Optimum Releasing will release a six-disc Collected Adventures of Asterix box set on July the 31st.

The set will include Asterix The Gaul (1967), Asterix and Cleopatra (1968), The Twelve Tasks of Asterix (1976), Asterix and Caeser (1985), Asterix in Britain (1986) and Asterix and The Big Fight (1989).

The set has an RRP of £29.99.

3rd July 2006

ZETA MINOR NEWS

I've added to the notes I published on June the 23rd about the James Bond Ultimate Edition DVDs (which are due on sale in two weeks' time).

Sony (who have effectively licensed the films from MGM) has spent a lot of money re-mastering the films, and, generally, they've done a fine job. The new transfers are vibrant and clean, and they've rectified some of the irksome glitches that marred the 2000 editions. However, anyone expecting that these discs would be flawless must be very naive indeed, given MGM's patchy track record.

There'll be plenty of reviews around of the new discs, and I really don't have the time to examine them to the degree I'd like to if I was to review them myself, so I've decided to concentrate on the nitty-gritty aspects of the discs: the sort of things that might interest the more demanding consumer: things that most reviews will probably miss, because they're simply not looking for them, or because they're not even aware that they should be looking for them!

Last time I offered some initial thoughts on the new transfers, and the various edits that have and haven't been rectified. This weekend I turned my attention to an aspect of MGM's disc authoring that has regularly blighted the Region 2 versions of their discs: their replacement of captions and subtitles.

Like most companies, MGM services a number of countries in the Region 2 area. To save having to author dozens of variants, they usually create one pan-European disc to sell in them all. Unlike their competitors, though, they often choose to use textless transfers of their films (i.e.: without the original theatrical captions or subtitles) to facilitate this. Then they add player-generated subtitle captions for each different language. I understand why they do this, but certainly don't approve.

It's not always possible to precisely replicate a film's original captions using player-generated captions (for one thing, you can't fade them in and out), but there's no excuse for not at least trying to mimic the colour, font, screen placement and duration of the original captions. Unfortunately, MGM simply can't be bothered, and their player-generated captions usually look nothing like the ones in the theatrical presentation of the film.

The new James Bond Ultimate Edition discs are a mix of films with the original captions, and films with truly horrible player-generated captions. Let's hope this is the last time the Bond films are compromised in this way, and that next time they're released (probably as high definition titles on Blu-Ray), they'll fix these problems.

Click here to read my notes on the new Bond discs. A handy index to the film's Incoming links can be found by clicking on the 007 Ultimate Edition logo' in the left-hand column.

I'd like to welcome a new contributor to the site! Ben Mott has been drafted in to help maintain our Incoming database. Welcome Ben!

The Incoming page offers a selected list of forthcoming titles that should be of interest to this site's visitors. With Ben's help, the Incoming page will be a bit more comprehensive, and there'll be fewer mistakes! The page is now being updated virtually every day: sometimes with a few new interesting additions, sometimes with huge swathes of new titles!

Please check the page regularly to keep abreast of the latest additions and changes, and use our affiliated etailer links to get yourself the best deal, and to help support the site!

DVD NEWS

Optimum Home Entertainment will release Tommy Lee Jones' acclaimed feature film directorial debut The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada on DVD on August the 7th.

The film, a tale of loyalty about an epic journey made by a moody ranch foreman (Tommy Lee Jones) to bury a murdered friend, features stunning cinematography by British Director of Photography Chris Menges (who won Oscars for two Roland Joffé films: The Killing Fields and The Mission).

The film is presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic format, with a choice of Dolby Digital 2.0 or 5.1 (at 448kbps) audio tracks. There are no subtitles.

There's a fair bit of debate among the etailers as to what the bonus features are. Here's the definitive list: a commentary track (by Tommy Lee Jones and co-stars Dwight Yoakam and January Jones); a Making of... featurette (26m); a Making of the Music featurette (8m); press conference-style interviews with Tommy Lee Jones and writer Guillermo Arriaga (14m); and extended and deleted scenes (27m). A fine effort by Optimum that puts the R1 version to shame. The press release mentions an interview with composer Marco Beltrami, (in the same breath as "Tommy Lee Jones and Guillermo Arriaga interviews"), but this seems to be missing from the disc. The RRP is £17.99.

Momentum will release the first half of season two of CSI: New York as a three-disc DVD set, on July the 17th.

The set will feature the first twelve episodes of the season, which saw a degree of re-vamping, as the team relocate to new premises, and a new character, Lindsay Monroe (played by Anna Belknap), is introduced.

As before, the episodes are presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen format, with Dolby Digital 5.1 audio (at 448kbps).

Unusually, there are no special features on the set (perhaps because the season hasn't been released in the US yet?) The RRP is £39.99.