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One DVD To Rule Them All
Obiwan Kenobi writes "In a gala event last night New Line Cinema revealed their Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring DVD Plans. This includes a 2-disc version on August 6th (in both Pan & Scan and Widescreen, click here for box art), and a special 4-hour, R-rated cut of the film debuting in a 4-disc set on November 12th. While the August release includes some nifty features, it's the four disc version, with the longer cut and three audio commentaries, that really gets the drool flowing."
Now that's what I'm talkin about!
So, do we hate the MPAA this week?
I'm trying very hard not to think of either Hobbits or Sir Ian naked. DOH!
Yes, 'cause the books combined are well over a 1000 pages and watching the movie would probably work out better for those who can't handle reading a 1000 page book. :)
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ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
Or are movies going from the big screen to DVD faster and faster? I swear that some of the movies seem to hit DVD before they've hardly left the theater!
:-(
In this case the added commentary tracks are going to be great. Nearly every movie I've seen with these has been interesting. Wild Things and the movie with the kid seeing dead people (argh what was the title) had truly insightful commentaries I thought. I'll be interested to see what the commentaries for this one will have.
Looking forward to it and am glad to see it coming out so quickly. Nowadays heading to the theater just isn't high on my list - too expensive too. DVD I can watch anytime I want, unfortunatly it supports the damned MPAA
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
Was having trouble getting to the site, so:
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring will be released in no less than four versions this year. On 8/6, separate widescreen and pan & scan versions will be released, each a two-disc set with identical extra features. Disc one includes the film presented in English Dolby Digital Surround EX and Dolby 2.0 surround (sorry, no DTS). Disc two is where all the goodies are at, and retail will be $29.95 for either the pan & scan or widescreen editions. The extras to be found on disc 2 include:
3 in-depth documentaries that reveal the secrets behind the production of this epic adventure, including "Welcome to Middle-earth" in-store special as shown by Houghton Mifflin, "The Quest for the Ring" as debuted on the FBC Network, and "A Passage to Middle-earth" as premiered on the Sci-Fi Channel
15 featurettes originally created for lordoftherings.net, which explore the locales and cultures of Middle-earth and include interviews with cast members Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Viggo Mortensen, Liv Tyler and others.
Exclusive 10-minute behind-the-scenes preview of the next The Lord of the Rings theatrical release, "The Two Towers"
Enya "May It Be" music video
An inside look at the special extended DVD edition of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Preview of Electronic Arts' video game "The Two Towers"
Original theatrical trailers and TV spots
Exclusive online content only available to DVD-ROM users via a special website set to go live on street date
Then, on 11/12, New Line will release a mega four-disc set, with a new extended cut of the film created by Peter Jackson himself, and featuring over 30 minutes of additional footage. This cut of the film will be Rated R due to some extended violence, and no retail price has yet been set for this release. The now nearly four-hour film will be spread over the first two discs and presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen (alas, no sound format information is yet available.) Unfortunately, all the supplements for the 4-disc set are still in production, so final details were not revealed. However, the disc is planned to include 3 audio commentaries and another four hours of bonus material. It is also not yet known if all the features on the "standard" two-disc set edition will also be included here.
Last but not least, New Line is also planning on release a special limited edition gift set of the 4-disc set, with two bookend statuettes by sculptor Sideshow Weta, the National Geographic "Beyond The Movie" DVD, and several collectible Decipher game cards. There were also rumors floating around that after all three films are done and released, a fifth mega-box set of all three with possible additional material may be released, which would be sometime in 2004.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
I understand. It's long. If you don't want the 1/2 hour extra footage you can buy the shorter version. Everyone wins.
I take that last bit back. in the end the people selling me the cd utimately win. Bastards.
Exactly how much of the extra footage is "closeup of ring" or "closeup of Frodo in awe".
Somebody walking out of the movie suggested that a good drinking game would be to take a shot every time there was a closeup of the ring. We decided that any viewer, Boris Yeltsin included, would be dead before a single RingWraith had ever appeared.
heh. better make that 12 hour marathons, once all three come out. i have a feeling that the R rated footage is probably still high quality, but by "high quality", i mean the same quality as the rock troll, as this is just extra footage that got edited out in mid-production b/c they realised it was too gory. still, a 7 hr star wars marathon was long, with eps 1-6 out by the end of 2006 (hopefully), and LOTR done by 03, you could spend an entire weekend watching pure geek vids! (and some Dr. Who to keep yourself entertained in the late night/early morning)
moox. for a new generation.
They are probably going to minimize the compression ratio for the ultimate in sound and picture quality. Just like the Superbit series.
Am I the only one disappointed by the sound getting no better than DD 5.1? I'm all about DTS. And widescreen. I'm still trying to convince some of my friends that you GAIN by watching the widescreen. They always complain that the black bars destroy their viewing experience. Ahh well, a home theater nerd I am. :)
The theatrical DVD relase should really contain BOTH the pan/scan and widescreen.
