DVD/Blu-Ray Special Features

[El Dingo]

I have not bought a DVD/Blu-Ray in quite a while. I did buy "Guardians of the Galaxy" because I had not yet subscribed to NetFlix or Amazon streaming and I needed a fun 'release'.

Anyway, I bought the "Cornetto" trilogy for $15 because I wanted to see the 'behind the scenes' stuff of  "Shaun of theDead", "Hot Fuzz" and "The Worlds End". Good move.

I just watched the extra stuff on "Shaun of the Dead" and was knocked out with how funny it was. The commentary, extra scenes, behind-the-scenes', prank TV bits they did in England were well worth the price of admission. I'm excited to watch the "Hot Fuzz" and "The Worlds End" extras.

Anyway, I just wanted to call out the main reason for buying a DVD/Blu-Ray anymore. Someday every film will be in your streaming library, but I'm not sure how the 'Extra' features will be handled. Will they be available on-demand? Even NetFlix discs have most of them disabled (on in-house pressings).

Maybe there willl be a NetFlix like service that caters to filmmakers and film afficianados that offers access to these 'extras' but for now I feel deprived of some content that is available on a movie I may not want to see again, but want to learn more about.

[Greg]

Ah, synchronicity.

I watched Antman on DVD last night. Thankfully, Marvel DVD's come with extras from Netflix unlike  a lot of other Studios which release rental versions without the extras.

So, we watched the deleted scenes and extended cuts and the gag reel. We also some of the viral marketing material which consisted of fake newscasts with Scott Lang and the main bad guy. On the whole, they were all pretty dull. The best part of the newscasts were the crawls along the bottom which had different bits from other bits of the Marvel universe and a mention of the California drought. The gag reel, which was as usual, self indulgent and not very funny.

The deleted scenes were deleted for a reason.

For me, this is pretty typical of DVD extras. There is nothing very special about them. I don't learn very much from them and they don't add much to the movie experience. So, if they go away with death of DVD's, I'm not going to miss very much.

The best commentary on films and filmmaking I watch is on youtube. It's called "Every Frame a Painting" It's awesome and they can't make them fast enough for me.

Here is a sample about Buster Keaton.