Chunking Express re-release -- THX 1138 get fiddled with -- Dogville in August -- Hellboy on region 1 -- Tommy Collector's Edition -- Scorsese Collection in August -- Double Indemnity in July -- Freaks on region 1

Chunking Express re-release on region 2 [27 May 2004]

Wong Kar-Wai has built a reputation as one of the most exciting directors to emerge from the modern Hong Kong cinema scene, and the film that really introduced him to an international audience was the 1994 Chunking Express, a brilliantly executed, tale of two beat cops and their luckless love-lives. As anyone who has seen the film will tell you, 'California Dreaming' will never be the same again. The film had been available on DVD for some time now courtesy of ICA, but the transfer was average at best and non-anamorphic. Fans of the film have tended to steer towards the region 1 release, which thoughj still less than perfect is at least anamorphic, though as distributed in the US by Quentin Tarantino's Rolling Thunder company, you have the pointy chinned wonder on the cover, introducing the film and wrapping it up. Thanks a lot. So the news that it is to be re-released on 28 June by Artificial Eye can't help but fill the film's fans with hope. No news has been released yet on the picture, sound or extras status of this release, but recent Artificial Eye releases have been predominantly anamorphic, and there has even been a move towards 5.1 sound. We can only hope. Updates on this release will be posted as soon as we have them.

Lucas revisits and messes with past glories [24 May 2004]

For those of you who think George Lucas's science fiction career began with Star Wars, a trip back to 1971 and his very first feature, THX 1138 is definitely in order. A remake of his successful student film, it's a fascinating look at a future in which humanity has lost its humanity (the automated confession booths are a particular favourite of ours) and works so well in part because of its visual minimalism - whole scenes take place in great expanses of white, emphasised by the scope framing. So a new special edition DVD release can only be good news, right? Well, no. In the spirit of fiddling with the original Star Wars, this is to be a 'director's cut', but Lucas has not just restored previously cut scenes, he has also pissed around with the picture by adding a pile of new effects that from the recently posted trailer just do not sit with the original film at all. We at Outsider have long since become tired of the whole monolithic Star Wars industry, and if the completely unnecessary, eye-candy additions to the original trilogy and the vacuous, CGI-overload that the newer Star Wars films represent are anything to go by, our George is about to take a perfectly fine film and fuck it right up. For those that still care, the picture has been really cleaned up, the sound remixed in 5.1, there is a a commentary by Lucas and master sound designer Walter Murch, and two new documentaries on a second disk, which will also include probably the best extra of all, Lucas's original student film, THX 1138:4EB. Presumably not with remastered effects.

Dogville in August [24 May 2004]

Lar's von Trier's powerful look on the darker side of humanity, wrongly over-contextualised by some as specifically anti-American, arrives on UK region 2 on 2 August. Featuring an anamorphic 2.35:1 transfer and 5.1 sound, there are a smattering of extras: an on-set cast and crew video diary, a documentary looking at the film's controversial screening at the Cannes Film Festival, and the original UK trailer. All of which sounds fine, but it still stands in the shadow of the excellent Danish 2-disk set already available. Does this mean a UK special edition will follow later?

Hellboy on region 1 in July [24 May 2004]

And here we go again - while we in the UK are still enthusiastically waiting for a cinema release of Hellboy, the latest horror comic-book adaptation from Blade 2 director Guillermo del Toro, over in the US the DVD has already been announced for a July 27 release. Even better, its a spanking good-looking 2 disk special edition. An anamorphic picture and 5.1 sound is joined by a slew of extra features, including a cast commentary with Ron Perlman, Rupert Evans, Selma Blair and Jeffrey Tambor and a film-maker's commentary with director del Toro and executive producer Mike Mignola. This would be enough alone for me to buy it, as del Toro does some of the best commentaries in the business, and the commentary tracks on The Devil's Backbone, Cronos and Blade II are among the few I have revisited more than once. But hold on, there's so much more. Try this lot: a two-and-a-half hour (!!!) documentary tracing the journey from script to screen; storyboards for the whole film that play picture-in-picture with the feature; featurettes on animatics and board-a-matics; deleted scenes with optional commentary; evolution of a scene with director del Toro; trailers and TV spots; posters; four Hellboy short cartoons; a feature that allows you to nip out of the film at key moments and visit a day on the set; a new feature called Branching DVD Comics allowing direct comparison with the original comics and a collection of DVD-ROM features. I'm dribbling already. Just for the record, the UK cinema release is not nscheduled to take place until 3 September, over a month after this DVD release. Anyone here planning to wait it out? I thought not.