..
I guess we are starting to see the limitations of current DVD technology (ie not enough space for both versions when its a long movie).
Back in the day they didn't figure into the equation that interactive features would become so popular / take up so much space. So when the movie is long you run out of room.
Now would be a good time to release HD-DVD
as a ex-employee of a movie store, i've learend that you shouldn't buy a DVD that's going to be in a series right away, sure it'll be great to be able to watch it and have it so soon, but after the box set comes out you'll punch yourself for buying all of them aready and not getting that cool looking box. So then your going to wonder if you should spend the extra however-many dollars to buy the box set jsut for that cool box, and after you do your gonna wonder if it was worth it jsut for the box, cus sure, the box is cool, but now you have 2 complete sets of the DVDs. on te plus side, you can lend out the old DVDs to friends but on the down side, your not gonna want to open the box set and see all the cool new stuff they have included with the box set cuz the new box look is just so spiffy, but then, on the other hand... you REALLY wanna see the cool new fetures, so you end up with a no longer spiffy looking new box set and a..... um... i forgot where i was going with this... anyways, just wait for the box set to come out cuz box sets are always better than getting the DVD's one by one. you get 2 things, a better deal and more stuff.
This message was brought to you by the death of 30 brain cells.
MIRROR!! (Box cover art)
l owship_w.jpg
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~mohanc/lordoftherings_fel
Just think Liv Tyler...We all know she got one good thing from her dad. Open up Liv...
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
You put the disk in your player but being The One Disk it makes your player disappear. You then end up poking blindly at the front panel for the play button(or eject button...which ever comes first) or finding the long lost remote.
Read the subject. Why, oh why, must all "epic" movies fall prey to the Celine Dion/Enyas of the world?
I buy DVDs for movies, not incessant caterwauling. Yeah, I know, I don't have to watch that part of the DVD, but, well, I'll feel dirty just knowing that the music video is on there...
On a side note, I hear that Lucasfilms has contracted John Tesh and Yanni for suitably "epic" songs for Episode 3. *grin*
I wish I had a kryptonite cross, because then you could keep Dracula and Superman away.
Oh no, not again.
Firstly, forget the 'dual layer, double sided' discs - every piece of research has shown that most people would rather have two single sided disc than one double sided one. Nice disc artwork rather than tiny, hard to read writing to check where side one is, the selling point of a two-disc set and the fact that plenty of people have multi-disc changers but no-one has a player that reads both sides are the main reasons.
Secondly, no offense to you personally but I trust the likes of David Prior and Charlie De Lauzirika to choose the optimum bitrate and encoding settings for the absolute best in picture quality than I do anyone on Slashdot. Most people here seem to think that MP4 is watchable. I've seen the original and Superbit releases of Fifth Element, and I can see the improvement. Mind you, I think that someone seriously dropped the ball at Lucasfilm over the Pile-O-Cack Episode 1 transfer, so you can tell I'm a picky git.
On an unrelated note, I only need to know one thing: is the Theatrical Cut going in the four disc set as well, or is there value in buying both (not that I won't probably get both anyway).
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
There's your reason to go see it again.
Heh, four hours doesn't come close to doing the books justice. The book is an epic adventure through wide spaces, dozens of side stories, meetings with all sorts of interesting people, etc... Heck like half a year passes in the first book. The movie is like "gotta go, gotta go, move move move move move, not enough time, lets skip a few chapters, go go go, action action action, go go go, skip some more, go go go go go, fight some baddies, go go go..." The movie makes it seem like the whole war of the rings took place in 3 days. A movie that actually represented the first book would alone take like 12+ hours, even if some of the more expendable side stories (like Tom Bombadil) were cut.
If it weren't that mini-series were always so poorly made, it would be better served in that format... Except it would be like 3 seasons long... So, maybe a regular TV show where the entire series is written and shot before it airs... But the first season would have a lot of episodes with no action, so nobody would watch it... Maybe if they took the story and put it in a series of books... Oh, wait...
... "Give me a woman who loves beer and I will conquer the w
...I suspect there will be nine DVDs...
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
- Sundays attitude will be decided via a random number generator. Numbers 1-3 will mean we hate them, numbers 4-6 will mean we like them and numbers 7-9 mean we're flexible: if they put out a good movie, like The Matrix, we like them. If they put out a bad movie, like anything with Leonardo DiCraplio, we hate them.
Milhouse:- Wait...What about 0?
Bart:- Yeah, what about 0?
Martin:--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
"This tv has been modified. It has been formatted to fit your movie." PAN & SCAN should be a CRIME!
... six hours ...
Is that the version with two hours of Tom Bombadil's singing?
