Is it just my copy, or is the new Meaning of Life DVD horribly choppy on most DVD players? I suspect that it will work fine on the one that supports progressive output, but all the others fall apart any time there’s any significant movement on screen. Deeply disappointing, since they all play other discs fine.

Update: I have four DVD players — seven if you count the computers — and only one can show this disc without serious tearing in almost every scene. That is, of course, the one that has progressive output, so there’s no interlacing. This is the only DVD I own that looks this bad with standard interlaced video; I don’t know what they did in the mastering process, but it sucks.

Ever since DVDs were introduced, I’ve made a point of checking every few months to see if they’d gotten around to releasing Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins. Tonight I discovered that it came out last month.

Sadly, it only seems to be available in pan-and-scan, not widescreen. Beats hell out of my old VHS copy, though.

Since this was also the day that the state of California permitted me to take my new Browning Buck Mark pistol home, today officially qualifies as A Good Day.

I’m horribly rusty with a pistol, though; at twenty-five yards I couldn’t get twenty shots into a group smaller than four inches. With a .22, no less. Blech.

Han shot first.

We never saw Newt’s family.

There was no World War II scene.

The government agents had guns.

Think of your favorite movies, the way you remember them. Pick them up on DVD, and there’s a disturbingly high chance that the movie you see will be different somehow. Maybe it’s subtle, adding a few minutes here and there that were originally chopped out for runtime or ratings issues. Maybe it’s dramatic, restoring huge chunks of material that were arbitrarily slashed away by a clueless studio. More and more often, though, it’s the result of a director revisiting his earlier work and simply changing his mind about how best to tell the story.

I call this “pissing in your whiskey,” because the director is insisting that the best work he could do ten years ago has soured in the barrel, and needs an infusion of mature creative juices.

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The good news: the Indiana Jones movies will be on DVD in November.

The bad news: the box set includes “Temple of Doom.”

It was on the tip of my tongue. Really.

Just a little hint was all I wanted, and I couldn’t find it. Back in the mid-eighties, I watched a mildly amusing (very mildly) film that had some nice quotable lines. I’d like to give proper credit when I use them, because while it’s fun to be obscure, it’s even better when you can prove you’re not making it up.

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