Savant's new reviews today are
Hello ... well, Savant has finally finished his 2nd review of his favorite movie, Major Dundee, which is of course an intense analysis of details of versions and interpretations. Readers not interested in digging so deep will get a preview of the disc's extras, however, some of which reveal the content of even more missing scenes, if one knows how to read them. Up until a couple of weeks ago the street date was August 30 but Amazon now lists it as September 20. I hope all my attention ups the interest for this one a few degrees.
I'm cleaning up the review stack while I have a chance - the onslaught of September and October genre product should be hitting soon, like an expected storm front. Going through my well-thumbed Hardy encyclopedia of Horror Movies it's easy to see that after this fall, the majority of the Horror genre is going to be on DVD. May it all keep coming.
I'm also curious to see what becomes of HD. I don't get the touted genre HD cable pix in my area and I have to say that the rumored format war will put a severe damper on the rollout of a new HD disc format. I like to 'adopt' earlier than some but I have zero inclination to invest in anything that might fade in a year or two. The greedy studios and hardware manufacturers (who have already deeply compromised what HD might be) need to realize that the market is already happy with the standard DVD quality. Make HD problematic, and it will sit there as an upscale toy for rich people, in the Hollywood circuit niche that kept laserdiscs down. So there.
And I like HD. A post house I worked at last week was playing a broadcast of Ride the High Country. The quality was phenomenal - it looked better and had far better color and detail than any 35mm print I'd ever seen, and I've seen the film projected at least fifteen times. HD will a pleasure to watch if the industry doesn't completely blow it.
Happy Saturday .... Glenn Erickson
Posted by DVD Savant at August 20, 2005 03:28 PM