It’s been a while since it was announced, but now that the last episode of the new Red Dwarf Series XI has aired, I might as well mentioned it here: The home video release of the first six new episodes will be on November 14 in the UK and – probably because it has not been shown over there yet – November 8 in the US! The original announcement was a bit light on the details, but a follow-up with the cover design revealed the bonus materials, which do not look all that exciting: all what’s listed is Behind the Scenes, Deleted Scenes, Smeg Ups, Trailers/Promos, Visual Effects, Model Shots and an Image Gallery – unfortunately not one word about a documentary or audio commentaries, which is somewhat underwhelming. The reverse cover with the design matching the older DVDs promises Over 90 Minutes of Deleted Scenes, Outtakes and Extras. The soundtrack is also listed as plain stereo, which is more than a bit surprising – wasn’t there a 5.1 broadcast mix?

We’ll find out when the DVD is released in two weeks – I’ve already got it on preorder and I’m not sure if I can do a complete review, but a blog post with a quick look should be possible. Stay tuned!

I’m not really looking at DVD or Blu-Ray release dates nowadays anymore, but here’s one I’ve been really waiting for: Andy Weir’s The Martian. According to a Space.com article from today, 20th Century Fox will first release the movie in the US as a digital streaming release on December 22, while the DVD and Blu-Ray will follow next year on January 12. There does not seem to be a UK release date yet, but according to Amazon.de the German Blu-Ray and DVD releases are on February 18, so a British release might be around the same time. There are absolutely no words on the bonus materials yet, but there will probably not a lot of them. I’ll probably get either the UK or German release, because when I order the US disc, it will probably arrive only after the European ones come out.

Just as a side note, I have actually not yet seen the movie except in trailers and some featurettes, but I’ve read the book and liked it very much for some very simple reasons. First, it is less science fiction than science future and seems almost entirely plausible. Second, no aliens or some etheral forces are mucking about. Third, Mark Watney may have to suffer more than John McClane in all of the Die Hard movies together, but nobody actually dies in the story! There is a bit of emotional baggage in the book that may or may not have made it into the movie and there’s quite a lot hair-raising excitement, but it seems far away from the drama-fests of Gravity and Interstellar. Despite the huge NASA hype around it – which only really started midway through production – I think the movie is what a proper space adventure should be all about.  I’m sure the movie will be fun, but I will do a merciless review when I’ve seen it!

While everybody’s waiting for the home video release, here’s a throwback to the beginning of this year: author Andy Weir was on the Weekly Space Hangout back in January before he got very busy with the promotion of the movie and was totally in his element. It was a great conversation and he even joined in for the rest of the hangout – it’s very much worth watching!

I had mentioned this a long time ago, but the planned release of My Fair Lady in its newly restored version had been delayed for unknown reasons. More than a year later, a new release date has been announced – now it’s finally coming out on October 27, although in the US only for now. Everything has been sort of hush-hush and not even Robert A. Harris, who has been working on both the 1994 and 2015 restorations, was able to comment much about the work on the movie – until now. A couple of days ago, the Home Theater Forum had scored an amazing interview with him, which has a lot of details about the earlier and current restorations of the movie and the huge differences between them. While digtal restoration technology was still in its infancy twenty years ago, this time it was possible to scan and restore the movie completely in the digital realm in resolutions that finally do the large-format 65mm source justice.

There are not much details about the single, combined Blu-Ray/DVD release – only that it will be a set with two Blu-Rays and one DVD. The second Blu-Ray reportedly will contain 90 Minutes of ‘never before seen’ archive material, but it does not look like this will be available on DVD. Keeping the old 2-disc special edition will be a good because most of the old extras including the documentary seem to have been jettisoned too – but the new release will be worth it alone for the new video and audio restoration. I’m still not sure if and when I will be getting this new release, but should it make the way into my collection, I will give it a full review.

For the anniversary of Orson Welles’ 100th birthday, Studio Canal has pulled something special out of the magic hat – a new restoration of The Third Man, this time in 4K made from a fine-grain positive copy of the original negative, done by Deluxe Digital in England. The new restoration has reportedly already been shown at the Cannes Film Festival and will be released in cinemas in both the UK and US on June 26 and “this summer” also here in Germany – but more importantly, new DVD and Blu-Ray editions are already coming on July 20th in the UK and on June 16th in Germany.

A 2-Disc DVD set contains the movie with the same great extras including an audio commentary and the Shadowing the Third Man documentary as the earlier StudioCanal editions, the Single Blu-Ray contains the same extras and there is also a slightly expensive Limited Edition Blu-Ray/DVD-Combo with the three separately available discs plus a soundtrack CD and some print material. The German editions seem to be identical, but only the 2-Disc-Set and the Blu-Ray are being released by StudioCanal’s Arthaus label. The prices are actually quite decent especially in Germany and if you haven’t bought the movie recently, this set is really recommended and is also a good replacement for the unfortunately out-of-print Criterion edition from a few years ago.