Tommy Collector's Edition on region 2 [15 May 2004]

Ken Russell's visually and aurally dazzling film version of The Who's rock opera Tommy is being re-released as a 2 disk special edition in June. Featuring a fun performance and some terrifying singing from Oliver Reed and key support performances from the likes of Jack Nicholson, Elton John, Tina Turner, Rober Powell and Keith Moon, this is for our money one of Russell's best films, and this special edition is long overdue. A new 16:9 anamorphic transfer and 5.1 sound is joined by a commentary by our Ken and critic and Russell enthusiast Mark Kermode, interviews with Russell, Roger Daltrey, Pete Townsend and Ann-Margaret, a featurette on the restoration of the soundtrack and a second feature on featuring key members of the technical personnel. It's out on 14 June on region 2.

The Scorsese Collection in August [15 May 2004]

After what seems like an eternity of promises and rumours, the long-awaited special edition of Martin Scorsese's acclaimed Goodfellas is to be released by Warner Brothers on region 1 in August. But better still, it will be part of a five film, six disk collection that will include some of the director's lesser seen but most impressive films, and all with spanking new transfers and, best of all, commentaries by Scorsese himself, joined in some cases by members of the cast and/or crew. The early, freewheeling Who's That Knocking at My Door (1969) has a mono soundtrack and a commentary by Scorsese and regular screenplay writer Mardik Martin (though he wasn't the writer of this one). The director's brilliant breakthrough film, Mean Streets (1973), finally gets an anamorphic 1.85:1 transfer and is backed up by a featurette and a commentary by the director. Surely Martin should be on this one, which he did write? Maybe the information is confused).Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore has a great first ten minutes, and though a lesser Scorsese work is still frequently impressive - the anamorphic transfer here is again supported by a Scorsese commentary, this time with as-yet unnamed cast members. The director's nightmare comedy After Hours has a busy commentary, with Scorsese joined by star Griffin Dunne, producer Amy Robinson, editor Thelma Schoonmaker (a wonderful lady who always has time to talk to starry-eyed film fans after a lecture) and director of photography Michael Ballhaus. And finally there is the 2-disk Goodfellas, with an anamorphic 1.85:1 transfer, 5.1 sound, a commentary by Scorsese and key members of the cast and crew, a second commentary by the real Henry Hill and ex-FBI man Edward McDonald, and four new documentaries. All will be available seperately, but together as a box set they will be spectacularly good value at less than $10 a disk.

Double Indemnity leads a film noir assault in July [7 May 2004]

One of the most electrifying scripts in cinema history has to be Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler's one for Wilder's 1944 noir classic Double Indemnity. Adapted from the novel by James M. Cain and starring Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck, this is one of the most perfectly realised crime thrillers of all time, and darker than anything you'll find playing in mainstream cinemas today. Universal have announced a range of film noir releases for the 6 July and this has to be the front runner, though a special edition would have been welcome here, given the film's status. At the moment only trailers have been confirmed for any of the releases in this series, which so far include John Farrow's excellent 1948 The Big Clock, Roy William Neill's 1946 The Black Angel (starring top noir bad guy Dan Duryea), Frank Tuttle's 1942 This Gun for Hire (based on a Graham Greene novel and starring noir goddess Veronica Lake), and the master of light and dark Robert Siodmak's 1949 Criss Cross, starring Burt Lancaster and - hey! - Dan Duryea. Even shorn of extras, there's some tasty stuff here. Release date is set for July 6 on region 1 only at present.

Freaks arrives on region 1 in August [7 May 2004]

As a plethora of shit big budget Hollywood films lines up to assault our delicate taste buds this summer, news comes from Warner Brothers to warm the heart of any true cult movie fan: a release date, at last, for Tod Browning's brilliant 1932 horror masterpiece, Freaks. This was promised for a region 2 release a couple of years back but frustratingly failed to appear, so Warner's announcement is set to end a good two years of yearning anguish on our part. Browning really made his name as the director of the first sound version of Dracula, but this film, made a year later, towers over that work in every respect. This tale of love, deception and murder amongst the so-called freaks in a travelling carnival is a genuinely extraordinary work, completely inverting traditional definitions of what is 'normal'. Played by real-life carnival acts, amongst whom Browning himself grew up, the cast themselves are remarkable, and the film itself was deemed to be in such bad taste by the British censor of the time (it's final coda remains a genuinely disturbing moment in horror history) that it remained banned in the UK for 30 years. My love of the film is enhanced by my memory of first catching it at the Scala in London on a double-bill with David Lynch's Eraserhead. Now that was that an evening. As if the release itself wasn't enough, there are some pretty tasty extras: three alternate endings (one of which I've seen and was not keen on), a new documentary Freaks: Sideshow Cinema, a prologue that was added for the theatrical release and a commentary by horror expert David J. Skal.