Movie Minesweeper - The Trail Mix Bowl Edition

- Charles Fox, Richard Pearce, Vilmos Zsigmond and The Fon... Henry Winkler have begun their terms as governors of AMPAS.

- film ick favourite Peyton Reed has signed to direct the movie version Yes Man. The original book was a kind of memoir by Danny Wallace, one time flatmate of Dave Gorman, the best comedy lecturer-come-storyteller in the UK. For the project/book/hell of it, Wallace spent a whole year saying yes to everything, and documenting the results. I sincerely hope the studio will let somebody more like Wallace than, say, Brad Pitt, Ben Stiller or Jack Black take the role. Simon Pegg? Actually... Nick Frost?

[EDIT: Is Jim Carrey still in talks for Yes Man? Several of you believe so... And now the producer David Heyman has made it clear that Carrey is after an Autumn shoot for this one]

- York Shackleton's Street is gaining Vivica A. Fox, Rachel Miner and most probably Laura Ramsey and Toby Hemingway. Bizarrely (well, I think it's bizarre) Luke Goss is the executive producer.

- ThinkFilm have the North American rights to Sidney Lumet's Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. Shame - because the film looks great, but I don't like ThinkFilm at all. They show no respect for the films they handle - at the very least when it comes to their catastrophic DVD mastering.

- Warners have shelled out for the rights to Angie Sage's Septimus Heap books. They're not like the Harry Potter books. Well... not exactly.

And that's Hollywood Reporter now also. So, I'm making my way along quite smoothly.

More soon.

Movie Minesweeper - The Variety And Hollywood Reporter Edition

Here's a run down of some stories that have popped in Variety and The Hollywood Reporter over the last day or so:

- Shane Ri... sorry, Guy Ritchie is doing it again. RocknRolla is an ensemble comedy set in London, hinging up a crooked land deal and some no-doubt silly gangster shenanigans. Joel Silver sense a quick buck and will produce the relatively cheap film under the Dark Castle umbrella.

- Maria Bello is to play Rachel Weisz's role in the next Mummy film. Clearly she wasn't as troubled by the criminally awful script.

- ThinkFilm are to release Paul Schrader's The Walker in North America. I bet they fudge the DVD release. So careless, rude and selfish - I think we should all boycott their every DVD from now until they replace all of their screwed-up titles for free.

- Five years after Kissing Jessica Stein made me roll my eyes back so far they almost ran down my throat, Jessica Westfeldt is returning with Ira and Abby. It played at the LA Film Fetsival last year and took this long to strike a distribution deal: either it's really original and hard to market or just not any good at all. Ahem.

- Psycho/Analysis is to film in Hungary later this year. Guess what? It's about the making of Pyscho. Groan.

- Tarantino is running a Spaghetti Western sidebar at this year's Venice Film Festival.

- Palm Pictures have picked up Marcelo Pineyro's The Method for US release. It was written by Mateo Gil, who previously scribbled for Alejandro Amenebar, co-writing Tesis, Open Your Eyes and The Sea Inside.

- Jane Bussmann's one woman show Bussmann's Holiday is to be a film, produced by Nira Park.

- Dan Mazer is to make a comedy about the Eurovision song contest. Will Wogan be in it?

- Mary Elizabeth Winstead is to dance in Make it Happen.

- Michael Scott's The Alchemyst is being adapted for the movies. It's no more the next Harry Potter than those Unfortunate Events were.

- Jan Cvitkovik's Gravehopping won the Critics Award at the LA South East European Film Festival. I wonder what would win South East Europe's LA Film Festival?

- Gary Cole, Jennifer Coolidge and Agnes Bruckner are all pretty darn good. They're also all in David Moreton's Say Hello to Stan Talmadge. Promising - but the film does sound a little too like Little Miss Sunshine for comfort.

Children Of Men, Superman Series And Tideland: The Sad State Of DVD Publishing Today

If you live in the UK, your first chance to buy Children on Men came in December. The single disc edition was virtually bare bones and when news broke about a replacement 2-Disc edition coming little more than three months later, it felt like a slap in the face. Early adopters had been had.

Luckily, now, Universal are agreeing to replace UK R2 copies of the single-disc edition with the full monty. And virtually for free.

Send your disc with a jiffy bag for the return item, stamped to the value of 70p, to this address:

Children of Men DVD Amnesty
PO Box 188
Woodford Green
Essex
IG8 7RW

You have until June 30th. Ex-rental copies are not elligible. Tell them who sent you.

You won't believe how hard it was to get that address. I called, was put on hold, cut off; called again, was put on hold, given an e-mail address to try; I e-mailed and never received a reply; called again, was cut off again... I could go on. Somehow I don't think Universal want a large number of returns - but they are doing the right thing. Well, almost - they should offer something in return for the postage costs, really. Maybe a discount voucher from other Universal releases?