[Update & Warning 15.7: I received the German DVD edition today and it’s worthless because the 1.33:1 image has been encoded in 16:9 with thick black bars at the sides, making it virtually unwatchable on 4:3 displays and wasting almost half the resolution of the DVD! DO NOT BUY THE DVD EDITION OF THIS DISC – the authoring is messed up either on purpose or by accident. It’s also false packaging, because the rear cover says “1.33:1 (4:3 Full Screen)”! This concerns all European editions of the DVD, since the disc has English, French and German menus. Highly disappointing of Studio Canal! I’m trying to contact the German and English offices with a complaint, but I have no great hopes that this will properly be re-authored. Unfortunately I will not be reviewing this disc now in this shape.]

Each year around this time, I usually try to post some Easter-themed reviews, but since this year I unfortunately don’t have anything new to post, so something from the archives has to do. Because the sheep have stormed the cinemas this spring, how about a bit of Shaun the Sheep? I’ve already reviewed the first two series a long time ago and I would aleady have done so with the current episodes if the BBC had released a proper boxset in the UK! But I guess that will come when Shaun the Sheep – The Movie is going to be released – which, incidentially, will be on June 1st in the UK and on August 6th in Germany. Until then, here’s some classic Shaun – Happy Easter everyone!

Continue to Shaun the Sheep Series 1 »
Continue to Shaun the Sheep Series 2 »

Time flies, January is already gone and I’m still working on getting something new for the website done! Plus there was a certain frustration over a highly anticipated movie we watched over the holidays that turned out a terrible disappointment – to the point that I actually shelved its review indefinitely.  So there will be some archival stuff first in 2015 with a whole planned series of translated articles and maybe some other shorter ideas which I still have to figure out. Bbut to show that this site is not dead and will be still alive this year, here is a short-ish article with some news – the only ones I’ve been able to find so far – and a bit of general news observation about what’s going on in the business at the moment. Overall, it’s rather slow and unexciting from my viewpoint, but let’s see…

First an apology – I had plans for some new reviews, but I just don’t have the time to sit down and write at the moment, so I’ll have to postpone that a little bit. But I assure you that I have something cooking with some discs lying around which really desperately need to be written about, and I’m going to do it sooner or later. Instead, I can only urge you to wander over to DVD Savant, where Glenn Erickson is always writing up a storm with two sets of reviews each week – I don’t know how he does it! But meanwhile a quick little news update, because I really want to keep up with what’s going on: Dreamworks’ two 2014 movies are coming to home video in the very near future, but first there’s a surprising announcement about one of my favourite musicals (plus another update from Criterion!)… 

After some extensive slacking off, I decided to write more news articles and re-open the DVD News Index, now with three date columns for US, UK and German releases. To make things easier, I’m not only going to include the discs I intend to buy myself, but also some others as well, regardless in which format they come. The DVDLog “headquarters” are still standard-definition only and probably still will be for some time, but that doesn’t have to mean that I can’t give a few recommendations. I’m also going to muck out the Wanted List and add some new entries with movies which really need a transfer upgrade. I can’t promise that I will be able to keep this up, but I’ll try to read the usual suspects of websites more often and do at least one news update every month or so, depending on how much interesting news there is to share. But now finally for some news…  

I have not written anythingabout the new incarnation of Cosmos with Neil deGrasse Tyson here, because I am technically not allowed to watch it yet from Germany. What I can carefully say is that I have been able to see a couple of episodes and it’s really great, but different than Carl Sagan’s original series from 1980. I was somewhat reluctant to announce the North American home video release coming on June 10th  because Amazon.com had initially listed disappointingly high prices, but at the moment you can get the DVD for $24.99 and the Blu-Ray for $29.99, which is really reasonable for a 4-disc set. The release actually comes just two days after the broadcast of the final episode and according to The Digital Bits, there are some cool extras like a making-of documentary, archive material about Carl Sagan and even an audio commentary on the first episode, so these are definitively worth buying even if you have seen the series previously on television!

I’m not posting a lot of news these days, actually I’ve pretty much given up on it save for special occasions – like this one: there had already been some rumours about a new restoration of the first Beatles movie A Hard Day’s Night since the beginning of this year, but now it’s certain: Criterion will release the movie on June 24th as a Blu-Ray and DVD combo set. A new 4k transfer has been made, this time apparently in the correct aspect ratio of 1.75:1, and in addition to a remastered mono track, new stereo and 5.1 mixes have been produced with the music this time coming from the original multitrack masters and with the involvement of Giles Martin, the son of the Beatles’ producer George Martin. There will also be numerous extras, including an audio commentary, some of the interviews from the 2002 release, the 1994 documentary You Can’t Do That (which has been out of print on DVD for a long time) and a lot more.

The press release from Criterion has all the details, and the announcement on the Home Theater Forum has the full poster including the crucial information that the two DVDs of the set will include all the extras of the Blu-Ray. There will also be a single-disc DVD release, but it will be sadly missing most of the extras. The price on Amazon.com for the three-disc set is $34.99, but if you ordered early enough you were able to get it for about $25 plus shipping. A full review of the new release will be coming in July!