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ARCHIVED NEWS - 19th-25th SEPTEMBER 2005 |
NEW AUDIO REVIEW
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21st September 2005 DVD NEWS
The film, which features Justin Ipock, Laurie Baranyay and John Freedom Henry, is about a virus which is released by an inmate of a mental institution, which mutates everyone into zombies. Chaos ensues.
Vital, a "body-horror from Japan's Cronenberg" (Tetsuo: Iron Man's Shinya Tsukamoto), is due for release by Tartan on November the 14th. The film, about a medical student who suffers from amnesia following a car crash, is described by Tartan as "a disturbing and yet compelling love story". His memory begins to return when he has to dissect a corpse - the body of his girlfriend, who died in the crash - during an autopsy class! The film will be presented in anamorphic widescreen format, with a choice of Dolby Digital 2.0, 5.1 and DTS 5.1 audio tracks. The disc will contain a director's commentary track, and a trailer.
The film, which also features Morgan Freeman and Bob Hoskins, was written and produced by Luc Besson, with fight choreography by the legendary Yuen Wo Ping. The film will be presented in anamorphic 2.35:1 format, with Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1 audio tracks. Bonus features include extended versions of the fight scenes; a Making of... documentary; music videos and outtakes. RRP for the disc is £17.99. Tartan has a couple of "European Adventures" lined up for DVD release on December the 5th. The first is Claire Denis's well-received 2004 ethereal drama The Intruder (L'Intrus), which is about a man suffering from a heart condition who is searching for a son he abandoned years before. The film, which reunited her with stars Beatrice Dalle and Michel Subor, will be presented in anamorphic widescreen format, with Tartan's customary choice of Dolby Digital or DTS 5.1 tracks. The disc will also include an exclusive interview with Denis. Spain is represented by Bigas Luna's amusing 1994 tale of jealousy The Tit and The Moon (La Teta y La Luna), which stars the delightful Mathilda May. The film will be presented in anamorphic widescreen, with a choice of Dolby Digital or DTS 5.1 tracks. The disc will also feature a commentary track by Lunas. Tartan's DVD line-up for November is: Dig! (single disc) - RRP £15.99 Silver City - RRP £19.99 Sky Blue (two-disc set) - RRP £22.99 Andrew and Jeremy Get Married - RRP £19.99 Whispering Corridors (Asia Extreme) - RRP £19.99
The series begins by collating data about two theoretical planets, using supercomputers to model their climates, seasons and geological histories. Special features on the DVD include an "in-depth and insightful" documentary, The Making of Alien Worlds; a trailer; and DVD-ROM content. RRP for the disc is £19.99. The series is being supported by an exhibition at the Science Museum, in South Kensington, London, from October the 14th. Click here for more information. Here's a closer look at the critters seen on the DVD sleeve...
Some news about The League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse disc, which is due on October the 3rd. The cast of the film will be signing DVDs in the Oxford Street branch of HMV on the 3rd of October, from 5.30 onwards. The disc features two Easter Eggs - skip this if you want to find them yourself, or don't want to know what they contain! The first is on the main menu, where, if you wait long enough, a homonculous appears, explodes, leaving behind a sphere. If you select it, it takes you to a two-minute deleted scene featuring the Royston Vasey characters (which contains a nice reference to Tod Browning's Freaks). The second is on the Precious Things menu. If you wait a while A rotating sphere appears, with a cow and pig in it. Clicking that leads to five minutes of behind-the-scenes footage of the scene featuring cameos by Peter Kaye and Simon Pegg (their character names are Simon Pigg and Peter Cow).