The Superman series boxset that was issued lat last year was, I'm told, a bit of a botch job. In R1 at least - can anybody confirm the status of the R2 discs? America will find the repressed, corrected set on shelves from May 19th. Frankly, I wouldn't touch Superman IV with a barge pole and way prefer Richard Lester to Richard Donner... I'm not the audience for this box. Not until it gets real cheap.

And finally, the biggest DVD debacle in recent years goes on and on and on. Tideland is still not available in the correct format outside of the UK. ThinkFilm's final official statement?

That they will be replacing the 1.78:1 disc currently on shelves with a 2.35:1 reissue later this year. No amnesty announced, no replacement scheme in place. And worst of all... 2.35:1 isn't the aspect ratio Gilliam wants used anyway. They should be repressing to the 2.25:1 (approximately) master that he supplied.

At least when discs area thing of the past and everything comes as a download, botches like these should be easier to rectify.

Tideland DVD Brouhaha Finally Wrapped Up

Phil Stubbs at Dreams has compiled all of the information he can regarding the various DVD releases of Tideland. The short version: get the UK version. Just like we told you in the very beginning.

Phil has been running a Gilliam site for years now, and as such, Gilliam sends him semi-official statements. That's the main thing to go over to the piece for, to see Gilliam definitively say once more what we've known for weeks:

That the ThinkFilm DVD is a hatchet job and the UK release from Revolver is just as the director intended.

Now... how do we get ThinkFilm to reissue the DVD, apologies and instigate a free disc-replacement scheme? Surely nothing else will do. Ideas in the comments section, please. Your support on this issue will be greatly appreciated.

Tideland Round Up

Okay then, here's a round up of Tideland news.

I never did receive the copy I was promised from Revolver. After all of the publicity they've recieved over the last week or so from my campaigning, I'm surprised.

Despite initial reports to the contrary, it seems that the Canadian release is faulty too.

Phil Stubbs' Dreams page have been running a forum on the issue. Phil is a good man and has done a lot to support Tideland, and Gilliam in general.

Aint it Cool, Cinematical, Davis DVD and The Digital Bits ran big pieces on ThinkFilm's faux pas, and were kind enough to link back here so that readers might get the full force of my ranting. I have to thank Drew McWeeny in particular for his forceful and effective piece.

Quick Stop Entertainment have published a new statement from Terry Gilliam himself. I'll post it below, but sadly, he appears to have been miseld again. He believes the North American discs are all simply unmatted presentations, whereas it has now been demonstrated to me that they do suffer notable cropping on the right and left sides of the picture. Why people are lying to Gilliam or feeding him bad info, I do not know. Shameful.

Don't forget, by the way, to get your R2 UK Tideland disc from Revolver. And if you speak to them, let them know I'm still waiting for the copy I was promised months ago. I'll review it all nicely and everything.

Here's Terry...

I'm embarrassed! Having been assured that the Canadian DVD was the correct format, I now discover I was completely misled.

What was I thinking? Why hadn't I jumped a plane and flown to Toronto to buy a Tideland DVD on the 1st day of sales? I would have known the truth before opening my big mouth. What a fool!!! I can begin to see why Stanley Kubrick went a bit whacko trying to keep an eye on every print of his films in every far-flung corner of the globe... and he had a full-time guy doing the legwork.

Any volunteers?

What I recommend for all the owners of the North Americamn Tideland DVD is to get a roll of wide black tape... sorry, before you do that, go out and buy a dozen more copies of the DVDs and pass them out to your friends, then... pause the disc at the Capri Films logo when it flares out into a blue sky. What you see is the correct proportion of 2.35:1. Then, unrolling the tape, mask off the black areas on the screen above and below. If you want to leave a little bit more space top and bottom of the logo you will end up with the UK proportion. Then you should just sit back and enjoy. All the information left to right is there. There was no panning and scanning. Just stupidity.

-Terry

p.s. Check next day to see how many of your friends will still look you in the eye. They are the people you should be spending time with. F*ck the others!

ThinkFilm Calling Canadian Tideland DVD A Bust Too

According to an e-mail from ThinkFilm's Senior Vice President, the Canadian release of Tideland uses the same master as theirs. So that one's off the shopping list too. [EDIT: Except, it isn't - he's either lying or giving us bad information by mistake]

Oh dear. He continues to refer to Gilliam's 2.25:1 ratio as 'faux 2.35'. This must be very embarrassing for ThinkFilm. They've made a terrible blunder and are spouting silliness now that they're confronted with it.

