Signs of life?

I doubt that he will borrow much from Hush. But if he is going to do Bane, given how The Dark Knight ended, I cannot see how he can possibly not borrow from Knightfall.

Actually, I am secretly hoping that the Selina Kyle announcement is a red herring and Hathaway has really been hired to play Talia. Talia is not as well known to the general public as Catwoman, but given that Ra's al Ghoul was the villian in the first one, there are almost too many cool possibilities to explore.

Not much of a secret now!

There are some very cool possibilities. I'm looking forward to the new Batman film.

Sadly, whether Batman or Bond, we have some serious waiting to do.

I'm patient.

I am not. I may just have to rewatch all my Bond Blus (I cannot watch any of the other titles, of course, since I foolishly sold off my DVD sets) and go through the entire Batman:TAS cycle again. Speaking of which, Warners has announced that Batman Beyond: The Return of the Joker is going to be released on Blu. That is one of the best animated movies that they have done to date, even though it is from the non-canonical Batman Beyond series.

I have too many other things that I have still to see for the first time to tide me over.

I have plenty of things to watch in the meantime -- I never get fully caught up. But I still crave the things I cannot have yet!


Speaking of plenty to watch, I finished the first season of Deadwood. I am glad that I bought it. It does really develop some serious depth to the characters as the series progresses. Some of the characters that seemed a bit one-note at first, like Calamity Jane or Swearengen really get interesting toward the end of the season. Characters that seem like cliches end up being nothing of the sort.

I have another gift card burning a whole in my pocket. Have you watched The Pacific yet?

The Pacific is one of those that I have but falls into the category of "I still have to see it for the first time." In other words, I haven't gotten around to watching it yet. The Blus are expensive. At Best Buy, they cost me over $100!

Swearengen is a fantastic character. By the time I was done watching all three seasons, he was my favourite.

I misunderstood -- I thought that you had already picked up The Pacific, but just not watched it.


Swearengen took a quick leap to near the top of my favorite characters in the episode in which he euthanizes the character who is suffereing from an infirmity (trying to minimize spoilers.) The surprisingly gentle way that he says, "Be at peace, brother" as he does the deed reveals more about his character than pages of dialogue could.


On the subject of my gift card, I read an interesting article on the A.V. Club giving ten reasons why they thought that The Vampire Diaries was superior to True Blood. Have you seen the former, and can you compare the two?

No, you are bang on about The Pacific. I have bought the series, but I have not gotten around to watching it yet. I was merely commenting on price as a heads up, though I am sure you will find it for much cheaper than I on your side of the border.

Swearengen only gets better. But I will say no more, so as not to ruin anything for you.

I have never seen The Vampire Diaries, so I can't comment. I had assumed that series was more for the Twilight crowd. I will have to do some research.

Amazon had The Pacific for $39.99 at the same time that they had Deadwood on sale. I do not regret going with the latter, however! All the locals WalMarts have it for $59.99, which is tolerable, especially when I am not spending "real" money.

Here is the article from The A.V. Club:

http://www.avclub.com/articles/ten-reasons-you-should-be-watching-the-vampire-dia,50681/

I will admit that I had no interest until I read that article.

Hmmm. The article doesn't sell me. I still think it a series more for the OC viewers out there. I could be wrong. If you pick it up, let me know what you think.

Well, I have two seasons of Deadwood yet to go, so I am in no rush. I used the gift card to order the Criterion Blus of Broadcast News and Videodrome, as well as the Blu for the Kenneth Branagh version of Hamlet.

Good choices.

As an aside, I checked out prices for Blus of Vampire Diaries and the complete series of Deadwood. I'm sure I could do better by hunting around, but my first search in a brick and mortor store turned up $80 for the former and $200 for the latter. I like to support local stores, but at those prices, I'd definitely order through the Internet. Which reminds me: I need to pay a visit to Alligator Records . . . .

I feel no guilt about giving Amazon $94 of my money (which was not even "my" money, since it was a gift card) for the latter. I like buying locally as well, but I buy enough Blu-Rays that I have to be more discriminating about prices.

I have a feeling I buy less than you. Having said that, I still buy enough that I, too, need to be discriminating about prices. This is supposed to be a hobby, not a reason for going bankrupt!

It (probably) will not help you, but Amazon has Deadwood on Gold Box for even less than I paid -- $89.

Actually, I can now order from Amazon.com, which is nice (I used to be restricted to Amazon.ca). That was the only way I could order Triangle -- I could not, for the life of me, find it in Canada.

I am tempted to pick up Deadwood on Blu, as I only have it on DVD, but there are other things to purchase first. Unfortunately, I have to prioritize.

The only priority that matters is when to go broke.

I suppose the best timing for that is right before checking out of this world. Only, since most of us don't know our departure dates, getting the timing exact is a challenge.

More tantalizing tidbits:

http://blog.moviefone.com/2011/02/04/bond-23-ralph-fiennes/

We have heard those "darker" kind of promised many times before, and it has rarely been true, but we shall see.

Hmmm. I do like Fiennes. And he can do dark.

Javier Bardem has also been bandied about. Fiennes could be very, very good depending on the part. The description of the part seems interesting.

Here is a silver lining with a cloud:

http://thedigitalbits.com/#mytwocents


While it is a good thing that a deal with Sony is nearly closed, the fact that Fox will let its rights expire for home video releases of MGM titles has a problem that Bill Hunt does not mention in the article: if Sony (or someone else) takes over home video distribution of the Bond titles, what happens to the existing supplements? If they are all copyrighted by Eon with no ownership by the studio, then all will likely be good, but if Fox has any rights then some or all of the existing special features may have to be dropped. And for those of us who sold our DVDs that could be a problem. Even relatively minor things like menu design and packaging are copyrighted, so even if the features can be retained, the packaging and menus may have to be changed. And while I am not a real fan of the "interactive" menus, I would prefer that they remain stylistically consistent for all titles.

If the look and feel changes and extras are dropped, that will irk me to no end. I like consistency across sets. That said, I'd rather have something released than nothing.