What’s that thing on your shoulder? Oh yeah, it’s almost the end of fricken summer, go out and play already!!!
Well, after my proverbial guts had been spilled on the floor last week, let’s look at news and notes on the HD-DVD and Blu-Ray fronts, shall we?
Warner Brothers teased HD supporters by promising a release of Good Night and Good Luck on the same day as it’s Blu cousin, but is holding off for now, for reasons unbeknownst to be as of this writing. At least there will be a Blu-R…y version of Full Metal Jacket to compare things with soon. By the same token however, rumors (thanks to themanroom.com) of releases of Caddyshack and The Searchers are whetting some appetites. Whether that’s due to Lacy Underall or not, I don’t know, but the cover art looks legit enough, and I’ll take flyers on both of these. In unrelated news, the Harry Potter discs appear to be going on some sort of moratorium by April of 2007, whether this shows any tangible release date for their long-awaited HD release remains to be seen.
Paramount is also making news for a couple of reasons. Immediately, their first wave of HD-DVD releases came out last week, those being Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Sleepy Hollow and Sahara. While more are on the way, after seeing Sky Captain, I’ve got to say that it should be interesting to see how some of the newer stuff will appear on 1080i resolution. Some of the titles in their blitz of marketing on the intros are Team America, MI:3 and The Manchurian Candidate. Their intro screen also shows a compare and contrast between SD and HD. Pretty sweet in my humble opinion.
The other news? Well, they are apparently quietly putting together HD versions of the Star Trek films. Go on, digest, process, I’ll be here. Happy? OK, let’s move on.
Otherwise, there doesn’t appear to be much else on the HD front, but if I may rant for a second, the 4th quarter of the year proves to be an eventful one. The question I have is that there are 2 major films (The Chronicles of Narnia and King Kong) that have both announced recent, multi-disc extended editions of their original blockbusters. I guess what I’m trying to say is that because standard def discs won’t be going away anytime soon, how are these huge sets going to be handled on the HD front? Mr. Jackson, I’m looking at you primarily for this. We know that the Lord of the Rings trilogy may shake some things up if given an HD release, but what’s the sense of giving up your aesthetically pleasing Extended Editions if you don’t get the same kind of respect and attention back on HD? Quite frankly, aside from the Blu-Ray price tag, the disappointing thing about some of their discs is that they’re not porting everything over in terms of extras. I know, we’re talking about super-uber-ultra-mega high definition and all, but if you can’t port over a commentary track or a pretty fricken’ good behind the scenes documentary, don’t bother coming over to ask for my money.
