Well, folks, it finally happened. The months of busting my hump hauling bags of dog food out to little ol' ladies cars paid off! Back in November, I said to myself, "We'll see where my finances sit in January, and if they're good, I'll buy a DVD player." When January hit, and the last Christmas bills were paid off, I saw my savings poised to hit $2500. I though "That's good." So, January 18 was the day I set aside to buy my player! On that day, I happened to bump into my good buddy Darmok online and I invited him along. We met up at the west end Future Shop, and I was prepared to take my first step into a larger world. It was great to have Darmok along, as he is in the know on these things and could help decode some of the technobabble. He also taught me valuable life skills like how to haggle with salespeople and how to screw salespeople out of their commissions when they refuse to haggle. All in all, a great day with a great friend, and now, I've got DVD, baby!

The Hardware: The player is a Sony DVP-S360. I won't bore with you the technical details because I'm still deciphering them myself.

The Software: Of course, this is what DVD is all about. After loading up with DVDs at Future Shop, Darmok and I headed on up to HMV in West Ed, because I saw a few there I just had to have. So, here is the origins of a vast DVD library!

Clerks: Special Edition
Plot: The first film of Kevin Smith, in which we follow a day in the life of Dante, a convenience store clerk, and his friend Randall, who's a clerk in the video store next door. Throughout the day, they ponder life, love, and Star Wars.
Special Features: The original ending, cut scenes, the Soul Asylum music video, the trailer, and running commentary with director Kevin Smith, star Brian O'Halloran (Dante), star Jason Mewes (Jay), producer Scott Mosier, and some other guy.

Ghostbusters: Special Edition
Plot: Do I need to tell you? One of those true classics of the 80's, with Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, and Harold Ramis doing battle with giant marshmellow people and saving Sigourney Weaver from life as a dog.
Special Features: Cut scenes, the trailer, trailers for other Bill Murray movies (Stripes, Groundhog Day, and, of course, Ghostbusters II), running commentary with director Ivan Reitman, star/co-writer Harold Ramis, and producer Joe Medjuk, the original 1984 "making of" special, a new "making of" special for the DVD, a "how they did the special effects" feature, storyboard gallery, conceptual art gallery, and procution notes displayed as subtitles. And lots more.

The Nightmare Before Christmas: Special Edition
Plot: Jack Skellington, the king of Halloween, is tiring of his holiday and decides to try his hand at another one: Christmas. Sadly, the world isn't ready for his version of the festive holiday. Created by one of my favourite directors, Tim Burton.
Special Features: Cut scenes, the "making of" feature, test animation and conceptual art for the characters, running commentary by director Henry Selick and the art director, the trailers, the trailer for James and the Giant Peach, storyboard-to-film comparisons, and two of Tim Burton's early short films: Vincent and Frankenweenie.

Transformers the Movie: Special Edition
Plot: The cult classic from my childhood! Optimus Prime dies in battle as the horrendus Unicron draws close to destroying the Transformers' home planet of Cybertron. The Autobots embark on an odyssye to save their homeland with thier enemies the Decepticons (who are now slaves of Unicron's) in hot pursuit.
Special Features: Storyborad gallery, interview with composer Vince DiCola.
Interesting Note: It was quite serendipitious how I got this one. I was telling Darmok all about it as we walked into HMV. It was playing on the giant TV in HMV's video section. Darmok casually pointed to it sitting on a shelf and asked, "Is this it?" I just had to snap it up after such a harmonic convergence.

"Weird Al" Yankovic Live!
Plot: Weird Al's Pasadena, California concert from his 1999/2000 "Touring With Scissors" tour! Bring the Weird Al concert experience home! Or, for folks like me, this is the closest we'll get until the next time he comes to Edmonton.
Special Features: On-screen lyrics, the music videos for The Saga Begins and It's All About The Pentiums, still photo gallery, and 2 education films from Weird Al's MTV specials.

Boxed Set: The Fantasia Anthology
Disc 1: Fantasia
Plot: Walt Disney's bold experiment, creating animated interpretaions of pieces of classical music. Considered to be an animation milestone by many.
Special Features: Documentary "The Making of Fantasia," running commentary by Roy E. Disney, conductor James Levine, Disney historian John Canemaker, and head of Disney film restoration Scott MacQueen, and a second running commentary by Walt Disney himself, pieced together over 30 years worth of interviews.
Disc 2: Fantasia 2000
Plot: 60 years later, Walt's original vision of Fantasia as an ongoing series of films is finally brought to fruition with 6 new segments and one returning favourite.
Special Features: Documentary "The Making of Fantasia 2000," running commentary by Roy E. Disney, conductor James Levine, and producer Don Ernst, a second running commentary featuring the directors of each respective segment, and the Disney short films Melody and Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom, which were originally developed to teach music theory.
Disc 3: The Fantasia Legacy
Plot & Special Features: EVERYTHING you ever wanted to know about the making of these two films! You get for every segment in each film: concept art, pencil tests, extensive interviews with the filmmakers, bios of the filmmakers, and extensive info about the selections of music. You also get the trailers for both films, and even cut and abandoned segemtns fromt the original Fantasia.

Boxed Set: Toy Story: The Ultimate Toy Box
Disc 1: Toy Story
Plot: Woody is the favourite toy of Andy's, until Andy gets a new Buzz Lightyear action figure for his birthday. When both toys are left at a gas station, they have to put aside their differences and work together to get home.
Special Features: The "making of" feature, 2 on-set interviews with Woody and Buzz, all 52 Toy Story treats, multi-language reel, running commentary with director John Lasseter, the writers, and the producers, isolated sound effects track, and the Pixar short film Tin Toy, which served as Toy Story's inspiration.
Disc 2: Toy Story 2
Plot: In this better-than-the-first sequel, Woody is kidnapped by an unscrupulous toy collector, and Buzz and the rest of Andy's toys launch a rescue mission. Can they save Woody before he's shipped to a toy museum in Japan?
Special Features: Running commentary with director John Lasseter, the writers, and the producers, isolated sound effects track, the bloopers which ran during the film's end credits after the film had been out for a month, the Pixar short film Luxo Jr., and the trailer for Pixar's next film, Monsters, Inc.
Disc 3: Supplemental Features
Plot & Special Features: For both films, you get the trailers, the teasers, conceptual art, cut scenes, abondoned story concepts, original character designs and test animation, original song demos, the very first draft of the Toy Story script (dated June 1991!), and, quite frankly, everything you ever wanted to know about the art of computer animation but were afraid to ask.


The Wish List: Of course, this is only the beginning. This is what I'll be amasing in the months ahead:
Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker
Batman: Mask of the Phantasm
The Iron Giant
X-Men
Blade
Independence Day: Special Edition
T2: Ultimate Edition
Men In Black
Ghostbusters II (Hey, gotta complete the set)
The Sound Of Music (if nothing, to fully show off DVD to my musical-loving Mom)
Melody Time (if only because it has one of my favourite Disney animated shorts, Lambert the Sheepish Lion)
A few of the James Bond movies
Princess Mononoke
Pokemon: The First Movie
Pokemon the Movie 2000
Jurassic Park
G.I. Joe: The Movie
Mallrats
Chasing Amy
Dogma: Special Edition (can you tell I like Kevin Smith?)
"Weird Al" Yankovic: The Videos
Maybe a few South Park Episodes
And a few Star Trek Episodes
And even episodes of the X-Men cartoon are now available
(Oh, and Darmok questioned my faith for not mentioning any Star Trek films, so I'll tell you what I told him: I'm waiting for the special edition of The Motion Picture, due out this summer.)

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