[EDIT: There is at least one version of Tideland available in Canada that is in the correct 2.25:1 aspect ratio. This exposes the comments from ThinkFilm as either a lie or completely misinformed. They really need to start checking their facts - that's what got them into this mess in the first place. Todd at Twitch has kindly performed all kinds of analysis on his Candian DVD - which is to say, he got the ruler out - and has been able to approximate a 2.25:1 ratio. There's complications if, in fact, there turns out to be more than one Canadian release, but what are the chances of that happening, eh?]

ThinkFilm Think They Know Better Than Terry Gilliam

Gilliam has spoken. His preferred ratio for Tideland on DVD is...

drumroll please...

2.25:1 - which, I'm sure you know isn't a standard aspect ratio. He opened the matte up a little from the 2.35:1 cinema release, and this is the master he provided to both ThinkFilm in the US and Revolver in the UK. Revolver issued it, ThinkFilm thought they knew better...

Here's Gilliam's statement, via Phil Stubbs:

"I mastered the DVD and decided that opening it up a bit vertically from the strict 2.35 looked better on the small screen. It's probably about 2.25. It is the choice of the director. Tell the fans to relax. I prefer it this way"

Revolver adhered to this, and released the film as Gilliam desired. ThinkFilm did not. Here's a statement from David Hudkoc at ThinkFilm:

You are correct that a 2.35:1 version is the most desired. We had in fact requested one early on in the DVD creation process; however, one was not created. Eventually, a faux 2.35 was created by the UK distributor, which ended up being closer to a 2.25 – a quick, but not complete solution. We are only in position to put out what materials are delivered to us, and although we all knew that the 1.78:1 was not ideal, nor true to the film, we had to proceed. We are currently working on getting a 2.35:1 master to work from and will plan a re-release when it is made available.

We apologize for the disappointment with the 1.78 version. Again, we will release a proper 2:35 as soon as it becomes available.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Kindly,

Dave Hudakoc.
ThinkFilm

dhudakoc@thinkfilmcompany.com

So, essentially, provided the 2.25:1 master from Gilliam, Hudakoc decided this was 'a quick soultion', declared it 'faux' and decided to make his own 1.78:1 version. Why? Why not release the 2.25:1?

Now they're talking about a 2.35:1 re-release at ThinkFilm... which, again, isn't Gilliam's preference. Oh dear. Make good use of Mr. Hudakoc's e-mail address, telephone number and fax line to make sure he gets up to date on all of this.

We aren't campaigning for a 2.35:1 Tideland anymore. We're campaigning for the 2.25:1 to Gilliam intended. Thankfully, Revolver have already issued one, here in the UK, and from websites like CD-Wow you can order it for delivery to many countries of the world.

[EDIT: A second statement from Terry Gilliam to Phil Stubbs reads "I think we have to get the word out NOT TO BUY the American version of the DVD. The Canadian version is correct. It's Region1... so Americans can see the film as intended" but, sadly, Mr. Gilliam had been deceived about the US release and may yet be wrong about the Canadian one. Is there ANYBODY out there who can confirm without a shadow of a doubt that the Canadian release is in the correct 2.25:1 aspect ratio?]

[EDIT: David Hudakoc has requested I remove his address and telephone number information from this post. Of course, I complied. Anybody who can use Google should have no trouble finding them anyway. Luckily they weren't in the comments, which I can't delete]

[EDIT: ThinkFilm are now slurring the Canadian release. Tut tut]

ThinkFilm Damned In A New Statement From Terry Gilliam

Phil Stubbs has posted an open letter from Terry Gilliam on his Dreams website. It is a rather scathing attack on ThinkFilm for how they rendered Tideland ineligible for the Academy Awards. Yep: it couldn't even be nominated due to an 'oversight' on ThinkFilm's part.

And we thought the aspect ratio issue was as bad as it got. I had proposed a boycot on ThinkFilm's Tideland DVD. I'm now just a hair away from calling for a march on their headquarters.

Stupid, ignorant, selfish, greedy people. Foolish people. What sort of distributor doesn't do the necessary for their films to be eligible for the Oscars? Its not hard - just a little bit of paperwork. ThinkFilm are clearly not fit for purpose.

I'm hoping this scenario prompts other filmmakers to think twice before signing a contract with these idiots.

Call This Number

Call ThinkFilm on 001 212 444 7900, from anywhere in the world, and let them know that, in fact, you will be boycotting their DVD release of Tideland and importing the Revolver one from the UK as it is in the correct aspect ratio.

Stress the point about the aspect ratio.

Now... does anybody have a good e-mail address for these butchers?

ThinkFilm Thoughtless?

I'm now reading reports that the US R1 DVD of Tideland from ThinkFilm has been cropped from the original 2.35:1 aspect ratio to 1.85:1. This would be tantamount to butchery.

Please check carefully - and not just on reatiler websites - before you shell out. If you have the disc, please confirm or deny these claims in the comments below. And if you have a copy from another publisher in another territory, could you please let us know how yours has been formatted?