Remember the ring had no power over him. Nor did weapons (he had them in a pile and had no use for them). The contrast of his peaceful existance as a powerful entity when compared with every other character in the story is one that is missed in the films.
I just found the Tom Bombadil parts to be highly tedious and annoying, and never saw any sort of explanation for him being a "powerful entity".
Dinivin
Heck like half a year passes in the first book.
In fact, a little less than 18 years pass during the first book. For seventeen of them, Gandalf is researching the ring and Frodo sits on his ass in Bag End.
Five months pass between Frodo leaving Bag End until the breaking of the fellowship at Amon Hen. Two of these are spent lounging around Rivendell, and they spend almost an entire month at Lorien. I don't think we'd want to see all of these periods represented accurately in the movie. A sense of urgency in the movie is appopriate and appreciated.
Here's the list of new scenes in the longer cut of the movie:
-A new addition to the opening sequence in which Bilbo provides background on Hobbits and their history in voice-over as he writes his memoirs.
-A new introduction to Samwise Gamgee, seen in his capacity as a gardener.
-A scene taking place at the Green Dragon Inn, which introduces us to the camaraderie of the Hobbits (we see them singing together) and sets up the geopolitics of the story.
-The Hobbits witnessing the departure of the Elves from Middle Earth on the way to Bree.
-Aragorn watching over the sleeping Hobbits, singing the ballad of Beren and Luthien to himself in the night.
-Aragorn at his mother's grave, in which we learn that he was raised by Elves and that Sauron has long hunted him.
-Two new moments during the departure from Rivendale, one in which we see Arwen's emotional reaction to Aragorn's leaving, and another in which Elrond sees the Fellowship off.
-A scene with the Fellowship in the mines of Moria, in which we learn how the Dwarves themselves unleashed the fire-demon that eventually destroyed them.
-A scene at Lothlorien, where Galadriel bestows upon each of the Fellowship a gift which will play an important role later in the Trilogy.
-And finally, more footage of the battle at Amon Hen. This is not particularly bloody footage, but its addition will likely result in this cut of the film receiving an R-rating.
It seems like the added scenes will add much needed depth to the movie.
I'm looking forward to the director's cut of the merged three movies in 2004. I suspect adding parts from the cutting room floor and revising the three movie scene order will make a smash movie. I'll probably need a lot of Hobbiton weed and Bree beer to watch to it all!
"You're terminated!"
(sounds of a pan flute)
Assuming you are a patient person, there is a way to have your cake and eat it too -
Buy DVDs second-hand
You get the discs and the MPAA doesn't see one cent of revenue. Plus, you'll have the added bonus of supporting the First Sale Doctrine, which the media and software companies are silently trying to do away with!
We want some answers and all that we get
Some kind of shit about a terrorist threat
- Ministry
Personally, I enjoyed the section on Bombadil. Even as creative as Tolkien is, his world sometimes appears to be a bit cramped. (How is that the Shire was so unheard of when everything was within a few weeks by foot?) The section on Bombadil expands his conception of Middle Earth in both space and time.
:
There is an wonderfully written writeup on Bombadil over here. I quote
"Likewise, Tom Bombadil was originally a Dutch doll also belonging to Michael Tolkien. John, his brother, put the doll down a lavatory. Bombadil was rescued and Tolkien wrote The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, originally published in Oxford Magazine in 1934. Tolkien later offered to his publishers the idea that Bombadil's story could be expanded into a sequel to The Hobbit, but they didn't bite, so Tom appeared anyway in The Lord of the Rings. Tom makes his debut in the form found in this collection.
The author's method reminds me of the ways in which painful losses are explained in many other cultures. Examples include some Native American mythologies explaining the disappearance of American bison, and German legends about the disappearance of magical creatures from the world. Tolkien's explanation also seems similar to stories told about the rise of iron and technology and the passing away of old traditions, or of the disappearance of the unicorn (it missed the ark), and the rise of the dichotomy that rends myth from objective "reality." One can see the theme at work in the poem "The Last Ship," present in this collection, and in Tolkien's later writing -- elves sailing out of Middle Earth forever, making way for the age of men.
Bombadil's Adventures, however, is a heroic comedy in part about his capacity to escape disappearance -- to endure. One kind of disappearance is that of loneliness, where one fades from the view of others, becomes "mythical," alien, other -- larger than life and yet too small to see, casting no shadow. It is the solitude of being attached to other worlds, worlds where story is more than pastime, worlds where real objects have more than one kind of life and significance, and the loneliness of being unable to weave the other worlds and this one seamlessly together, to make everyone understand."
Bob
Science, like Nature, must also be tamed, with a view turned towards its preservation.
Peter Jackson directed the very funny but very gory "Braindead", and the very funny but quite disgusting "Meet The Feebles". Expect lots of blood and entrails - however I don't think we'll see Sam chopping up goblins with a lawn mover.