The Game: Criterion Release

stimpee · #1 12-14-2005, 04:03 PM

Just picked this up on piratebay. It seems it was only released on Laserdisc and for a very short time. Someone has taken all the Criterion exclusives for this and married them with the limited Japanese DVD release. I couldnt find ANYTHING out about The Game ever being released on Criterion except the catalogue number at IMDB.

Havent watched it yet but I just wondered if anyone had got this? Or got any more info on the laserdisc?

grady · #2 12-14-2005, 05:04 PM

The Criterion Collection laserdisc was one of the final LDs released in 1998.

I downloaded both DVD-Rs that the release group put together at another torrent site.

Basically what they did was make a 2 DVD set of all the supplemental material from the LD plus the featurette from the Japanese release and put it together with the 16x9 transfer from the DVD release in Japan. It's a wonderful little package that they've put together and I hope they will start doing this with older catalog titles.

At the moment I'm attempting to do something similar to this with the film Bad Day at Black Rock. The Criterion LD from back in the day, 1991 featured audio commentary by director John Sturges. (On the Boogie Nights commentary with director Paul Thomas Anderson, he refers to Sturges commentary as the best director's commentary ever. He's not too far off, it's pretty informative.) Unfortunately Criterion doesn't license their supplemental materials and this was not included on the recent DVD release by Warner Brothers.

So I was going to record the commentary from the LD onto my computer and then author a new DVD off of my own copy of Bad Day... specifically so the commentary can be heard with out having to watch the LD. Probably a bit more work than is necessary, but it will be nice to have.

adam · #3 12-14-2005, 05:51 PM

What's Bad Day at Black Rock?

grady · #4 12-14-2005, 06:02 PM

Bad Day at Black Rock

A one handed stranger comes to a tiny town possessing a terrible past they want to keep secret, by violent means if necessary.

imdb

amazon

more info

adam · #5 12-14-2005, 06:06 PM

Yeah, I know how to google shit. I wanted you to be all OMG WTF you don't know what it is?! BEST EVAR!!! C'mon, man, sell it to me.

grady · #6 12-14-2005, 06:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by adam

Yeah, I know how to google shit. I wanted you to be all OMG WTF you don't know what it is?! BEST EVAR!!! C'mon, man, sell it to me.

I gotcha. umm....here is a little tidbit, it was the first to be shot in Cinemascope at MGM in the 1950s.

b.miller · #7 12-15-2005, 12:06 AM

i hope some AV geek somewhere decides to rip all their old criterion LDs to DVD-Rs, man... that would rock so hard... tons of interesting commentaries I can only imagine, back from the days when the commentaries were actually worth listening to. The Game one was great... Always interesting to hear Fincher geek out about how anal he is but I was surprised how much actor-y stuff Michael DOuglas threw into the mix... I've always wondered about him because he made his name as a producer before an actor (nepotism aside) so I always figured he had a better grasp of the big picture than other actors, which is why he's always chosen pretty interesting projects for the most part.

...waiting for someone to bring up The In-Laws so i can quote where I said "for the most part"... right up there...

Bad Day at Black Rock. Dude, it's good. Robert Ryan, Ernest Borgnine and Lee Marvin play thugs and Spencer Tracy out-badasses them all even with a gimp arm. You should watch it. do you need me to add any acronyms to inform your decision?

adam · #8 12-15-2005, 06:50 AM

Well, a few words in caps would've helped.