Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Well... our work on the book’s pretty much done. The Digital Bits: Insider’s Guide to DVD is off to the printers later this week. We’ll update you with a final street date as soon as we get one from McGraw. Boy it feels good to be done!

Around the horn today, our own Adam Jahnke’s written up a nice little tribute to Warren Zevon, who passed away on Sunday. You’ll find that at our MusicTAP site today.

A lot of you have asked about the Alien: 2003 Director’s Cut we mentioned yesterday. It’s going to be in theaters in time for Halloween. Here’s a link to the Fox website, which lists Alien as coming soon (a website is reportedly coming soon as well). IGN has the official trailer up for the new release.

Just a quick bit of news. Criterion has announced the DVD release of Federico Fellini’s La Strada and David Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch in November.

In other news, it looks like Fox is temporarily delaying the release of the next seasons of Buffy and Firefly. We’ll post more details when we get them from the studio.

Disney is testing its self-destructing EZ-Ds this week in a few test markets. You can read more on that here via Yahoo and here via CNN (just FYI, CNN has a poll on reaction to EZ-D that’s worth checking out). Anyone out there taking wagers on how long this experiment will last?

And finally, Columbia TriStar has announced the DVD release of The Sea is Watching, Winged Migration: Special Edition, The King of Queens: The First Season, Marooned and My Big Fat Greek Life: The Entire Series for 11/18. Here’s the cover art for Winged Migration: Special Edition. Enjoy!

See you tomorrow!

(LATE UPDATE - 9/8/03 - 10:30 AM PDT)

Hi everyone! I just wanted to jump in here with a word on Fox’s upcoming Alien Quadrilogy nine-disc set. There’s obviously not yet been an official announcement for various reasons, and we suspect there will not be one until after the new Alien: 2003 Director’s Cut appears in theaters next month. The set IS still coming and with any luck it will be out before the end of 2003. As all of you know, we’ve closely followed this production for many months now for our upcoming book (it features more than 30 pages dedicated to a look at the making of the set). Because there hasn’t been an official announcement, we’re unfortunately not allowed to say anything here on The Bits in terms of specs and other details. We can tell you that all of that information - a complete disc by disc laundry list of the contents and extras - is included in the book (which streets the last week of this month or the first week of October). So that’s likely to be the closest to an official announcement we get in the near term. The reason I wanted to jump in here, is because there’s been some details leaked recently from the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC). I wish I could tell you more, but the one thing I can tell you for sure is that The Alien Legacy documentary is NOT on the new set for space reasons. So just be aware of that. The moment we’re allowed to post anything more about this set and its contents, we will. ’Nuff said.

(EARLY UPDATE - 9/8/03 - 12:01 AM PDT)

We aren’t pulling your leg. This is really it. This is our last day of work on the book. We’re just doing one last proof of the final layout text and all the images - making sure all the Ts are crossed, etc. As soon as we sign off on it, the book is officially off to the printers (whew)! Right now, Amazon is showing a September 26th street date. In order to make that, and get this baby in the hands of all those of you who have shelled out your payola in pre-orders, we’re going to be working pretty much all day today.

The good news is, when this is finally done, we’ll be getting back to our old selves in terms of reviews. Frankly, I’m really looking forward to having the time to spin and review more DVDs. It’s really amazing how much work it is to write a book - especially one with a lot of diagrams and images. The text can read great in Word, but making sure it all makes sense in print is a whole other challenge. It’s definitely been a learning curve. But just ONE more day. The light at the end of the tunnel is blinding us. ;-)

In the meantime, we’ve kicked off another trio of Trivia Contests - three separate contests from three different studios, including Warner Bros, Fox and Buena Vista. The contests run until Saturday, so get your entries in quick.

Stay tuned...

9/5/03

Is anyone else out there just totally ready for football? I’ve been playing Madden 2004 for a few weeks now just to get my fix in, and I watched last night’s NFL season opener with the Skins and the Jets in high-definition. There’s just something about this time of the year that really gets the old blood pumping, you know? Repeat after me football fans: "This could be the year..."

Todd’s back today with another one of his Doogan’s Views columns. He checks in with a quick look at Urban Vision Entertainment’s new DVD release of Ninja Scroll: The Series, Volume One - Dragon Stone.

Buena Vista has revealed that Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl will arrive on DVD on 12/2 as a spiffy 2-disc set (SRP $29.99). Get this... the disc will feature anamorphic widescreen video, Dolby Digital 5.1 audio, audio commentary with director Gore Verbinski and star Johnny Depp, a second commentary with producer Jerry Bruckheimer and Keira Knightley, a third commentary with the screenwriters, the Epic at Sea production documentary, deleted scenes, an effects progression reel, trailers, interactive timelines and more.

Just a word of advice... a lot of people are reporting problems with Universal’s new Monty Python’s Meaning of Life DVD. Disc Two of the set is fine, but the movie disc is plagued by strange picture artifacts - blurring of movement, etc. It could very well be an encoding problem with the disc itself. We haven’t seen the disc yet ourselves, but we’ll let you know when we do.

We’ll be posting a new Trivia Contest this weekend, and we’ll be back with one (and possibly two) new DVD reviews on Monday - The Core and 24: The Complete Second Season.

Enjoy NFL kickoff weekend, may your favorite team win (unless they’re playing my Vikings) and we’ll see you back here on Monday!

9/4/03

We’re getting an early jump on things today, folks. The big news today is that Universal Music has revealed that they plan to slash prices for their A-list CDs across the board to an SRP $12.98 (from their previously outrageous prices of $16.98 to $18.98). It’s a very good move, designed to curb online digital file sharing. The price shift takes effect on 10/1. You can bet I’ll be buying a few new discs that day just to celebrate. You can read more on this from Matt at our MusicTAP site and here at CNN Money.

Also today, we have a pair of new DVD reviews from our own Rob Hale. Rob takes a look at a pair of great movies on disc from Hong Kong-based filmmaker Wong Kar-wai - Chungking Express (as released by Miramax) and In the Mood for Love (from Criterion).

And our good friend Adam Jahnke’s checked in with another new edition of The Bottom Shelf. Wanna know why we love Adam so much around here? Read his last two columns. Every good team has a go-to guy, and Adam’s that guy here at The Bits. And he always keeps you guessing. Think he’s gonna zig? Nope - zag. His latest column is On Knowing One’s Place: The Big Emotional Spielberg Ending. And in it, he reviews...

Okay, I’m not gonna spoil it for you. Let’s just say we have THREE new DVD reviews up here at The Bits this morning and leave it at that. Enjoy!

Stay tuned...

Bill Hunt, Editor The Digital Bits billhunt@thedigitalbits.com