- Well, one of the two anyway….Sadly, we’re still unable to report anything on the Dogma Special Edition DVD. We’re waiting for any info but they’re keeping it quiet for the time being. Basically, we’re still assuming there’s some content issues (similar to those issues a while back that they’d found a way around) and that the studio is working with those involved with the disc to come up with a solution. While this again seems rough, it’s a good sign. Whatever the problem is, the delay means that they’re trying to get the best product out there to the fans, rather than just settling for something inferior.
Speaking of which, the A Better Place DVD could have been done a while ago too, if Vincent hadn’t insisted on making this thing PERFECT. And while we know a lot of you have orders in all over the place, the good news from Vincent himself is that the final blocks are being put into place. Here’s Vincent:
As for A BETTER PLACE, the deleted scenes are finally together and the commentary recorded and Don May is heading out to Los Angeles in a week to finish work on this and a few more of his titles. That means, all elements will be handed to the authoring facility and work on the screens, navigation, compression, etc., will begin. It’ll take them 2-3 weeks to do this and get us a check disc, and after we approve that, a few more weeks to press the discs, so this one is just about ready to go. When we actually have the check discs in hand and approve them, we’ll announce the firm, final date, but look for it to be late-February.
There ya go, folks. Stay tuned for more big DVD news here soon. Clerks Uncensored is still on track and we expect to see the two mentioned in the headline in the next couple of months. Keep those spots on your DVD shelves open.
“Among the new breed of indie-trained directors, Kevin Smith (Chasing Amy, Dogma) has been more outrageous in his verbal assaults on the audience’s squeamishness than in his visual forays. Clerks was originally rated NC-17 for raunchy language and the rating was only changed to R after an appeal. “It would have been easier to show Dante gutting a woman or a 12-year-old boy than lamenting about his girlfriend sucking 37 dicks,” Smith says. “I find that a sad comment on our society.” Smith personally shies away from showing sexual acts. “Visually I’m not talented enough to bring it off,” he says. “Maybe when I’m 40, I’ll be more of a dirty old man, and I’ll want to show sex. That’s probably why you see nudity in Robert Altman films–not that I knock the man. But he probably has the desire to see young and vital actors in the buff. Maybe I’m too much of a Catholic ever to have those scenes. I don’t know if I could have that conversation with an actor.” Smith’s ultimate dismay, though, came about through circumstances that speak volumes about the problems he and every other director face in an industry that is, as always, hopelessly schizoid on the subject of sex. “In Mallrats, the studio said we needed a pair of tits, and so there’s a scene where Joey Lauren Adams opens her shirt. To me, that’s a career low. Talk about unsexy! Remembering that scene will probably chase me away from doing sex and nudity for a long time.”
