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Hi. I am pretty sure (not 100%) that the slip covers are for retailers like where I work to put all kinds of sales stickers and crap on. Then, after the customer buys it, they can slip that part off and still have a shrink wrapped case with no $24.99 and "SALE $19.99" and all the other crap companies put on the cases. May also be if the person wants to give it as a gift, easier than trying to peel the stickers off of the shrink wrap.

-- Bill

I keep on seeing all these things on slip covers, such as it's for security or it's for protection. Doesn't it seem it's for marketing? I mean, usually these slip covers are foil layered to make it shiny, or in The Day After Tomorrow's case it was holographic. Scarface has a shiny one as does The Rundown, Bad Boys 2, and King Arthur. Look, King Arthur is the perfect example. The theatrical version had no slip case, but the Unrated version did. It's obvious that it is used as an attention getter so that when people walk the aisles at their favorite store it jumps and catches their attention, and then they are more likely to pick it up and look at it thinking "hey this looks special, let me take a look". It costs the distributor just a couple of cents more for each DVD and it increases sales. Doesn't that seem to be the most logical reason behind them?

-- Kaya

Good points, both of you. You make more sense than some of the studio reps I've talked to. :)

-- Andy

So, let me ask you - what compels a reasonable human being to watch TAXI more than once (This is all the way through I'm presuming)?

-- Christopher

Only to recheck the video. Someone told me I was way off on the video so I looked again and sure enough, they were right. I'm used to Fox being very good with their transfers so I gave them a pass when they didn't deserve it. And yeah, that movie was a stinker.

-- Andy

Just a quick question about the re-release of The Passion of the Christ; it's being called 'recut', does that mean more or less footage?

-- Jordan

Six minutes of beatdown is removed. I checked with Fox, there are no plans for a DVD release of the recut. It's just an Easter special.

-- Andy

Hello Andy,

I was wondering if you had any information about the Ghost In The Shell 2 replacement discs. Are they going to be available anytime soon for retail purchase, or do I have to buy the closed-caption version and mail it back to Go Fish in order to obtain the corrected disc? I passed on buying GITS2 because of the problem, and was glad when I heard about the replacement program. But the discs have yet to appear in stores (I was in Best Buy yesterday and held up a stack of the GITS2 DVDs, and there wasn't a single V4 to be found on any of the spines).

-- Greg

Well it appears the V4 discs are slow to get into the channel. I know Go Fish has been very good at getting replacements out in the mail. About 10 days after registering at their site for the replacement, they sent me the mailer, I got an email a week later saying they had the disc and my replacement would show up in two weeks. Sure enough, my replacement came last night and the subs are much better. So I'm not sure what to tell you, except give it a few more weeks.

-- Andy

After watching the Academy Awards last night, I got online today to see when Million Dollar Baby was playing at my theatre, only to find out that it has left! I saw Mystic River at the theatres and loved it, yet haven't got a chance to see Million Dollar Baby. Of course when I get a chance to go, conveniently after I see it win on the Oscars, the movie has left my area. Any word on when the DVD will come out, and possibly what will be on it? Thanks.

-- Steve

That was incredibly stupid on the part of the theater, as the Oscar wins popped MDB's box office this past weekend. Well, the DVD is still in the works. I asked Warner. They actually want to do it right, as opposed to certain other Oscar DVDs over the past few years that were treated as though they were Uwe Boll's latest stinkbomb and thrown on the market without an ounce of care.

-- Andy

OK, I've just got one question - what in the hell is up with all the double dips? Fox is re-releasing three movies with the special editions that should have been around the first time through. And I'm still scared to buy either Kill Bill at all, fearing that Miramax is going to announce some mega-special edition as soon as I do. What's going on here?

-- Herman

I've given the studios grief about this, but most of my contacts are PR people who have to be spear catchers for the marketing department. They don't like it, either, since they get all the grief from people like me. In some cases, I've been told it's because the extras weren't ready or legally cleared for the U.S. In other cases, it's poor planning. As for Kill Bill, you may remember a Miramax executive bragged in the New York Times about all the money they were going to make off multiple releases and all hell broke loose. Miramax suddenly got very quiet in regard to Kill Bill. It's all but official that the special editions are coming in August, and hopefully that will be the last batch.

-- Andy

Do you think the Matrix Box Set could be released on Blu-Ray or HD-DVD on a single disc? And if so, do you think it will be? I was just wondering. But I know it's like 35 hours of video, so I was wondering if it could be possible.

-- Adam

Well, studios fill every bit on the disc, even if the actual content is less than the 9.4GB for a dual layer disc. Now, since Warner is in the HD camp, they have less capacity than Blu-ray, 30GB max. That will translate to three of the UMC discs per HD disc, and that's if they do nothing to the existing audio and video files. You have to figure they will want to upgrade the video to 1080, which could make the files bigger, depending on compression technologies. I wouldn't be surprised if each film gets its own disc, but all the bonus material gets squeezed onto a few discs, so it would be maybe a six or seven disc set total. But it's speculation on my part. This will be a new format and multiple new technologies are in play, and Warner will have to learn what they can and can't do with the new stuff.

-- Andy

Is there a difference between 1.33:1 and 4:3? If not, why is 4:3 being called 1.33:1 now?

Thank you for your time.

-- Jon

Your math is worse than mine. :) It's the same thing. Mostly people use 1.33:1 for stylistic reasons. It keeps the ratio at one, so you have 1.33:1, 1.78:1, 1.85:1 and 2.35:1.

-- Andy

I know in terms of storage, HD and Blu-ray crush what is currently available to us. But in terms of resolution and picture quality, compared to currently available progressive scan 1080i widescreen pictures, how much better can it really get? I mean, there are titles now that match (or in some cases if cleaned up even surpass such as Star Wars) their original source material. In other words, picture-wise, will the picture remain pretty similar to the high end standards of current-generation DVDs, but instead only become the norm and with mass storage? Thanks for your time!

-- some random guy

It will depend on the codec that's used. There are more codecs in this fight than there are formats. Microsoft thought they were in the game but ended up being rejected because theirs wasn't as good as promised (oh, that never happened before, right?). Blu-ray has yet to settle on a codec but they seemed to be leaning toward MPEG4.

-- Andy

Regarding your complaint about the "fractional" aspect ratio of 2.39:1 for The Incredibles:

The SMPTE (Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers) standard for current widescreen formats is 2.39:1, not 2.35:1, and that is generally the way that they are shot. (To further confuse things, 2.39:1 is sometimes rounded to 2.40:1.) Using the expression "2.35:1" seems to be a matter of habit more than an accurate representation of the aspect ratio -- the more common CinemaScope aspect ratio was 2.35:1. This changed in 1970, but old habits die hard.

So the DVD for The Incredibles is actually specifying its aspect ratio correctly. In either case, I doubt that anyone could tell the difference between 2.39:1 and 2.35:1 without a cursor generator, and even that would be questionable because of overscan differences.

Clear as mud?

-- Stephen

Not at all, that was excellent. Thanks for the clarification. It also explains why I'm seeing 2.40:1 these days.

-- Andy

Are there any plans for Eddie Murphy Delirious coming out on DVD soon?

-- Roger

Unfortunately, no. He owns the rights to them, and because he's trying to be Mr. Family Entertainment now, he won't let them out. He's also got enough money not to care how much he's passing up.

-- Andy