I’m as exciting as a veryexcited man who’s just invented a new pair of exploding trousers!

[Ben Kirkham]

Oh my god! Just went on Amazon to look for the Blackadder Rides Again documentary which I still haven’t seen, and found this:

Everyone else probably knew about this before me, but this is fantastic! At last, one of the BBC’s best comedies gets treated with respect!

Topic

[Smeg4Brains]

Oh great. I’ve only just managed to get the original box set and now they release this.

[PhilPagett]

Bollocks! Bought the boxset about 6 months ago.

[Michael Warren]

Yeah, I was going to get the boxset cheap at ASDA a few weeks ago, but checked first to see whether anyone had it cheaper on Amazon, and discovered the new release.

[PhilPagett]

The lesson here is never buy anything.

[Ridley]

Baldrick will now be wearing Jabba the Hutt under his nose.

[TheLeen]

HAHAHA I NEVER BOUGHT THE BOX SET HAHA

I’m broke anyway :(

[Danny Stephenson]

I’;m not a fan of selective commentaries. if they are on every episode then I may think about it…

[JamesTC]

Some commentary is better than no commentary. I mean the ones on Buffy, Angel and Firefly are great despite only being on certain episodes.

[Danny Stephenson]

Hmm, I know what the problem is with me buying DVDs, and it’s that because I bought Series I of Dwarf first, I expect all other DVDs to follow suit as a result.

[Pete Part Three]

I bought the Region1 boxset many moons ago. This presents a quandary.

[John Hoare]

The lack of pilot still rankles.

But commentaries = excellent, obviously.

[JamesTC]

>Hmm, I know what the problem is with me buying DVDs, and it?s that because I bought Series I of Dwarf first, I expect all other DVDs to follow suit as a result.

As much as I wish all could it is just not possible, it is easier to slap on “collectors edition” on a DVD with subtitles, animated menu and scene selection listed as the bonus features then to do a proper job like is done with Dwarf, Doctor Who, The Simpsons/Futurama ect.
With American shows I understand why commentaries aren’t done on every episode, I mean it is 22 episodes or more a season (which is why I listed Futurama and The Simpsons, it is such a good accomplishment especially when they are all so good in the commentaries).
For every Bodysnatcher Boxset and ‘Trial of a Time Lord’ we get a Quantum Leap Season (which added an episode of Season 5 onto Season 4 as an extra) and an Only Fools and Horses release (complete with cuts!)

[Ben Kirkham]

> The lack of pilot still rankles.

Indeed, that still pisses me off. Even though I’ve watched it on YouTube, to have it on DVD would be excellent. What a strange piece of work. Sort of a bizarre hybrid between ‘The Black Adder’ and ‘Blackadder II.’ Only less funny, I think. I believe a section of the pilot is in the Blackadder Rides Again documentary, which is okay, but what’s wrong with the full episode? This isn’t Red Dwarf USA, is it?

> For every Bodysnatcher Boxset and ?Trial of a Time Lord? we get a Quantum Leap Season (which added an episode of Season 5 onto Season 4 as an extra) and an Only Fools and Horses release (complete with cuts!)

The Quantum Leap sets are a bitter disappointment. Still, at least we don’t quite suffer the music edits (Season 4 aside) that Region 1 do. As for Only Fools & Horses, well, what happened to them on DVD redefines the word ‘travesty.’ Particularly in relation to what happened to ‘A Royal Flush.’

[JamesTC]

I have stopped buying the Only Fools and Horses DVDs because of the cuts, when I heard about ‘A Royal Flush’ losing 20 minutes well that is just awful. Wikipedia has a list of all the cuts and I couldn’t believe it was so many. I will wait for a next-gen release in 10 or so years, I can wait that long with a mixture of DVDs and VHS’.
As for Quantum Leap well Season 1 came with a nice amount of extras, not that many but enough to show they cared, then Season 2-5 had next to none, infact Season 5 advertises 1 extra which isn’t even on the DVD!

[peas_and_corn]

The thing about commentaries is that I like them to be… well, entertaining. The Pierce Brosnan commentary on Die Another Day is awful because it’s just him trying to come up with things to say- he also didn’t apologise once. The season 7 Scrubs DVD has commentaries on every episode, but there is only one person on each- I personally prefer it if there was half, and had two or three people in the room for the commentary rather than one person having nobody to bounce off of.