The film will be presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen format, with Dolby Digital 2.0 audio. Bonus features on the disc are a short interview titled A Conversation With Ray Harryhausen (12m), and an interactive Map of Myths and Monsters feature (which includes interview snippets about some of the mythical creatures and characters in the film). Basically the UK disc looks like it will replicate the one released in the US three years ago, except that the American version also has a theatrical trailer. It's a crying shame that WHV hasn't included a Harryhausen commentary on the disc. RRP for the disc is £15.99. Incidentally, there are some very nice-looking Clash of the Titans models being released soon, by a company called Gentle Giant. You can see pictures of them here. There's also a new Harryhausen book due in November, from Aurum Press. It's called The Art of Ray Harryhausen, and it looks like it will be a fine companion-piece to An Animated Life. You can see the sleeve at Amazon!
The set will be spearheaded by a new edition of his 1960 masterpiece, Psycho, as a two-disc Special Edition, which will be packaged in "fabulous" red mirri board. Sadly, it doesn't look like this new set will feature a new transfer, (the existing disc is a rather botched anamorphic conversion from a letterboxed NTSC master). The bonus disc on the new set, The Hitchcock Legacy, incorporates two programmes: Masters of Cinema: Alfred Hitchcock and American Film Institute Salute to Alfred Hitchcock. The other Hitchcock titles will be priced at £9.99, which surely indicates that Universal haven't taken this opportunity to correct the well-documented framing problems (and other issues) with the existing transfers. The other titles are: The Birds, Vertigo, Rear Window, Family Plot, Saboteur, Shadow of a Doubt, The Man Who Knew Too Much (the 1956 version), Frenzy, Marnie, The Trouble With Harry, Rope, Torn Curtain, Mr and Mrs Smith and Foreign Correspondent. A "very special" box set containing fourteen discs, plus a bonus disc, will also be released, in November.
The series, about the lives of two mismatched flatmates, features The Smoking Room's Robert Webb, and Faq U host David Mitchell. It also features Olivia Colman (as the object of Mark's lust), and introduces the star of the Clueless TV series, Rachel Blanchard, as a taboo-busting love interest for Jeremy.
The disc will feature all six episodes,
with commentary tracks on three of them (by Webb, Mitchell, writers Jesse
Armstrong and Sam Bain, director Tristram Shapeero and producer Phil
Clarke). Other bonus features will include deleted scenes, a
behind-the-scenes feature and something called Gog's Film.
Finally, I've made some amendments to the Phantasm box set information (below), now that I've had more of a chance to look at the discs. 19th September 2005 ZETA MINOR NEWS Ceri has added some new bargains to the Offers page. New goodies at reduced prices include the Battlestar Galactica (new series) box set; good deals on some new Network titles at Benson's World; and a staggering half-price offer for the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy - The Complete Radio Series box set. DVD NEWS Sleeve images for the two sets of The Hunger TV series (which were announced last week) are now available... Each set will feature twenty-two "half hour" episodes. The first series was hosted by Terence Stamp; the second by David Bowie (who, of course, starred in the movie that inspired the series, Tony Scott's erotic vampire film The Hunger). Series two will feature some "exclusive" interviews with Ridley and Tony Scott. October 31st, £29.99 each.
I've added a couple of pages of menu screen for some of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment's October releases, and can clarify some information about them...
It's presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen format, with Dolby Digital 5.1 audio (at 448kbps), and optional English subtitles. The film has extensive bonus materials: a commentary track (with star Ryan Reynolds, and producers Andrew Form and Brad Fuller); deleted scenes (7m, with optional commentary, and Play All facility); two featurettes (Supernatural Homicide, 18m, and The Source of Evil, 26m); a photo gallery; and an Easter Egg (click and drag to reveal: Home Movies, 4m). There's also a Follow-The-White-Rabbit-style feature titled On Set Peeks, which gives access to behind the scenes snippets. A trailer for Deuce Bigalow - European Gigolo completes the offering. Menu screen grabs for the disc are available here. Some of Sony's releases will, it seems, still be branded with the MGM logo's (perhaps theses were authored before the take-over?) Fans of producer Roger Corman might be delighted to discover that Sony's October release of The Masque of the Red Death is presented on DVD in its correct 2.35:1 format for the first time in the UK. The currently-available disc from Warner Home Video is a pan-and-scan abomination - they probably grabbed the nearest master, knowing that their license would be expiring, and that it wasn't worth spending money on a new transfer. The other Poe adaptation, The Tomb of Ligeia, is new to DVD here, and is also presented in 2.35 (and both have anamorphic enhancement). There are no extras; the discs are single-layer; and the films have optional English subtitles. Menus for these - and an almost-random sample frame grab - are available here. Menu screens for the Amicus film Torture Garden and Poltergeist III are available here. Neither of these discs has no extras. Both are presented in anamorphic 1.85:1 format, with mono audio (at 192kbps).
