Slashdot Mirror
Tron Special Edition On Sale January 15th
Muddie writes: "OnVideo.org reminded me that on January 15 , Disney is releasing the "Tron 20th Anniversary Collector's Edition" (1982) on DVD and VHS. Directed by Steven Lisberger, the film stars Jeff Bridges, Bruce Boxleitner and Barnard Hughes. The 2 disc DVD set contains the remastered film with commentary by Lisberger, producer Donald Kushner and visual effects supervisors Harrison Ellenshaw and Richard Taylor, a new 75-minute "making-of" documentary "The Making of Tron", deleted scenes, original soundtrack music deleted from the film and more all for $29.99.
Check out all the happy details at Amazon's link"
... I wonder if the DVD disc leaves a bright trail of light behind it if you throw it...
In Soviet Russia, sig types you!
...of me dreaming about what goes on inside my Vic 20.
I wanted to know how to access the little tron bike game.
I was upset.
I was also like...8 or so.
Imdb also advertises the release of the sequel to Tron, Tron 2.0. Hope it's not a flop
Imperium et libertas
Autocracy and freedom
does anyone else find it funny that amazon has a "used price" for this movie directly above the paragraph explaining that the movie isn't even released yet?
maybe it's just their patented one-click time-travel system.
I'll re-post an Anonymous Coward submission from yesterday. I'm not taking credit, but it applies again:
Slashdot (to MPAA): You fucking fascists. We hate you.
MPAA: But look at these shiny colors!
Slashdot: Oooh! How much?
Any computer geek who is bashing this movie obviously hasn't been around that long. Yes the movie was a financial flop as it was over the heads of 99.9% of the people who might have seen it when it was released in 1982, but the fact remains that a majority of its plot holds true to what the internet is today. Heck, I bet you could draw great parallels between Tron and the open source movement. Replace the MCP with Microsoft, attempting to squash all competition. Place the users and their programs seeking a free system, up against the evil MCP, and voila. Yes, the special effects are pitiful by todays standards, yes the acting isn't that great, but as a whole, the movie was and still is a great movie for computer geeks to watch.
I'm I the only one who finds the practice of releasing a "vanilla" DVD, then releasing a "extra groovy" DVD six months or a year later totally annoying?
One more reason to rent-rip-burn. Bastards.
-Peter
They should include the old arcade video game as a DVD-ROM extra! That'd make my buy it. Actually 4 mediocre games in 1, that became more than the sum of it's parts, it was kinda fun. There was a light cycle game, a game where you shot spiders (though I don't think they were internet spiders back then), a breakout-esque game where you had to break through the cylinder to the MCP, and one more that I can't remember right now. It had the movie soundtrack, and that was kind of cool for a video game back in the day.
Don't forget that Friday is Hawaiian shirt day.
Disney doesn't throw much of anything away. Given how much footage of the making of, say, Snow White and Fantasia is still around 60+ years later for their respective DVDs, I'm not surprised in the slightest that extra Tron footage exists. Whether or not its interesting is up to the viewer, of course...but I'd never be suprised @ Disney keeping things around.
Walt kinda made it a policy not to throw anything away, as "all good ideas will eventually find a home". See the making-of for Toy Story 2 to see that attitude still in action...but it was around back in the 40s as well, when some of the footage drawn for Pinnochio and left out eventually ended up intact in Bambi, including much of the forest fire sequence.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
My definition for advertising:
/.ers probably have fond memories of Tron they'd be interested to know they can pick this up.
Anything that builds product awareness.
This means any news posted any time is advertising. The court case against Microsoft is/ was advertising. Katz' review of Orange County was advertising. Admittedly this is a little more blatant, but I'd argue since a lot of
No sig for you.
Everytime I hear anything about this movie I remember what Dennis Miller said about Al Gore... "This man is the Vice President?! His favorite movie is 'Tron' for fucks-sake!"
Oh that will cost me some karma.
That was not my intention, I may have done it when I checked the link out though.
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
An ambitious hacker (Tom Hanks) transports himself into his Windows XP Home Edition computer to pull off the ultimate hack: to free Internet Explorer from Windows. Along the way he becomes attached to a flighty email virus (Meg Ryan) and the two are chased by the Matrix's Agent Smith as they are shuttled from computer to computer around the world. Can he find his Passport home?
Supposedly the DVD will contain deleted scenes of Hanks gaping at all the porn on people's computers and a 30 minute documentary about how difficult it was for him to lose his tan for the part.
</SARCASM>
It's kinda funny, I picked this nickname for Slashdot in a moment of sillyness, and hadn't seen the movie in quite a few years, but I since bought the DVD and found that I actually like the movie much more as an adult than I did as a kid. I guess I'll have to get the new deluxe set and give my old DVD to my cousins.
I submitted this article from the San Francisco Chronicle about the anniversary last week (rejected, naturally). It has a nice discussion about the film's creation and influence.
I would be fine with a Katz review of Tron in recognition of the re-release on DVD, but a link to Amazon (with a referrer id...this guy will $1.50 per sale that amazon makes) plus the words "all for $29.99" is over the top. Just tell us that there is a new DVD release of the movie and point us to the movie studio's page about it. I'm sure everyone on slashdot who has fond memories of the movie is fully capable of finding an online retailer who's happy to sell it to them.
