Nerd Rant: DVD and Blu-Ray Rental Nazis Say, "No Extra Features For YOU!"

Something odd happened to my wife and me the other day. We were watching a DVD movie from Netflix and after we watched the movie, we liked it enough to want to see the extra features that were listed on the DVD's menu--the deleted scenes, the production features, and so on. All of the menu links appeared on the screen, so there was no reason to assume that we could not access these extra features. Yet no matter what feature we selected, a black screen would appear with a message that said that the DVD we rented was for rental purposes ONLY and that we'd actually have to buy the movie we watched to see the extra features.

This is the first time that I've encountered this problem, and I don't think that it's all-encompassing (yet). After all, we later watched another DVD from Netflix and we could access the extras on that disc with no problems whatsoever. Yet to have a rented DVD forbid us from watching the extras and explicitly tell us to buy the movie if we wanted to learn more about it was a bit of a shock after almost a decade of renting DVDs and the extra features that came with them without a single hassle. Read on ...

As a film fan, the extra features on DVDs and Blu-rays have been pure bliss. The extras were one of the welcome attributes that set DVDs and Blu-rays apart from VHS tapes and by extension they also enriched the movie rental experience. Some discs have had too few features while others had too many, and some features have been complete wastes of time. Nevertheless, the features shed a lot of light on movies--how they were made, how they were received by the public and the critical community when they were first released, what was left out of the movie's final cut, etc.--so I'd much rather have them than not.

I can see why Netflix and possibly other DVD/Blu-ray rental companies are getting rid of the extra features on their discs. We're currently in the middle of a major transition in how movies are distributed to the public, so I'm sure that all sorts of business models are being tossed around as to how to make movies both convenient to watch and profitable for Hollywood. DVD and Blu-ray rentals have been on the decline for years now, and this strategy was probably cooked up by some movie company executive as a way to boost sales.

As a means to increase movie sales, I doubt that this strategy will work. I think that the most likely outcomes are that casual viewers will just shrug it off while more curious viewers will find the information they seek for free on the Internet about the movie they just rented; either way, neither group will buy the movie on DVD or Blu-ray. On the other hand, given how many damaged discs are sent back to DVD/Blu-ray rental companies, I can see the financial logic behind sending out basic, no-frills discs--even if the discs still include the user interface menu that lists the extra features as accessible options.

Sadly, I think that the omission of extra features is an inevitable part of the next stage of movie rentals. Movies that can be rented via on-demand download do not have extra features included, and I could see in the future companies charging extra for downloadable rentals that include extra features. If this trend continues, then it will indeed be a sad day for movie lovers who enjoy having the option of learning more about the films they rent, not just the ones they bought for their collections. Oh, well ... it was fun while it lasted, wasn't it?

Bait 3D: I Need a Price Check on Tiger Sharks in Aisle Six

For fans of 3D sharksploitation movies, it looks like Christmas is coming early this year. In September, not only we see the release of Shark Night 3D here in the US, but Bait 3D will also be released in Australia at roughly the same time.

Bait 3D is about a group of people in a coastal Australian city who are trapped in a flooded supermarket after a tsunami, and a handful of tiger sharks are trapped in the store with them. This film has been written and directed by Russell Mulcahy, the same guy who brought us Highlander, The Shadow, Resident Evil: Extinction and Razorback, another Australian Jaws knockoff. You can watch a preview video on YouTube here, which gives an early look at the production of Bait 3D, and you can watch the first official trailer here.

Of the two monster shark movies, I think that Shark Night 3D will probably be the better film but I'm not completely dismissing Bait 3D just yet. Like Shark Night 3D, Bait 3D will also be using both CGI and animatronic sharks, so we could still get some effective, realistic scares out of this movie that would satisfy any monster movie fan. Regardless, now would be the perfect time for Universal to restore and re-release Jaws 3D on 3D Blu ray, so that it can later be combined with the 3D Blu ray releases of Shark Night 3D and Bait 3D for the ultimate 3D sharksploitation box set.