There are two sets: a premium-priced,
limited edition Phantasm Sphere set (the discs are housed in a
facsimile of the spheres in the film, housed in an Easter Egg-type box -
see left, £34.99); and a standard Digipack edition (RRP £29.99). Each of
these sets will contain five DVD-9 discs: one disc for each of the four
films, and an exclusive bonus disc.
Single-disc, film-only editions of the first three Harry Potter movies - (Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - where have you been!?) - will be released by Warner Home Video on October the 24th. The RRP for each disc will be £9.99. Three monster box sets containing complete collections of three popular TV series will be released by Warner Home Video during October and November. These are the Friends - The One With All Ten Seasons set, on October the 31st; the Babylon 5 - The Complete Universe set, on October the 24th; and The West Wing - The Bartlet Years - Seasons 1-6, on November the 7th. RRP for each set will be £199.99. It looks like the new boxes will 'simply' gather together the existing DVD sets - there are no new bonus features. Here are some box pictures...
Full details of Warner Home Video's release of the CGI family movie The Polar Express have been announced. The two-disc set will feature the film and a theatrical trailer on the first disc, and bonus material on the second. This includes: You Look Familiar (Tom Hanks comments on his five unique roles); A Genuine Ticket To Ride (about performance capture, music and the film's creation); True Aspirations: An Author's Adventure (about book author Chris Van Allsburg); Josh Groban at the Greek (video of Josh performing Believe); Behind the Scenes of Believe; Meet The Snow Angels (cast and crew members share their "holiday" memories); an Easter Egg (Flurry of Effects); Polar Express Challenge ("kid friendly" game, can be played with your remote control; and a DVD-ROM level of the Polar Express PC game. The film will be presented in 2.4:1 ratio. RRP is believed to be £17.99. For sleeve art, see the News entry for the 6th of September. Last week's Zeta Minor News can be viewed here. Previous Zeta Minor News entries can viewed here. |
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A
film that pays homage to George Romero's Living Dead films by - err -
ripping off the title of one of them, Ana Clavell and James Glenn
Dudelson's Day of the Dead: Contagium, will be released by Arrow
Films / Fremantle Home Entertainment on October the 10th.
Universal
Pictures Video will release the recent Jet Li martial arts film
Unleashed on November the 21st.
Channel
4's DVD label 4DVD will be releasing a two-part, two-hour Channel 4
documentary titled Alien Worlds on October the 3rd (the series will
air on the 1st and 8th of October). The series uses CGI animation to
speculate what sort of alien life might exist on other planets, based on
the latest scientific research.
The
fine stop motion animation in The League of Gentleman's Apocalypse
pays affectionate tribute to the master of the art, Ray Harryhausen, whose
final film, 1981's Clash of the Titans, is being released by Warner
Home Video on November the 21st.
Universal
will re-launch their unrivalled collection of sixteen Alfred Hitchcock
movies on October the 17th.
The
second series of the BAFTA-nominated sitcom Peep Show will be
released on DVD on November the 14th.
Sony's
leading title for next month is October the 24th's The Amityville
Horror, the recent remake of the 1979 film. 
I
have more
details about the bonus disc in Anchor Bay's forthcoming Phantasm
box sets.
