DVD Roundup – 8/9/06 News Posted by John Hoare on 8th September 2006, 11:50 So, TOS announces today (that’s today! Not two weeks ago!) that Series III comes out in France on September 13th – new menus, re-mastered eps (particuarly pointless when it comes to Series III, but never mind – I’ve gone on about it long enough) and missing the odd extra like the commentaries and raw model footage. Presumably sales have held up despite Series 1’s “All his mates were French”. The other interesting bit of DVD news is regarding Beat The Geek – Play lists the release as exempt from classification, and this was confirmed by Andrew on the Webboard – “We only got final word on that a week ago. Yep, DVD games are exempt… There WAS, for a long time, pressure to finish early enough for classification – even though we’d questioned whether it was needed. I think we finally got the news, of all ways, when the cover art came through!” It does highlight some weird gaps in the classification system. There is a similar one with regards to commentaries – they don’t have to be submitted to the BBFC, and indeed the Red Dwarf ones aren’t. However recently, some Tomorrow People DVDs had to be recalled – because the swearing on the commentaries was not suitable for the classification. On first glance, this appears to just be dumb. But it costs for DVDs to be classified by the BBFC – costs that are easily met by oufits like 2 | entertain, but hurt slightly for smaller distributors. Maybe it’s a good idea that every single bit of content doesn’t have to be classified, and companies are left to self-regulate slightly more – a term that I usually loathe, mainly because there’s always some companies that can’t be trusted – but here might just lead to more and better DVD releases for everyone. After all, it’s not like recalls aren’t enforced if companies take the piss. Enough waffling. Beat The Geek should also have a preview at DJ, much like the DVD doccos in the last couple of years. Whether it’s simply some footage of it, or something rather more interactive, remains to be seem. Actually, we haven’t mentioned much of what’s coming up at DJ – there’s the Smeg Or No Smeg competition (DO YOU SEE IT’S LIKE DEAL OR NO DEAL), and also… karaoke. I’d enter it myself, but for some reason I seem to be under the impression that I have some self-dignity. Hmmm. …Was that spun out into a decent article? Yeah, I think that scrapes it. Well done, John.
You know what… I think I prefer the French covers. The red arc really adds something to them and doesn’t, as I suspected it might, make it too cluttered. It’s looks lovely. Nothing can excuse having the spine test the wrong way round, though.
Weird thing about bonus material. In the States – someone correct me if I’m wrong – I don’t think ANY extras get classified. (And, in fact, a cert isn’t a requirement anyway; it’s just that so many theatres and stores refuse to carry unrated material). That seems bizarre to me – 18-rated extras on a U DVD?! This led to this brilliant ‘fuck’ moment on the Star Wars Epsiode 1 doc that only got spotted late in the day, once the BBFC were shown it. (Anyone know if it slipped through on the US edition? It’s from Ewan McGregor to a crew member, just after doing a stunt. Something like “Do you want to be in Star Wars, they said. Too fucking right, I said!”) But yeah, audio doesn’t get rated – so the commentaries are down to our own ruling, and, like the Tomorrow People recall, we prefer to match the BBFC cert. Video elements have to be, though, so the menus get checked while the book chapters don’t.
One thing I meant to mention in this article is something Norm said on his site: The interactive quiz game was good fun to do and it was nice to be an even older Holly (I’m probably the right age for him now). Being about the right age to do it is a very interesting comment. Exactly what Sylvester McCoy said about the Doctor in the McGann Movie, actually. And he was very good in it.
I think Norman’s right. The deadpan dopeyness, coupled with the occasional moment of childlike playfulness, works even better for an older-faced character. I love his performance – Hattie’s too, actually – on the Geek game. I just hope everyone else feels the same…!
I think Norman’s commentary on VIII goes down as one of my favourite moments from the DVDs as a whole. > There is a similar one with regards to commentaries – they don’t have to be submitted to the BBFC, and indeed the Red Dwarf ones aren’t. Talk about stupid. This is laziness in a way. Obviously the BBFC don’t want to listen to the commentaries, and the other way of doing it – viewing a transcript of the commentary (many are transcribed for subtitles) – would be extremely tedious, and something could easily slip through. They could just do searches for naughty words such as tits, cunt, twat, pissface etc. and even then certain conversations that would be deemed too strong for say a ‘U’ rating (perhaps allusions to sexual acts) might still make it through.
Well, I said exactly that on another forum I visit. And someone pointed out that classifying every single extra like that was a bit of an arse for the smaller distributors, as the BBFC charge for *every* single thing they have to classify. So logically I absolutely agree with you, but from a practical point of view, perhaps it’s a good idea.
Thing is, they are a film and video classification organisation. Audio files simply don’t count. So it’s not laziness, it’s their remit. So it’s a problem with the set-up, rather than the BBFC themselves.
