Latest DVD Purchases

[Adam]

re-bought some dvds I had pawned earlier (when cash became tight) for $10 in total:

[Weeping_Guitar]

Adam, how is the picture quality on that newer Blade Runner relase? I'm probably going to hold off for the big deluxe super all inclusive set later this year.

[Adam]

It looks better but, not having a widescreen tv, I can't tell that big a difference.
I'm also waiting on the box set but that won't be out until fall.

[Weeping_Guitar]

[Weeping_Guitar]

[sisyphus]

i love manhattan and hannah and her sisters. classics.

[RocDoc]

Ya seen 'Scoop' yet?

[sisyphus]

i saw scoop but wasn't too impressed. i think i remember liking the ending. woody hasn't been at his best lately. i kind of liked that one he did with christinia ricci a while back...it's been a while.

[KooL]

'Scoop' was OK, but it was sorta throwaway. Woody just made that one 'on the side' while he was making Match Point in the UK, which was a much better movie.

His last great movie IMO was Deconstructing Harry. That movie was hilarious, Kirsty Alley stole the show in that scene where she fights with him after she discovers he was fucking one of her patients. The black hooker was funny in that too.

[Thorngrub]

Picked this amazing item up yesterday, it's the original complete BBC series w/David Attenborough narrating. I wanted the UK version instead, cuz the US version (w/ Sigourney Weaver narrating) is edited for content.

5 discs of the most amazingly photographed images on the planet. Sisy & I watched most of the 1st disc last night.

In a word,

Stunning.

[RocDoc]

'Edited for content' in the case of something like this is going to typically be an example of ridiculously over-reaching All-American prudishness.
Well, in 99.9% of the fucking cases anyway...I'm honestly sick of that shit already, making us all over here look so damned stupid.

Any inkling whether that's the case with this Planet Earth show, thorny? The bugaboo 'indigenous nudity' perhaps?
Geez.

I was watching one of my favorites last night, Globetrekker doing a 'Paris City Guide' for which I am of COURSE going to be a complete sucker becasue I love that city completely...and they were at the Louvre standing in front of some statue which I should have recognized probably, but the blurred the butt (or maybe it was genitalia for all I know) out of the picture!

I mean come ON and wtf??!

Classical sculpture is a no-no on Public fucking TV?

Grr.

A couple of weeks back I watched a Tivo'd recording of a 'Behind-the-scenes-of-Rick Steves' show' (one of the pre-eminent travel guys on PBS) and he actually brought up some of the same thing saying that they had to keep in mind American sensitivities on nudity and such, while he and his producer and his cameraman were paying BIG bucks to get 'private time' to film at places like the Louvre, D'Orsay, the Vatican even....Steves is a highly intellectual guy, schooled in European history and architecture, and he has to hold back because of some sort of blue-nose anti-intellectual 'code' that U.S. TV must follow?

Ai.

[Thorngrub]

Well I tried finding out about what they edited out - - and from the Wikipedia entry on the series, it appears that perhaps the only differences are,

1/Sigourney narrates on the US (aired on the Discovery Channel) version
2/The chapters, or episodes, were released in a different order on the US version
3/The US version is available on HD DVD; not sure if the original is (confused on that part)
4/There is different theme music for the US release


That seems like the only changes, so perhaps all the content is there in both versions, I don't know. I just prefer the idea of David Attenborough narrating, to be honest. He does a fine job of it.

~

As for the indigenous nudity - I'm not sure if any humans are featured in this series. I get the impression we're not, which is cool by me. But I know what you mean - our stateside prudishness is ridiculous. Its enough to get me wantin' to go streaking as an activist statement. If I thought it would change anything in this post-Puritan Theocracy, I would do it.

[RocDoc]

Actually, I think the current post-puritan theocracy has nothing new to do with it (if that was your point, tho maybe hopefully it wasn't)...shit's been this fucked up way since like forever with us, with lots and lots of X-tians being as nuts as the Muslims with their goofball need to be chaste.
I mean, they look upon their women as nothing less than this garden of perversion that men simply cannot stand to see even a strand of hair or they'll be thrust (so to speak) into a sexual frenzy.
It's simply endemic to be scared to death of 'dirty' nekkidness (and all related forms of it) here in the U.S., or else the 'Keepers Of The Faith' whomever they are, will threaten boycotts and shit for 'racy' content....and the moron networks/sponsors ALWAYS have backed down for fear of financial ruin...

They've successfully equated the 'human process', what we are, to the nastiest shit...gore of all types, death and violence.
Oh and 'bad language' too.
Pretty sick, if JUST for the fact that there should not ever have been an equation presumed there.

Enough.

~

...the only differences are,

1/Sigourney narrates on the US (aired on the Discovery Channel) version
2/The chapters, or episodes, were released in a different order on the US version
3/The US version is available on HD DVD; not sure if the original is (confused on that part)
4/There is different theme music for the US release

If that's all, that's pretty damned redundant.
Coulda kept all those production costs in their pockets instead.
Duh.

[Weeping_Guitar]

[Adam]

Nice buy, Weeping.
I wonder how big an improvement the reissued disc is over the original Criterion release.