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Other
DVD Awards for 2003
back
to Outstanding Achievements in DVD for 2003
 WORST
DVD - OVERALL |
The
Real Cancun (New Line)
In this category this year, we didn't
want to simply select a disc that was disappointing or
technically inferior. Instead, we wracked our brains trying to
come up with the title that most made our skin crawl. Not just a
disc that somehow should have been better, but one that really
just doesn't need to exist at all. One where the world would
actually be a better place if the movie had never been made in
the first place. Dumb and Dumberer
was briefly considered, but ultimately rejected. After all,
we've endured plenty of pointless sequels before and will again.
A close second was Boat Trip
and its Playboy enhanced
menus, the nadir of Cuba Gooding Jr.'s rapidly plummeting
career. But finally, the clear victor was New Line's The
Real Cancun, a god-awful "spin-off" of
MTV's Real World
franchise. As staged and pointless a contrivance as the "reality"
show genre has ever produced, The
Real Cancun is a must-see for everyone who thinks the
Girls Gone Wild series is
too intellectually challenging. If the choice is watching a
bunch of personality-impaired college kids binge drink and flash
skin or saving our money, buying some booze and going on a
bender of our own, we'll go for the latter every time. |
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| WORST
DVD - SPECIAL EDITION |
They
say misery loves company, so you know we couldn't pick just one
title here.
Scarface:
Anniversary Edition (Universal)
The only new stuff on this disc was a
silly hip-hop documentary talking about Scarface's
influence on the art deco of hip-hop artists across the globe. A
staple for every fan of MTV's Cribs,
for sure, this doc would have fared better as a special feature
on the Cribs DVD box set.
All the rest of the special features were pulled from the
laserdisc release from a few years back, meaning they're dated
and nothing new. The only truly worthwhile extra is the original
1932 film this one was based on. Of course, that's exclusive to
the $50 Deluxe Gift Set.
What a shame.
The
Right Stuff: Special Edition (Warner Bros.)
We were thrilled with the picture and
sound quality on this new version, and it's great not having to
flip the disc over halfway through the film anymore.
Unfortunately, the extras left a lot to be desired. There's only
25 minutes of audio commentary (the film is over 3 hours long),
the deleted scenes are all non-anamorphic, and the original
material created for this dual-disc edition was yawn inducting.
Only the already produced PBS documentary is of any real value,
and it tells the story of just one of the seven Mercury
astronauts. A film this important deserved better.
The
Fast and the Furious: Tricked-Out Edition
(Universal)
This film deserves a spot here purely on
the strength of its title alone. Apparently, Universal's
original The Fast and the Furious:
Collector's Edition wasn't collected (or collectable)
enough, so the studio decided to re-package the film with "tricked-out"
new material just to get people to buy it all over again. It
shouldn't surprise anyone that most of the new material was
designed to tease the sequel. |
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| WORST
DVD - STANDARD EDITION |
The
Pianist (Universal)
Roman Polanski's Oscar-winning triumph is
one of his very best films. You'd think if any movie deserved a
special edition, it would be this one, right? Well, if you think
that, you must be Canadian. Our friends north of the border
received an extremely handsome 3-disc package... 2 DVDs and a
bonus soundtrack CD. What did we get from Universal here in the
States? The movie and that's about it. Even the packaging of the
Canadian version is better than the American one. This isn't the
first time other countries have produced better DVDs than we
Americans get, and no doubt it won't be the last. But it always
seems a little more insulting when the superior version is so
near and yet so far. |
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| WORST
DVD - BOXED SET |
American
Pie 1 & 2: The Ultimate (But Not Final) Mega-dip
(Universal)
If you search for "American Pie DVD" on Amazon.com,
you find no less than twenty-three different releases available.
That's rather surprising, given that there are only three films
in the series. First, there were the Collector's
Editions of the first two films, in both R and
Unrated versions. Then there were the Ultimate
Editions, in both R and Unrated versions again. Now
you're telling us that we have to buy these two films all over
again just so we can get the new and exclusive Beneath
the Crust material? F#*ck that. |
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| WORST
DVD - VIDEO |
Monty
Python's The Meaning of Life: Special Edition
(Universal)
Are you sensing a trend here with these
Universal DVDs? We'll be the first to say that the studio's new
Meaning of Life: Special Edition
is a damn fine release... once you get your hands on the version
with the properly fixed video, of course. It seems the first
version of this disc slipped past the crack Universal Quality
Control team with improperly flagged video. So those with
progressive scan compatible TVs and DVD players got to watch
irritating blurry lines instead of classic Python. Perhaps the
QC boys need the machine that goes ping. |
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| WORST
DVD - SOUND |
Chicago
(Miramax/Buena Vista)
Leaving the theatre after seeing Chicago,
we thought this was going to sound amazing on DVD. When we
finally got the disc home, it was more than a little
underwhelming. A couple of years ago, Fox's Moulin
Rouge really raised the bar for how movies like this
should sound on disc. Maybe we're spoiled, but it seems to us
that the first Best Picture-winning musical in decades ought to
sound a whole lot better than just okay. |
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| WORST
USE OF DVD FEATURES |
It
a four-way tie. Studios, you should all be proud.