Heroic Hangouts!

Every hero needs a place to call "home"...even though it's not. Let's just say it's a really cool clubhouse and go from there. These bases would really make fun places to live!

The Fortress of Solitude

The commute for this one would be killer if you didn't have super-speed or flight on your side, but you have it admit it would be a pretty nice place to hang out. Now I'm not talking about the "ice castles" version you see in the movies and on Smallville...I'm talking about the one in the comic books. 

This thing had gigantic statues, a bottled city called Kandor, a full-sized cruise ship (just for decoration!), a private alien zoo, and so much more. Not to mention the fact that it virtually guaranteed no solicitors at your doorstep. They wouldn't even be able to find the place or lift the gigantic arrow key!

Of course, between all the world-saving and the Daily Planet day job, I don't see how Superman spent any time in the thing.

The Baxter Building

Home to the Fantastic Four since the beginning and almost constantly since, the Baxter Building is the antithesis of the Batcave: It's located right in the heart of the busiest city in the U.S. so everyone knows where it is! Add to that the fact that no one in the team has a secret identity and you get the feeling it was begging for visitors.

Filled to the brim with scientific do-dads and even the entrance to the Negative Zone, the Baxter Building packs a lot of function into a small amount of space.

It took several years and multiple battles before Reed Richards finally bought the place. Before that happened, it couldn't have been fun working in that building.

"What's that sound? Oh great, Doctor Doom's attacking the top floor again. Now I'll have to take the stairs to go home! 35 flights of stairs! I'm getting another job!"

The JLA Satellite

A base in outer space is another way to keep the unwanted visitors off your doorstep. Unfortunately, there are those of us who have crippling fears of heights which would immediately strike this off the list of potential heroic hangouts. 

This is definitely the most unsafe of the bases in this list, as any puncture to the hull would result in immediate and terrifying death for those who weren't built for outer space.

This base got a really bad rap during Identity Crisis, when Sue Dibny was assaulted by Doctor Light in it. To me that was something that could have been skipped over altogether.

The JLA no longer have this place, choosing instead to work out of the Hall of Justice. Those of us who grew up in the Bronze Age of comics still think of this place as the JLA's true home. Even the moon base they had for a while didn't seem as cool as your own satellite in space.

The Avengers Mansion

This one is cool because...well, it's a mansion. It's located in Manhattan (where all the cool heroes hang out) and has been the sight of several titanic battles over the years. Tony Stark originally paid for and built the thing for the Avengers back before they knew he was Iron Man and it's served them well over the years.

The mansion has been the site of several heart-wrenching battles. The "Avengers Disassembled" storyline saw the death of Ant-Man and Hawkeye there before it was destroyed. The Masters of Evil also came in the ripped the place to shreds at one point, almost killing Jarvis in the process.

The Avengers moved to their own floating island/building for a while. Big surprise here, but it was eventually sunk during an attack in the "Acts of Vengeance" storyline. Recently it was rebuilt by Stark and given to Luke Cage as a base for the "New Avengers" after the events of Civil War.

The Batcave

Hands down the coolest place to live on Earth, the Batcave won our reader's poll of best overall base and it's easy to see why. Besides being hidden in a cave (and what guy doesn't think that's cool?) it's filled with the latest gadgets and goodies...along with an awesome car, boat, and plane at your disposal at any moment!

Don't feel like being in the dark? Well, you get the best of both worlds here by just walking upstairs to stately Wayne Manor! Now it's nothing but fireplaces and flat-screen televisions in every room, along with your own butler! No more cleaning up after yourself!

Actually though, there's a possibility Batman could have been a bit of a hoarder with all that junk he kept in there (a giant penny and a mechanical dinosaur? Seriously?). Also, what's the point of having such a boss base and never letting anyone else see it? I'd have friends over all the time, which is probably why I'm not the Batman (or am I?).

Green Lantern: Rise of the Manhunters video game is out soon!