[JamesTC]

The Joss Whedon ones on his DVDs are usually with him alone, they are always great, very imformative and regularly funny.

[peas_and_corn]

I can’t comment on those commentaries- however I have found that in general one person commentaries are boring (Fawlty Towers anyone?)

[ChrisM]

I agree having multiple people on a commentary is better than just one. (Depending on the kind of commentary of course.) As long as they’re actually all there discussing it, rather than little recordings done separately and slapped into place like on the T2 special edition.

Dwarf’s commentaries are particularly good for this as we know (although ‘ham and cheese’ gets a bit repetitive. ;) ) The guys on Evil Dead 2 were great too. (They weren’t bad on the other ED films, but that one stood out for me, the banter, etc.)

[peas_and_corn]

>rather than little recordings done separately and slapped into place like on the T2 special edition.

The commentary for T3 is great- it’s done the separate way, but whenever they cut to Arnie’s commentary he’s talking about ow great his body looks and what his weights routine was. There was a long section where he was tlkaing about his concerns about the possibility of doing A-B comparisons between his body in T2 and T3. Funny stuff.

[Carlito]

EDIT: oops posted in a different thread (or so I thought) and it ended up here :s

[si]

Best single person commentary – ‘The King’ on Bubba Ho-Tep.

[Tanya Jones]

Bob Spiers on Fawlty Towers is excellent on his own. You can have someone on their own who’s really interesting, or a group of people who don’t know enough about the production, and so are REALLY boring. I’ve never been that fond of the cast RD commentaries, because, although I love ’em, they’re not that great at telling me stuff I want to know.

[si]

Well, yes, but they’re clueless.

My problem with commentaries is that I can’t listen to them unless I’m familiar with what I’m watching. Hence there’s loads of Classic Who commentaries on stories I’ve never seen before that I haven’t listened to, because I don’t want to watch the story, then just watch it again straight away with commentary. Likewise, as much as I love info text, I find that while reading that, I, er, forget to listen to what’s happening in the story, so that means watching it again.

Because of course, my life is so busy.

[JamesTC]

I have listened to all of the Colin Baker commentaries since they are all brilliant (especially ‘Arc of Infinity’). I listened to the ‘Trial of a Time Lord’ commentaries all in one go.
‘The TV Movie’ had a good commentary as far as I rememer, that was just the director, I hope they get a re-release with Paul McGann on it though, he done a commentary for Alien 3 and he was great in that.

[J_Spaced]

Have to say that I thought the Director’s commentary on the Dr Who TV Movie was near wrist-slittingly dull! You need more than one person on commentaries in order to talk about stuff! Still not as boring as the Daredevil commentary:

“Here this shot is CGI. That’s not Ben. That’s some nice CGI. We put some CGI in there because Ben would have died otherwise, my fault: asking him to act. That’s not Jennifer Garner’s real head. That’s CGI…”

Best commentary line, or at least one that I can remember is from Spaced where Edgar Wright asks Mark Heap something like:

“Do you want to talk us through how you approach playing Brian?”

“No.”

[JamesTC]

I’m sure the best commentary line would have come from David X Coen.

[Danny Stephenson]

I find it really difficult to watch Futurama without commentaries, they’re just brilliant!

[ChrisM]

>Best single person commentary – ?The King? on Bubba Ho-Tep

Ha,ha! There are always exceptions.

I don’t dislike all commentaries with individuals, it’s just a preference thing really, but each have their place. Doug Naylor on the Back to Earth’s Director’s Cut being a good example.

[pfm]

D’you know, I’ve always thought the picture and sometimes sound quality of the complete collection release was pretty crap across the board. They probably didn’t do anything to it at all, just slapped it on DVD like a fucker. So it’s great to see it re-released and presumably looking a damn sight better. But for fuck’s sake, anyone who gives a stuff about Blackadder will already own the complete collection, like the thick demented sods we all are. So will I buy it again? You’re talking to the guy who owns both the Tardis series 1 boxset and the normal version that they released later.

[J_Spaced]

On the subject of commentaries, I’m currently listening to Red Dwarf Series 8 with commentary. My God! Talk about overcrowded. Everyone yelling over everyone else and everyone trying to drown out Norman’s moaning. Some of it’s funny, some of its just so whingy!

