I Am Going to Miss DVDs

[Spock]

In the old man stands on lawn and shouts at the cloud department.

I was thinking today about how much better DVD's are than streaming is. Unless I am completely mistaken, it does not seem that you get the extras with streaming that you got/get with DVDs.

I generally love these-the director's commentary, the deleted scenes etc.

If I am wrong-please tell me how to access these features on streaming.

As a family, we watch almost every movie with the subtitles on-personal preference and, Yes, that is a feature that is usually available on streaming.

So DVD>Streaming>VHS.

Otherwise, I am trying to think of any movies that I should buy on DVD that have beaucoup extras before they disappear. I do have a lot of my favorites and a lot of the greats as well.

[mrkelley23]

Make sure you also have a backup player.

[Vandal]

Bring back the Betamax!

[Game Girl]

I love DVDs and will miss them if they ever leave.

[silverscreenselect]

I generally love these-the director's commentary, the deleted scenes etc.

Sometimes, what you get on the DVD isn't just a few deleted scenes but an entirely different director's cut or roadshow version (for older films) of the movie. These are generally impossible to find on streaming. I've been trying to locate the director's cut of The Town, which is about 20 minutes longer and supposedly better, but with no luck. I have the director's cut (with commentary) of John Frankenheimer's Reindeer Games. It's also about 20 minutes longer and better than the theatrical version. Frankenheimer comments on the scenes that got cut out of the standard theatrical release. I've seen the longer version available on HBO as an added feature when they had the streaming rights.

Everybody's favorite comedy, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World was originally a 3 1/2 hour roadshow (including overture and entr'acte). The general release was about a half hour shorter, and that's the version that's usually available on DVD or streaming. The Criterion Collection version includes most of the remaining footage, but about five minutes of the roadshow version seems to be gone forever (unless someone turns up a master copy of the original film).

I have one extremely valuable VHS tape, the roadshow version of John Wayne's Alamo. It was released as a special edition VHS tape (on two cassettes), but the masters they used to make the extended VHS tape have disappeared before the movie was ever released on DVD. So unless a master shows up somewhere, there won't be a DVD or streaming version of the roadshow. There are other movies that were released on VHS in the 1980s (usually in non-widescreen formats), priced to rent, but were never made available on DVD or streaming and probably never will be legally. Some of these tapes fetch hundreds of dollars. (Anyone with some technical knowhow can get ahold of the VHS tape and transfer it to DVD or streaming, but the video quality will probably be quite poor and, of course, it's a bootleg.)

Some of these longer versions aren't available because the studio that holds the rights refuses to release the movie in a new format or version.

[mrkelley23]

I generally love these-the director's commentary, the deleted scenes etc.

I have one extremely valuable VHS tape, the roadshow version of John Wayne's Alamo. It was released as a special edition VHS tape (on two cassettes), but the masters they used to make the extended VHS tape have disappeared before the movie was ever released on DVD. So unless a master shows up somewhere, there won't be a DVD or streaming version of the roadshow. There are other movies that were released on VHS in the 1980s (usually in non-widescreen formats), priced to rent, but were never made available on DVD or streaming and probably never will be legally. Some of these tapes fetch hundreds of dollars. (Anyone with some technical knowhow can get ahold of the VHS tape and transfer it to DVD or streaming, but the video quality will probably be quite poor and, of course, it's a bootleg.)

I have to take issue with your last statement up here. The reason many ports from VHS to DVD have poor quality is because the magnetic signals on the tape on the VHS have already deteriorated so much. You don't have to play a VHS for its quality to deteriorate -- time will take acre of that for you. I recommend anyone who has VHS tapes that they value to take them to a reputable shop and get a digital copy made ASAP. It may not be as good as the original (see above) but it will keep its quality forever, given you don't play it thousands of times. My Jeopardy and Wheel appearances are on VHS, DVD, flash drive, hard drive, and in the cloud. If I look at them all today, the one on my hard drive looks the best.

Granted, I am not an expert on these things, so I could be wrong. Anyone with a lot of technical knowledge about video and digital storage disagree with me?

[Bob Juch]

I generally love these-the director's commentary, the deleted scenes etc.

I have one extremely valuable VHS tape, the roadshow version of John Wayne's Alamo. It was released as a special edition VHS tape (on two cassettes), but the masters they used to make the extended VHS tape have disappeared before the movie was ever released on DVD. So unless a master shows up somewhere, there won't be a DVD or streaming version of the roadshow. There are other movies that were released on VHS in the 1980s (usually in non-widescreen formats), priced to rent, but were never made available on DVD or streaming and probably never will be legally. Some of these tapes fetch hundreds of dollars. (Anyone with some technical knowhow can get ahold of the VHS tape and transfer it to DVD or streaming, but the video quality will probably be quite poor and, of course, it's a bootleg.)

I have to take issue with your last statement up here. The reason many ports from VHS to DVD have poor quality is because the magnetic signals on the tape on the VHS have already deteriorated so much. You don't have to play a VHS for its quality to deteriorate -- time will take acre of that for you. I recommend anyone who has VHS tapes that they value to take them to a reputable shop and get a digital copy made ASAP. It may not be as good as the original (see above) but it will keep its quality forever, given you don't play it thousands of times. My Jeopardy and Wheel appearances are on VHS, DVD, flash drive, hard drive, and in the cloud. If I look at them all today, the one on my hard drive looks the best.

Granted, I am not an expert on these things, so I could be wrong. Anyone with a lot of technical knowledge about video and digital storage disagree with me?

I found in the early 90s that many of my VHS tapes had degraded to the point they were unplayable.