I'm sure this comes as no surprise to anyone, but there is a Green Lantern video game coming out just in time for the new movie. Video games have been tied in to movies for years as a way to boost sales for both, but sometimes they aren't the best match.

This year we've seen a Thor game that's actually pretty fun because you get to start out as the real thing rather than slowly build up a power set that takes forever to create. Now it would appear the Green Lantern game will be following that model.

Just looking at the various screenshots available out there from the PR firm doing a real bang-up job of getting the word out to everyone, I think this game is going to be amazing. The movie already has my vote for best trailer of the summer.

Now it would seem the game will allow you to actually create things to fight with, just like you would if you had a ring for real (admit it, you'd make some fun stuff like a giant glove or something). Whatever you build, you can fight with.

I am by no means a hard-core gamer and finish very few of them, but this looks like one I might be tempted to stick with for a while. It comes out right before the movie on June 7th, so make plans to get out there and scream the oath in your own living room for the fun of it!

Shark Night 3D Teaser Poster and Trailer--It’s Jaws 3D: The Revenge!

With the recent waves of 3D films hitting the multiplexes these days, I'm glad that the horror genre--particularly the monster movie subgenre--hasn't been left out. Last summer, we had the Piranha remake in 3D; this September, we'll be getting Shark Night 3D. The teaser poster (as seen above) was just released the week, and you can see the first official trailer here on YouTube.

It's been almost 30 years since Jaws 3D, so I think that it's about time that we got another 3D monster shark movie that uses the latest 3D technology. It would've been nice if someone at Universal took the initiative to convert Jaws 3D from anaglyph 3D to high definition field sequential 3D for distribution on Blu-ray but that will probably never happen, so Shark Night 3D is the next best thing. Read on for more thoughts about this upcoming 3D deep water fright flick.

Shark Night 3D will be using a combination of animatronic and CGI sharks, much like Deep Blue Sea. (In fact, Walt Conti, the effects wizard who built the animatronic sharks in Deep Blue Sea, also built the sharks for Shark Night 3D. Sweet!) The movie will take place in a salt water lake in the Louisiana Gulf, although I'm not sure how many sharks will be in the movie. Another good thing is that Shark Night 3D does not have to deal with the same obstacles that Jaws 3D did, such as the following:

* Monster sharks trapped in a man-made enclosure. Maybe it's just me, but there's something less scary about a monster shark that's stuck inside of an artificial environment. It dulled the shocks in Jaws 3D, as it also did in Deep Blue Sea. What scared me about the sharks in Jaws and Jaws 2 is that the sharks were out in the open water, so you could never be sure of exactly where and when they would appear next and thus added to the suspense. You don't have that kind of unpredictability in a man-made lagoon or a sinking research facility.

* Sea World. This one still irks me the most after all these years. A movie about a big, voracious monster running loose in a popular theme park should be an instant cult classic. Unfortunately, no one who owns a popular theme park would ever run the risk of allowing his/her park to be portrayed as being unsafe and fatal, even if the threat in the portrayal is a complete fiction. This is what makes Jaws 3D such an oddity: The owners of Sea World wanted to profit off of the publicity that would come with being associated with the Jaws franchise (they even put Jaws 3D's 35 foot long animatronic shark on display in their park as part of the movie's promotion), but they obviously refused to allow the filmmakers to shoot any scenes involving the deaths of its tourists and costumed water skiers. In other words, Sea World wanted to have its cake and eat it too--and Universal was willing to let them, of course--and the end result was a very tepid 3D creature feature.

I can only imagine what the first pre-production discussion of Jaws 3D must have been like between the suits at Sea World and Universal: "You want to shoot a Jaws movie here at Sea World? With TWO killer sharks, not just one? Absolutely, go right ahead! The kids will love it. But you can't have the sharks eating the tourists. I don't care if it's a shark movie, you can't kill any tourists--not one. It would be bad publicity for the park. You can't have the sharks eating any of our water skiers, either. Yes, I know that you had a skier eaten in the last Jaws movie, but you can't eat OUR skiers. They're performers who entertain our customers, and that other skier was just a nobody. Behind-the-scenes staff, such as technicians and divers? Sure, nobody goes to our park to see them. You can have your sharks eat as many of those employees as you want ...."