[John Hoare]

One interesting thing – the film inserts for The Black Adder survive. All of them. And there’s a hell of a lot of film sequences in that series.

If all of those are retransferred on modern telecine equipment – like they do for the classic Who releases, if the inserts survive – then the first series will look fucking gorgeous. For me, it’d be worth re-buying the boxset purely because of that. And all this talk of remastering would seem to suggest they’ve done it.

Here’s hoping. For an example of the stunning difference it can make, see this article – scroll down to the grab of Peter Davison, and then stick your mouse cursor over the picture to see the retransferred sequence:

http://www.purpleville.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/rtwebsite/NewBeginnings.htm

[Dave]

Joss Whedon gives good solo.

Commentaries which feature lots of contributors recorded separately are just inherantly dull.

[Danny Stephenson]

Monty Python spring to mind, trying to overlap the paired commentaries and make it look like they’re in the same session.

[Ben Kirkham]

> Monty Python spring to mind, trying to overlap the paired commentaries and make it look like they?re in the same session.

The Doctor Who commentaries have not been averse to that also. Both ‘Pyramids of Mars’ and ‘The Hand of Fear’ have done the same due to availability. It worked quite well with ‘The Hand of Fear’ commentary.

>One interesting thing – the film inserts for The Black Adder survive. All of them. And there?s a hell of a lot of film sequences in that series.

If all of those are retransferred on modern telecine equipment – like they do for the classic Who releases, if the inserts survive – then the first series will look fucking gorgeous.

True, the best Who release to get beautifully remastered film sequences is ‘Earthshock.’ The colours are sharper and the whole thing stands out.

[pfm]

I love the Family Guy gag about all the hours of crap Monty Python sketches that no-one ever mentions. That reminds me, I must buy the complete Flying Circus set. Just checked, it’s only ?17. Coolness.

[Pete Part Three]

Family Guy did a joke about crap comedy? Eeep.

[Danny Stephenson]

That reminds me, I must buy the complete Flying Circus set. Just checked, it?s only ?17.

Thank you for your order.
We hope you enjoy your purchases and come back again soon

Fucking Play.com!

[Ben Paddon]

Family Guy did a joke about crap comedy? Eeep.

Divide by zero?

[pfm]

Incidentally, has anyone else seen Life of Brian on Blu-ray? It’s fucking beautiful.

[Ben Paddon]

I have it but haven’t watched it yet.

[Somebody]

I got the original boxset for Xmas… which annoyed me because I’d been deliberately holding off from getting it for years since everything I’d heard suggested the original DVDs were not only vanilla (and missing The Cavalier Years), but crappily encoded since they were one of the Beeb’s very first DVDs. And I’d found out in November or so that they were finally going to be doing an improved one in the next year. And now there’s no way I can justify getting the better one…

[Michael Warren]

Got my copy the other week – first chance to watch it this weekend. And bloody hell – it’s Chris Barrie!

[John Hoare]

Do you know if they’ve replaced the film sequences in the first series?

[Danny Stephenson]

Do you know if they?ve replaced the film sequences in the first series?

How do you mean, John? Replaced with what?

[John Hoare]

With better quality versions, from rescanning the negatives – like the Doctor Who example below (scroll down, then hover over the big image):

http://www.purpleville.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/rtwebsite/NewBeginnings.htm

[Michael Warren]

Do you know if they?ve replaced the film sequences in the first series?

I haven’t actually looked at The Black Adder properly yet (not my favourite of the four series). I probably wouldn’t be able to tell anyway :D

Here’s a random screengrab I just made from the new DVD. I don’t know if you can compare or not:

[pfm]

It doesn’t look remastered, though maybe you can’t tell from that.

[John Hoare]

Nope, not remastered. Thanks though, Michael!

This infuriates me. If you’re going to re-release a programme as much as Blackadder, then by this time round there’s really no excuse for not making it look as good as possible. Replacing the film sequences with newly-transferred ones would VASTLY improve the look of that first series – it’d make it look absolutely stunning.

I can only think the DVD guys didn’t know the film sequences exist. (And I’m fairly sure my information is correct – it comes from someone who works for the BBC archives, who posted on the now-defunct Doctor Who Restoration Team Forum…)

[Author]

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