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Do
you own all of these movies?
No. Most of the movies I review here have been rented from Netflix,
or are borrowed from friends. I won't buy a DVD unless I feel I
will watch it more than three times. I figure, if I can watch it
three times, it's probably good enough to watch over and over again.
How
do you rate movies?
When I rate a movie, what you see is purely my opinion, based
on my own personal tastes. I am not a trained film critic, and I
have never studied filmmaking.
How
do you rate video quality?
When I rate the video quality of a DVD, I am looking for
a clean picture, good color, and no compression artifacts. I do
take into consideration the age of the film (and if it has been
restored), as film stock from the 60's were not as good as what
is available to movie companies today. Also, I favor anamorphic
widescreen transfers. I will not give a letterboxed (non-anamorphic)
widescreen transfer of a film more than a rating of "3"
no matter how good it looks. I will not take points off for a DVD
not being widescreen if the original source was also not
widescreen. A rating of "2" denotes "average",
and is not a negative rating.
How
do you rate audio?
When I rate audio, I am looking for clear, clean sound
with a full frequency range. Again, the age of the movie is taken
into account, as recording technology from the past is inferior
to what is available now. For movies with surround sound, I'm looking
for a full soundstage to set the scene, the mood, the music, whatever,
throughout entire movie rather than surround sound that is used
only for special effects.
How
do you rate special features?
If
a disc has commentary and trailers (and that's it), or filmographies
and trailers (and that's it), I will give it a "2". Any
less than that will get a "1". If a disc has no special
features on it whatsoever, it gets a "0", and no, "chapter
selection" is not a special feature! Anything above
and beyond "average" is rated based on quality of content,
originality and thoroughness -- how much effort did the studio put
into producing these extra features, and are they worthwhile to
watch?
Why
don't you list the subtitles and other languages?
The
DVD's being reviewed are all Region 1 encoded, and the intended
audience for this site is the US and Canada, under the assumption
that everyone reading this site can understand English. As such,
I only make note of audio tracks in other languages when English
is not the original language of the movie, and in such a case, I
will list the various languages available on the disc. For the same
reason I do not list all of the languages of subtitles available,
as I assume that any DVD of a foreign language film released in
America will have English subtitles if it does not have an English
soundtrack available.
What
is "Anamorphic Widescreen"?
I havent made that part of my site yet. Until that happens, you
can click the link in the upper left of your screen to find out.
Why
does your "Studio" listing say "Warner Brothers"
when this movie was made by MGM?
The
"Studio" listing for each DVD I review refers to the studio
that released the DVD, which is not necessarily the same
studio that produced the actual film. This happens especially frequently
with older MGM movies because in the 90's, Ted Turner bought the
rights for the entire MGM film film library. Since then, Time Warner
has bought out Ted Turner, and thus today, AOL Time Warner now owns
all of those old MGM movies. I decided to do things this way because
this is a DVD review site, not a movie review site.
If
your question was not answered here, feel free to send an email
to Bryan.
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