* Alan Landsburg. From what I've read over the years, Universal's agreement to let Alan Landsburg produce the third Jaws movie was a horrible idea, because many of his decisions and demands ultimately undermined the production and final cut of Jaws 3D. Read more about Landsburg's wacky Jaws antics over at the very informative Jaws 3D fan site.

Without having to face problems like these, Shark Night 3D should be a blood-soaked blast of sharksploitation fun. Yet if this film turns out to be a bust, don't worry. There's also the Piranha 3DD sequel, which is coming out in November. Bon appetit!

The Avengers Have Been Assembling on Disney XD

Boy, is my face red. I'd like to think that I'm up to date on most geek-friendly entertainment, but somehow this one escaped me: Since last Fall, The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes has been airing on the Disney XD channel.

In retrospect, I can see how I missed this. It seemed that during the rise of niche channels on cable TV, almost all of the cool animated shows have been going to the Cartoon Network--Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Young Justice, Venture Brothers, Symbionic Titan, and so on. So, to find out that one of Disney's cable channels has been running the latest animated version of one of Marvel Comics' premiere superhero teams really caught me off guard.

Finding Captain America, Iron Man and Thor on a Disney channel does makes sense, actually. Disney bought Marvel back in 2009, so naturally Disney would play a key role in deciding when, where and how any Marvel properties are marketed to the public. Furthermore, with Marvel laying the groundwork in its live-action movies such as Iron Man, Incredible Hulk, Thor and the upcoming Captain America movie for a likewise live-action Avengers movie in 2012, it's logical that Marvel would also put an Avengers cartoon on the airwaves to build additional interest in this particular title and the Marvel universe in general.

I've been catching up on the episodes I've missed and from what I've seen so far, the show does justice (no pun intended) to its source material. The team's roster has a selection of both popular and less well-known heroes, and the show accurately portrays the personalities and prior histories of each of the main characters. Even though DC also has its own selection of popular superhero characters, Marvel has often done a better job of placing its characters in a single, consistent narrative universe. That trend continues in the current Avengers show: Characters from all over the Marvel universe appear in each episode, from episode-length guest roles to fleeting, momentary cameos. The only thing that I think this show could improve is its overall quality of animation, which looks somewhat awkward and uneven in comparison to its closest thematic counterpart, the Justice League TV series.

For more information about this series, go to the Avengers page on the Disney XD site.

Captain...?

I have no idea what makes the rank of "Captain" so important, but it seems like everyone wants to be one. Just take a look at all these:

Captain America

This is probably one of the first you think of when you hear someone mention a hero named "Captain...?" The shield-slinger has been around for decades, and is just now apparently getting a fairly decent movie treatment.

For a while, he was Steve Rogers, then Bucky Barnes took over, then Steve came back and Bucky went to jail. Technically this leaves us with no clear Captain America as the movie is coming out, but I'm sure that will all be fixed up quickly.

Any way you look at it, the guy is popular with more statues and figures out there than any other hero on this list.

Captain Marvel (Marvel version)

This is one of the few "Captains" who actually has a military rank for his name. Granted, it's in the Kree army, but it counts. Mar-vell died in the very first Marvel graphic novel ever created called (surprise) "The Death of Captain Marvel".

The story did so well it paved the way for many more graphic novels over time. Unfortunately now every TPB is branded a graphic novel which cheapens the title. Read the original story in light of the comic books coming out at the time and you'll see why it was such an amazing story.


Captain Marvel (DC version)

This poor hero had a hard time of it for a while. When he first came out, DC included him in their rash of legal challenges against any and every hero who even remotely resembled Superman. Even though he was a popular hero with a lot of differences from the man of steel, DC won and the character spent years in comic book limbo. Ironically enough, DC bought the character and later brought him to his own series of stories that proved very popular.