All I'm saying is that this is blatant advertising and they should have done something more understated like this.
Random note:
Anytime I post with a subject that ends in "!!!" someone always mods it "Troll" When my posts end in "..." they're usually modded "Interesting"
"Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"
You know, you'd think with Disney's constant backing of DRM, as well as basically funding the SSSCA, that /. would encourage a boycott of them, and not encourage supporting them, regardless of what products they have to offer.
/. can and should be a place where actions start. If anyone else feels the same way, please make your voices heard, or at least contact me.
I would love Tron on a collectors DVD as much as the next geek, but until Disney starts respecting our rights, I won't be buying it. Mod me down if you want, but I feel that
:) That's what inquiring minds would like to know!
See deleted scenes
Yes, it drives me absolutely nuts.
Disney's marketing practices thoroughly enrage me. When I first got a Disney DVD and it made me watch Disney home video ads before my movie, I was immediately pissed off.
I buy a lot of DVDs. There are far more old movies that I want on video than I can afford to buy at any given time, and I have no particular order that I feel I need to buy them in. So, if a studio makes nice releases of their movies on DVD, I'm inclined to look for movies from them next time. If they make lousy releases, I'm inclined to look elsewhere.
So Disney is pretty low on my purchase priority list. Every time I see a Disney DVD in the store, or on Amazon, that I'm interested in, I think "Hmm, I'd like to have that movie, but it'll have ads on it, and they'll probably come out with a deluxe edition in six months anyway. I'll get it some other time." And I buy two Warner Brothers DVDs instead because they're cheap.
You know, I was riding in the car today with two Malaysians, an African, and a New Zealander. We were talking about Zone X DVDs.
Turns out, one of the Malaysians purchased a 100% bonified good DVD (Final Fantasy, I think) and couldn't play it in his DVD player. The reason? His DVD player is region-free.
He commented that the pirated versions of the movies play just fine.
Then I said, and this really surprised myself: "I would like to be a DVD/CD pirate. No, not to make lots of money, but it seems like the right thing to do."
When I realised that I was serious, and that it really truly *IS* the right thing to do. Someone needs to ensure that when a guy buys a player and some media, that it will actually play.
What sort of idiots would allow a situation where someone can buy a player legitimately, buy some media legitimately, and not be able to use it? Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.
fifth sigma, inc.
The irony here is thick. Tron, the only movie where the bad guy was ICE, an intrusion countermeasures routine written by a huge evil corporation, is now released on a video format protected by... intrusion countermeasures... developed by a huge evil corporation.
If Bill Gate's house bluescreens tomorrow pinning him under the refrigerator till he asphyxiates, I don't think the irony would get any thicker.
--
What happens when you outlaw guns
Was anyone else incredibly pissed that Tron lost an Oscar to Gandhi for *BEST COSTUME*???!?!!
I was. That was the turning point. From then on, I knew the oscars were a complete sham.
Come on; a bunch of freakin' sheets beat out the most yummy high tech other worldly costume design to have ever graced the big screen?
He commented that the pirated versions of the movies play just fine.
Why? Because they're region free as well. I'd bet my bottom dollar that he probably has an early Apex player. Those (as well as a few others) had the ability to turn region coding on and off at will (you can change it in the Setup menu).
The catch came when RCE (Region Coding Enhancement) became the norm a few years ago. I remember clearly that one of the first titles to utilize this feature was The Patriot (let's take note that Final Fantasy was released by the same company, Columbia TriStar). If you player didn't specifically state it was region 1 hardware-wise, it wouldn't play the DVD.
You know what the real irony of this is? Is that if you change your Apex player (or whatever brand, mind you) back to Region 1, you could fix the problem and play the DVD.
Then I said, and this really surprised myself: "I would like to be a DVD/CD pirate. No, not to make lots of money, but it seems like the right thing to do."
Christ, what kind of ego-driven self-serving comment is that? Yeah, you wouldn't make money off of it, you'd just do it out of the kindness of your heart. It's comments like these that tell not only your age, but your maturity.
Instead of paying the studios and filmmakers for their work you'd rather rip them off. If actors/directors/writers/etc don't sell units, don't sell tickets, don't move these products, they're out of jobs. So please excuse me if I don't jump on the soapbox and proclaim that stealing is somehow beneficial to the artist(s).
What sort of idiots would allow a situation where someone can buy a player legitimately, buy some media legitimately, and not be able to use it? Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.
Here's a question: what kinds of DVD idiots are
a) too dumb to turn the player back to its proper region (which will fix the problem)
b) buying pirated versions in the first place?
You can yell from the mountaintops how great it is to steal from people but the fact remains: there are plenty of folks who live off those DVD dollars. Movies aren't released around the world simultaneously (albeit a few of the bigger blockbusters), so sometimes a Region 1 DVD will appear in the states before it's even in theaters across the Atlantic/Pacific.
Example: Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back won't be released in Australian theaters until March. The Region 1 DVD comes out in February. Now if all those Australians get pirated copies of that great (and hilarious) film, who gets paid and who gets the shaft? Kevin Smith and his cronies for their hard work and great talent, or a money-grubbing hack who wants to earn a buck and cry "Free speech!" everytime someone accuses him of stealing?
People can complain about region coding all they want, but the solid evidence supporting the practice is right here.