[Spock]

I know it took "The African Queen" forever to get released on DVD so I bought a special VHS version with a lot of extra goodies in the box (not on the tape of course) but that was right before the DVD came.

And yeah-Criterion Collection seems to be the way to go for movies that you really like.

I have mentioned this before-but SSS will probably enjoy that my youngest son is into the really offbeat directors like David Lynch and Stanley Kubrick and some others that I haven't even heard of.

But, I keep trying to get him to watch the 2 Godfather movies with me and I can't get him to do that.

Speaking of extras-I watched "The Wild Geese" yesterday straight up-now I will watch the commentary and such.

And here is the best extra in any DVD ever.

Yes, it is from Mark Steyn-but it is not political-it is his column on the passing of Christopher Lee.

https://www.steynonline.com/8952/fangs- ... ry-papilla

>>>"Before he was an actor, he was an intelligence officer, and had, as they used to say, a good war, attached to the Special Operations Executive, or the "Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare", responsible for espionage and sabotage in occupied Europe. Afterwards, Lee stayed on to hunt down Nazi war criminals."<<<

>>>"On the Lord Of The Rings trilogy, he was the only member of the cast who'd actually known Tolkien. Yet my favorite moment in the series isn't even on camera, but in the DVD commentary. It's the scene on top of the tower where Lee's Saruman gets stabbed in the back by Grima Wormtongue, for which the director, Peter Jackson, wanted Lee to let out a scream.

The actor felt obliged to explain to Sir Peter why that would be all wrong. He proposed to let out a small groan, a quiet gasp, as the air is pushed out of his punctured lungs. The director was resistant, so Lee said: "Peter, have you ever heard the sound a man makes when he's stabbed in the back?"

"Um, no," replied Jackson.

"Well, I have," said Lee, "and I know what to do.'" And from somewhere deep in the recesses of his memory an old SOE agent conjured the sound a Nazi makes when you plunge the knife in.

A full life, on-screen and off."<<<<

[silverscreenselect]

I have mentioned this before-but SSS will probably enjoy that my youngest son is into the really offbeat directors like David Lynch and Stanley Kubrick and some others that I haven't even heard of.

That note reminded me of one of my rare DVDs. Lair of the White Worm from the late 80s was based on a Bram Stoker novel and was about a bizarre cult that worshipped a giant demonic worm that ate human sacrifices. It starred a very young Hugh Grant and future Dr. Who Peter Capaldi as the heroes and Amanda Donohoe as the high priestess of the worm cult. She was quite popular at the time for her appearance on the TV series LA Law. In this movie, she didn't leave much to the viewers' imagination.

The first DVD version of the film featured a commentary from director Ken Russell, that's never been available on subsequent versions. He qualifies as one of your son's possible "really offbeat" directors because all of his films had bizarre visuals, so a horror movie like White Worm fit right in. And his commentary was pretty bizarre also going off in all directions about the film.

I've always admired Christopher Lee as an actor. As you noted, he became a favorite of Tim Burton. In his early films, like Edward Scissorhands, Burton tried to cast Vincent Price whenever he could. After Price died, Lee became Burton's go-to guy in a number of movies. At one time, Lee had appeared in movies with more different co-stars than any other actor (he's since been passed by people like Eric Roberts and Michael Madsen, who show up for a day's filming to lend their names to some direct-to-streaming work) Lee died in 2013, but he actually got an acting credit last year for the animated Lord of the Rings movie in theaters at Christmas time. They used a clip of his voice as the evil wizard Saruman briefly at the end of the movie, so he gets a long-posthumous credit.

[Spock]

Partly through The Wild Geese commentary watch and I had to chuckle at one Roger Moore comment. He said during the military training part of the preparation/filming they had to stop Hardy Kruger from goosestepping. For those that don't know-Kruger was in the German army during the war.

I was completely gobsmacked that Hardy Kruger lived until 2022. I would have guessed a much earlier year.

Interestingly, the company of "mercenaries" in the film included several actual mercenaries. Not sure if they came in with/because of Mad Mike Hoare (the technical advisor on the film) or not.

[Spock]

The Wild Geese got me thinking about Congo mercenaries and such and how George MacDonald Fraser, my favorite author, perfectly described them in one of his Private McAuslan short stories.

>>>"I lost sight of him when I was demobilised; he was still with the battalion then, going his careless way, raising hackles and causing trouble. Many years later, a wire-photo landed on my newspaper desk, and there he was among a group of Congo mercenaries; the moustache had gone and the hairline had receded, but there was no mistaking the cigarette holder and the relaxed, confident carriage; even with middle-aged spread beneath his flak-jacket, he still had style. Yes, I thought, that’s where you would end up. You see, there’s no place for people like Errol in a normal, peace-time world; they just don’t belong. Their time lay between the years 1939 and 1945 – and even then they sometimes didn’t fit in too comfortably. But I wonder if we’d have won the war without them.

Fraser, George MacDonald. The Complete McAuslan (p. 443). Skyhorse. Kindle Edition. "<<<<

[silverscreenselect]

For those that don't know-Kruger was in the German army during the war.

As a teenager, Kruger was enlisted into the army at a time when they were looking for anyone who could carry a gun. He had already made his film debut a year earlier. He was captured and later escaped from Allied custody. Ironically, one of his better known films was The One That Got Away, a 1950s British drama about a German pilot who was the only German prisoner to escape and get back to Germany. Kruger's character escapes from a Canadian POW camp, makes his way through the then-neutral United States into Mexico, where he's able to get passage back to Germany.