He has fought Superman a lot over the years, though their titanic battle in Kingdom Come remains my favorite. In that one he truly cut loose against Superman and took him down, answering once and for all who would really win if the gloves were off.

Captain Carrot

One of those "funny animal" heroes, Captain Carrot really is a pretty cool dude. I remember reading that first issue as a kid and being hooked from that point forward. Spending years in limbo, they were brought back two years ago in a mini-series that ended up making them real animals in our world. They did get to come back in Final Crisis, but nothing has happened with him since.

To me, I think a Captain Carrot action figure would be a huge hit. The costume was cool and I'd love to see it in 3D as a figure, though I doubt he'll ever get one. Then again, if Animal Man can get a figure, surely some custom figure guy will try his hand at Captain Carrot and put him on Ebay!

Hey, tomorrow's my birthday, so if you're good at that thing and feel generous, it would be one of the coolest geek birthday presents I've gotten in a long time!

Captain Britain 

There are rumors he'll be a cameo in the upcoming Captain America movie. If he is, I highly doubt he'll show up in his awesome 70's outfit with the medallion and staff. Oh there are plenty of haters on the internet who hate that thing, but it beats out his later spandex outfit to me.

This character started out as Marvel's answer to Captain America for England, but he eventually made his way over the pond to team up with Spider-Man against Arcade in Murderworld. Years later he proved popular enough to lead a team called Excalibur (Marvel's attempt at a British version of the X-Men with a few mutants thrown in for the mix).

Captain Comet

Known as "The Man From the Day After Tomorrow", Captain Comet showed up for several issues as the lead hero during the run of "Society of Super Villains". After that he was pretty much banished to guest-star-only status for over a decade.

Even though he's been in several books since then, he has yet to really make a long-lasting impression on many readers. Most of the titles he appears in tend to be canceled shortly after he joins the roster. It makes no sense to me though, because I think the guy is pretty fun to read about. Great costume too!

Captain Universe

I still remember Micronauts #8 where we first saw this hero. Though the idea of a person becoming a hero to help in a situation and then losing that power isn't new (remember "Dial H for Hero"?) the way the character moved into his own series later on was a nice touch. Each issue would see a different person get the power and use it their own way. Sometimes they helped people, and once a cat burglar got it and tried to use it for his own selfish gains (it didn't end well for him).

The Uni-Power has even taken over a number of superheroes. Spider-Man was the first, then later the Silver Surfer, the Hulk, Sue Storm, and Daredevil all got their chance at unlimited power.

Captain Atom

Another hero who got his "Captain" title from military rank, Captain Atom was originally a Charleton character that was bought by DC. One of only three that really made an impact in the DC universe (the other two are the Blue Beetle and the Question), Captain Atom is the only one of the three still the original character from Charleton. 

The good Captain even made his way into a nice Justice League Unlimited story arch on television, working for the government to stop the Question and Huntress. He's recently rejoined Justice League International members Booster Gold, Fire, and Ice in Justice League: Generation Lost.

Star Tours, Episode II: Revenge of the Star Tours

Star Wars has been in the news quite a bit lately. First came the announcement of the upcoming September release of all six Star Wars movies on Blu-ray. Then, this weekend marks the opening of the updated Star Tours ride at the Disney theme parks.

The updated Star Tours ride looks like a really sweet upgrade. All of the video footage shown in the ride will be in 3D, thus making the ride much more immersive than its previous version. The updated ride includes planets and characters from all six movies; in fact, the planets and characters appear in different sequences during each individual ride, with up to 54 possible combinations. Go to the TheForce.Net, Mouse Planet and Entertainment Weekly sites for more details about this amazing theme park experience.

The last time I was on the original Star Tours ride was back in June 2007, and we were lucky enough to be there during one of Disney's "Star Wars Celebration" weekends. Click below to see some of the pictures that I took of theme park staff who dressed as Star Wars characters as part of this event, as well as some pictures of the original Star Tours ride.