A story about a man named Bob.

Please note, the characters and events portrayed are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to real people or names is purely coincidental.

Today I bring you a story of a man named Bob, who works at online etailer DVD Plus. Now one day 'twas Bob's job to list "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: 2 Disc Special Editon Limited Edition Giftset" for sale. Now foolish Bob accidentally set the price as £13.87 rather than £23.87. As I scoured the internet I stumbled upon this occurance. What is the point of this story I hear you ask? Well basically I got the giftset for only £13.87, a ridiculously cheap price for a new release and Bob probably got fired, as I alerted virtually everyone I know to go and order it. the following day the price was changed back and since DVD Plus list the precise number of each DVD they have in stock, about 12 hours afterwards, they had shifted a further 50 copies. So quite a substantial loss of potential earnings one would presume.

And for those of you who care my DVD is 01382 of 20,000.

In other news today saw the arrival of the R1 Pokemon master Quest Box Set 1. 32 episodes for only $19.99, not bad going really so I'm ploughing my way through those.

Also today saw the arrival of the "Pokemon Chronicles" Boxset featuring Volumes 1 - 3. Rather smugly I can say that if you get the boxset, volume 3 comes in it's own case with it's own cover, rather than being tacked on with the Volume 2 DVD, as the previously released DVD was. Yay for me!

Buena Vista Home Entertainment Lied to Me?!

Please note the sarcasm that comes with the title. Once again the worst excuse for a home entertainment company lets me down. There I was browsing the shelves of Woolworths, when my eye was caught by the DVD of "Pokemon Heroes", it was only £4.99 and I was tempted. I knew that the R1 DVD was pan and scan and I thought to myself "no", 'tis a work of pan and scan evil! But then I remembered that BVHE UK had delivered the previous movie "Pokemon 4Ever" to the UKers in glorious anamorphic widescreen, a thing which no doubt left most Americans seething as they clapsed the Pan and Scan copies that BVHE US has given them. So I picked it up turned it over and Yay! It said clear as day "Widescreen Format", my heart jumped! I looked beneath and it said "1.85.1", again I nearly cried I was so ecstatic, I looked on the spine and saw a glorious logo that procliamed "widescreen". That was it, I was sold, I bought it!

Then when I arrived home, it went in the DVD player the second I got through the door, and lo and behold, 'twas pan and scan! Anyway I grudgingly sat through the next 75 minutes, the outrage causing me to foam slightly at the mouth! When it was over I checked the bonus features, and what a shock. Whereas the film had been butchered into pan and scan, the bonus features when presented in widescreen!!! What the?!! I'm baffled, well and truly baffled. I shouldn't be surprised, it's not the maddest thing BVHE UK have ever done.

Now the point of this story is not that BVHE UK lied to me, or that they destroyed a film by chopping bits of the picture off. No, the point of this story is that once again, being the foolish mortal that I am actually believed and trusted BVHE UK. I have been bitten more than enough times by BVHE UK, yet still I continue to dip my hand in chicken blood and waggle it before the hungry tiger!

And will I do this again? Buy a BVHE UK DVD without checking meticulously every review and online scrap of information to make 100% sure that they are telling the truth? Of course I will because BVHE have me in their snare. I'm a BVHE addict and the only way out is death!




< The pan and scan BVHE UK effort, and above the widescreen print how it should be.





The outcry over the syndicated episode of Roseanne have led to panic, dismay, fear, chaos, nausea, strains of bird flu and random acts of Cher impersonation. But could a light be at the end of the tunnel.

Well Anchor Bay UK have made an announcement that should lift the spirits of all the fans of the chubby, animated Disney cow voicing woman.

and I quote: "Anchor Bay UK is releasing masters supplied by the production company. We will investigate this and if there are longer versions available we will use our best endeavours to get them and issue them accordingly.If we do this, it goes without saying that we will be more than happy to exchange the longer versions for the short versions, so true Roseanne fans can put them in their boxes accordingly."