House
of 1,000 Corpses (Lions Gate)
All right. What the hell was the
exclusive footage shot by Rob Zombie? I hope we missed it,
because if it was just the inane chatter between the group of
actors (who played the evil family) acting like the evil family,
then it sucked.
The
Rules of Attraction (Lions Gate)
A Carrot Top commentary? Need we say
more?
Kangaroo
Jack (Warner Bros.)
Behind the Gas...
a featurette on how they found the perfect sound FX to match
marsupial flatulence. Yes Warner, there is such a thing as too
much information.
Duran
Duran: Greatest - The DVD (EMI)
This would be a great DVD... if only all
the best extras weren't hidden as
nearly-impossible-to-figure-out Easter eggs. |
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| MOST
DISAPPOINTING DVD |
The
Matrix Reloaded (Warner Bros.)
First, the fact that this isn't a special
edition should tell you right there that a much more loaded
version of this film is coming to DVD in the not too distant
future. But what's more disappointing is that the few extras you
do get here were designed to A) get you to buy the Enter
the Matrix videogame, B) get you to buy The
Animatrix DVD, and C) get you to go see The
Matrix Revolutions in theaters. Does it get any more
shameless than this? Ugh. At this point, we'd like the blue pill
please.
The
Adventures of Indiana Jones: The Complete DVD Movie Collection
(Lucasfilm/Paramount)
This woulda been, coulda been and shoulda
been the winner for the Best DVD -
Overall and Best DVD -
Boxed Set. Unfortunately, a trilogy of films as
important as these were released on disc with no audio
commentaries, no deleted scenes and nothing of consequence but a
documentary by way of extras. That's just plain wrong. To be
fair, the documentary was excellent. But this set definitely
didn't meet our expectations. And this is the basis for the
forthcoming Star Wars Trilogy
DVD release? As Han Solo might say, "I gotta bad feeling
about this..."
Remo
Williams: The Adventure Begins (MGM)
C'mon! This is the movie inspired La
Femme Nikita fer Christ's sake! A pan and scan
edition with no bonus material? What was MGM thinking? |
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| DIGITAL
IN |
Independent
DVD Producers
Wanna know a secret? Hands down, the very
best DVD special editions are being lovingly hand-crafted by
independent producers. It was true in 2003, it was true every
year before that and it'll be true again in 2004 and beyond.
Wanna know why? Most studio execs are NOT movie fans, they're
businessmen. They're accountants. They're marketing managers.
Independent DVD producers, on the other hand, tend to live and
breath movies because they love them with a blinding passion.
Who do you think is gonna make the better discs? Our hats off to
all the independent producers out there who fight the good fight
to ensure that DVDs continue to make the fans smile as big as
the studio bean counters.
Digital
Video Essentials
Video technologist Joe Kane fights what must be an often lonely
battle to ensure that the picture and sound quality you enjoy at
home is as good as it can possibly be. His original Video
Essentials DVD was an absolutely... well, essential
tool for calibrating your home theater equipment. Now, with the
new Digital Video Essentials,
he's raised the bar again. It's a little tricky to navigate
around, and it's probably not for the novice user. But if you're
a high-end videophile, it just might be the most important DVD
in your collection. If you want to enjoy the most theater-like
experience from your home A/V equipment, this disc can help you
achieve it. |
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| DIGITAL
OUT |
David
Fincher and 20th Century Fox
David, you know we love you, baby. And
Fox. Fooooooox. You guys rock. But the two of you need to bury
the hatchet and move on. Okay... so you don't have to work with
each other ever again. That's fine. But why did the first-ever,
joyfully-awaited, much-overdue special edition of Alien³
have to suffer for your bad blood? Couldn't you have tried
counseling first? Alien Quadrilogy
was THIS close to perfect. Oh, the humanity! |
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| DVD
STUDIO WE WANT MORE FROM |
Universal
Damn you, Universal! Why do you make us
pick on you? For the second year in a row, Universal gets our
DVD Studio We Want More From
award. If you've been reading the dubious honors we've bestowed
above, you already know why... and trust us when we say that's
just scratching the surface. There are signs that this studio is
starting to show a little life. They are, after all, finally
opening up their vaults to let slip some deeper catalog on disc,
and they're finally starting to do something with all those TV
properties they own as well. But Jesus... did it really need to
take 7 years for them to get a clue? |
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| WORST
TREND IN DVD |
The
Dumbing Down of DVD
Now that DVD has become the new VHS, it
seems that all too many studios are trying to squeeze as much
blood from the stone as possible, sadly at the expense of
quality. The result? Cookie-cutter special editions that are
anything but special, cheap packaging, no more insert booklets,
too many non-anamorphic catalog releases, DVDs loaded with
marketing materials like forced preview trailers and "The
Making of the Tie-in Video Game" featurettes, double,
triple and even quadruple re-releases of the same titles and the
list goes on. Who loses? You do. Love a great, in-depth,
multi-disc special edition? Sorry... so many studios these days
are producing their SEs with their in-house EPK teams that
you're going to see fewer and fewer of them. DVD has
unfortunately become the victim of its own success, and there's
little hope of this situation changing anytime soon. |
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