Shadow of the Thin Man (1941) - vintage shorts: The Tell-Tale Heart and The Goose Goes South; trailer

The Thin Man Goes Home (1945) - Robert Benchley shorts Why Daddy? and Screwball Squirrel; trailer

The Song of the Thin Man (1947) - Passing Parade short A Really Important Person; Slap Happy Lion; trailer

The set will contain a seventh disc, Alias Nick and Nora: The Thin Man Collection Bonus Disc, featuring two documentaries, William Powell: A True Gentleman and Myrna Loy: So Nice To Come Home To, and The Thin Man TV episode, I Loathe You, Darling (featuring Peter Lawford and Phyllis Kirk). The RRP is £44.99.

I have more details for you on Momentum's The Seed of Chucky DVD (see last week's News page if you missed our initial report). In fact I have a copy of the disc here, so it seems that the spec's, like Jimmy Hoffa, are now set in concrete.  The disc is presented in anamorphic 1.85:1 ratio, with a choice of DTS (at 768kbps) or Dolby Digital 5.1 (at 448kbps) audio tracks.

The Jennifer Tilly's Diary feature is a text-only piece (it's very funny, and a reminder of what a bright and articulate actress she is). The Family Hell-iday Slideshow runs for three minutes, and, contrary to what you might guess, is not a photo' gallery: it's actually a short showing Chucky and his family enjoying their holiday snaps. Conceiving The Seed of Chucky is an excellent eighteen-minute featurette, which gives a potted history of the film series, and includes a good look at how the doll animatronics are achieved. FuZion Up Close wasn't mentioned in the press release. It's a four-minute Entertainment Tonight-style package featuring brief interviews with Tilly and her plastic co-stars (it looks like the bits featuring Chucky and Tiffany were pre-filmed, so that they could be slotted in between questions from interviewers from a variety of different shows). There's a commentary track, with Tilly and producer / director Don Mancini, which is terrific. Tilly, who plays an exaggerated version of herself in the film, is a great sport, and well aware of the public's perception of her as a ditz. Finally there's the usual text bio's.

Unfortunately everything else that's on the US disc (which includes a deleted scene - which is even referred to as being "on the DVD" during the commentary - a second commentary track with Mancini and puppet guru Tony Marsters, storyboard comparisons, pop-up trivia and a couple of of other short featurettes) is missing from the UK version. That's a shame, coming, as it does, from Momentum, a company that often goes the extra mile to make their R2 discs more appealing than their American counterparts.

4 DVD will release the first season of Julie Burchill's recent teen lesbian comedy drama series Sugar Rush on August the 15th. The two-disc set will include all ten half-hour episodes. The RRP is £19.99. The series is currently airing on Channel 4 and E4.

Warner Home Video will release Joshua Martson's Maria Full of Grace on August the 22nd. The disc will feature a director's commentary, and an interview with the director, and star Catalina Sandino Moreno. The film will be presented in 1.85:1 ratio, with Dolby Digital 5.1 audio (in Spanish, with English subtitles). The RRP is £17.99

Finally, thanks to Julian Smith for letting me know that the BBFC has just cleared a bunch of new bonus material for a forthcoming edition of The Terminator. Here's the breakdown, according to the Board (the numbers refer to hours:minutes:seconds:frames):

00:09:12:19 Unstoppable Force: The Legacy of the Terminator

00:11:25:12 The Terminator - Closer to the Real Thing
00:00:14:22 Deleted Scene 1
00:00:35:14 Deleted Scene 2
00:00:09:22 Deleted Scene 3
00:00:05:21 Deleted Scene 4
00:00:14:06 Deleted Scene 5
00:00:29:11 Deleted Scene 6
00:00:22:08 Deleted Scene 7
00:04:08:06 Deleted Scene 8
00:01:38:11 Deleted Scene 9
00:00:31:10 Deleted Scene 10
00:00:50:03 Deleted Scene 11
00:00:14:21 Deleted Scene 1 - With commentary
00:00:35:15 Deleted Scene 2 - With commentary

00:01:23:03 Deleted Scene 3 - 7 - With commentary
00:04:08:06 Deleted Scene 8 - With commentary
00:01:38:12 Deleted Scene 9 - With commentary
00:00:31:11 Deleted Scene 10 - With commentary
00:00:50:04 Deleted Scene 11 - With commentary
00:18:29:05 Other Voices - Back Through Time
00:21:18:07 The Terminator - A Pause in the Action
00:12:24:04 Creating The Terminator: Visual Effects and Music
00:08:52:21 The Terminator: The Release