Robert Meyer Burnett Tagged Articles at Cinematical
Comic-Con: Sneak Peek at Upcoming DVDs, Including 'Blade Runner'!
Filed under: Action », Sci-Fi & Fantasy », DVD Reviews », Comic/Superhero/Geek », ComicCon »

If you're a DVD junkie like me, then you'll end up buying a new Special Platinum Holographic Limited Master Ultra Five Disc Edition of a DVD you already own, just to get some paltry extras, like interviews with the gaffer. I'll admit, it's a sickness, and once Blu-ray and HD-DVD were introduced, it got that much worse for me.
Likewise, if you're a hardcore DVDer, then you probably visit DVD news sites like The Digital Bits and DVD File for the latest news about anything DVD related, no more how trivial, and no matter how much Peter Jackson continues to hammer you over the head with new versions of The Lord of the Rings DVDs.
To that end, our first early morning early morning panel was the DVD Sneak Peeks for 2007. Bill Hunt and Todd Doogan from Bits introduced Charles de Lauzirika, who works on a lot of Ridley Scott's DVD releases ... he has the lucky distinction of working on the Blade Runner: The Final Cut DVD, Javier Soto, who works with Guillermo del Toro, and Robert Meyer Burnett, who directed Free Enterprise and is working on the DVD releases of Shoot 'Em Up and Valkyrie.
New On DVD - Harry Potter 4, Howl's Moving Castle, Jarhead
Filed under: New Releases », DVD Reviews », New on DVD », Home Entertainment »


- Breaking News - Hong Kong action director Johnny To delivers this watchable Woo-alike about a police force that loses the support of the public when a robbery goes bad and is covered by a local news program. The set pieces are pretty tight, even if the drama and the statement To tries to make about the power and responsibility of the media doesn't fully come through.
- Free Enterprise: Special Edition - A self-effacing turn akin to Marlon Brando's in The Freshman and Pauly Shore's in Pauly Shore Is Dead is William Shatner, sending up the cult of personality that has followed him since the original Star Trek series ended its five year mission two years early in 1969. When fanboys Rafer Wiegel and Eric McCormack meet their boyhood idol, he is far from the super-cool man for all seasons they have long worshiped. He's bent on staging a one-man musical version of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, a great running joke that culminates in the brilliant payoff that is the Shatner/The Rated R rap duet, "No Tears For Caesar". Writer-director Robert Meyer Burnett has created a love letter, not just to Trek, but to anyone who has ever loved anything with fanatical passion, and this long-overdue 2-disc treatment gives it the respect it was not afforded when it was first released in 1999. Check out the Pop-Up Video style trivia track, which annotates the geekery, new special effects, the making-of feature Where No Man Has Gone Before, and the unaired TV pilot, Café Fantastique, which features the real fans who inspired this smart, hardy-har-har trek. A sequel, My Big Fat Geek Wedding, has been listed on the IMDB for nearly 3 years now, and Mindfire Entertainment's website features a rudimentary mention of it, though no firm details are available as yet.
- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: Special Edition - Death, and the gloomy heft that comes with it, visits Hogwarts in the fourth and most satisfying installment in the ongoing series so far. When an evil thought vanquished literally rears its ugly head again, Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermoine (Emma Watson) team up to expose it. Like the overwhelmingly dark Revenge Of The Sith, this is the first to bear the PG-13 rating (for "sequences of fantasy violence and frightening images"), though its decidedly down ending makes it feel more like The Empire Strikes Back. It is not unreasonable to expect studio Warner Brothers to keep their three leads on through Harry Potter and the As-Yet-Unwritten-and-Untitled Year 7 Story. This, of course, is despite the fact that they will be in their early 20's by then, but let us not forget that at least one of the 90210 kids was practically eligible for Social Security by the end of that run. Even at 157 minutes, the book has still been truncated, but it is doubly encouraging to know that kids will know what is missing and will sit still for that long in order to be able to go on smartly about it. The second disc is chock-full-o' extra goodies, and is available in full- and widescreen editions. A single disc version is also available.









