E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial 30th Anniversary Blu-ray

With Jaws on its way, its only fair that Spielberg release a little something extra for us this year as well. We'll get more Spielbergian movies, but Jaws and E.T. are great titles to enjoy at the beginning of the new year.

Now we come to the not so great part. Spielberg may have decided to go back and edit out his previous changes, but he decided to change the box art. Oh, boy. What a bad idea. Very little thought was put into it. The photoshop may not be as bad as my banner, but well check it out:



As you can see, a little too much is going on here with different color hues going on. Where's our famous fly across the moon image? It may serve as a back cover image, but it looks like its gone. I'm pretty anal about my DVD covers. There are some pretty fantastic (with a hint of bizarre)covers (I'm a fan of simplicity), to the just plain awful (I should have chosen a well known movie, but Val Kilmer's stretched head will suffice for now). E.T.'s cover is an an example of just being bad. Its not awful, but it isn't good either.

I can't imagine Mr. Spielberg would change it to the out of print DVD cover, which is pretty fantastic since the Disc represents the moon. Or the single disc cheap Special Edition cover, which is a mix of two classic E.T. posters. I guess he just wanted to go with something new. Its not amazing, but I guess I can live with it. At least you can't go wrong with Jaws.

The Great Christmas Haul

Got a few surprises and things I’ve wanted for a long time.

It's Got A Wonderful Defense Mechanism. You Don't Dare Kill It.

• The Simpsons may be over sooner than the creators once claimed. There’s a contract dispute were FOX wants to start cutting costs including the actors paycheck. Can the voice actors really win with their 400k an episode (Not including the merchandise)? Oh, and Dexter could end as well.
• Apple announced a new iPhone the other day. Its an update of the recent iPhone. People will still buy it. People are stupid. Lets move on.
• Batman has a new animated series coming….it looks and sounds weird….
• An Arrested Development movie looks well on the way! But wait, there’s more?! Not only movie, but a Miniseries will also be made to go into the movie! The TV gods actually listened! Joy. Oh, and this happened.
• Now that we finished with iPhones lets talk about Microsoft’s Zune HD. Well its officially dead. Rather depressing since I actually own one of these wonderful devices, but again Apple wins. I guess it is all about quantity over quality.
• Well that time of year is here. My favorite season of the year. It is that of fall. The slow transition into cooler weather and when horror movies start appearing more frequently on cable. I usually start watching as many horror movies as I can and buy a few on the side. This year I am trying to find the best horror Blu-rays from all the online sales. They are very frequent this month and more frequent during the holiday season. But back to this season. So far I have brought “The Evil Dead” and “Alien” to my Blu-ray collection, both excellent Blu-rays. I have yet to decide on the third though. Anyways, buy horror Blu-rays now everyone!

If anyone can guess where the news title came from, a Blu-ray movie I watched yesterday, you win the internet for today!

One of the Greatest Movie Trilogies is now on Blu-ray…

…and I have no plans to buy it. You may have heard of these Holy Grails. Star Wars on Blu-ray. Every Star Wars fan has waited for this day for them to be released. But these aren’t the movies we are looking for right now…

As much as I love these movies, I can’t bring myself to buy them. Sure I was crushed by how much George Lucas as done to the Original Trilogy and ignored it, but this…this has become a bit too much. Sure making graphical changes and adding a scene or two is nice, but changing key scenes to your own stories just seems very wrong. Especially in the ways Lucas seems to think are “good” changes. For example:

What? Is this supposed to be a reference to Darth Vader’s nooo in Revenge of the Sith? It just doesn’t work that way.

Here’s another change. It doesn’t really change the story, but its just weird and annoying:

Yeah…as much as I would love to see Star Wars on Blu-ray I can’t own these. There have been way too many changes than I ever wanted done to these movies. I really don't want to see the "Jedi Rocks" and Hadyen Christensen "ghost Anakin" sequences in glorious HD either. I’ll look for the extras around YouTube. And probably rent them or through other unmentionable means. By the way, did anyone else see the box art inside and out? The cover makes no sense and the inside art seems like it was all picked randomly. What a mess of a Blu-ray.

Oh, well. At least Rocketeer and Hook where announced on Blu-ray recently. Also I predicted The Crow to be out on Blu-ray and that’s coming soon as well.

Update: ...ok, I might want the Star Wars set for the extras.

No, You Were Right. This is Really The Blog You Are Looking For

Welcome to the newly presented Inside the Briefcase (not shown in its finished product). Yeah its quite nice, but I don’t know if I quite like it yet. You now have to comment next to the Blog Post’s Title and things were mixed around. I can’t even make a big banner anymore. Well, we’ll see how things work out. In the meantime, if you read my Twitter post I went to Best Buy recently. Yes, Coraline really doesn’t work that way. Its formatted in the old 3D and it doesn’t mean its digital 3D. You’ll know what I mean when you see it at your nearest Best Buy, in the meantime I’ll gloat with this:

It was only $5.50, but I can’t go wrong with a [free] inch thick steelbook. It was also the last one at Downey Best Buy, so don’t wait to get it. Wither you plan to buy the upcoming Theatrical Editions of Lord of the Rings or Extended. I’m mostly waiting for the latter, but sometimes I can’t help myself. Plus $5 off.