Well let's hope that does happen, or I may have to get pitch-fork happy on their asses!

How to do cover art the wrong way

Ah, Lady and the Tramp one of those classic films everybody loves. I remember when Trusty the dog got high and they all had a knees up down a back alley. What's that you say? That never happened in the film! Well that's not what the cover for th upcoming DVD seemd to suggest!



One word, "blech".

Meanwhile on:



It turns out that we in the UK are also getting the horribly butchered 1st season! :( Ta for nothing Anchor Bay!!!

A light at the end of the Roseanne shaped tunnel?

Let's face it, a Roseanne shaped tunnel is going to be pretty wide! But it looks as though the fans outcry at the syndicated episodes may have lead to Anchor Bay to do something right. Apparantly overwhelmed by the number of complaints about the abomination that was released on August 30th, they are seeking the original network broadcast prints from Carsey-Werner in order to release the remaining seasons as they originally aired. Of course this is not 100% certain yet, and there is still no news about a rerelease of season one, but hey hum I can at least practice my happy dance should the good news come. This news also applies to the other Carsey-Werner shows distributed by Anchor Bay, inlcuding some sitcom about some Cosby guy, which I don't think was that popular.

And the Award for worst Season box set of the year goes to...

Roseanne!!!

I love this show and have waited with baited breath ever since DVDs hit the market for it to become available. Finally in May of this year Anchor Bay announced that they had made a deal with Carsey-Werner to distribute the show and I almost fell over backwards with glee!!! I preordered the DVD and was on the verge of making a calendar to count down the days, but I decided I wasn't quite that sad.

However the sun was about to set on my joy as lo and behold it has become known that they are the syndication prints on the DVDs so are missing in some cases up to 3 minutes of footage each as THIS review will clarify.

Wow, DVD companies really do know how to keep my money in my pocket don't they! I encourage everyone to avoid this DVD at all costs, even if I do love it!

A glimmer of hope there may be though as the R1 DVDs running time currently stands at 505 minutes and the press release for the UK version has a time of 502 minutes. Now PAL speed up would shorten the running time by much more than 3 minutes, so potentially could there be more footage per episode? Or is it more likely that it's an Anchor bay balls up. Unfortunately the latter is more likely.

Also there is still hope, the official word from Anchor Bay is that Carsey Werner would only allow then the syndication prints even though Anchor Bay did want to release the full episodes, the same applied to 3rd Rock from the Sun which has also been edited on the R1 DVDs, for the same reason Carsey-Werner would not allow them to have the uncut prints. However 3rd Rock from the Sun is already available in the UK and they are 100% uncut, they even managed to clear the James Earl Jones rights for the voiceover! So could this mean that Carsey-Werner have different policies for releasing their product to different countries? If so the UK could get lucky with unedited episodes of Roseanne after all! Here's hoping!

Go and see Herbie: Fully Loaded you miserable set of buggers!

Why is it that movie critics today have to slam everything. Well actually no that's not true, they do praise somethings, the stuff that doesn't deserve to be praised and ought to be resigned to the trash can of the motio picture industry like the abyssmal Shrek 2.

Herbie: Fully Loaded has met nothing but criticism. What is it with people, can't they recognise a fun movie? Or have all of their brain celled been deadened by the thought of a donkey in a carriage saying "Are we there yet?" What a world we live in when a joke that has been trotted out more times than can be remembered, without digging out the domesday book in order to check the precise date the first are we there yet joke was told! It's bad enough we even had to endure an entire film called "Are we there yet?" earlier this year.

Half of the critics out there don't know what they're doing anyway and wouldn't know a good film if it came up and knocked the ridiculously expensive hat of their head, which they bought when the incomprehensible buckets of money they get paid for spouting the undegestible diatribes that so often clog up the crap rags of film reviews we are so often presented with.

So go and see Herbie Fully Loaded or instead sit there and wait for Shrek 3 to be released, and move even closer to becoming a vegetable of Jeffrey Katzenberg's eveil regime!