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Fan Rant: Old Flicks on DVD and the Business of Re-Releases

by Monika Bartyzel Mar 18th 2008 // 9:02PM

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Fan Rant

The DVD business is this insidious virus that messes with your mental state, stings your wallet like an unfriendly bee, and clutters up your home, your local used store, and landfills with previously-loved recordings that have been thrown out like old cell phones.

The main culprit are those mean, money-hungry re-releases. Sometimes, the hints of discs-to-come are very strong -- enough that you know a new version is inevitable. When Donnie Darko dipped to $9 a disc, you just knew that a new release was on the horizon, and this week, those under-$10 Ice Storm discs have paved the way for a new Criterion release. But it is not always so cut and dry.

Sometimes you get a handful of releases for one single movie, often with competing features. The fifteen billion Army of Darkness releases, for example, offer battling quotes. If you want to hear "Good. Bad. I'm the guy with the gun," you better make sure that you have the right version; otherwise, you'll get the painfully inferior: "I'm not that good." The same goes for: "Maybe, just maybe my boys can protect the book. Yeah, and maybe I'm a Chinese jet pilot," which became the much less quotable: "I need more men." It becomes not only a race for the best disc features, but also a race to get the movie you remember, and the quotes you love.
So, we, as fans, buy and buy and buy, or refrain and live without. After Jersey Girl, which I actually liked, I waited for a better version, sure that the one with the tacky icon of Kevin Smith in the corner would soon pave way to his own much better release. It's been four years, but there's still no better disc, or at least a release with a cover that does it justice. I should just suck it up and buy it, so that the new release announcement can pop up. (There have been rumors, but never anything solid.)

And then there are the oldies but goodies. Sometimes, restraint pays off. After waiting and waiting, Topper finally hit DVD, as did my beloved Margaret Rutherford-starring Miss Marple flicks. But they're not all so obscure. Less than a year after I finally broke down and ordered a Myra Breckinridge VHS from the UK, the DVD was released. A few days after I buy 8 Men Out, the anniversary edition gets released.

It goes on and on. I settle and pay, then the new one comes out. I don't; I keep waiting. Instead of these damned digital editions of the popular movies you can find anywhere, there should already be a thriving digital market for these old movies that can't quite make it to our eyes. (It seems to be coming, but so far, we can only hope that it will thrive.) I passed up the chance to pay $50 for a rare VHS of My Dinner with Andre this weekend, sure that if I spent that much, it'll come out again pronto. While it might not scream "money maker!" to studios, it would be so simple to make it downloadable. I shouldn't have to pay $50 for it on tape, or hundreds for the out-of-print DVD.

We've had these discs now for over a decade now. Can we still say that the format is finding its sea legs? Or are we doomed to just continue to buy, buy, buy, and wait, wait, wait? Is it too much to ask that instead of inferior box sets like that recent Die Hard trilogy release, which paled in comparison to the previous box set, we get all the other movies that we're itching for, or at least the re-releases that make the discs worthy of our money?

Please, studios! I want to sit down and eat with Wallace Shawn...Run away with Craig Sheffer and Virginia Madsen... See the Men with Guns... Reminisce with the camp-driven Poison Ivy free of Drew Barrymore... See those Fire Walk with Me scenes that are held in studio limbo... Or better yet, David Lynch's Hotel Room, and Industrial Symphony #1 on those beautiful, shiny discs...

But what about you? Which discs did you buy, only to be slapped, pronto, with a new release? And what discs do you continue to wait for, and pine for?

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Tags: DVD releases, DVD woes, DvdReleases, DvdWoes

 

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