h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I always thought we needed a separate thread where us DVD junkies could rave about the latest discs. So let's do it.

I picked up far too many DVDs when over in the States last week: the only one I've had a chance to look at so far is The Limey. Now that Erin Brockovich has burst the $100m barrier and Soderbergh is officially a Dirty Sellout, it's nice to look back to the halcyon days of 1999 and see just how radically he could film what's basically a fairly standard story of death and revenge. We've discussed the movie at length elsewhere, so I'll just talk about the extras that Artisan have included.

Two audio commentaries for your pleasure: I haven't heard the cast one yet, which apparently is a huge 60s nostalgiafest (Stamp, Fonda, Warren, Newman and Dallesandro all contribute). But the second commentary by Soderbergh and writer Lem Dobbs is hysterical. There's a wonderful tension between the two, based around the premise (true or otherwise) that Dobbs feels Soderbergh has messed up his script, and can't do human relationships to save his life. There's even some nifty re-editing to fragment it in a similar fashion to the movie. We also get an isolated music score, trailer and TV spots, and even a scene replayed in both anamorphic and letterbox formats so you can decide for yourself which is best. A lovely little R1 package from Artisan, which hopefully will be duplicated by Film Four when they release it over here.

okay now that I can rant about my own DVDs I feel like I've joined the jet set. One of the first I got was the HUGE 3 disc version of Brazil with every feature under the sun. Two versions of the film (directors cut and studio cut) comentaries by Gilliam and a chap who quite likes the nonsensical studio version. Loads of other goodies too including a crap trailer, behind the scenes documenatary, a film version of Jack Matthew's Battle of Brazil and storyboards, costume designs. Cost an absolute fortune, but for a Brazil nut like myself its worth every penny. Interestingly it appears to be codefree although I'd check before hand if you definately can't play region one dvds.

Spank, how did the prices of DVDs in the US compare with buying on the web? I'm going to New York next week so hope to stock up on a few and save the extravagent postage.

They were all in the region of $20-25 apiece, in some extreme cases closer to $30: so it was more a question of saving due to the lack of postage, rather than any saving on the basic cost. My problem was, I went out with a shopping list of four (The Sixth Sense, Three Kings, The Insider and The Limey) and ended up with eight additional impulse buys as well. Even with new releases like the four mentioned above, there wasn't that much of a discount at the big chain stores.

Just got back from Canada, unfortunately it was a business trip so didn't have much time to shop but managed to pick up Three Kings (for about 10 quid!), Sex, Lies and Videotape (has commentary by Soderbergh - tried to get the Limey but couldn't find it), Trees Lounge (commentary by Buscemi) and Best Laid Plans (has an alternate ending which should be interesting). So many I wanted to get but didn't have time. Nearly bought Stir of Echoes. Why do we get such crap movies released in the UK on DVD that would not even have gone DTV (mainly starring Stephen Baldwin) and yet not get other movies that were released theatrically? Not fair, mutter, mutter, grumble.....

Hello kd - glad you could make it. Er...I don't own a DVD player. I have a bunch of (still unwatched) video discs though... Anyone?

Most of the crap movies going to DVD also go direct to rental video, normally they wouldn't get a chance to be released on retail, but the fact they're coming out on DVD lets them escape from the Video shop shelves and into your local HMV.