Mother Of All Dust Devil DVD Releases!

July 26th, 2006 Posted by Ian W | Film & TV News | no comments

Subversive Cinema have announced the specs for there Region 1 DVD release of Richard Stanley’s Dust Devil. To say they sound good is a bit of an understatement. See what I mean -

Disc One:
• Dust Devil :The Final Cut: 107-minute version with 5.1 and 2.0 Dolby Stereo sound
• Audio commentary by Stanley and Hill
• Stanley’s production diaries
• A Demon Reborn: The Final Dust Devil featurette
• Making of Dust Devil featurette
• Trailer for the long-lost 16mm version of Dust Devil

Disc Two:
• Bonus CD: Dust Devil soundtrack by Simon Boswell

Disc Three:
• 114-minute reconstruction of the Dust Devil work print, in non-anamorphic 1.85:1 widescreen with 2.0 stereo sound
• New Dust Devil comic book by Phil Avelli, story approved by Stanley

Disc Four:
• ‘Voice Of The Moon’ documentary about Afghanistan, with commentary with Stanley and Hill
• ‘The White Darkness’ documentary about Haitian Voodoo, with commentary by Stanley and his production diaries

Disc Five:
• ‘Secret Glory’ documentary about the search for the Grail and the neo-Nazi movement, with commentary by Stanley and Hill and Stanley’s production diaries

This release easily tops the current Region 2 DVD and must rank as one of the best Special Edition releases ever put out. I’ve never seen any of Stanley’s documentaries before but ‘The White Darkness’ and ‘Secret Glory’ sound fascinating. I’m glad I held off buying the current UK release as this is a must have.

Comic Book movie sequel news…

July 23rd, 2006 Posted by Ian W | Film & TV News | no comments

Dark Horizons have reported some interesting news on the Batman and Hulk sequels-

Batman

The big Batman news is that Heath Ledger has allegedly been offered the part of the Joker in the next film.

Now Ledger is a good actor (although I can’t think of anything he’s been in that I’ve really enjoyed) but he lacks the flamboyance needed to portray the Joker. I think Paul Bettany or even Adrien Brody would have been a better choice but after Batman Begins I’m willing to accept that Christopher Nolan knows what he’s doing.

He’s yet to make a bad film and I’m eagerly awaiting The Prestige due out later this year.

Hulk

Now this is very good news. Louis Leterrier the director behind The Transporter films and Jet Li’s Unleashed will be directing the sequel.

I’ve yet to see Transporter 2 but based on the other two films he’s a director who knows how to make an action movie, and that’s just what this film needs. Ang Lee is a great director but he was always a bad choice for Hulk, trying to make it fit his style of filmaking rather than fit his style to the film.

According to Leterrier the new film will do for Hulk what Spider-Man 2 did for Spider-Man. There’s no news if Eric Bana will return but I hope he does as it will give the film some sense of continuity. The budget is reported to be over $100 million and there will be a lot less CGI this time. And that may be a good thing.