Of the Sith. On DVD.

Naturally, I was there bright and early to buy a copy today. I’ve since watched the film again and most of the extra materials.

The movie is awesome. The picture quality is awesome. The sound is awesome. The documentaries are awesome.

You know what’s not awesome though? This.

What in the hell is this for?

You know, I’ve kept my mouth shut about this issue for too bloody long, but this… this is the last straw. Over the past few years, the big movie studios have taken to releasing their films on DVD in Canada with different covers then in the US, featuring French text. They didn’t use to do this, and I have no idea what brought about this change, but I’m sick of it. Some times the French just adds clutter and looks ugly. Some times it’s just redundant. But what ticks me off the most about it with this particular situation is that none of the other Star Wars DVDs have any French on their packaging at all. Now the spines don’t line up and there’s this one entry in the series that’s going to look like the odd one out on the shelf.

I care about this sort of thing. Maybe some people don’t, but I do. I’m actively aware of things like graphic design and composition. I buy a lot of DVDs and I take great pains in maintaining the condition of their packaging for display purposes. I want the DVDs I buy to have attractively designed covers, on the front and on the spine. I don’t want French text on my DVD covers. I don’t need it. It just looks bad. And it especially looks bad here, when I want to have all the films in a series lined up in a row.

I could understand if this were this bilingual cover was only released in Quebec and other areas of the country where French is the predominant language. I’d be fine with there being an option to display an English or French design via a reversible cover. But no, they have to be “politically correct” and be all inclusive at the expense of good design. Bah.

Seriously, if this DVD did not have any French on the cover, would any French speaking person living in Canada pick up a copy and say “What is this?” Well, obviously not, they’d say that in French, but you understand my point. Would they really not know what they were looking at? It’s freaking Star Wars! How could you not know what you were getting into? Is this extraneous French text really necessary? Is my life, and the lives of all Canadians, that much more enriched knowing that “Revenge of the Sith” is “La Revanche Des Sith“?

I say NO!

I am taking up arms over this issue. I will be writing to 20th Century Fox, Lucasfilm, or whoever else I need to yell at, in order to obtain that which I desire. I will kindly request to be sent a replacement cover featuring the English-only design, and suggest that future DVD releases feature a reversible English/French or English/Bilingual cover.I urge that all other Canadian DVD collectors do the same. Together, we can effect change, so that both English and French speaking DVD buyers can proudly display their collections without being horribly embarrassed.

I will have my Revenge.

Sayonara.

I bought a lot of Transformers this week.

If you haven’t heard by now, Toys R Us in Canada is having a sale on the basic sized Transformers Energon and Cybertron figures. They’re half price all this week. So I bought… six. Yeah. Six. There’s Scattorshot, Overhaul, Clocker, Ransack, Hardtop, and the Minicons.

I was also lucky enough to find a few toys at the usual unlikely special place I often find toys in. They were all at discounted prices. Really happy to get Scorponok, since I’ve really been wanting to find one at a decent price. Quickstrike is another cool one, a big red helicoptor, and he’ll probably end up being one of the rarer pieces from the Energon line. Sixshot, Wing Saber, and Universe Tankor and Obsidian round out the bunch. A lot of swag for not a lot of cash. It’s been awhile since I’ve scored a big haul like this, and the timing was right. I am pleased.

Sayonara.

This is pretty damn funny.

Isn’t mainstream journalism just so totally awesome? Who needs important things like “facts” when we can have broad, generalizing statements of dubious accuracy?

Sayonara.

Batman is pretty cool. I like Batman well enough. I didn’t like him when I was a kid, but when the Animated Series came around I changed my tune. This I am not ashamed to say. So, I thought that Batman Begins was a great movie. It’s coming out on DVD this week and I will likely own it at some point.

But also coming out on DVD are brand new releases for the other Batman movies. Do I really want these? I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. I don’t really like them. Any of them. I mean, everyone knows that Batman and Robin is just god-awful and I really don’t want to talk about why because I’ll just keep going and get all riled up. But even the first one I don’t really like that much. I mean, it’s pretty good for what it is and what it was at the time, but it didn’t really do all that much for me. Even watching it in recent years after developing more of an appreciation for both Tim Burton’s cinema and the character of Batman, I still don’t like that movie very much. I was never fond of the idea of The Joker being the killer of the Waynes, so I can’t get past that and the movie didn’t excite me otherwise. Batman Returns is a bit more interesting to me, but only because it has this weird quirky style to it. But it still didn’t grab me. Batman Forever is just a bizarre mess. Batman and Robin is truly terrible, but at least it had some potential to be a somewhat decent film if more people had cared about making it into one (which is the major reason why I hate the movie so). Batman Forever is just a neon train wreck, and I find very little potential there and very little to like about it. I just can’t believe that some of the decisions made in that film were made while thinking that people would find them exciting.

So, even though I like Batman, the choice of not buying these new DVDs should be obvious, right? Well, it’s not, because these DVDs look like they are going to be incredible. They’re just loaded with special features relating to the several aspects of the films and the character, and I think I’d really like to watch those. Plus, they each have director’s commentary, which I bet will be absolutely fascinating to listen to. I am not comfortable with the idea of owning a DVD copy of Batman and Robin, the film that I probably hate more than any other film in the world. But listening to Joel Schumacher attempt to explain what the hell he was thinking when he made that piece of junk? That seems very entertaining.

So, I don’t know. I’m certainly not going to rush out and spend money on this DVD set on my own. Or at least not right away. But, if someone were to make the mistake of thinking that I liked these movies and buy them for me, I’d probably keep them. My standards for what I’d put on my shelves are pretty low. I own lots of crap on DVD.

Besides, it doesn’t really matter. I’ve already got the best Batman movie on DVD. This one.

Sayonara.

Transformers World 2005 recently held an art contest about Super Deformed Transformers. The winning entry would be sculpted into a fully licensed statue by First 4 Figures. Of course, I had to enter this, and what better character to use for such a contest than Skybyte, the poetry loving Predacon shark?

Well, out of more than 50 entries, my SD Skybyte placed in the top 10. Yeah! It won’t be made into a statue, but I do win a poster with artwork of all the top 10 entries. Not too shabby. In fact, aside from an Armada Unicron entry, mine was the only one in the top ten that wasn’t a character from Generation 1. There are some really fantastic pieces of artwork entered for this contest that are both in and out of the top 10, so go ahead and check them out in the TFW2005 Contest Entry gallery.

I’ll be adding my Skybyte entry to the Fan Art Gallery next time I update, and I might just add some extra content with it, so look forward to that.

Tsunami Blaster!

Sayonara.